Microsoft exec says Open Source stifles innovation
By Christine Peterson, on February 15th, 2001
from the depends-how-you-define-innovation dept.
Foresight Director of Communications Tanya Jones writes "In an article on CNET (also seen on Slashdot), Microsoft executive Jim Allchin is quoted as saying that: 'freely distributed software code such as rival Linux could stifle innovation and that legislators need to understand the threat.' Has Microsoft neglected to consider that Open Source is a voluntary movement and that some intellectual property cannot be regulated (like the joys of building something cool) or perhaps this is just another attempt to stifle competition." CP: You have to admire that company's chutzpah, if not their products.
Re:welcome to the new world order
Nah, I don't think so. In fact, I pointed out where OSS has its biggest problem — software development businesses can't embrace it (much as they'd like to try).
The answer to the "supermonopoly" is the "will of the people". The backlash against M$ has been what has largely driven OSS arena to such heights in recent years. The fact that Linux could so threaten M$ in so short a time speaks volumes to the power of the people. In this way, its "disaggregation" may be its biggest strength in that it doesn't give the monopoly(s) something to shoot at and it is so changeable that it hurts their ability to do strategic planning.
However, this strength is, as you point out, a weakness as well. Take away the driving influence for the OSS community and how much of the community will dry up? It may not be to the OSS community's benefit to see M$ die (even if that is by simply joining the OSS community)!
Re:welcome to the new world order
You are right that MS can't make its kind of money on the OSS model; probably no one can. But by the same token, it's not correct to say that Linux has "deep pockets" (the volunteer or low-profit community). The problem is disorganization. MS can make strategic plans and release coherent, bundled, user-friendly products. OSS seems to have a lot of trouble doing this. MS can hype and mass-market its products, and can make deals with the other potential components of the "supermonopoly" I am warning about. The disaggregated OSS community can't. While urging me to "turn down the rhetoric," you haven't addressed the issues I raised in my post. Apparently you still believe in the romance of OSS, even to the point of seeing it as a danger to MS. Well, good luck.
Contrarian Position
I think that you can argue that Linux could stifle innovation, and a good example is embedded systems.
Linux has become a viable opportunity for embedded systems. The problem is that Linux can be so inexpensive, that due to the various cost pressures faced by manufacturers, they have little opportunity to choose Linux – because other alternatives are too expensive. This effectively drives the alternatives out of the market, and there you have it: innovation stifled.
Another dimension is the "forward looking nature" of Linux. There is a classic debate between Linus Torvalds (Mr Linux) and Andy Taunebaum (Mr Minix, Mr Ameoba and a respected academic). The debate is over the original design "intention" of Linux. Linus saw Linux as a choice other than Minix. Andy said that if Linus has produced Linux for one of his classes, he would have failed him. It is quite clear that Linux is not an operating system built "for the future" (i.e. it does not incorporate many of the advanced operating system theories into its design, e.g. microkernels, security, system abstraction, etc) – because essentially Linux looks back to the "old world" (i.e. the world of Unix). Linux may be an example of a succesful outcome of the open source revolution, but it not an example of a "technically superior" operating system.
What this means is that the "economic benefits" of open source software are all supporting the continued survival of an operating system that is not technically progressive at its core. It becomes costly radically overall the operating system itself, and the competitors (e.g. for RTOS, something like QNX, perhaps also Plan 9 [I know little about]) find it difficult and costly to maintain and develop their "niche product".
You could almost say that Linux could go the same way as Windows – at least for embedded/distributed systems – because in 5-10 years time when everyone needs a well designed, secure multiple platform, distributed, real time operating system – etc etc, they many wonder how Linux drove out competitors who were embodying forward principles the likes of Ameoba and so on.
Good laugh
Check out the User Friendly for 16 Feb. 2001. You can find it here.
Re:welcome to the new world order
Whoa! Turn down the rhetoric some…
Of course Microsoft is out to kill off any competitors to their products — it's in the definition of being a competitive business. Whether they achieve that thru some underhanded or legislative mechanism remains to be seen. I think there will be a lot of people standing in the way of Microsoft doing something unfair.
However, let's back up and look at what Allchin is saying again. Looked at another way, Allchin is making the same complaint that Netscape did when Microsoft started giving away IE. Think about — maybe Linux is the monopoly in this case!
Netscape did not have the deep pockets that Microsoft had in order to be able to fund the software development necessary to out innovate Microsoft in the browser area. Both companies had to fund that development, but Microsoft (by robbing Peter to pay Paul) gambled that Netscape would run out of money before it did (it won that gamble). Netscape then claimed that in the browser market this was unfair competition (and the judge backed them up on this).
Now another competitor has come into Microsoft's market and is doing quite well. Allchin (and Microsoft), however, are realizing that, because anyone can add to an OSS product, this competitor has essentially unlimited funds for software development. If this continues indefinitely, Microsoft is left with two options:
The problem with the second approach is that, so far, no one has come up with a lucrative business model for doing commodity software development in an OSS world. Sure there are OSS support or distribution models that are reasonable (but even these haven't been very lucrative), but the only software development model I've seen is "one-off" development (ie. contract work with no residuals). Looked at this way, Allchin's remark is much more understandable because, if he wants to make himself and his stockholders megabucks, he can't embrace the OSS model.
NOTE: I'm a UNIX programmer, so I am not a fan of the stuff Microsoft puts out.
Vocabulary problems
Perhaps this Microsoft lad has confused the worlds 'open-source' with the word 'monopoly.' I don't give much credence to the babblings of a avaricious corporation with incompetent programmers which wrote THAT operating system on my computer which crashes on every second keystroke…
welcome to the new world order
"Legislators" are not going to pass any laws against Linux, but MS is betting that under the Bush regime the Justice Dept. will either drop its suit or settle on very lenient terms, and that MS will be given a green light to indulge its most egregious monopolistic practices. (I understand they have a new OS which comes bundled with many multimedia features.) At the same time, the new FCC chairman says there is no need to regulate communications, and even the very mild conditions that were imposed on the AOL-Time Warner merger are likely to be eased.
It looks like we are going to find out exactly where mindless deregulation and free-market fundamentalism will take us. There may now be nothing to stand in the way of a super-monopoly that could strangle the open-source movement, not only impose copyright protection but impede or prevent the free copying and distribution of unprotected content, restrict and control the flow of data on the internet and block the emergence of a true, infinity-channel, video-bandwidth network in order to preserve the broadcasting model corporate-controlled information and entertainment .
Why not? Intel could come out with a new processor with hooks for an encrypted OS built in to the firmware. Teaming up with MS, AOL, and Sony, they could create a seamless, consumer-friendly, closed universe of circumscribed applications and copy-protected corporate entertainment. They don't need "government coercion" to achieve this, only government inaction to let them do it.
Sure, you'd still be able to get unprotected hardware and open-source software. But it would fall behind in the flash race, and would become increasingly uninteroperable with the new, protected formats that most of the world would be using. Fewer and fewer people would use the "amateur" stuff. One by one, the brave hacker startups would fold.
Do you think this is paranoid exaggeration? I tell you, this is exactly what they're thinking, behind closed doors. How many of you believe the world is going to be using Linux in ten years, when search engine, graphics, speech and vision applications are consuming the majority of processor cycles? How many think the corporate and national security worlds aren't dead serious about copy protection, computer security, surveillance and cyberwarfare? How many think the mass media and entertainment industries are willing to see their chokehold on the flow of infotainment dissolve? Or that they don't have the clout to deter lawmakers, nearly all of whom operate on the same raise-cash-buy-ads model, and most of whom would greatly prefer to peddle "access" to a few elite reporters than to have to face a universe of Matt Drudges with differing points of view?
Who's going to stop the supermonopoly? Only an activist government could. It really isn't hard to identify policies that would foster opnenness, interoperability, stablity and standardization without domination by a greedy monopoly, and an open network with lots of diversity instead of a few hundred "channels" of corporate-programmed sludge. But most of the most likely activists remain deluded that the "free market" will bring Nirvana all by itself. And so we will get the policies of the monopolists, imposed upon us, not by law, but as a matter of fact.
Usual Microsoft hogwash
Utter bilge. If Microsoft think that taking out a patent on a product and sitting on it, or hiding their code away so nobody can improve it, or diddling established standards to include deliberate incompatibilities, or buying out successful competitors to close them, or telling distributors not to stock rival product is in fact progress, they need recalibration.
Open Source allows innovation, obfuscation hampers it. It's that simple.
Vik :v)