In his first monthly column, Danny O'Brien describe why Rob Enderle's keynote at the recent SCO Forum is eeeevil.
Just for kicks, I decided to read what this long-time Linux-basher / Microsoft-worshiper has to say for himself. Sadly, the first 2/3 of this keynote is just blather on why he worships Microsoft, why he's got an axe to grind at IBM, and why it is his personal responsibility to defend SCO from the likes of the FUD-slinging evil-of-all-evils, Groklaw.
Skip that. The stuff that's got a smidgeon of value is towards the end, where Enderle describes why free software bigots are their own worst enemies:
Why in the world would a programmer trying to make ends meet want to drive an initiative that could only make him, or her, less valuable over time? Linux folks are not only not paid more than their UNIX counterparts, with the massive move to off-shoring, the average wage is dropping like a rock globally and the jobs are moving to places where that wage is acceptable.There's a fair question lurking in there somewhere. Leading up to this statement, Enderle talks about why checking out of the monied economy is a fool's errand -- it may work in the short term for some things, but inevitably it implodes, or it causes society itself to fail, since no one is earning a salary, paying taxes or underwriting community services (police, national defence, trash pickup, etc.). Fair enough.
Kent Beck made similar allusions at OSCon, albeit much more convincingly. Kent's fundemental queasiness about open source and economics can be distilled to at least one of the following:
Enderle makes a lot of sweeping generalizations that are trivially false: characterizing the Linux-based TiVo as "spyware", linking demoware and crippleware with free software, and implying that free software is an entirely barter-based and non-monitized economy. Oh, and if you are a big company (like GM), then Linux programmers are listening to the trade secrets you must share with them, and will then share those secrets with another big company (like Ford).
Where to begin. First off, open source is not a manufactured good like a car or a watch. It's a shared resource, like a new way to bake a soufflé. It's not a zero-sum game anymore. Second, free software today is mostly about the most fundemental levels of IT -- stuff you need in order to get the real work done. So when the GM IT folks are sharing information, it's not really about the strategy for the new diesel hybrid engine, it's about how to tweak Samba and Apache for the intranet. And, guess what, they're probably talking to the Ford IT guys directly, without a Linux vendor acting as intermediary. And it's not a big deal.
Finally, the biggest flaw I can see is that Enderle presupposes that the only way to fund linux is through direct payments to vendors. Yet he talks about how Notes is "free software" because IBM gave it away to sell hardware. Funny, IBM is doing the same with Linux now, and no one but Enderle is accusing Notes of being free software....
I've seen this model before. It's called taxation. Who pays for Bryant Park or Washington Square? Taxpayers do. Can you use those parks even if you don't live in New York and pay taxes there? Sure you can. These parks are funded by getting a large enough group of people to each pay a relatively miniscule amount of money. Add up enough pennies from millions of taxpayers, and lo and behold, the parks department has a budget.
The same thing is true with Linux. It's certainly not a foolish experiment to play with a de-monitized barter economy. Given Kent's observations, I'd say that options #2 or #3 need further examination.
So, now comes the fun part: where is the flaw in Enderle's argument?
His flaw is in the word "only." Working with Free Software does not make a programmer less valuable over time. Even if we wave the flag of offshoring. The programmer increases in experience, and becomes more valuable. The installed base of software the programmer has created and worked with grows
characterizing the Linux-based TiVo as "spyware"
That's bizarre. I wish my Tivo was spyware. It says they don't keep track of my thumbs-up/thumbs-down preferences
It's not a zero-sum game anymore.
It never was.
I've seen this model before. It's called taxation. Who pays for Bryant Park or Washington Square? Taxpayers do. Can you use those parks even if you don't live in New York and pay taxes there? Sure you can. These parks are funded by getting a large enough group of people to each pay a relatively miniscule amount of money. Add up enough pennies from millions of taxpayers, and lo and behold, the parks department has a budget.
My idea is different. Say a large school has a $100K budget for software. Instead of buying $100K of Microsoft software, I say they should hire two hackers and pay them to make the district run on free software, releasing the modifications to the world. Meanwhile, if other schools and government agencies and companies do this, there will be a snowballing effect making the software better and better (by the standards of those funding it). The software industry goes on, it just changes. This is already happening.
Free software is accelerating to an inevitability point: it is inevitable that free software will have enough support behind it as to render the proprietary model unable to compete (this may happen as a whole, or piecemeal in certain software areas, increasing as we go). To me, there's just no way around it. Might as well figure out how we're going to live with it now. Knowing that, the people who contribute to free softare now are going to be the ones on top of the curve after the revolution comes. So it makes a lot more sense to be contributing free software than Enderle thinks.
