[svlug] A little on Open Source Philosophy...

[Gies, Dennis]

I have learned that the following argument for Open Source just doesn't work
when talking to MS lovers:  "I just know that it is the right way."  So I've
done my best to branch out...

A little background:

I've had many-a-lunch time argument with my manager about whether Linux can
truly compete with Windows based alternatives, both operating system wise,
and application wise.  Obviously, I am on the Linux side.  

The Argument:

He is very prone to looking at it only from the position of an end user, and
does not like to realize the fact that while my mother perhaps could not use
Linux now, its constantly improving.  Eventually she will.  

This aside, however, he makes some arguments that I cannot quite answer,
although I know I'm right.  First, he says that the endless integration of
shit into the Windows OS is great for him as a developer because it gives
him easy access to it.  I ask how he would feel if he hated the product that
they integrated and was forced to use it due to the fact that there are no
alternatives, no one else can integrate with the OS.  To this he answers,
"If I didn't like the MS tools for HTML parsing, for example, and if
Netscape would open their APIs, then I could just use Netscape's tools
instead."  I think this answer misses the point.  

He also asks me whether I think Intel should release their schematics.  I
told him that I think this would be great, assuming all the other chip
makers release their schematics, because then we (as a company) would
benefit from all the improvements other companies made.  He said other's
would just steal Intel's designs, and make their own chips, and I said that
the only way for Intel to make money then would be to innovate faster than
the competition, in effect continuing to have the best product on the
market.  This launched him into a comparison of open source to socialism,
where it sounds great but in practice people owuld not be motivated to makea
better product when someone else could do it.  This raises an interesting
question:  Why would a company spend tons of money on R&D if they were going
to give away the design once they had it (even if they could sell the
product successfully).  I did not have a good enough answer for this. All I
could do was ask him how he explained the Linux movement, but the truth is
the Linux movement is strongly founded in beliefs that underlie
socialism...people innovate because it makes them feel good; its for the
good of the community.  Not everyone has that same devotion and motivation,
so how would open source scale to industry?  

The question of open source development scaling was posed to Linus at the SC
Intel Linux Users Group meeting last week.  He answered by saying that it
had very well scaled so far, and that was many orders of magnitude.  This is
very true, but its scaled only within a group of people who all share a
common desire, and its not monetary.  As we all know, the world is driven by
money, whether it should or not, so how does open source fit into that
picture?  

Suprinsingly, my manager used to be a Linux user.  Now he is very supportive
of MS, which really blows my mind.  I can't believe that someone who spends
his entire week in front of a computer can stand having a corporation
control every aspect of it.  Especially during these arguments, however,
he's always looking at it from a corporate/regular users view point. 

"How is an IT dept. going to support an OS when they don't have anyone to
turn to for support?"  -- A: RedHat, SuSE etc.

"A regular user doesn't want to be able to configure every little thing in
their OS...they just want email."  -- A:  Linux could/can do both.

"As a developer, I want to be able to count on my code running on every
users machine, and in a corporate setting every user is running Windows." --
A:  Good God, where to start?

etc.

So if any of you have some Earth shaking arguments for Open Source, or some
web pages that address these issues, I'd love to hear them....

dnns
------------------------
Speak not for Intel do I.

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