Gartner Group Debunking Open Source Myths 152
6j3net sent us a report from the Gartner Group that attempts to debunk Open Source Myths. It looks like they got things pretty much right. It looks as if this might be a great url to send the bossman when he asks questions.
In General, A Good Thing (Score:4)
Hell, irrespective of whether Gartner are paid mouthpieces for big-name companies or not, this kind of report can only help. All that was said is dead-obvious to us, but it's not to people who haven't been a part of the scene. This gives OSS a bit more of a legit status.
The thing to now be aware of is that this kind of report may very well lead to lots more "newbies" coming into the OSS world, from both the IT user/support side and the development side ("Carl, go check out OSS and see how it can help us sell more of product X"
It is now the responsibility of those who have said "Isn't this report kinda old-news & obvious" to ensure that the newbies don't go down the wrong path. Ensure that they are guided to reputable companies & examples. Help them avoid the pitfalls of the OSS world.
Gartner are opening the gates. It's up to the rest of us to ensure that OSS doesn't get a bad name as the "clueless hoards" crash the party and start milling aimlessly about.
Re:Mythical Dollar Month (Score:1)
Re:slashdot readers == morons (Score:1)
Re:Myths. (Score:1)
Hmm... so when W2K was in beta and they released updates for w98.. that doesn't qualify as two seperate development efforts?
May I further point out that my experience is that closed source companies often opt not to fix some bugs at all. In those cases it'll *never* get fixed. Which kind of leaves you in the lurch, doesn't it?
And from a user standpoint, the same can happen with open source. If I discover an obscure configuration bug in, say, Samba, the developers can still tell me it's not a "big enough" issue. There's alot of bug fixes that /could/ have gone into the linux 2.2 tree, but linus told them to merge it into 2.3 instead -- like all those hardware driver updates. As a user I'm still "in the lurch". Having the source code means nothing to me if I can't use it.
Do I hear the sound of Signal 11 smacking his forehead in chagrin?
Not yet. =)
What's most amusing is... (Score:2)
yet another reason (Score:1)
Re:Mythical Dollar Month (Score:2)
As a home-office worker, I'll attest to that (at least my experience of that). I would love to go all-Linux on my laptop, instead of clumsily switching from Linux to WinNT as I do now. But there are a few problems:
So in the end, I end up using the Linux side considerably less. If I'm going to have to flip back and forth between OS's, why not stick in the one I have to use anyway?
Re:Mythical Dollar Month (Score:1)
That's because they are two different things that don't really compare well to each other, ie apples and oranges. They're both reaching for different goals, so comparing the successes of each to any single metric doesn't make much sense. Once again, IMHO.
All it will take is time... (Score:1)
I don't know, whenever I do graduate from Tech, if I haven't seen this process start, I may try it myself.
Comforting reckognition! (Score:1)
If many follow in employing commercial developers R&D into opensource projects, it means a new world order... probably less capitalized and improved socially.
It's accurate ! (Score:1)
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A U-turn by Gartner Group - Maybe Not...... (Score:2)
Now this is no longer what the corporate 'customers' want to hear so Gartner (who are never inacurate in reports, just evasive
This isn't strange; Gartner group just need to play the tune their customers want to hear.
1,000,000 frenchmen can't be wrong
Re:In General, A Good Thing (Score:1)
Hell I'm a newbie on Slashdot and I don't get it here either...
Re:Where are they getting their numbers? (Score:2)
Save Jon!
This is how consulting firms work (Score:4)
Re:The title... (Score:2)
> kind of article mean that I'm wrong and SOL?
ROTFL. AFAIK, hackers _invented_ the TLA! IMHO the key difference is that ours are intended to be funny (and ideally recursive), plus we have the Jargon file to explain them to newcomers, wheras suits intend them to look impressive and use them to indimidate newcomers.
Re:Myths. (Score:2)
a) OSS already has revolutionized a big chunk of the world. (Or counterrevolutionized, if you realize how traditional it actually is.)
b) Show us some links on the "all bad" claims. I feel like you're mischaracterizing what most of us actually say.
> I direct you to several stunning *proprietary* software achievements which the OSS community has yet to duplicate.
a) You could also direct us to innumerable proprietary software failures, if only you wanted to see things in that light.
b.1) My mom can't use any proprietary desktops, either.
b.2) You seem to be blaming OSS for the fact that CAD and game publishers target the biggest market and neglect the smaller ones.
> have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers?
Ummm, yes. And that's how it's supposed to work. The difference with CSS is that all this is hidden from casual observers.
Oh, yeah. Pick up a book on software engineering and you'll see this listed as the "evolutionary model", or whatever term the author goes in for. It has been around a lot longer than Linux has.
> most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier
Surely you've got some major typos in there that makes it sound like you're saying something you didn't intend to say?
> Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation.
Oftenest, they're working without proper documentation for the hardware. There's a heck of a difference in designing a driver based on internal engineering documents (some available before the device was actually built) and trying to design one based on publicly released documents that deliberately try to hide anything with the remotest possibility of turning out to be valuable IP.
It's a bit hard to get it right the first try when you're groping in the dark.
> That is to say they're impatient.
Check out some of the developers' lists' archives. You'll find some amazing displays of patience.
> I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again.
Ignoring your slanders against my motivation and abilities, I can only wonder what kind of paradise you visualize for a CSS shop. Again, I've worked both sides of the fence, and (to the extent that it's possible to generalize between individual shops at all) the only consistent difference is that you get to peek behind the curtain with OSS, but not with CSS.
> Let's take another myth: that we're somehow superior to windows or macheads.
That's another one that needs to be supported by links.
> I'd also like to point out that there are other "source" movements out there that make progress approximately on par with linux
Again, you seem to mischaracterize the prevailing attitudes found on
I don't fault you for criticising Linux; I fault you for doing so cluelessly. There are many substantive criticisms that could be offered for Linux, but for some reason you've joined the "let's go to
Which is amazing, because you used to post some thoughtful things here. (Or have I been fooled by someone with a look-alike handle?)
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It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Great "up the sleeve" material for the PHB! (Score:1)
Re:Myths. (Score:1)
This means people will have to be more willing to share, knowing that people will share with them too. It's like in a family, we need to learn to trust each other. Not breaking that trust, but also be strong enough to not break apart when promises eventually gets broken. Like it is now, we're frantically hogging on to our belongings. Our attitudes towards eachother creates alot of resistance in the community we live in.
Btw, Redhat and other supporting companies have and will in the future hire Open Source authors. Sometimes even finance their projects, especially with commercial hardware and software. Bottom line is: As things are now, everything needs money to exist in our society. There are alot of ways of making money flow into the vein of Open Source movement not yet fully explored.
- Steeltoe
Re:This is how consulting firms work (Score:2)
Or (say the even more cynical hemisphere of my brain), maybe one of those IPO millionaires bought these reports, Business As Usual style.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Gartner Response (Score:4)
In lives before GG I was a technical architect and developer every bit down in the trenches as the typical slashdot reader and probably more than most.
I'm amazed at the notion that GG has been anti-Linux or OSS in anyway. In fact when you read the bulk of our research its quite bullish on OSS and Linux. Keep in mind that we've published LOTS of information of Linux and OSS; unless you're a GG client you probably haven't seen 99% of our research. Most of the comments I've read on slashdot are based entirely on ignorance or from a small snippet of published material.
I find it comical that advising our clients that Linux WON'T replace Win32 as the dominant desktop operating system in the next three years is somehow Linux bashing. I'd actually expect responses to be no sh** but more often it's the opposite.
Has Microsoft payed GartnerGroup to write Linux or OSS research? No. GartnerGroup does not write research specifically for ANY vendor. Furthermore, as any of our clients know GartnerGroup has consistently been one of Microsoft's strongest critics. Microsoft is a BIG company. Like most big companies they do some things very well and some things terribly bad. Gartner's value to our clients is an unbiased third party analysis and our Linux/OSS research IMO is an excellent example of balanced even handed view of an incredibly overhyped and radically evolving subject matter.
Are Linux and OSS overhyped? Of course they are. Every newly discovered technology trend goes through an inevitable cycle of hype and backlash as it enters mainstream IT environments.
Is there real substance under this hype? Of course there is. Gartner's charter is to help separate the wheat from the chafe. The notion that any negative position is bashing or selling out to a vendor is not only ridiculous but childish.
I thought long and hard before posting this response insofar as I'm sure it will bring inevitable flames but then again this will only prove my point. Bottom line, GartnerGroup is not the enemy, we will continue to track OSS trends, vendors, success stories (and failures) in an impartial and even handed manner. We will analyze and report on the good, bad and the ugly with regards to OSS. You'll probably like what we have to say in some cases and you'll hate it in others.
Do you have particular success stories of OSS projects in your IT organization? Do you have a specific OSS subject that you think we should be covering but aren't? I'd love to hear about them (gganalyst@hotmail.com). Do you have some asinime flame or insult to throw my way? Don't bother.
Especially the BOTTOMLINE (Score:1)
If you feel that the whole report is too lengthy, you can print out the "BOTTOMLINE" and distribute it to whoever you think should take a look at it.
The "BOTTOMLINE" is as follows (as I copied from the website):
Bottom Line: Contrary to common perceptions,
open-source development is neither a recent
phenomenon nor a transient one, and more
significantly, it is one that will increasingly be
associated with commercial vendors and end-user
organizations. We recommend that IT organizations
which currently exclude all OSS from their
acquisition plans should re-examine this policy.
Re:Myths. (Score:2)
All previous models of large-scale, even global marketing -- that's what we're really talking about, after all -- are based on corporate methods and billion-dollar budgets.
What's needed, IMO, is a marketing effort that's coordinated with people like Red Hat. Contributing code won't be enough for this, though. Cash will be required.
The consumer probably has at least two problems with Linux, or any Open Source Software.
One, it sounds kind of good ("Open" is better than "Closed". It's not more complicated than that in marketing), but what is it supposed to do in her life that would make her give up Windows, which, with all of its drawbacks, is still Good Enough? What's so compelling -- from a usability/functionality/price-- point of view to persuade someone standing in front of a cheap PC box at Office Depot pick and OSS over Windows?
The consumer, for whom a computer is just another buy for the house, more often than not, is gonna pick the safe choice, every time. Hell, they'll take their kid's advice before they take yours. Advertising and consistent marketing will help move the bubble, but it's gonna take time, and even then only if it's awfully, awfully good.
Actually, this effort could be kind of interesting. (I obviously like hopeless causes. I'm not signing on for this one, as I already have one, thanks.) How does one take the OSS philosophy and make it work in advertising? How would it be funded? Who would approve the ad copy? Who would hire the ad agency? How would goals be defined? Who watches the budget? How would development be crafted to aim more at the consumer market, and not just the IT market?
If this group has proven anything, it's that it can shape a new paradigm. This, I would guess, has never, EVER been tried before.
It will be interesting... (Score:3)
Bias is not how we get to truth guys.
Some good from CSS to OSS (Score:2)
In an article on GameSpy, Tim Sweeney was saying that we need a new programing language which is more intuitive and has higher level commands. His example was adding the elements of arrays A and B to make array C. Intuitively, the algorithm is just C=A+B, but in C++ it isn't nearly that simple. When I read this, I was struck (for the umpteenth time) how simple/powerful Mathematica is. In Mathematica I can just add the arrays, C=A+B, and the program takes care of the details (add element A[i,j] to element B[i,j] and assign the sum to element C[i,j]; move to element i+1,j
Relevant now
The system of computation Mathematica uses could be a useful model to a programmer trying her hand at creating the afore mentioned 'next generation' programing language. And I had to buy it (well, I didn't _have_ to buy it, but pirating non-MicroSquish software seems unfair to the coder who wrote my new program; ethics, what a nuisance), I couldn't just download it and start solving sets of coupled partial differential equations. (How I love those PDE's.)
MicroSquish/AOL isn't the only proprietary software company out there (although it seems that way sometimes), and many of those companies are staffed by people of good moral character who make money doing what they love. And they're good at it, giving us good products. (Please don't misunderstand me, I am _NOT_ saying that MicroSquish='good product', just that many proprietary software companies do a good job. Qualcomm's Eudora, for instance.)
OSS isn't the sole repository of talented programmers, there are many who work at traditional companies. Ignoring, dismissing or insulting these programmers will not produce better programs or more OSS, it will just divide the two groups even more. As the non-traditional "fringe" group, it is our responsibility to try to build a community where both sides can come to talk, and not feel discriminated against.
end rant
Louis Wu
Signal 11's comment:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/28/07
Mathematica:
http://www.mathematica.com/
The GameSpy article:
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/devweek_b.shtm
The Slashdot discussionof the GameSpy article:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/25/150
a bit light? (Score:1)
anyone else think this gartner group report was a bit light? ie, it seemed more like a summary than a report.
probably took a whole hour to put that web page together...
otoh, there's a lot of respect for the name 'gartner', so maybe just the fact that these folks have spoken up about opensource will get noticed by some fence-sitting managers.
--
Re:Myths. (Score:1)
The title... (Score:2)
How to use TLAs to legitimize something.
Isn't OSS about less obscurity? Does this kind of article mean that I'm wrong and SOL?
TLA - Three Letter Acronym
OSS - Open Source Software
SOL - Shit Out of Luck
Re:Where are they getting their numbers? (Score:1)
Re:The title... (Score:1)
Nice rebound, many will fall for it (Score:2)
I don't buy it. If there's supposed to be any use for Gartner Group they better tell me things I don't already know. And their opinion is just that. What happened to researching for answers yourself instead of handing the power of your own decisions over to some over-paid consultant? It's not like you can sue Gartner Group if things are wrong. Just look at the nice disclaimer at bottom of their reports.
- Steeltoe
Something to keep in mind here: (Score:3)
Only the GPL and its descendants guarantee Free Software, while there are many Open Source licenses (the Sun license, the BSD licenses, and the MPL, for instance) that are similar but don't necessarily accomplish quite the same thing. Rather than getting into a detailed discussion of licenses per se, I'd just remind everyone that Open Source comes in many flavors, and hopefully the market will reward the freer varieties over the less and non free ones. Gartner is on the right track, though.
- -Josh Turiel
Re:Myths. (Score:4)
I agree with your points about OS superiority being a myth, and overall I agree with the spirit of your post. However:
In reference to your points about proprietary software having some incredible success stories, your examples are all right on the money, and I guess that's my point. Until OSS developed momentum as a business model, there wasn't much percevied value (i.e. profit, i.e. money) in either releasing your code or open sourcing it. It took OSS success stories to convince companies that had long histories in the closed source model (the only model they knew that worked) to open up.
A parallel example is open-source news. A lot of newspapers were slow to get online because they were closed-source (pay-for-core-content) and that was the business model they knew. Now look at them clamber to get online and give their information away free, and develop other revenue sources. The example is not an exact parallel, but I hope my points come through anyway:
But i think that's your point anyhow; that CS can produce good stuff too, right? But maybe now we'll see more of these CS companies open up their source as well? Or maybe not. That's a different question, and I won't extend this post with it right now.
This is surprising, pleasantly surprising (Score:2)
Ulterior motives (Score:1)
OK,
I don't mean to burst this bubble, but this does not seem to be any better research then any of their other stuff.
We are all going to have a lot of fun with this report, but seeming as Gartner Group usally try to debunk OSS, has anybody seriously consided what might have caused this change in tack??
Like perhaps it isn't just that they suddenly relised (16 years late apparently) what a good idea it is, and that perhaps this hints at slightly more cunning manoeuvring??
Re:a bit light? (Score:1)
Re:Open Source News != Open Source Code (Score:1)
I would point out that in the 80's people never thought shareware would get off the ground, or when it did that it would last as a business model.
There are ROI models that apply to opensource. Let me give you a freeware example (not opensource, but bear with me): Many of the major antivirus software makes are expected to begin releasing their scanners as freeware and then selling the more frequent downloads: virus data files. This is brilliant (if not greedy, but we won't mark down a company for being greedy, right?) and is like giving away razors but selling blades...
So is there an ROI model applicable to opensource games? Damn straight there is. If you are a gamer, then you are, almost by definition, a network gamer. Now suppose you stopped selling the razor (the game) and started selling blades (network connections to hot servers--as already happens, ran a market for weapons trades--taking a percentage of sales, etc.). revenue? yes. profitable? yes. Giving the game away free? yes... Free!=OpenSource, but this ROI model applies to OpenSource games as well.
So when epic merges with a subscription based game server company, then we'll know OSS gaming's time has come...
Re:Some good from CSS to OSS (Score:1)
Numeric Python:
http://numpy.sourceforge.net/
Re:Myths. (Score:1)
What you leave out is that Microsoft comes in second or third in most of those categories. It's not best at anything, but it's pretty good at most. The only major failings of Windows are stability and reputation. The GUI for Windows is good, the software for it is good, NT's suitability for a server is good (though it is better as a LAN server than an Inet server). It's not BEST at any of these, but it's GOOD at most of them.
If you must standardize on a single OS for everything in your company, there is NO better choice then Windows. If you have the freedom (and IT staff to deal with) to install multiple OS, then you can get a good solution by using BSD for your servers and Macs, some *nix, or WindowsNT Workstation for your user boxes (95/98 isn't stable enough).
Of course, so many geeks blindly hate Microsoft that they never even look at what the MS OSs do well.
Re:Myths. (Score:1)
Doing it for the love of it is wonderful but I would like to support myself and my dependents off of what I love rather than having some day joy I don't love (at least in the form of the products) in order to afford to still a few hours from friends and family to create software that I do love.
Re:a bit light? (Score:1)
The Gartner group should open source all their documents and make money by selling support contracts! Don't they know anything about how to run a successful business?
Re:Myths. (Score:2)
You can't take a badly written product and just dump it out as Open Source and expect it to magically become better. Netscape, is a perfect example of this. Instead of making Netscape better, it had to start almost from scratch to create todays Mozilla. A lot of code had to be rewritten.
So I agree that a development plan is needed, but Open Source with the propper support will do this. When we have vendors releasing specs or drivers up front for Open Source programs, we have better quality. You're right that people don't want to wait for this, and just start writing code. But if the support from vendors was there in the beginning, you won't have this. I think that XFree86 is a good example of this. They have a lot of vendors that do support them, and those drivers are up to par.
Steven Rostedt
Re:Mythical Dollar Month (Score:1)
Depends. If I measure success in terms of installed user base, feature-set, and profitability (secondary, but it's there), then proprietary software is still handily beating open source in a variety of areas.
However, this is not broadly true for all markets - in the webserver market Apache is beating the _______ out of proprietary software - infact all of the leading proprietary software manufacturers /combined/ *still* can't touch Apache. But, if we switch over to the SOHO environment you'll be hard pressed to find any linux boxen. Ironically, this is the "market" linux ought to do best in - cheap, commodity, x86 hardware doing routine server work.
Re:Great "up the sleeve" material for the PHB! (Score:2)
That's not a bad idea, Gartner does not seem to expressly forbid copying their material if it is only a small part that "does not have a negative impact on the market" for thier products. I suppose a commercial version of RedHat might fail the "educational, personal or non-commercial" provision, but then sounds like you just need to get permission, which I can't see why they would object since it is just free advertising for their non-free services.
Re:Mythical Dollar Month (Score:1)
No debate there. But I expect/hope this changes as OSS projects and businesses grow, thus expanding the installed base and increasing the "network effect" to promote even more OSS development.
Additionally, "Mom's GUI" is still a key issue here. I think we will see rapid expansion of OSS installed user base in the thin client space overtake proprietary systems before we see the same in the PC space, largely because thin clients running OSS will be developed by companies who have a vested interest in getting the UI right, and in the thin client space (I'm including net access devices in this) that problem has a much narrower scope than the GUI issues in a general application OS.
Until UI experts start collaborating on OSS, or until OSS coders with killer UI sense (and experience/training-- good UI design needs experience and education as much as good coding does) get on board, this may not happen. And I'm not knocking the work being done now. It is great, and entirely impressive, but it's not yet good enough to steal MS marketshare in the market Sig11 was mentioning: SOHO.
Re:This is welcome addition (Score:1)
Watch it, or the AAAAAAA will get after you! (Score:2)
Today's Weather Report for Hell (Score:5)
Good words for OSS from Gartner? I don't believe it.
Re:Myths. (Score:4)
You are fairly right that different OSes are good at different things. But then you turn the world upside down and concludes Linux is not nessesarily better than Windows. Here is my personal conclusion of some OSes of today: Linux (and other UNIXes or clones): Stability, networking, programming, multitasking. OS/2: Flexible GUI, multitasking, (programming?). MacOS: easy to use GUI, _easy_. BeOS: video, multitasking, programming. Windows: widely used, many applications. From this list we learns that in fact anything is better than windows for any particular application, as long as the specific user application does exist on the said platform.
And last, but not least, Open Source is better because an OSS program can not by any means trade code beauty (maintainability, functionality, robustness, generality) for UI beauty. Of course, the OSS movement still have to learn to code good UIs, too.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Re:Where are they getting their numbers? (Score:1)
Linux is just the kernel. How big is the kernel (include source if you like)?
Everything else is other OSS software
Now, this may fly in what you believe, but Linus only maintains the Linux Kernel, and if you look at all the supporting programs, you will find they are from someone else.
Recommended! (Score:2)
Never knock on Death's door:
Re:Myths. (Score:2)
Hmmm, you don't start out so hot. Have you even read the different things that ESR and RMS have to say? ESR says the Open Source helps a lot of software get better, but all he wants is software that doesn't suck, so he'll take closed source for some stuff. RMS says he'll take free (not Open Source, and there's a perceptual and actual difference) software, even if it's worse, because of the freedoms granted. Maybe you need to go back and read some more.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I direct you to several stunning *proprietary* software achievements which the OSS community has yet to duplicate.
The desktop, we're working on. CAD, no, we're not on that level yet, but there are several projects working on it. Plugins? We don't have Flash because not many people cared. Games? Have you played Red Alert? The programming's not even vaguely interesting to a real coder. Recreating that game is an art project, plain and simple.
Just to name a few. On the hardware side - have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers? Then you'll notice they follow a peculiar pattern - Initial Release (aka, it works, but it's slow). Revision 2 (it's buggy, but faster), and finally Revision 3 (finally get it right). The reason is that most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier and b) Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation. That is to say they're impatient. The result is hundreds of releases of software each day. Some people think this is because we "release early, release often" - I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again. Now, if you listen quietly for a moment you can hear people already hammering at their keyboards crying foul. But I'm not done yet.
Huh? I don't even know how to begin responding to this. Of course it's the release early, release often attitude. Do you not bother to notice the version numbers somewhere below 0.01? This is how the development process works. I'm sorry if you've had a bad experience somewhere, or a driver didn't work right, but that's not because the programmers were idiots. You're just not getting the privilege of seeing the early revisions of closed source stuff.
Signal 11, I can't help but think you're displaying a real ignorance with this post. No real member of the community considers themself better than others just because of who they are. I'm not sure where you're getting some of these assumptions, but you're dead wrong.
(PS: unchecked fact, but how many Linux kernel + GNU util developers are there, vs. core BSD'ers? I'd not be surprised to find they're roughly on par...)
--
Ian Peters
Re:Myths. (Score:1)
That's a good idea, but here's a question for you: will the developers ever see that money? As it is, most of the "successful open source companies" don't pass the profits along to the developers, execpt for the few (if any) that they have working in-house. For example, 99% of the development effort that goes into a Red Hat CD goes unpaid for by Red Hat.
It's because of this that most open source developers need to have a "day job". Think of how much better open source software would be if those developers could actually afford to work on it full time. That will only happen when those developers are actually paid (in money) for the work they do. None of the "successful open source companies" actually do this, and I have yet to see a business model where this could be done. We can't all live off grants and charity like RMS.
Make a Private Mirror (Score:2)
-Peace
Dave
It's the users... (Score:3)
As the user base extends to those with other needs: non-software industries' apps, games, personal software, PC drivers, ease-of-use, ease-of-development, etc, the quality and availability of those applications will improve.
Although this doesn't refute your point that free software is not always better right now, it does imply that someday it will at least catch up.
And, if you believe in the power of empowered users, it's easy to see that it will likely surpass proprietary software, as it has already done in the areas of greatest need. I suggest that it also will or already does serve needs that proprietary software would have taken forever to get to: child-simple programming languages (what's the prorietary advantage in that?); truly portable applications; unobtrusive, ubiquitous, standard networking; small, reusable, interactive tools.
In general, free software will be much better at creating a marketplace of commodity software: no lock-ins, no single-source, no platform-specificity, no buying the unnecessary to get the needed, no forced upgrade paths, better future-proofing, better accountability, better responsiveness, real choice.
The day when "open source is always better" is not here, but it's coming.
Re:Mythical Dollar Month (Score:1)
I haven't much experience/knowledge in the thin client arena, so the following comments may be inaccurate. I think we can agree on everything else though. =)
It's obvious that Transmeta atleast hopes to leverage it's Crusoe chip into the "net appliance" / mobile computing space, and it's also apparent they intend to use OSS methodology to build many of the applications for the Crusoe processor. As a curiosity, Crusoe is an anagram for "Source". I would think that if Transmeta's business partners are successful, linux and it's derivatives would dominate the embedded/mobile market. If this is what you meant by the "thin client" market, then I'll agree with you that linux will take off in that market.
I do have to wonder how long until somebody forks the linux tree - there are many specialized kernel tasks going on here and the existing kernel is almost 20 megs now to download. I wonder how long it will remain practical to keep everything bundled together.... although this has no bearing on any of the discussion so far...
Sick of the "Mom" myth (Score:1)
I have not set up Linux specifically for my mom yet, because she uses tax software, which is one of the few useful things not available under Linux (CAD is another, true). As for video games, I much prefer my Playstation--and, if you want lots of games on your PC, you can buy a $10 gamepad and download an emulator! I did.
Another reason people release software as OSS (Score:2)
There's one other reason: the developer(s) might not want to put in the effort to sell software. Selling software can be quite a pain: you have to deal with bounced checks, credit card transactions, reporting estimated taxes every quarter, requests for fixes and enhancements (since they don't have the source code), hiring people to port the app to other platforms, and so on.
I think non-programmers sometimes don't understand what goes on in a programmer's mind. They see us labor for years to learn this stuff, so they can't comprehend someone spending months on a project, posting it on an ftp site, and then saying, "Here, have fun, I don't care if you use it or not." They look at software development as some kind of laborious black art. Sure, you need to be super-smart to be a programmer, but once you get to that level, whipping up a 1000-line Perl script (or in my case, Rexx) is something you do when you're bored.
Re:Myths. (Score:2)
Now, there's little doubt in my mind that in the end, free mindshare and collaboration, even on forked projects, are superior to proprietary (forked) projects. But if the driving force is missing, you won't accomplish anything. Any company wishing to go Open Source, must do some real thinking before they go on with it. This is the real world, newcomers are eaten for breakfast every day.
I think the solution lies in the consumer. People should start using Open Source, and support companies that contribute to it with MONEY. Not because proprietary technologies are "evil", but because Open Source is superior and more beneficial in the end. Money is in the bloodstream of our society. People should learn that while corporations talk, money walks the walk.
Power to the people! Yeah!! Flower power!!! Etc...
- Steeltoe
TCO is good (Score:4)
My mum can use linux (Score:2)
Pythagorous was a closed religion (Score:2)
most of the teachings. Not all that different from a proprietary corporation. He believed numbers
could explain and control Nature and the supernatural.
Greek philosophers freely "borrowed" each others
ideas and salvaged some of Pythagorus's ideas, e.g. Euclid.
Gartner published something GOOD?? (Score:1)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Yeah, I can see how it could backfire if not handled correctly. Hmm... any suggestions from someone who has been down this road?
QUALITY and SUPPORT myths not debunked in Gartner (Score:1)
My manager still thinks that OSS software are of poor quality. For some antiquated reasons I don't understand (and don't want to), management still prefers the so-called brand name of a company behind any product they purchase. Often it has nothing to do with technical merit, but a psychological comfort and security.
As great as my manager thinks I am as a programmer/analyst/sysadmin (*ahem*), he would feel much more comfortable if there is an 'official' support of a company, usually the same company that we buy the product from. I would like to see Gartner or any other so-called credible media (that management reads) debunks the myth of OSS quality and support.
Re:Myths. (Score:2)
While we're discussing myths.. how about we debunk another one: Open Source is superior to everything by virtue alone. Listening to RMS, slashdotters, and ESR's writings would have you believe OSS will revolutionize the world and proprietary software is /all/ bad.
Not really. It's better because it's free. That's all I really care about. Non-free is evil. If a bunch of people want to come champion Linux on technical grounds, go ahead and shoot them down (not that i'm particularly convinced web plugins or the windows/mac desktop is any kind of elegant technological acheivment, but that's beside the point). I just don't care if Linux is "better" in that sense or not.
I suggest reading what RMS has to say again. It's not "GNU is technologically better." it's "GNU is free." That's it. and that's also what matters to me.
Let's take another myth: that we're somehow superior to windows or macheads. Comeon people, this is dogmatic and fanatical in the extreme. We have an OS that does *some* things better than the others. But NO OS is superior on the basis of it's name alone.
No, that's not it. If you run free software, you're not "better", you're simply on the moral high ground. I'm all for being dogmatic about that.
We already knew all of this, but it's still good.. (Score:1)
"...our statistics show that regular frag-fests increase worker contentment and productivity by relieving stress..."
Wow, Gartner Group gets one right... (Score:1)
--Troy
!FUD (Score:3)
Re:a bit light? (Score:1)
anyone else think this gartner group report was a bit light? ie, it seemed more like a summary than a report.
I felt the same. None of their facts are backed by any proof (we know it's true, but somebody else may want some proof). They just present them "as is".
Gartner and MVS (Score:2)
Or maybe we saw different sections of their reviews... The last time I had access (about a year ago) there was a whopping lot of material on things like "Parallel Sysplex" and cost structures for CMOS mainframes and the likes.
Re:It will be interesting... (Score:1)
Re:Sick of the "Mom" myth (Score:2)
My mom had trouble at the login. After that, we managed to get up and running with a box-stock mandrake system. I showed her how to login and asked her to find and open netscape. Keep in mind I already set everything up so it could find the gateway and all that. It took her awhile.
It was fun watching her try to print, too. "Nothing happened". I hear that alot on tech support, but that's the first time I had to agree with her - going through the system logs (NOT SOMETHING A NEWBIE CAN DO) I found that lpd was turned off. Enabling it caused mountains of garbage to be emitted out of the laser-printer.
Let's talk about other fun things newbies can do with linux: edit the /etc/ppp/chap-secrets file to login to their isp. Use linuxconf (text-based) to get their connection online. Okay, I'm making this alittle hard - you could use kppp. =) After you login you find out you can't - it keeps disconnected. Research reveals that ipx-negotiation was buggy on their end...
The list goes on. In short, linux fails the "mom test". It is not a myth - it is a fact. If you know what you're doing under linux these things can be minimalized and marginalized.. but for a newbie they are taunting mountains of knowledge to be overcome. And I don't know about you, but moms don't want to spend months learning rm, ls, cp, mv, ps, vi, ad nauseum, just to get X to start so they can e-mail her friends on AOL.
Ignore it all you want - but linux on the desktop is still a joke. There are *serious* UI issues to be resolved here before the average computer user (not the savvy ones like on slashdot) can use linux.
Re:This is surprising, pleasantly surprising (Score:1)
Agreed. But I wish they would have spelled it Perl instead of PERL. :-)
Never underestimate the power of wishful thinking to filter what the eyes see and what the ears hear
Re:OSS Business Model Sustainability (Score:1)
But this misses what I think is the primary reason people work on open source: they want to use the program they're working on. Making it open source means they can get help from others with the same interest.
Re:Myths. (Score:3)
That's kind of missing the point entirely. What you describe isn't even a side effect, it's the whole point. What makes open source "open"? You release the code, and you conduct development out in the open where everybody has the opportunity to participate. You release sub-1.0 versions and later unstable versions in the hope that others will try it out, make useful suggestions about adding features, and help you to fix the bugs.
In the majority of cases the developers will clearly mark which versions are stable and which versions have more features but are still buggy. Obtaining free software is a case of caveat emptor just as it is with any other kind of software.
But the *difference* with open source (as opposed to closed source) is that (i) the developers won't try to pretend that bugs don't exist; (ii) being subject to greater scrutiny, they'll put more effort into fixing them; and (iii) if you can't wait, you have the option of trying to fix it yourself, or paying someone else to do it.
I know that access to the source won't be much use to those without the resources to make use of it. But, if stability is your sine qua non, then obviously, get the stable version and leave development versions alone. And with closed source you don't even have the option.
May I further point out that my experience is that closed source companies often opt not to fix some bugs at all. In those cases it'll *never* get fixed. Which kind of leaves you in the lurch, doesn't it?
I'm surprise that you of all people would say something like this. I think you must have left your brain on your pillow this morning! Do I hear the sound of Signal 11 smacking his forehead in chagrin?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Did ACAD used open source Xlisp? (Score:1)
So while it has not been duplicated (and honestly does not need to be duplicated), it was based on at least one part on an open source code project.
Then there is the reverse engineering required to get autocad plug in's to work. Even costly packages don't do it.
There was some open source cad engine code released a while back.
Many programs can read DXF, some even right it.
Heh, trying to redeem themselves? (Score:2)
[ c h a d o k e r e ] [iastate.edu]
The real reason most software exists... (Score:3)
Re:This is surprising, pleasantly surprising (Score:2)
Cool, negative karma... (Score:1)
by Lyle Lovett, from the album "I Love Everybody"
I don't go for fancy cars
For diamond rings
Or movie stars
I go for penguins
Oh Lord I go for penguins
Throw your money out the door
We'll just sit around
And watch it snow
I go for penguins
Oh Lord I go for penguins
Penguins are so sensitive
Penguins are so sensitive
Penguins are so sensitive
To my needs
Penguins are so sensitive
Penguins are so sensitive
Penguins are so sensitive
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
Penguins are so sensitive
Penguins are so sensitive
Penguins are so sensitive
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
To my needs
Re:Sick of the "Mom" myth (Score:1)
linuxconf (text-based) to get their connection online. Okay, I'm making this alittle hard - you could use kppp. =) After
you login you find out you can't - it keeps disconnected.
If you ask me, the "Mom Myth" is true for all OSes, I don't care which one you talk about. How many times have I had to explain to my mom how to print a file in Windows? How many times have I had to explain to her how to simply browse the web? If someone is not inclined to using computers to begin with, no matter how "user friendly" you make them, if the UI is not organized the way that person thinks, they will struggle. I think all of us have at one point or another struggled to get dial-up connections working...wrong IPs, wrong submasks, something somewhere isn't done correctly. Those problems will exist no matter what you do, unless you want to try and force a standard deployment on everyone.
I often like to think of it like this: Computers are tools, just like say a hammer, perhaps one of the least complicated tools around. If you are skilled with the tool, of course it is easy to use, but if you haven't ever really used the tool, you are going to wind up with a bruised thumb.
drivers (Score:2)
Open source software treats the user like a developer. If you have the inclination to improve the software then you can. You know, "maybe you will find this useful."
Secondly, I would not say that commercial drivers are any better. Every drivers and supporting software that I have gotten with a piece of hardware did not work, and I had to get updates off the web. This includes my video card (Creative Riva TNT2 Ultra), CD ROM burning software (the Adaptec software that came with it had a major bug), motherboard (had to flash the BIOS to make the "do not wake on keyboard" setting take effect), external modem (Windows drivers AND flash the bios on the hardware), DVD decoder required several software updates before they finally got it right (crashes and bad playback. Creative again), and so on.
Now don't get me started on actual software. Every software package I have bought (dozens) has come out with bugfixes that you have to download. I wonder why they bother distributing programs on CD anymore. If you have to hit the web to finish installing your program they might as well let you download it and pay for it online.
So, to what standard do YOU hold open source software?
Who cares? (Score:1)
Granted, their words still carry weight with clueless business types, but I'm past the point of caring if they accept Linux or not. The more mainstream Linux becomes, the more we risk catering to imbeciles and watering down everything to a level acceptable to yer average AOL luser. We are to the point where we no longer have to go hat-in-hand to various hardware vendors begging for meagre driver support. That's all I ever wanted.
Understand how Gartner works (Score:2)
This paper may reflect a lot of the values of the open and free software communities, and it may eventually have an impact and sink in at the top... but it is the way it is because the junior analyst who wrote it is a script kiddy of the analyst world and he was sitting in the back orifice, he downloaded the docs from the various sites, reformatted, hit "print" and carried it out to the front office : )
Right now, he's slaving on the next project.
Re:We already knew all of this, but it's still goo (Score:1)
You forgot the all important ones, such as:
"Stress tests workstation hardware"
"Verification of LAN's ability to deal with high network loading"
and the best one:
"Quickly locate workers with outdated equipment."
:)
Re:Great "up the sleeve" material for the PHB! (Score:2)
The most concise and precise analysis of OSS I have seen so far.
I wish there were more documents like that. I do not know how much gartner chrages for their services, but unless the redistribution is forbidden this is worth including in any Linux or BSD distribution.
I mean only the index. Gartner can still keep the ownership of the child documents (noted in the text) and get their money from them. So by redistributing this document as a part of an OS or software distribution Gratner should actually earn money (lots of PHBs want figures and they are in the child docs which Gartner does not give out free like this index).
Myths. (Score:4)
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I direct you to several stunning *proprietary* software achievements which the OSS community has yet to duplicate.
- Autocad. For that matter, any serious CAD program.
- A desktop my mom can use.
- web plugins (until recently, we had no flash!)
- Games. Quake and Loki's offerings may be cool, but they're a small subset of what the Windows world has. I'm still waiting for a Red Alert clone.
Just to name a few. On the hardware side - have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers? Then you'll notice they follow a peculiar pattern - Initial Release (aka, it works, but it's slow). Revision 2 (it's buggy, but faster), and finally Revision 3 (finally get it right). The reason is that most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier and b) Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation. That is to say they're impatient. The result is hundreds of releases of software each day. Some people think this is because we "release early, release often" - I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again. Now, if you listen quietly for a moment you can hear people already hammering at their keyboards crying foul. But I'm not done yet.Let's take another myth: that we're somehow superior to windows or macheads. Comeon people, this is dogmatic and fanatical in the extreme. We have an OS that does * some * things better than the others. But NO OS is superior on the basis of it's name alone.
I'd also like to point out that there are other "source" movements out there that make progress approximately on par with linux and it's related software despite the fact that it has a much, MUCH smaller developer pool to draw from: the BSDs. I'll now turn matters over to my fellow slashdotters for an explanation...
Re:a bit light? (Score:4)
This is just an index to lots of documents listed at the end. And these documents actually cost money to obtain (just gessing, but Gartner has to earn its living somehow).
Free software (Score:2)
Re:It will be interesting... (Score:3)
Here there was nothing to guess at, their report is just a rehash of literature that's been around for a while now. No guessing, no leaning. I certainly wouldn't use this one article as an indicator that they are suddenly "at least mildly pro-linux".
----
1984 the beginning of open source? (Score:2)
Re:Mythical Dollar Month (Score:1)
I disagree with your view that success is measured in these corporate-type bench-marking terms with closed-source software. That may be useful when comparing two companies, say microsoft vs. corel, to determine who's more successful. But the case is entirely different with OSS, IMHO.
Many OSS packages exist because someone wanted to provide themselves with either some tool/program not available as closed-source, or to provide an open-source option for themselves and/or others. I don't believe many people are trying to actively compete with closed-source to be the better software package, as you seem to imply in your quote. Thus, the definition of success between open-source programmers, who are doing it for either themselves, the community, or the sheer joy of doing it, and closed-source programmers, mostly doing it for a job and to become the number-one software producer in their field, are entirely different.
Thus said, I would NOT judge the success of open source software in terms of user-base, and profitability, as you mention above. In other words, if a commercial company only has 100 customers, they're not making much money, and hence cannot stay in business. Thus, they aren't successful. OSS, however, is not competing like this, and if ONLY 100 people are HAPPILY using some OSS software, it's a success. The key word is HAPPILY. IMHO, of course.
They left out one of the most important advantages (Score:2)
Now, say BigCo needs software that will load balance their IDKFA servers. There's no way anyone could market software to load balance IDKFA servers, for various market reasons. BigCo can either a) foot the bill to write their own software from scratch or b) share the responsibility of producing the software by making it open source.
In A, the cost will be huge and if the programmer that wrote it leaves the company, the bugs will be difficult and costly to work out.
In situation B, even if they end up footing most of the bill for the software, they will get lots of help removing the bugs from evreryone else who load balances their IDKFA servers. If the programmer who designed it leaves the company, there are still many other programmers familiar with the code they can hire to update it.
The value of software is purely the value of what it does. Sometimes, you can sell it based on that value. Sometimes, you can't sell it, despite it's value. If it's valuable and you can't sell it, Open Source it! (duh)
And, there's that other little side benefit to participating in an OSS project. You'll have a lot of information gathered on who out there is a talented programmer you might want to recruit. No job interview is going to match how much you learn about a candidate from actually watching their work.
Re:Myths. (Score:1)
Like CatB and Cauldron? Uh huh. Even read the annotated Halloween documents.
Maybe you need to go back and read some more.
No need to get ornery here, we're not discussing what ESR or RMS had to say about the matter, we're discussing myths behind OSS from a practical standpoint - not the theory behind it.
The desktop, we're working on. CAD, no, we're not on that level yet, but there are several projects working on it.
Which restated means "we're not there yet." Next...
We don't have Flash because not many people cared.
We have Flash now. Read freshmeat much?
Have you played Red Alert? The programming's not even vaguely interesting to a real coder.
I think the gaming industry would disagree. I think it's pretty arrogant to say that "real programmers" can't design games. To make Quake3 requires some very in-depth knowledge of 3D display, OpenGL, and a dozen other APIs, languages, and methodologies.
I'm sorry if you've had a bad experience somewhere, or a driver didn't work right, but that's not because the programmers were idiots.
When this happens to dozens of drivers I don't think that argument can continue to hold water. And I'm not accusing the programmers of being idiots. Most are quite competent. But just like any other profession - if you don't give them the proper tools and environment they aren't going to do quality work. What I'm saying is that these programmers do not have the tools and environment required to design solid code (without lots of extra effort). Go re-read my post.
No real member of the community considers themself better than others just because of who they are.
*cough* No comment.
Weather report appears true (Score:1)
"Bottom Line: Contrary to common perceptions,
open-source development is neither a recent
phenomenon nor a transient one, and more
significantly, it is one that will increasingly
be associated with commercial vendors and
end-user organizations. We recommend that IT
organizations which currently exclude all OSS
from their acquisition plans should re-examine this policy."
Re:It will be interesting... (Score:2)
BSD development (was Re:Myths.) (Score:2)
And then you come to some point in a system which is horrifically complicated (such as the VM system) where you probably have under 10 people on each side that understand it thoroughly.
On the other hand, practically anybody with a little bit of C knowledge and patience can whip up a nice looking GTK+ application without too many problems, so here, the larger user base of Linux shows up as more user applications are written.
Note that all this is just theorizing; I have no figures to back me up.
OSS Business Model Sustainability (Score:4)
OSS developers do not work for nothing; an OSS project is a training and proving ground exposing young developers to large-scale collaborative development. Another reward is the accumulation of kudos -- this may be sought for its own sake or leveraged commercially, especially within organizations that follow an open-source business model (see Note 3).
This is a very perceptive, succinct write up by Gartner, and Rob got it right when he said this one would make a good executive summary.
My question is how sustainable this is. I worry just a little that OSS business model/business culture is a bubble that could burst (especially after enough IPOs and mergers etc etc). Look at Mozilla... what if Netscape programmers were suddenly reassigned to work on AOL 7 (seeing as AOL 6 [observers.net] is already out ;)? ATW doesn't strike me as anything less than a cold-hearted capitalist corporation bent on world domination. RH is a more encouraging example of an OSS business culture that I would expect to survive.
We can't deny that Linux has fueled a lot of the interest in OSS as a business model. If Linux ever stagnates or reaches a development plateau (gasp-shudder-perish-the-thought), and there isn't another project with it's momentum to "lead the charge", could OSS businesses fade? Or is it here to stay? (I personally feel that OSS business is more long-term profitable than closed-source, but IANAE).
If anyone has any links to research or projected growth models, I would appreciate it, particular ones with positive expectations for OSS business ;) Ethan
Wow (Score:3)
Now I have something to put us closer to equal footing.
I especially love this part:
I just can't wait for the next meeting to bring this up again and show these fat, balding, middle-aged, clueless management drones that they have been laughing off OSS at their own expense all this time. Maybe it'll do some good, maybe not. Just the recommendation alone that we "re-examine" the no-OSS policy will set off a flurry of activity as someone will get this action-item to report on this and most of the points that were cited in our poicy are directly debunked in the Gartner article.
Somebody is going to look even stupider than usual.