on the ed.z analysis

Thomas Lord

Sat May 17 16:37:19 -0700 2008

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ed.z there are some problems with your analysis.

First, here's a trite and obvious one that many are talking about: personal computers might become extinct. At least that is what many are speculating and there's huge amounts of investment money that assumes this outcome.

There is a very strong push to deliver applications entirely via the browser. In some markets (such as CRM / salesforce management) this push has unambiguously won the day. In other markets (such as word processing) things look shakier but don't rule it out.

The $100 computer you might well be offered in a few years, in this scenario, will not be a general purpose computer: it will be a web terminal. It will come with DRM hardware that you can not work around. You won't be able to create and load your own OS. It will simply be a next generation TV.

Don't rule Microsoft out of that game. They have plenty of foibles. They are not always especially competent. But they also haven't yet seriously moved in that space yet and they do have a lot of competence to do so. They are TYT shooters ("Take Your Time" -- "Every gunfighter has his time. The time it takes him to draw aim fire and hit. If he tries to beat his time the result is almost invariably a miss...." -- WSB). Google looks to me like the "Snatch and grab -- Jerk and Miss" type. A lot of what Microsoft is doing strikes me as making a (very plausible) effort to crowd Google's draw.

If there is a much larger transition to the browser replacing the general purpose personal computer, then I think that Google is overbought on will-be-obsolete-before-payout data centers, is likely to lose customer trust as an application and data host, and has less competence in software than you'd think. Microsoft may well get the last laugh.

Second, when it comes to commercial use, FOSS is no longer FOSS. The open source industrial complex has all but killed software freedom. I should explain a bit:

To be sure, there's a few ("small_value * 100"?) million lines of "not junk" code, much of which is copyleft and all of which is "open source". You and I and everyone around here can manage to use our software freedoms in ways that helps us enjoy that code. I don't deny that.

Unfortunately, that isn't how those lines of "not junk" code are being used in almost all of the commercial world. On the web, that code base is used almost exclusively as a $0-license-fee run-time system for proprietary applications. In the net infrastructure (routers, deep packet inspection spy technology, etc.) it's the same story. Canonical's optimism notwithstanding, and OLPC's realism standing out, FOSS is quickly losing ground in the carnage that remains of the personal computing world. In the embedded systems / personal device world it's mostly the same story again: but for a few niche products targeting geeks, the FOSS stack is again naught but a $0 run-time system.

The so-called "open source community" is openly exploited by many as naught but a source of unpaid labor. Some of our famous thought leaders enjoy, for example, book royalties and speaking fees for teaching firms how to obtain labor that way -- so firms can get gratis custom development to extend their $0-license-fee run time systems.

The strategic R&D investments made by the open source industrial complex are nearly naught and now it is beginning to show. A fine example is Red Hat's recent backing away from personal computing as a business opportunity: their bread and butter is firmly in the area of proffering and supporting the $0-license-fee run-time system for proprietary software.

It seems palpably obvious to me (at least from appearances) that this was not our Technocrat host's aim when creating the OSD and joining the summit. Yet, that is what hath been wrought.

The free software movement got economically and politically hacked and subverted. On purpose. The overwhelmingly dominant trend at the moment is that the resulting "open source" world will being doing almost nothing more than lowering some of the costs for developers of proprietary software.

-t

You can't rape the willing

Uncle Entity

Sat May 17 18:03:34 -0700 2008

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There are some problems with your analysis.

First and foremost a lot of FOSS development is done on company time and on the company dime. They 'pay' for the use of the code base by releasing their changes back into it.

Secondly, you fail to take into account 'psychic profit'. Those unpaid volunteers you claim are being exploited because the end users of their work don't share the profits are not working for monetary gain in the first place.

Out of the almost unlimited number of things that they could be spending their leisure time doing they chose to work on FOSS projects with the full understanding that they will not receive financial compensation. Leisure is a good onto itself which is why there is the economic concept of 'the disutility of labor'.

The fact that some people manage to make money off the 'volunteer labor pool' doesn't in any way change the fact that these people aren't 'laboring' in the first place — they are expending their limited leisure time on something they enjoy and are thus receiving psychic profit.

Life's not a zero-sum game...

Now if someone embarked on a FOSS project with the intent to capitalize on it in the future and failed this is just an indication that they invested their capital (labor) in an unprofitable venture. This would also change their role from volunteer to entrepreneur.

sorry, no

Thomas Lord

Sat May 17 19:10:15 -0700 2008

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First, as a victim of real rapes, I find your headline offensive. It is offensive because, first, it is false and, second, it expresses encouragement towards predators. That is off topic, however.

To the topic:

A "lot" of FOSS development is done by paid employees. It is undisputed that a "lot" is also done by volunteers. It is indisputable that there is a small industry in training firms to solicit and manage (by psychological manipulation) volunteer labor in service of commercial aims. The concept of professionalism left the building in the open source industrial complex more than a decade ago. You will find, if you search, some late first studies that are trumpeted by the open source industrial complex -- e.g.: "70% of the work on the Linux kernel is done by employees". Think that through. The kernel is but a small part of the stack. 30% is not done by employees.

You say that the volunteers are not working for monetary gain in the first place. In a very few cases you are clearly correct -- one could point to RMS' work on Emacs in recent years. It is indisputable, however, that volunteering for projects that yield commercial benefit for others has been marketed as the entry ticket for careerism. It is a rumour, at best weakly supported by and more realistically contradicted by attitudinal surveys about FOSS volunteerism. You are parroting propaganda from the open source industrial complex's marketing machine.

The insidious BS that you echo here has been going on for years and was driven by a small number of well position voices who laugh all the way to the bank. And it reaches to the very top. For example, I've been told by multiple VCs that "Well, your technology and IP may or may not be good. I don't know and I'm not attempting to evaluate it. If you want to talk to me, you must recruit a substantial number of volunteers to contribute to it. Then we can talk." They did not mean "And then we can fund the team." They meant "And then we might fund you to keep that team around because that's a lot of leverage." I don't take slaves. This is professional proper stance for entrepreneurial effort in free software. This is an appropriate way to solicit help with a new venture.

-t

sorry, no

Uncle Entity

Sat May 17 20:01:22 -0700 2008

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It is indisputable, however, that volunteering for projects that yield commercial benefit for others has been marketed as the entry ticket for careerism. It is a rumour, at best weakly supported by and more realistically contradicted by attitudinal surveys about FOSS volunteerism.

Well, that would make them entrepreneurs and not volunteers then...they are trying to capitalize off their 'free' labor.

Damn exploitive animal shelters have been doing this for years also as have a bunch of other industries like the art world and the worst of all, the music industry.

You are parroting propaganda from the open source industrial complex's marketing machine.

Actually I was parroting the much hated (around here at least) Murray N. Rothbard.

The insidious BS that you echo here has been going on for years and was driven by a small number of well position voices who laugh all the way to the bank.

How many didn't get the chance to laugh all the way to the bank as a result of the dot com bust? Little wonder the ones who do a little (lot) of due diligence are the ones who are still around today.

But like I was saying you might have a case of malinvestment on your hands. I'm not saying this to be an 'internet fscktard' but just giving an honest opinion. Maybe it's time to reevaluate your objectives and come up with a different plan to get you past the current stumbling block you appear to be fixated on.

sorry, no

Thomas Lord

Sun May 18 10:17:26 -0700 2008

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(I don't take you to be a fscktard.)

I agree that when people volunteer believing it is a step on the path of volunteerism, that makes them entrepreneurs. Perhaps I can clarify the problems I see with professionalism in the open source industrial complex as they relate to that:

Essentially, it's become a ponzi scheme.

The (let's stipulate it for the moment) fact of careerism as a primary motivation is usually obscured in presentations aimed at the investment class. Also obscured is the substantial amount of marketing that is done to attract volunteers. It's a relevant fact for investors to consider because if the industry is relying on volunteer numbers that greatly exceed the numbers of possible careers, then eventually the pyramid will collapse in a rubble of disillusionment and the production costs for "open source" products will climb significantly.

Deception also characterizes the marketing to volunteers and potential volunteers. Actual career prospects are systematically unquantified. Purported social norms, invented out of whole cloth and boiling down basically to "help the vendors", are promoted as the standards of the community.

You could say that many careerist volunteers are, therefore, "suckers" and I wouldn't disagree much. That doesn't undo my distaste for an industry that's come to rely on the exploitation of suckers.

What would "professionalism" look like? Well:

I'm all in favor of having low wage or even volunteer opportunities for new candidate-entrants to a professional field. It works in other industries. People considering medical school often volunteer in hospitals, for example. As a teenager, I myself had a wonderful recurring summer job in a (mostly) software firm. One of the better, early free software jobs I ever had considered hiring me by saying "We don't care to look at resumes but please write some free software and show us your ability to code."

There was no deception in any of that and no ponzi scheme. These are low-cost ways for those firms to develop entering professionals, not cheap-or-free labor ways to lower the marginal costs of their projects. All but the most struggling hospitals could get by just fine without the volunteers. I did some useful stuff at my summer job but they were scrupulous about making sure I was never on a critical path of anything and in making sure that the best hackers working for the firm were encouraged to take some breaks and spend time mentoring me. It is those firewalls of mutual protection that characterize a professional approach to bringing in volunteers and newbies.

In free software, I think that would look like sets of firms who are fully capable of producing and renewing their product lines with no volunteer aid whatsoever. Those firms can also, like the hospitals or my summer employer, enrich their field and the experience of their employees by carving out opportunities. Have expert programmers host educational practice projects of little or no commercial significance, for example. If these firms need flexibly sized work-forces, develop standard methods and contracts for hiring temporary stringers (rather than falling back to social exhortation, competitions, awards, and other ponzi scheme tools).

Does that help make the point of view clearer? There are factual matters I don't claim to have (even tried to) prove here (e.g., the claims about deception) but perhaps you can see the form a more complete form of my argument takes.

-t

sorry, no

Uncle Entity

Sun May 18 16:40:03 -0700 2008

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I think you are attributing motive to these folks. There is no way to tell how many people think that working on a FOSS project is a stepping stone to 'a' career instead of an 'open source' career.

What would be the benefits to this one might ask?

The main one would be that your work is out there for the world (and potential employer) to see. It would be the difference between driving to a job interview at a custom car shop in a POS Datsun as opposed to in a tricked out classic Chevy.

Also they can see how well you work with others just by viewing the developer's mailing list.

Now I'm just speculating from the outside in since I couldn't code my way out of a wet paper bag but I have read a few things here and there.

I will admit that anyone who falls for the 'track to open source stardom' marketing scheme is a 'sucker'. But then again they apparently have a high birthrate.

sorry, no

Thomas Lord

Sun May 18 17:08:02 -0700 2008

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(I had a typo that you (thanks) saw through -- writing "step on the way to volunteerism" where "step on the way to careerism" was meant. I appreciate tolerant-in-what-they-receive readers and discussion partners in shoot-from-the-hip forums like a comment section.)

And, yeah. Well, there's various theories about why the volunteerism ladder climb might work out. The empirical evidence that it does is lacking. The marketing that variously claims or strongly implies it does work out is abundant. Hence my complaints about professionalism here.

People should be encouraged to be smart and not be suckered. Definitely. A truth, though, is that if you build things or create situations that invite people to be suckers: you breed suckers. Hence the "high birthrate." Hence the old timey concern for that quaint concept of professionalism. Almost as if a component of engineering were social responsibility.

-t

sorry, no

Uncle Entity

Sun May 18 17:33:23 -0700 2008

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Reminds me of a story I was reading about the person who first mass produced clocks.

After establishing a US market he decided to branch out so shipped a bunch to the UK. The customs inspectors over there saw the claimed value of the clocks in the invoice and (since clocks were expensive things only the nobility could afford) assumed it was false. They had a law at the time where misstated imports could be confiscated at claimed value + 10% which they did.

What's a professional engineer to do in this situation? Show the Brits the error of their ways so the average person in the UK could buy a clock?

What ended up happening is the inventor (who's name I forget) continued to export his clocks in order to receive a guaranteed 10% profit with no marketing or sales risk. Eventually they wised up and figured out that maybe there's something to this mass production idea that, incidentally, was invented in Britain (and quickly dismissed as going against the 'social order') a hundred years before it was put into general use in the States.

On topic? Probably not but it does show how the prevailing perceptions of how the world is 'supposed' to work sometimes need to get a little shock now and again.

close to (at least subthread) topic

Thomas Lord

Sun May 18 17:50:25 -0700 2008

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Hey, if this was just a question of an oversupply of software engineering labor and process improvements driving down prices, I'd be right with you.

It's an oversupply of a dangerous, dumb substitute for software engineering being used in its stead, though.

Curmudgeonly yrs,
-t

sorry, no

Uncle Entity

Sat May 17 20:04:26 -0700 2008

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First, as a victim of real rapes, I find your headline offensive. It is offensive because, first, it is false and, second, it expresses encouragement towards predators. That is off topic, however.

Oh, and no offense intended.

sorry, no

Jason

Sun May 18 01:25:50 -0700 2008

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"First, as a victim of real rapes, I find your headline offensive. It is offensive because, first, it is false and, second, it expresses encouragement towards predators. That is off topic, however..."

It is sad that rape happens and sad that it has happened to you. I imagine a possible world that we could live in, where things like that.. things that are counter to our well-being, do not take place. In that world I imagine, people realize that being a victim is a choice (not the what happened part.. but how we choose to experience what happened). There is authentic power in choosing your experience of what happened.. In this possible world I imagine, a world full of authentically powerful people, (as opposed to much of today's world, full of victims living in fear, pursuing power by dominating others (inauthentic power)...) there will no longer be people who commit acts against the well-being of themselves and others...

I was surprised to realize that most who commit acts against others' well-being (the ones who do not have a mental disease anyway...) are acting out of the same sense of being a victim as their victims!.. ironic huh?

Be well, be powerful :)

 

~Q

thanks

Thomas Lord

Sun May 18 10:36:49 -0700 2008

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Thanks. I don't mean to turn this into a group therapy situation but I appreciate your sentiments. I'm in fairly robust shape about all of that: hence the decision to "come out" rather than just stew over the headline that bugged me.

-t

a question

D. Hensley

Sun May 18 02:28:42 -0700 2008

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Now please don't take this as flame or troll, as I mean neither --and it is off topic here, but I am trying to figure out what the offensive part was?

I mean, as a logical proposition the statement that you can not rape the willing, seems to stand as a valid statement.

I admit having zero experience, even indirectly, with rape or a victim of one (that I know about anyway), it therefore follows that I may be missing some subtle view or viewpoint.

If, and only if, it does not bother you, and if you can (I would easily accept that you just don't wish to discuss this on any level), I would really like to know exactly how one rapes the willing --or rather what it is about that statement that is so offensive... possibly just the act of using rape as an analogy in any way at all?

I really don't wish to offend anyone, or argue over this, it's just that you often display a fair ability to express your thoughts, and I hoped to possibly gain some enlightenment from you.

Thanks either way,
Don.

an answer

Thomas Lord

Sun May 18 10:52:01 -0700 2008

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No problem. We're way off topic, of course. But...

The offensiveness, from my perspective, stems from the common defense "He (or she) wanted it."

The logical problem is that "willingness" or "consent" are not simple binary options. Willing to what? Gave consent to what? Under what circumstances? And leading to what?

"Willingness" is the wrong test, even though it is sometimes applied.

Vaguely returning to topic: in the analogy to people volunteering for the open source industrial complex, they certainly are willing to write the code they write. They certainly do voluntarily put themselves in various situations. Are they fully informed or deceived? Are they socially pressured with little room to maneuver away? Are they unaware of aspects of how their participation will be used and how their career prospects will be shaped?

You can rape the willing. You need only construct a situation in which that act of will is the only rational choice from the perspective you construct for them.

-t

a good answer it is,

D. Hensley

Sun May 18 12:14:12 -0700 2008

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Thank you.

I suspect that the problem is more one of the Judas Goat --The animals that willingly follow him to slaughter do so without knowledge of what lies in store for them (but not for the Judas Goat himself).

I had never considered rape in that context, but I do see how it could be that way in some circumstances --and therefore I agree it does invalidate the 'willing' test, at least as being the only test used.

On the other hand though, does this actually have much bearing on people and their choices, beyond "Look before you leap" (or blindly follow), anyone at any time.

In other words, choices should always be made in as informed a manner as possible, and yes you can be lied to, about anything, by anyone, at anytime.

The problem I have here is that I can't quite see the Judas Goat in FLOSS. I mean if ever there was a rather plain and open explanation of what you are giving and getting, it would have to be in the FLOSS world. Or so it seems to me --as you have taught me there may be another viewpoint. But I confess I can't find it on my own.

For me I think that anyone capable of coding/programing/contributing money, to anything, has the sole responsibility to 'Look first' --and should have the knowledge of the situation to adequately assess the risk/benefit.

Every contract I have ever signed stipulates (in the boilerplate sections) 'that all the signatories to this contract attest that they have sufficient knowledge in the applicable nature of the matters contained herein, and are aware of the associated risks, and have done due diligence sufficient to themselves, each respectively, in relation to the matters contained herein' or words to that effect (I just loosely copied that from a contract I had close to hand).

So what complaint can some one have, especially with FLOSS, that they were lead by a Judas Goat into working for free, or what ever the complaint is?

The contract would be, of course, what ever license they release their code under.

And thanks again for the clarification about the 'willing rape' problem. But I don't see the Judas Goat existing in FLOSS. Perhaps you do and could enlighten me about that aspect (at least it's back more or less on topic --sort of anyway).

I did read your first post, but it seems to deal with the notion of product, as in market driven product, and I don't see that in FLOSS --I run a completely free, all upstream updates, etc. copy of HREL on my home web server --it happens to be named CentOS. Now I don't pay anyone for support, but I could if I wanted or needed to (I do contribute some money here and there, and even sometimes a tiny code offering). I can guaranty you that I have received way, way, more then I personally have ever or am ever likely to contribute. Did this harm a closed source developer? Possibly. Does that matter much to me? Very little. If his code is good and useful then he will do fine, if not, then not.

At the end of the day I just believe that if you can't compete with free then you just can't compete. That's in the all things eventually reach parity in cost and therefore are free (same cost = zero differential) in so far as one company gaining 'margin' over another for the same goods. So it always eventually comes down to competing on some level other then cost. Or so it seems to me.