Open Source

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Another Reason People Create Open Source Applications: Rage Note: Been programming since 3 am; may be incoherent and rambling -- but how many of my blog entries quote poems? Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. -- Dylan Thomas I've think mentioned this before, but at the risk of being pedantic, I wanted to make this point again.  I was stuck in traffic yesterday and thinking a lot about Open Source and why people do it.  For some it's: a desire for recognition scratching their own niche boredom in a job need intellectual curiousity altruism I think another whole motivation is very simple: Rage.  I mean let's be honest -- if you are a developer and you hit a bug or a crash in something, how often do you think "Damn It!  I could do this better" (even when you honestly can't).  It goes through all our heads.  Every time I'm in Outlook and the search engine (which strongly sucks little green toads) fails to find something that I know is in the folder, I get mad.  And every time it happens again, I get even madder.  And then, sometimes, the dam breaks.  And look at that!  It's an open source project for X where X = the current subject of the rage.  Here's what tipped me over into the Linux world: Microsoft Site Server.  This product, which is actually conceptually fairly nice, had, at least in 1999, the annoying habit of eating it's own data files.  You'd set up an index run and it would work for a while and then just die.  And you'd have to rebuild it.  After enough times, I finally said "Enough!" (actually my words were more like this "Damn MS **$&*($#@@_)@#" -- use your imagination).  That took me into Linux as a user and now other frustrations have brought me to the "Screw it all.  Time to launch my own project".  Now if you think about this from an industry wide, economic perspective, here are some interesting questions: What would Microsoft's revenues have been last year if Linux/FreeBSD didn't exist and every 1U box in a data center was running NT / 2000 / IIS? What would Sun's revenues have been last year if Linux/FreeBSD didn't exist and every 1U box in a data center was running Solaris? How many more programmers / support engineers / sales engineers / field staff would have been employed if Linux / FreeBSD didn't exist? Looking at it this way, you can see how Microsoft argues that Linux is bad for the overall economy (one of their very spurious arguments from a few months back).  Of course you also have to realize that the Internet as it is today simply wouldn't exist without Linux / FreeBSD.  Why?  Simple -- we couldn't afford all the license fees needed.  And server OS pricing would be higher without Linux / FreeBSD to put downward price pressure on them.  And I think everyone would argue that, despite the dot commage, the Internet has been hugely good for the overall economy.  So if you accept the premise that Linux has cut into OS revenues then the corollary is that Open Source will (and has) cut into commercial software revenues.  And, while we could argue that this is bad for the economy, just as we all say about the MP3 issues: Business Models Change.  It's just that simple.  For all too many years now, the high tech industry, software and hardware, has been terribly arrogant and basically getting away with poor quality.  If much of the open source movement is tied to rage, as is my premise, then they really have no one to blame but themselves.    Amazing what a little rage and a lot of smart people can do, huh?  Do not go gentle into that commercial world, Poor quality and bugs should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage and create something anew; Make it free; give it away. -- Poorly Done Mock Dylan Thomas (if there's a good poet out there, email me your version of Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night cast as a pro or con Open Source poem and I'll publish it here and link to you) 6:27:50 AM