Enterprise open source Toolkit

Story: Bursting the proprietary-software bubble

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Re: True, for software which is commoditized

: Some much larger things have become near
: commodities, like Linux, because the demand
: huge so there's enough motivation for an open
: source market to develop.

You speak of Linux as if it is a single monolithic entity. It explicitly and deliberately isn't. It is a large collection of much smaller projects, designed to interoperate with each other and more often than not, having competing variants of different capabilities. This isn't relevant or even visible to the average end user though; it is the job of the "Distributions" (Red Hat, Ubuntu etc) to hide this complexity from the end user and meld the parts into a consistent whole.

I also find myself wondering if you have looked up recently, when you say that an open source market "might" develop .. future tense. It has developed and it is huge! Blink and you miss another push outwards.

I also wonder in what terms you are using the term "market". I have debated against the conventional use of the term .. to grossly simplify: the number of potential "sales".

If you are using it in a more complex economic theory sort of a way to describe the process of needs and wants and development incentives and such underlying the simple "Want one Gimme", then the richness and energy in this zone would obviously surprise you.

Because of the inclusive nature of the process, open source tends to feed back and amplify, with every project adding something to the whole and in so doing every other project. Even if a project "fails" it doesn't, because it is there for all to see, pinch code out of and critique. I have regularly seen projects burn upwards, falter and die; to be replaced by another similar, but critically different project. Maybe that in turn is itself replaced, but the key fact is that they don't all start from square one. In the proprietary world, they will almost always start in complete ignorance of each other and very often repeat each other's mistakes.

Open Source ratchets, closed source does not.

: Open Office may yet get there.

The last stats I have seen (2007-09) puts the number of downloads for OOo is in the 10s of millions and this completely disregards the fact that it is a standard fitment on most Linux CD/DVD sets. What the figures are these days .. heaven alone knows.

I submit that it's doing ok, ta muchly.

: But you overgeneralize. Certainly there are
: open source initiatives for virtually any type
: of software, but many (perhaps most) of them
: are not effective because there isn't enough
: critical mass of interest to produce software
: that matches the capabilities of proprietary
: software.

I am not alone in being a regular and heavy user of software; and a dizzying array of different kinds at that. I very very rarely have to use anything other than my Linux based laptop to run any of it. Given that in your terms "perhaps most" of the software types do not have capable open source software, perhaps you will care to give us a few examples.

: So at very least the dinosaurs can continue to
: make money on the "long tail" of highly complex
: or lesser used software areas.

There comes a point where the economics of proprietary software production just don't work any more. As more and more people realise that they have been chucking their money away on expensive proprietary titles when there are perfectly satisfactory open source equivalents to be had; more and more momentum will be drawn out of the proprietary "You get what you pay for" mantra and open source will inevitably become the target for the old saw:

"Nobody ever got sacked for choosing XYZ"

XYZ was IBM until it wasn't, then it was Microsoft until it wasn't .. how long before we can cut and paste in the words "Open Source" instead.

One of the big arguments in favour of Open Source is that it is very difficult to make any money at all in the core business of software production. If the development department makes it to the break even point, then they're probably skimping on the test cycle ;-) The big money is made in training, consultancy, literature etc etc. By switching to open source development procedures, the company is simply acknowledging this and concentrating it's resources on the parts of the business likely to repay the shareholders. In these straightened times, expect to see more of this, not less.

Given the ratchet effect described above, open source is quite simply inevitable. In the longer term, the phrases open and closed will be obsolete. They will be contrasting two sides where only one survives. Proprietary software will survive for a bit longer, but in a lot of cases not because of quality or features, but through protectionism, lock-in and (sadly) dodgy back room deals.

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