To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 10:57:03 +0000 (UTC)
From: "Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hps@tanstaafl.de>
Message-ID: <96o9pv$j3j$1@forge.intermeta.de>
Organization: INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH
In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.0.20010216170349.01efc030@mail.etinc.com>, <20010217151407.E26627@alcove.wittsend.com>
Reply-To: hps@tanstaafl.de
Subject: Re: Linux stifles innovation...
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

mhw@wittsend.com (Michael H. Warfield) writes:

>	No...  Close Source and proprietary protocols are then anthema to
>BOTH progress and innovation.  When innovation is done in a close arena, it

These are two different things! Proprietary protocols are the death to
variety and customer choice! 

I personally are perfectly happy with closed source and open
protocols. Show me a compareable product to BEA WebLogic, which is
free. But if I consider this closed source program to suck, I can
still take my application and deploy it on a free EJB container with a
free servlet engine. I don't lose with closed source here. And the
closed source vendor is forced to compete with open source
products. Which in the end gives me a better product. I'm happy with
upgrades and release cycles where I get one new release and some bug
fixes in six months. Not a new release all two days. And I'm happy
that I can call a support line or open a bug ticket with a
vendor. Yes, there are vendors which care about bug tickets and fix
bugs in their products.

The division "Open Source - all bugs are fixed in shortest time"
vs. "Close Source - no bugs are fixed at all and only updates are
sold" is IMHO plain wrong. And e.g. in Germany, where there is
something called "Gewaehrleistungsfrist" which is six months after
selling a product, vendors are held by the law (!) to fix bugs. And
again, companies like M$ try to circument this with "EULAs" which,
according to some lawyers do not uphold in court. But according to my
knowledge, noone in Germany has ever tried to sue M$ to force them to
comply to this law.

Microsoft tries to circumvent this competition with proprietary
protocols and non-interchangeablity. Why do they bash Java? Why do
they push something like C#? Because they don't want _NO_
competition. They "embrace and extend". And the patent the extensions.

Many other companies take the challenge of open source and open
protocols and try to compete with open source products. And they do it
really well! I have to see Oracle to lose a significant percentage of
their Enterprise RDBMS to free software (And please don't quote me the
"Nasa switches to MySQL" article. This is fine but then again for them, 
Oracle wasn't a good choice in the first place. ;-) )

Innovation today happens with protocols. With ideas. With interoperability.  
On the Internet. Open Source and Closed Source are competitors and
open source and free software _forces_ company to make better software
if they want to compete.

Microsoft tries to avoid the competition and wants to lock their
customers into the Windows - IIS - ASP - .NET - C# cycle with
proprietary protocols, languages and platforms, because then they know
that for these customers, changing into _any_ other environment (be it
the LAMP, FreeBSD-PostgreSQL-Python, Zope, Oracle, Cold Fusion or
anything _else_) is so hard, that the customers won't do. 

Setting up a network of "Microsoft certified professionals" which
repeat the ideology from Redmond on and on, really helps here. It is
almost like the roman-catholic church. ;-)

Microsoft don't really care about "Open Source", "Closed Source", GNU,
Linux, BSD and all the stuff. They only care about "Competition" and
"Market share". Anything that endangers their market share is a
threat.

>	Without Open Source and it's predecessors, we would not have the
>Internet as we know it today.  Companies back then (and I worked for

No. Without Cisco and Sun, we wouldn't have a working internet at
all. And they do closed products with open protocols. And that's IMHO
the point.

>some of them) could not envision a network as we know it now.  Several
>of them saw no future what so ever in the "Internet".  One of them even
>went so far as to proclaim that Novell was the be all and end all of
>networking and nothing would ever amount to anything on this petty worthless
>Internet thing.

>	History has proved them wrong and history has proved that Open
>Source is the provider of choices not the limiter of choices.

No. Open protocols and Open ideas are. Open source is just a part of
the whole picture. Every company that tries to lock their customers
into their products, are a threat to the Internet and to users and
customers. That's where Novell from your example failed. They failed
because of IPX and their inability to adjust to the emerging IP
environment.

Novell failed because they tried to push a small vertical, expensive
product (file and print serving) when a competitor started to give the
"peer-to-peer" and server network away with their baseline product
("Windows"). Not because they made a close source product.

"We give away for free, what you sell". Microsoft got Novell with
this. They got Netscape with this. They will try to get the next
competitor with this, too. They can't get Linux with this and that's
why they're afraid. And that's where such a Linux-bashing article
comes from.

	Regards
		Henning
-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen       -- Geschaeftsfuehrer
INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH     hps@intermeta.de

Am Schwabachgrund 22  Fon.: 09131 / 50654-0   info@intermeta.de
D-91054 Buckenhof     Fax.: 09131 / 50654-20   
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