From: "Robert White" <rwhite@casabyte.com>
To: "Larry McVoy" <lm@bitmover.com>
Cc: "Stephan von Krawczynski" <skraw@ithnet.com>, <wa@almesberger.net>,
       <miquels@cistron-office.nl>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: RE: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 14:39:01 -0700
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How *exactly* does that (your below) jibe with your dismissal of the
arguments of people like myself who do, in literal fact, have twenty years
of experience in the field of software design and innovation and the
*business* of selling that design and innovation to others?

You talk this great game about how you are just trying to weight the
comments you receive based on the experience backing them up.  But then, on
the backside you "refine" your allowable definition of experience so as to
comfortably dismiss, without consideration, any comments you don't like.

Further, if you *are* this great paragon of business wisdom, why didn't you
apply this acumen and address a single element of any of the arguments from
my two seminal posts?

Where is your response to my citation of rise and fall of Peachtree or the
passing of the innovate-then-get-bought model exemplified by the product
(and companies behind) things like Quattro Pro and Excel?

How am I wrong in my presentation of my position that the ongoing support
costs of software, particularly in a market that will not let you produce a
product and then move on to another, undermine the financial position needed
to bring successive new products to bear?

With your boundless store of superior software business knowledge, why
haven't you trotted out some model that explains how Microsoft's "superior
innovation" is demonstrated by their ability to buy their out-performing
competitors (Excel, Power Point, Word etc were all "bought" not innovated at
MS) and throw huge amounts of Monopoly money at the tasks of "stealing"
concepts from others (Explorer from Mosaic and/o Netscape, "Windowing" from
X11 and DesqView, DOS from CPM, which stole from Unix, etc)?

See, it is nice and comfortable for you to make statements about innovation
and how the OSS movement is just a bunch of copycats, but you have yet to
turn this sea of insight into something as simple as a single instance of a
company founded and maintained on "innovation" completely without the aid of
the common mimicry you like to repackage as hyperbole-friendly "theft".

There is a fundamental flaw in your entire position.  You fail to recognize
or admit one simple, irrefutable fact:  All software is derivative work.
Even the great seminal works (e.g. "VisiCalc") were produced by applying an
overwhelming body of existing thought to a novel paradigm.

Until your vast (and somehow more important than everybody else's) specific
"I run a business so I know things" experience can debunk that single point,
you have no moral high ground on which to base your as yet unfounded "people
shouldn't mimic my product, its immoral" stance nor any of its in-defensible
follow ons about how "only businesses innovate."

Rob.


-----Original Message-----
From: Larry McVoy [mailto:lm@bitmover.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 1:52 PM
To: Robert White
Cc: Stephan von Krawczynski; Larry McVoy; wa@almesberger.net;
miquels@cistron-office.nl; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Troll Tech [was Re: Sco vs. IBM]


On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 01:41:49PM -0700, Robert White wrote:
> The idea that you "don't learn anything from (playing a less skilled
> opponent)" and by extension you also can not learn anything from a
> non-player is so flawed as to be laughable.

In theory, you can learn anything from anyone.
In practice, the highest concentration of useful information comes from
someone with more experience and skill than yourself.

Who do you want to have as your doctor?  Someone who has done it for 20
years or someone who is observing other doctors?  Repeat for any other
profession, sport, discipline, whatever.  Maybe you want to have your
heart surgery done by someone who thinks he can do it, me, I'd pick
someone who has done it successfully a few hundred times.

That's my point of view, it's clear it isn't your point of view.  That's
fine, how about we agree to have different points of views and let this
thread die?
--
---
Larry McVoy              lm at bitmover.com
http://www.bitmover.com/lm

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