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Not exactly. The problems I think they have are:
1. Uncertain business models. The lack of indemnification
is a showstopper. They better work that out pronto if
they want to compete for big accounts.
2. Lack of IP. This makes it hard to stay competitive
unless they innovate and obtain IP. I don't mean the
competition to get market share, but the competition
to keep cash flow given costs. I think the SCO
episode is at least indicative of the problem. They
do need multiprocessor capabilities in Linux. If
they had trading agreements, they could pick that
up from SCO by having IBM agree to swap IP with
SCO. On the other hand, they still have to work
out the details of distribution. But those are
standard agreements. Now does that apply to all
open source (has to by the agreements that open
source contributors make) or just IBM? See the problem?
If the open source community owned common IP, they
could make good deals and maintain cash flow positions.
Otherwise, the low cost position evaporates in the
face of licensing costs. Indemnification costs
exacerbate that. Now can they acquire tradable
IP and still meet the "exquisitely high standards"
of the W3C patent policy?
In short, open source systems have to compete to
the same requirements as any other system.
I held on to my Netscape browser until MS made the
Outlook options competitive. Netscape made it easy
to get and send email. In other words, I
do see the applications to the Internet as valuable
and my choice of browser could reflect my morals
because it did the jobs I needed to do.
As to the operating system itself, at home I
choose a platform for which a host of reliable
sound processing utilities are available. So
it gets pretty specific when one starts to consider
the desktop apps. If I could afford it, I might
switch to an all Apple solution, but then when
I have to go home and do FoxPro work, I'm back
to Windows.
Good enough is good enough until it isn't. I don't bet
against open source. I'm counting on it. But they better
get a lot smarter about what is required to do business
in environments that require guarantees, warranties, etc.
as well as being cheaper. Cheap is just a matter of
what the business is worth: call that the cost of
owning the customer. Anyone can do cheap.
"Papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his
hat was his home, and when he died, all he left
us was alone." - Whitfield/Strong
len
From: John Cowan [mailto:jcowan@reutershealth.com]
Bullard, Claude L (Len) scripsit:
> It's a fear if the threat is to what one fears losing. It is phobia when
> it is the knee jerk means to raise a rabble because they are afraid of
> losing market share. If Moz is really demonstrably clearly to any
> user better, it can hold its own.
You can demonstrate all you want, but many people will not listen.
> >so i support ip, open source, proprietary products, and most importantly
> >standards. but in the end the big companies and the markets will
> >determine which, if any, of these things have value.
>
> Me too, but given our business model, the bigCos are there to enable
> us to manage risks for our customers, to enable us to sell based on
> the applications we build and the types of content we manage, and
> not on spending cash assets to obtain core technology without IP
> advantages. We will lose if we go down that path.
>
> >buying based on who you can sue is basically admitting failure before
> >you've even tried success. that might explain a lot of large system
> >failures
>
> It is only down at the level of core technology that open
> source is competing seriously (open office not withstanding) and
> there they do it without IP management which reduces their overall
> credibility.
There's a sequence here.
1) "Open source is just a toy; there will never be an OS."
2) "Open source has an OS, but it will never have a desktop."
3) "Open source has a desktop, but it will never have credible office apps."
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.
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