Stanford Teaching MBAs How To Fight Open Source 430
mjasay writes "As if the proprietary software world needed any help, two business professors from Harvard and Stanford have combined to publish 'Divide and Conquer: Competing with Free Technology Under Network Effects,' a research paper dedicated to helping business executives fight the onslaught of open source software. The professors advise 'the commercial vendor ... to bring its product to market first, to judiciously improve its product features, to keep its product "closed" so the open source product cannot tap into the network already built by the commercial product, and to segment the market so it can take advantage of a divide-and-conquer strategy.' The professors also suggest that 'embrace and extend' is a great model for when the open source product gets to market first. Glad to see that $48,921 that Stanford MBAs pay being put to good use. Having said that, such research is perhaps a great, market-driven indication that open source is having a serious effect on proprietary technology vendors."
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Not following their own advice? (Score:5, Funny)
They should have left their research closed. Now anyone can take their research, reverse engineer it, and repackage it under a Creating Commons license.
Re:sissy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:resistence is futile (Score:4, Funny)
There's a reason Macs outsell Linux [today.com].
Re:sissy (Score:4, Funny)
Google says [google.co.uk]: No results found for "Improve your jihad: nuclear weapons".
GASP! They nuked the article! CENSORSHIP!
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
Re:resistence is futile (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, because a few million Mac desktops vastly outnumbers hundreds of millions of Linux embedded devices, servers, desktops and virtual appliances.
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
What makes me laugh is that there is such an "Us Vs Them" tone in all of it.
Right. And the discussion below won't have a similar tone... :)
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
What makes me laugh is that there is such an "Us Vs Them" tone in all of it. It's like the nice business people think that all the open source guys are just waiting to kill their babies!
Wait, thats not our ultimate goal? I dedicated my life to a lie!
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
It's like the nice business people think that all the open source guys are just waiting to kill their babies! I mean settle down.
I agree, they really have nothing to worry about in this regard. The open source baby killing project is not even in beta yet, and there are compatibility and dependency issues that will keep it out of the linux kernel for quite some time. The closed-source world, especially Microsoft, is years ahead of OSS when it comes to infant termination software. But if there's anyone out there in slashdot-land who would like to lend a hand please grab the sources from freshmeat and pitch in!
I know the real motive! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
Our Mulch-o-Tron 5000 satisfies over 9000 best business practices and is ISO infinity certified. What better way to protect your company from the legal dangers of open source?
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
I always wondered why they called it that...
Re:resistence is futile (Score:2, Funny)
Some have asked: "Why does open source imitate more than innovate?"
Good question. We suspect the problem is that most open source software is written by programmers.
Although programmers are similar to human beings in many respects, and may even be mistaken for humans when observed briefly from a great distance or under adverse viewing conditions, controlled observations clearly demonstrate humans and programmers are distinct. Since programmers are a different species (as the term is broadly defined, since unlike other species open source programmers have never been observed to procreate -- or at least the very least we offer our most sincere condolences to any researcher who might witness such an event) they tend to construct interfaces that are either incomprehensible to the human mind, or in recognition of their own limitations, construct systems that are simple mimicry of human designed interfaces (aka "human interfaces"). Here the term "construct" is used intentionally because we cannot in good conscience use the term "design," with all that it implies in this context, as most evidence indicates programmer-constructed interfaces are unusable by human beings.
We performed several tests.
Emacs, an advanced operating system constructed by a programmer, was tested first. We requested our test subjects start emacs, write a short sentence, save a file containing the sentence, and cleanly exit the system -- all without the intervention of an open source programmer. No human test subject was able to do so. In fact, mere open source programmers were typically insufficient to complete the task: an open source programmer with a gray neck beard was often required.
We contrast emacs with Microsoft Word. The latter is not regarded as having an ideal interface, but nearly two thirds of human beings under the age of 40 who grew up in am industrialized Western nation were able to complete the open-edit-save-exit task without the intervention of a programmer. Even marketing staff had little trouble opening the application, saving the file, and exiting; most confusion revolved around the requirement to type a short sentence, but in all honesty this wasn't the fault of the software and furthermore this was the portion of the task least likely to elicit effective guidance from the programmer.
An equivalent test with Open Office, written by open source programmers but sporting a derivative interface, demonstrated similar results.
Next we tested the GIMP. Several graphic designers simply began to cry when placed in front of the testing terminal. Further testing was aborted on ethical grounds after one designer became physically ill. Although the results were officially recorded as "inconclusive," we remain skeptical as to the usability of the GIMP's interface by anyone other than a GIMP programmer. Similarly, we remain skeptical as to the graphic design proficiency of those programmers, but this is strictly untested conjecture and represents fertile ground for future inquiry.
With commercial software from well established vendors we presume there is a high likelihood that one or more human beings will be responsible for human interface design. Although further research is needed, it is possible that the absence of humans on many open source projects results in unusable or derivative interfaces. Furthermore, there may be aspects of the typical open source development process that discourage participation by humans. Again, further research is needed.
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Well, they *have* been known to kill their wives. :-(
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
The closed-source world, especially Microsoft, is years ahead of OSS when it comes to infant termination software
Well... my copy just failed with a Vaginal Ring of Death... I demand a 3 year warranty and diapers for my newborn...
Cheers!
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
And just where does this "freshmeat" come from? Hmm?
Much of it from gnus it seems.
Unfortunately they're overexploiting that so I suspect that nowadays most of the meat is not even real gnu, but generic gnu-flavored beef instead.
Re:confusion (Score:4, Funny)
- Are extroverted. Make an effort to show themselves as friendly to people in general.
Kill them. Kill them with fire.
I just "earnt" a Computer Science PhD... (Score:4, Funny)
Glad I never got one of those fancy degree's, they obviously do not teach spelling or grammar.
Perhaps Mexican universities don't teach IT classes in English. Looking at many of the posts on /. US universities don't teach English well either.
Falcon
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:2, Funny)
The open source baby killing project is not even in beta yet [...]
The Apache team have already added a new feature. After killing the baby, they take its scalp.
This is what I love about open-source software. When you have a bunch of committed developers, you end up with a killer application.
Re:natural order (Score:1, Funny)
Actually, 2009 will be the year of the Linux desktop.
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Reminds me of Microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
I have argued this over and over, but you never listen. The baby killing doesn't belong in the kernel. It should be a user space program. Keeping the code in the kernel removes the user's ability to remove the code if they are morally opposed to baby killing, whereas others would prefer to set different limits on how long child processes are allowed to continue before being killed.
Why is this so hard to understand?