Open source may have won, but not by *that* much
Though Keith Curtis (@keithccurtis), author of After the Software Wars, spent 11 years programming for Microsoft, once he bit into the open-source software apple, he bit hard. In Curtis' enthusiasm for open source, however, he sometimes confuses his beliefs and aspirations for what open-source software can achieve with the market as it actually is.
I can relate. I have that problem, too, at times.
Curtis makes a wide array of valid points, but sometimes they contradict each other. As just one example, he cites Stanford University research that reveals just .17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code in Linux to highlight Linux's reliability compared to Windows and other proprietary software, which tends to average 20 to 30 bugs per 1,000 lines of code.
This sounds great for Linux until Curtis points out that the median age of those bugs is ten months, roughly three times longer than the Linux kernel's release schedule. This wouldn't be such a problem if Curtis didn't point out the cause for bugs' longevity: developer whimsy.
The good news is that it is easier to fix bugs than to write code because writing code involves design, which in turn requires difficult decisions to be made....In the bugfixing phase of a software product cycle, most of the hard decisions have already been made, so it is mostly a matter of maknig small tweaks....
Fixing these bugs might be tedious, especially when the developer doesn't have access to the hardware he is trying to debug, but everything about hardware is tedious so they may as well just do it now.
Except that they don't. Bugs sit there, as Curtis documents, for an average of 10 months. Willing the developers to fix them faster is not a viable strategy.
Nor is castigating commercial open-source developers like IBM and Red Hat, both of which Curtis takes to task for not making the Linux desktop better. Curtis views the desktop as the key to winning on the server, a lesson learned from long experience at Microsoft, and is dismayed by IBM's (Linux desktop code "will not become functional until IBM understands free software can achieve world domination if they do their part!") and Red Hat's (Its "concentration on its for-profit Enterprise offerings has distracted it from creating a healthy community of interested geeks") apparent indifference.
Overlooked in Curtis' analysis is that IBM and Red Hat are minting hundreds of millions (billions, even) from their "wrong" open-source software strategies. They simply don't care about the traditional Linux 'desktop' as much as he does, which is understandable since no one has managed to monetize that desktop.,/p.
Hence, while Curtis' book is a useful guide for those looking for an exit from the proprietary software thicket, his too-ready willingness to believe open-source software is the answer to every software problem leads him into arguments that don't withstand much scrutiny:
I think proprietary software, if it becomes popular and long-lived, is destined to become a mess because it does everything by itself rather than leveraging free software components, and it doesn't receive the constant tending that a garden the size of a city would require.
Curtis and I agree that there are huge benefits that derive from open-source software, but it's hard to dismiss Microsoft's, Apple's, Google's, etc. outsized successes by saying, "30 years from now they'll really be in a pickle!" The rewards far outweigh the risks, in that decision calculus.
Open source is, or should be, a pragmatic tool, not an ideological screed. I believe Curtis views open source through a pragmatist's lens, but derives overly broad generalizations from his data. As noted before, I can relate. This is a problem that plagued me for years.
Curtis has written a good book, but will become an even more potent voice for open source once he marries the positives from years at Microsoft with the positives of years of open source outside it.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
What about fixing the 'maknig' bug in this sentence.
:)
Can positivity be had on the dark side?
I will read it a few times and try to incorporate your perspective as I revise the book in the future.
A few points:
I do believe that telling developers to work harder on bugs is a good strategy. You don't think your statements about GPL versus Apache, etc. have influence in the industry?
I will think more about IBM and Red Hat. As for Red Hat, failing to build a community around their free desktop version can and likely did hurt them in the enterprise, a point I do make in the book. You think of Red Hat as a success, but I think of it as a failure. I last heard they had 2 million paid-for users. There are surely games on the iPhone with a larger marketshare.
Why is this line problematic?
I think proprietary software, if it becomes popular and long-lived, is destined to become a mess because it does everything by itself rather than leveraging free software components, and it doesn't receive the constant tending that a garden the size of a city would require.
If you saw the source code to Office, you'd agree with me more! I only hint at this in my book ;-)
Do you have a more complete list of my contradictions?
BTW, I think Apple and Google are going to be in trouble much before 30 years -- Google is only 10 years old! And I do believe that FOSS is the solution to every problem. Part of it comes from the fact that we have enough FOSS programmers out there already today, if they just worked more efficiently.
Contrary to this, both IBM and Red Hat have their open source models centred around open source stacks and open standards including Java application servers. At no point can there be any advantage to using one client over another precisely because the client software, being open source, can be made to run on any client-side operating system so there's no way any of the server packages can be in any way tied to any particular client operating system. Matter of fact, some of IBMs proprietary software will run on both Linux and AIX but runs far better on AIX and so they're using these same tactics of vendor lock-in to upsell people to AIX based packages.
For people to move to the Linux desktop there has to be a compelling advantage. With open source software there can be no situation (at least, not in a permanent sense) of software only running on the Linux desktop, it can be ported to Windows so there is no compulsion to leave Windows behind if it's already available and all the required software is available or can be made available. The possible compelling advantage of moving to Linux is a dramatic reduction in maintenance and a similar increase in ease of use but both of these will cost a great deal in time and money to pull off with no obvious monetary return. These are the reasons already given by Red Hat for not investing in the desktop.
So, the Windows/OS X desktop can work just as well with Linux servers and providing the level of ease of use and maintenance that would be required for people to jump ship is almost certainly a money-pit. Additionally, despite your disparagement of Red Hat's sales their growth figures are more than healthy and it makes sense for a relatively small company to stick to their core competencies rather than expanding too fast and failing as a result as so many have. Sure, there are games on the iPhone with more users; some of those games are five bucks.
In short: I'm just not seeing it.
SuSE tried to sell a packaged desktop distro when YaST was proprietary and after being bought by Novell the commercial package now includes Novell Netware software but they're not making a huge dent in the desktop and not as successful as Red Hat so the desktop strategy isn't working there. Maybe Canonical can pull it off when they finally settle down to putting out stable release from the get go rather than fixing with patches after the fact.
Until then, don't look to Red Hat or IBM to do anything on the desktop, IBM are too invested in AIX and Red Hat are doing just fine sticking to what they're already good at instead of expertmenting in an untested market. Maybe they're waiting to see if Canonical have any success.
When you make a statement like 'I do believe that FOSS is the solution to every problem' you weaken your case. This is a religious statement, not a pragmatic one.
James
- by KeithCu September 8, 2009 12:12 PM PDT
- Jimmyed2000,
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(7 Comments)Strictly speaking, it doesn't really weaken my case. It is also a concluding thought after writing a book. I didn't really hope to make that case in a little box on this website. It took many pages and months of thinking to get there.
Anyway, on what grounds might it be wrong? Are you suggesting that proprietary software can lead to better code? Or that people should be allowed to sell proprietary software? As for the latter, I do say on page 4: "the free market gives everyone an unfettered right to innovate in any way, create any license agreement, and charge anything for a product."