Wednesday, December 03, 2003
How Open Source Misunderstands the Market
Ted pointed to the article "How to Misunderstand Open Source Software Development". A good article that points out some things that people may not realize.
However, there are some things that the article doesn't address or are just pure opinion. For example, in the first paragraph, the author states, "As a commercial software program and development manager, I view Open Source Software methods as simply a way to build applications. It happens to be the most efficient one." Pure opinion. There is nothing no evidence that Open Source methods are more efficient.
Later he says, "In a closed, proprietary development shop project leopard would continue to exist as an idea. Instead of people downloading the application and using it to build eGovernment web sites, the project team would still be writing specifications. Business analysts would have engaged in interviewing "users" and the whole project would have just crawled along. ... In an Open Source world, we would have consulted the existing standards base, looked for existing code or projects, found a database vocabulary and tool kit and opened the specs to our team...". He seems to imply that "users" are never interviewed. How the hell can you determine what your users want? If your competitors are also using Open Source techniques, such as consulting existing standards base, how can you ever gain competitive advantage? After all, it will be the user that picks one product over another. If both are functionally equivalent because each development team was using the same research, it wouldn't matter which product was selected.
And this leads me to one of the biggest misconceptions from the Open Source supporters. Only an extremely small percentage of all the computer users out there will actually touch the source code. Most people are just plain users and don't give a damn about the ability to modify the source because they don't have the skills nor knowledge to do so. Open Source supporters keep shouting that Open Source is better because you can modify the source. If well over 90% of the potential market can't do it, why the hell does it matter?
And where is the evidence that Open Source produces better products or is more secure? I haven't seen anything. They say to just look at the number of Windows worms and viruses that have been released. That doesn't mean the code and/or application is less secure. Only that more authors are targeting Windows because they get more bang for their buck due to a MUCH larger installed user base.
I think eventually we'll find that neither open source nor closed source is any better or worse than the other in terms of which is a better model for development or more secure. They are just two different methods of software development. In the meantime, I would like to see the evidence backing up the claims from the open source community.
However, there are some things that the article doesn't address or are just pure opinion. For example, in the first paragraph, the author states, "As a commercial software program and development manager, I view Open Source Software methods as simply a way to build applications. It happens to be the most efficient one." Pure opinion. There is nothing no evidence that Open Source methods are more efficient.
Later he says, "In a closed, proprietary development shop project leopard would continue to exist as an idea. Instead of people downloading the application and using it to build eGovernment web sites, the project team would still be writing specifications. Business analysts would have engaged in interviewing "users" and the whole project would have just crawled along. ... In an Open Source world, we would have consulted the existing standards base, looked for existing code or projects, found a database vocabulary and tool kit and opened the specs to our team...". He seems to imply that "users" are never interviewed. How the hell can you determine what your users want? If your competitors are also using Open Source techniques, such as consulting existing standards base, how can you ever gain competitive advantage? After all, it will be the user that picks one product over another. If both are functionally equivalent because each development team was using the same research, it wouldn't matter which product was selected.
And this leads me to one of the biggest misconceptions from the Open Source supporters. Only an extremely small percentage of all the computer users out there will actually touch the source code. Most people are just plain users and don't give a damn about the ability to modify the source because they don't have the skills nor knowledge to do so. Open Source supporters keep shouting that Open Source is better because you can modify the source. If well over 90% of the potential market can't do it, why the hell does it matter?
And where is the evidence that Open Source produces better products or is more secure? I haven't seen anything. They say to just look at the number of Windows worms and viruses that have been released. That doesn't mean the code and/or application is less secure. Only that more authors are targeting Windows because they get more bang for their buck due to a MUCH larger installed user base.
I think eventually we'll find that neither open source nor closed source is any better or worse than the other in terms of which is a better model for development or more secure. They are just two different methods of software development. In the meantime, I would like to see the evidence backing up the claims from the open source community.
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