Apr

15

Is OpenSource Good for Shareholders and CEOs?

April 15, 2007 |

Update: Sam Ramji of Port 25, Microsoft’s Open Source Labs, posted a response to Hugh’s ideas which gives some great inside into the thoughts at Microsoft about Open Source.

There is a basic problem when people frame “traditional software vs. open source software” – the assumption that there is a zero-sum game to be played and that therefore it is war.

This is a mistaken understanding. Software is technology. It can be delivered as a product or as a solution. It must meet the needs of its users. Users come in different segments as defined by their needs and their ability to communicate with each other about the technologies they are using.

This may seem obvious, but segments vary! High-level, simplistic discussions of “A vs. B” miss the reality that there are different right answers – and sometimes multiple right answers – for any given segment.

Hugh McLeod latest post shows that he doesn’t understand the open source movement at all. Here is the worst part:

I know very little about software, so my hunch is that the reason Microsoft is able to make money, is simply that running a large business with 2000 people on the payroll requires very different ways of going about it, than just hacking together something in your garage.

Well, that hunch is wrong and those days of hacking in the garage are long over (did anybody ever really hack in a garage anyway?) and something tells me that Hugh should be smart enough to know that. A lot of open source software these days is written by employees of big and small companies. Hell, a lot of companies with 2000 employees rely on open and free software to run their businesses.

He also asks if it scales? Of course it does, though it is not clear what Hugh means with this. Does the product scale or the development process? In my view, both scale just fine. Linux is the shining example, but even smaller products (think Zimbra for example) do just fine.

I guess now that Hugh has been hired by Microsoft, he gets paid to post this kind of stuff. Why is Microsoft still on the top? Already established market penetration, a huge marketing budget, being a monopoly and the simple fact that some of its software is actually pretty good (think MS Office 2007).

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3 Comments so far

  1. hugh macleod on April 15, 2007 10:41 pm

    “I guess now that Hugh has been hired by Microsoft, he gets paid to post this kind of stuff…”

    If only it were that simple [SFX: Evil Laugh]

    ;-)

  2. hugh macleod on April 15, 2007 10:41 pm

    P.S. Thanks for having my widget on your blog. I appreciate it. Seriously :)

  3. Frederic on April 16, 2007 12:16 am

    Hugh - I guess it isn’t that simple… but you should take some time to read more about open source. I am great fan of a lot of your stuff (hence the widget on the blog here), but that post just hit a nerve in me.

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