Re: Forest Ants, GRSec Pd, etc.

[Mordy Ovits <movits () bloomberg com>]

On Wednesday 31 December 2003 11:47 am, Dave Aitel wrote:
> Hmm. I wonder if in the long run the market will just shift towards open
> source since it's just better value for the money. I can't see how it
> wouldn't be.

What market?  The picture most people have of the "software market" is 
severely distorted.  Most programmers do not write programs that are put up 
for sale; they don't work at software shops.  Most programmers write code 
that is for the sole use of the company that paid for it to be written.  The 
sea change for them is offshoring, not open source.

Open source development, being a commons, works best for infrastructure 
software.  There's no competitive advantage to running any given piece of 
infrastructure software; your competitor has the same OS and Java app server 
too.  This helps provide incentive to a) brutally cut costs in that area and 
b) make that area a commons.

There are very few companies with large portions of revenue coming from 
infrastructure software like app servers and OSes.  Sure, they may be rich as 
all hell, but there's still only a a handfull of them.

No one uses an operating system.  It's just a base layer for getting real work 
done by running apps.  This simple fact is the reason why the OS market is 
dead.  There are only two companies in the world selling mainstream OSes - MS 
and Apple.  Everyone else is either non-mainstream (QNX, etc) or using it to 
sell higher-margin hardware or services.  Apple very nearly qualifies for the 
latter case.

Even this picture is distorted by MS's monopoly status.  If it weren't for 
their monopoly, *no one* would be selling OSes today.  This market anomaly is 
true of several classes of software, mainly infrastructure.  The BEAs and 
Oracles are just as vulnerable to Free software as MS is, they're just 
further back on the curve.  Even the market for niche infrastructure like 
development tools is being eroded by Free software.  Look at Borland; 
remember when many companies sold compilers?

The *real* software market has little to fear from Open Source.  In my 
experience, the tens of thousands of programmers in the financial sector fear 
India, not Linus.

Sorry if I misunderstood you, but I needed a good rant, and the list server 
seemed bored :-)

Have a fun New Year's Day,
Mordy
-- 
Mordy Ovits
Network Security
Bloomberg L.P.

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