[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > A good portion of last night's meeting dealt with software
> > development models in business, primarily with how to use FOSS
> > effectively in a commercial environment.
>
> I want to make one comment on this. I feel the European model (write
> code, give it away, defeat evil empire), has not shown commercial
> viability. In fact companies like RedHat have made enterprises out
> repackaging the work done by these groups. KDevelop is a great
> example. A few people have been able to latch on to corporate
> entities and make a go of it, but they are the exception. (Miguel,
> Linus, Alan Cox, etc.)
I haven't noticed a particular effort to attain commercial viability in
the European drive to convert to OSS. I see them primarily as using any
means necessary to get out from under the IBM/Microsoft "thumb." OSS is
a good tool for this.
> I went to a developer conference in England (Raymond was one of the
> speakers) this past spring. The thing that struck me is:
>
> 1) they are hot, hot, hot about open source as a way to one up the US.
>
> 2) Almost everybody there, except those working in finance, were working
> on government projects. Open Source is great for government projects, but
> I think our strength comes from the innovation of the private sector.
> Financial reward is vital.
>
> My feeling is that Europe is embracing a socialistic model of software
> development. I don't think this is the right model for the US, and we
> should look at both the technical merits AND the business achievements
> that have come out of the European model. I have done this myself.
> Almost all Linux users I talk to about my proxy ask, "why don't you Open
> Source it." Because I want a fighting chance of making a buck on my work.
> It would be difficult for me to compete against the likes of Red Hat, who
> would gladly take my work and sell to IBM themselves.
You say yourself that most of the people who attended the conference
were working in government, so it would be a poor assumption that *all*
of Europe is 100% pro-OSS. Take SAP for example. Their enterprise
software only runs on Windows; I don't see them racing to enter
partnerships with Novell/SuSE anytime soon.
The phrase that seems to apply here comes from the aforementioned "Magic
Cauldron" essay:
"... software is largely a service industry operating under the
persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing
industry."
This is the tact that IBM (evil though they may be, they serve as good
examples of this business model) takes and is succeeding at. It implies
both that the attempt to sell a word processor *application* as if it
were a physical word processor piece of hardware is not ineffective
under OSS, but that the concept will eventually be defeated in the
commercial, closed-source world as well.
Those are just a few of my thoughts on the matter. YMMV.
Tim
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