It might be of interest to some advogato readers (let's fill
these
diary entries a little bit ;-). As I said in a previous
message in the
thread, I would love to see what is the current employment
ratio of
shrink wrap vs custom software + support, and money making
ratio, and
David answered he would love to see it too. Any information?
From: Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Why open source is winning
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Date: 21 Oct 2000 13:07:51 +0200
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org> writes:
It looks like to me that you're reducing the "software
development
industry" to the "shrink wrap proprietary software
industry".
David Masterson <dmasters@rational.com> writes:
Is there any other? :-)
Well, none of the people I graduated with (software
engineering) work
in the shrink wrap industry, they all work
writing/maintaining custom
software for big projects, or as contractors inside various
companies
also developping/maintaining custom software for one client.
All these
companies and people are making big money, and there's no
shortage of
work to do!
It might be an Europe vs US way of doing software.
I would say you're missing all the one customized software
for one
customer/problem industry [...]
I mentioned this later in my message as "contract"
programming (ie. first
user pays development costs). Its not an unreasonable
model, but it does
have flaws...
But you seem to imply again that all software is "sellable"
to the masses
(shrink wrap), and that's just not true. I see a large
market for
"first user pays development costs" and no other user ever
exist.
But, of course, you're thinking like a bank employee with no
competition for
your job.
Just to clarify what I do, I work on financial equity and
other
derivative software, if you think there's no competition for
jobs
or otherwise in this market, I guess you don't know it at
all!
Now think about it from the point of view of the bank. What
would the bank think of making *ALL* of the software that
you develop "open
source"? Can other banks now become more competitive with
your bank because
they pick up and use your software? Remember these other
banks are not
obligated to contribute to the development of the software,
so they would be
making use of your software for "free" (monetarily
speaking).
I think you're completely misunderstanding the "open source"
licensing
scheme. You're NEVER obliged to release to the community
your
customization as long as you don't distribute binaries to
people
outside your organization (*). There are custom ports of GCC
made and
used by only one company, and they don't have to release it
at all,
and this is perfectly fine with the FSF. The software I work
for is
not intended at all for use outside our company, and we even
have some
software protection and authorization scheme to make sure it
stays
this way.
(*) There is some debate on how to have multi company
collaborative
work on "unreleased" GPL software, but that's a bit special.
On the other hand, if your software is *not* released as
"open
source", does that mean that all those other banks have to
go about
duplicating your efforts? Isn't that wasteful?
Yes of course all other banks in this market are duplicating
our
efforts, this is where the competition is! The software
embodies
nearly all of the bank derivative product know-how, that's
all kept
secret as much as possible. The model is that if you want to
know what
other banks are doing, you have to pay to get their
employees work for
you and bring you their knowledge. There are companies
selling this
kind of software (proprietary way, and may be open source
way), but
with much less advanced functionalities (often with a plugin
interface
so that banks can put their know-how in).
Perhaps it would be a win-win if your bank sold the software
to the
other banks (oh, but then you're into a "proprietary"
model... ;-)
See RISK magazine if you're interested in learning what's
going on in
our industry.
My employer decided to use an open source tool and pay for
technical
support (not cheap!) a few years ago for this critical piece
of
software and this was an informed move. They hired me in
part because
I know very well the technology since I worked on it, and
the sources
are available. In case of emergency I'm even able to fix
things myself
(we have very hard requirements on getting things to work
quickly). They can't get that level of insurance if they
choose to use
proprietary software since the selling company is the only
one with
source access (monopoly), if you piss them off and have a
problem,
you're dead, no alternative, no incentive to fix things we
need
(except may be the low one to one 1/N with a big N since
you're
selling to the masses). To put it otherwise, vendor lock-in
and
racket.
For other custom software developed in my bank where
multiple
proprietary tools are used, my coworkers have to make sure
things work
together, and sometimes their vendors have conflicting
interest, I can
tell you that ends up being very costly and unsatisfying.
I guess this experience applies to other industries, a lot
of
businesses today are heavily depending on combining and
customizing
software for their own unique purpose. If your business
scales up,
you'll end up being very interested to buy skills to do even
more
customization, and in this way, open source is very
attractive because
it is ... the only option. Sometimes you might even end up
competing
in a slight way with what your original vendor software
does, and you
just can't live with a proprietary vendor.
I firmly believe that the software market needs this kind of
competition, and I do not see it at all as putting every
software
engineer out of business, well on the contrary! But I can
easily
imagine that people with different experience think
otherwise.
PS: I didn't notice your email at first, but your company is
offering
a competing product to the free software we use (GNAT, an
Ada
compiler). I haven't tried yet to compile our software
using the
Rational Ada compiler, but I'll do it one of these days, as
QA for
code portability at least ;-).
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>