From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Oct 19 2002 - 15:17:56 MDT
Those who might be reading this thread without a
background in how we got to where we are (As in just
how unbelievably BAD the MicroSoft products actually
are), or a basis of comparison to where we might be
might want to check out Steven Levy's classic
"Hackers". Altho it ends in 1983, all the key
conflicts and most of the major players are already
covered in such a way that you can easilly see how the
present day is a direct product of their various
philosophies.
The case of Bill Gates, for example: Most people
today do not realize that he is directly responsible
for the entire marketing model for software that is
used for 95% of that market. Gates began sueing
people who pirated his MicroSoft BASIC, way back when
a state of the art micro-computer might have 2K or 8K
of RAM and a audio cassete deck for storage. Prior to
his attack on free and/or open source, virtually all
software for micros had been written by amateurs or
professional programmers for their own use and
released to anyone who wanted to use it, together with
the source code.
We could have continued with that model. There were
plenty of professional programmers who enjoyed seeing
their name spread around by adoring fans. That model
could have segged naturally into a peer reviewed
open-source model that included commercial packages,
but also provided for libraries of proprietary
routines available to anyone for personal use and
experimentation, but subject to royalty fees for
commercial packages.
Under that model, the 90% cost for marketing and
packaging to go on store shelves would have been
reduced to virtually nothing. The money would have
gone to the programmers and the on-line or print
review sources, such as magazines. Even with small
royalties, the programmers would have made a whole lot
more than they typically get today.
Using standard libraries and open source the code
itself would have been much smaller, faster and far
less buggy, as well as costing less than 10% of what
software costs under the model that Gates perpetuated.
I suggested in print in the late '80's, in one of my
published magazine articles, as a refinement of this
model, that computer manufacturers (I focused on the
Amiga) sell their computers with a CD with ALL the
currently most popular software on-board - the top
five wordprocessors or desktop publishing programs,
the top five graphics suites, etc.). Without the
separate marketing costs adding 90%+, the CD would
have added perhaps $50 - $100 to the cost of the
computer, while still putting more money in the hands
of the actual programmers.
It is truly sad to see that gargantuan pieces of
bloatware that pass for state-of-the-art software
today and are full of bugs and typically lacking in
the basic features that we expected to find 15 years
ago.
How is it - if the Gates model is so good - that The
Gimp can rival PhotoShop and be both smaller and free?
Or, Blender, which only recently got too big to fit
on a FLOPPY zipped, but directly rivals 3D Studio Max
or Lightwave.
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