Cool London Shopping Guide

It would be nice if you addressed this -- somehow I doubt you will:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39...

I would be interested specfically in hearing why Microsoft believes open-source software doesn't have a role to play in emerging markets.

Robert, thanks for the the info on the shopping guide. in addittion to actvist blogging I publish a christian magazine www.thepowermag.com in the baltimore / dc area and I was looking at how to connect the churches and community via maps such as these! I know you are travling and will be in it@cork,ireland. I hope these irish blogs
http://www.irishblogs.ie/ might be of help finding a few bloggers. smile

Mujibur: I don't comment on things I don't know about.

But, in general, I wonder about people who want me to give away my work for free. Do you work for free? Can you come over and cut my lawn for free then? Why are you against open source lawn cutting?

I think your comment speaks for itself.

Mujibur: and yours speaks for itself too. So, when you gonna come over and cut my lawn?

Mujibur: are you also outraged by this behavior? http://gamersreports.com/news/230/

Just want to get a sense for if you believe in intellectual property rights or not.

I support intellectual property rights.

I don't support companies trying to minimize free software's exposure in emeging markets. It just seems cheap for Microsoft to manipulate a UN paper in an effort to compete.

You lawn-mowing is not only recycled but also retarded.

Hi Mujibur

Open or Closed Source? That is a matter of personal choice. If the products features, function and financial fit work, then you should choose that product whether it is is open or closed source.

Open source software has done a great deal to increase the features, functionality and decrease the fees of software and long may that remain.

But eventually people need paying for their (full) time; unless you are one of the few people in this world to have truly attained self-actualisation (Maslow's Heiracrchy of need)

Much of the open source community initiatives are actually funded Firefox, Opera by Google ($1 downloads and homepage), Openoffice by Novell, Google, Sun etc. less we foget in the hype.

Microsoft needs competition otherwise we will get more bloatware and so that is why I support the Opensource commnuity. Without them we would never have seen Windows for the 3rd world, IE7, Office XML EMCA file format, RSS in Vista etc.

By the way I prefer to use the LAMP stack and FF and OOO as these products meet my three F criteria compared to the expensive MSFT alternatives.

Sam,

I agree with you for the most part. Developers, whether working on open-source or closed-source, certainly deserve to earn a good living.

What does that have to do with Microsoft attempting to manipulate the UN to promote closed-source software?

"But, in general, I wonder about people who want me to give away my work for free. Do you work for free? Can you come over and cut my lawn for free then? Why are you against open source lawn cutting?"

Thats amusing, your analogy above would seem to indicate that there is no way to make money out of open source.

Tell you what open source lawn cutting is - I'd build shears, put the blueprint online, and pix demonstrating the best technique of cutting grass, and then offer my skills for a price. Anybody else could do the job looking at the blueprints and pix, but there are enough lawns to trim/not too many cutters like me so I get paid to trim the lawn. [The above argument shows that the quoted stuff is logically inconsistent/irrelevant]

@Scoble: You've made some very fair posts in the past [apart from some not-so-fair ones where perhaps your opinion differed from mine, so we'd agree to disagree]. But a couple of posts...like your responses to this one, those aren't logically consistent or well thought out. They just come across as defensive, rather than genuinely considering the original poster's p.o.v.

There are a lot of people who have a fair degree of regard for your blog and the ideas you come out with, why jeopardize that? You don't even have to be anti-Microsoft if thats what you fear - you can just be balanced, and even if you don't score points over the people you argue with, everybody who reads your points will respect them and pay more attention to them than somebody like Chris Coulter (who does make *some* good points)

Blah: I see your point, and admit that there's a lot to open source that I like. But I've argued this out with quite a few smart people and most don't agree with you, which is why most commercial companies don't go the open source route -- if they want to make their investment in software back.

Here's the deal: why should I invest money and/or time in making a better pair of clippers or a better lawn-cutting technique if you're going to give that away for free?

Now thats a fair reply - I wasn't really arguing *for* open source so much as saying they have a valid point, just as you do.

But now your reasoned response deserves another.

"Here’s the deal: why should I invest money and/or time in making a better pair of clippers or a better lawn-cutting technique if you’re going to give that away for free?"

Lets make things simpler, lets say I'm the person developing the technique...should I improve it, even though give away the technique for free?

The answer is Yes! I sell my services, not necessarily my knowhow. And my services can be done more efficiently, with less expenses, or can be extended to different kinds of lawns if I upgrade my technique.

Capitalism demands growth, and that growth is only possible if I keep improving my service, or extending/expanding it. Thats enough of an incentive for me to put my efforts into research.

Now the question is, what benefit do I get if somebody uses my freely published research? You don't get a direct benefit, the way you would if you licensed it out. What you do get is perhaps a better way of doing the job from people out there who also take your research and extend it. You do get competition from other people who work in the same area. But the amount of work you've put into the research makes you highly skilled at the job!

Sure, this is a pretty idealized situation, but why rubbish it without taking a cold hard look at its merits and demerits? The open source approach leads to a scenario where you *have* to perpetually be a lean, mean company/conglomeration of lean man units which are agile enough to change, hard working, and willing to accept a reasonable profit rather than trying to maintain ridiculous margins while blowing most of your profits elsewhere.

Risk taking really requires a lot of courage.. ..living in the above mode will *force* you to take calculated risks because without them, you'll have th e wolves at your heels. But at the same time, the risks *will* be calculated simply because the money y ou're spending simply *cant* be just thrown away. There is a *lot* of pressure to do things right.

Now the above is *one way* of doing things. I'm not saying its the only way, or the best way, or even a very good way. I'm just saying its a valid way, and its a way that has one rather large benefit - it makes life more competitive for everybody than the current setup.

So its worth a look-see, and for better or worse, it will form part of our world in the future, just as Microsoft will form part of our world for better and worse.

Here's where I don't follow. You're the grass cutter, not the guy who made the blade. Your expertise isn't in making the blade. So, why should the guy who made the blade invest in making a better one if you're just going to give it away for free? What you're saying is that the profit is in the grass cutting, not the blade making, so you're forcing blade makers to also do grass cutting in order to make a living.

I'm not a grass cutter, I'm a blade maker. So, why, again, are you expecting me to work for free?

"I’m not a grass cutter, I’m a blade maker. So, why, again, are you expecting me to work for free?"

Fine..sell blades. People will gladly pay you for the labour involved in making good blades. You'll have competition. You'll have to adapt. You'll have to extend. You'll have to optimize. But you have a market, and you have a product, and what matters at the end of the day is that you follow the basic premise of capitalism - growth, by growing your target market. Competition keeps you working hard, and looking for ingenious ways to move forward. Those ingenious ways are soon appropriated by them, but the sheer effort you've put into finding those ways gives you a mastery on par with Hattori Hanzo (from Kill Bill Vol I, not the Tokugawa Ieyasu follower).

Effort matters. Not trying to defend yourself but instead using competition to propel yourself forward matters. Closeness can breed stagnation.

All these, as above are one way of doing things. Not the only way, you can be a closed source blade maker.


What if you're purely a blade designer/architect? You just won't find yourself surviving very easily because the blade makers will pick up blade design pretty quickly. [And I think this is really where you're coming from, the knowledge producer]. Whether you're open, or closed, you cant stick to that line, you need to go beyond merely coming up with designs.

That of course, is one point of view. There will be people who thrive despite the competition, who come out with superb designs and sell them. But even those will acknowledge the other possibility too.

Sooner or later, a lot of people get sick of hoarding knowledge and using it to obtain their power ;) Especially when theres no reall need to do so!

Scoble:

The reason the commercial entity should not invest in a blade is because IT'S A BLADE.

The open-sourcing of development tools and core components will be profound partly because it will force commercial vendors who want to build the whole widget to move to a higher level of abstraction.

Commercial vendors need to move up the food chain instead of delivering a marginally improved "blade" every year.

Here's an example. Ever wanted to repartition your drive while maintaining your data? You used to have to buy PartitionMagic for $80 or more to do this task. The company made marginal improvements to their product and raked in the profits. I think we can all agree this is basic functionality that advanced users should expect.

Today, I can choose from 5-6 open source tools to do the same. I appreciate that because it forces the folks behind PartitionMagic to deliver more value which they theoretically should have been doing regardless.

Commercial vendors no longer get a free lunch. You need to reinvest in your product or die just as it should be.

What happened to the post?

Not sure what you're asking.