5 ms·

> The open source business is thriving. Thriving, may be, but not exactly dominating the consumer market. The vast majority of software companies still keep th

by veddox 8y ago

> The open source business is thriving. Thriving, may be, but not exactly dominating the consumer market. The vast majority of software companies still keep their code well under wraps.

zeth___ 8y ago
The majority of servers are open source, the majority of consumer devices are open source, all super computers are open source. How is open source not eating the world?
- veddox 8y ago
  As long as MS Windows still has 89% market share on the desktop/laptop market [1], as long as Google still keeps core parts of Android under lock and key, and as long as all my friends still communicate with Facebook and WhatsApp, I think the claim that "the majority of consumer devices are open source" is a bit early. Look, guys, I'm not saying open-source isn't important! And I'm definitely not saying there aren't any great open-source programs out there! All I'm saying is: on the current market, most companies that produce software choose to distribute this software under a closed-source license. What's so hard to accept about this simple observation?! [1] https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share
  - nine_k 8y ago
    Open source makes sense for widely used, preferably infrastructural things. Operating systems, various network servers, programming languages. Most companies' has a very limited audience and a very narrow purpose; it can't benefit from the network effect.
- adventured 8y ago
  You just named 0.1% of the revenue of the tech industry. Closed: Google search. Windows. Office. Facebook. Cisco. Intel. Amazon AWS. Amazon retail. Most Adobe products. Most Oracle products. iOS and most of what Apple does. Salesforce. Workday. Most of what nVidia does. Most of what Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and pretty much every other chip maker does. Most of what Samsung does. The core software of: PayPal, Square, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, et al. The list keeps going. Most of what every major tech company does is closed off. The tools are largely open source. The actual pieces of the companies that generate revenue are not. They love open source, when it isn't about their revenue generation. Ask Facebook to show us all of their source code. Nearly the entire tech industry is built on massive, closed products. Google search by itself generates more operating income every year than every public open source company combined, by a factor of ten. Ask Google to show you all the source code to search.
  - zeth___ 8y ago
    That we no longer pay rents to the owners of the kernel is a huge victory for everyone. That you mistake market failures for successes is a rather sad reflection on the state of the soul of most technologists. The commodification of services that used to be cutting edge happens all the time, and if not for artificial patents would happen even faster.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - TimJYoung 8y ago
      Pay rents ? Do you think the Linux kernel just magically appears out of thin air ? If not, then someone is paying for the kernel development. If it isn't you, then that organization(s) or person(s) may have goals that are completely antithetical to your goals.
      - zeth___ 8y ago
        Or I develop part of the kernel for something I need for my day job, send it up stream to make my life easier the next time I to use it and someone accepts it for the same reason. You then need someone to pay what is essentially an administrator to keep track of the changes. The reason why a company would do that is because of the name recognition advantage they get from this. "Oh you need someone to tune your Linux performance for your super computer cluster, we have the guy who it's named after on staff."
        TimJYoung 8y ago
        Yes, that does indeed happen, and is an example of where you're paying with your time. My point is that if you're not paying with your time, and most people are not, then someone else is paying for it. The rent doesn't go away, it's just getting covered by someone else.
        slrz 8y ago
- ekianjo 8y ago
  supercomputers are not open source. They may use a linux kernel but they need a proprietary compiler and a bunch of proprietary drivers to interface that are custom made. pretty bad example to pick.
  - dpark 8y ago
    You’re asserting that so long as any code is closed, the platform is not “open source”. I disagree. When 99% of software on a device is open source, open source has clearly eaten than device.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      well for supercomputers you are really far from that kind of ratio. even desktop computers are far from 99 percent for that matter.
      - dpark 8y ago
        I bet you’re not that far from 99% on supercomputers running Linux. Drivers are not the bulk of the system. Obviously desktops aren’t at 99% unless you’re running Linux.
        ekianjo 8y ago
        > I bet you’re not that far from 99% on supercomputers running Linux. Drivers are not the bulk of the system. No, compilers should also count, and i'm not just talking about drivers. Everything from data storage (file system) to data transfer between the different racks of a supercomputer is usually proprietary. Seriously, look it up. > Obviously desktops aren’t at 99% unless you’re running Linux. No, even your Linux desktop is far from being 100% open source. How about the BIOS? The Intel microcode? Even open source GPU drivers interface with proprietary interfaces on the actual hardware. And let's not forget that many Linux distros don't make it very clear if what you are installing is actually free software or a proprietary blob. The reality is that it's very hard to have something fully running on free/open source software from A to Z.
- orbifold 8y ago
  The relevant portions of a supercomputer are not open source: The MPI implementation, the compilers, the CUDA drivers, some of the tools to monitor the system, the fancy 3D AR wall software and so on...
Theodores 8y ago
In the article it mentions the once popular book 'Principles of Leather Tanning'. This probably sold really well but not as well as shoes, belts or other finished leather goods. People would probably have at least double the amount of shoes as copies of the book. The book was for the trade audience not the end consumer. Open source is a bit like that. Much like a book has to be read rather than merely used/worn, Open Source Software has to be cloned/forked/apt-get-ed/'make'd and so forth. Now if you were to buy a pair of leather shoes then the particulars of what chemicals and processes were required to tan the leather may well be learned from the 'Principles of Leather Tanning' but tweaked a bit to a proprietary recipe that could be kept 'under wraps'. Regarding the Open Source desktop applications, Libre Office is not a clone of Word/Excel/Access/Powerpoint. Same with Gimp, it is not a feeble clone of Photoshop. These tools may be able to use the same file formats but there is a different ethos to them. For some people the UX of Libre Office is far superior to MS Office - no ribbon and therefore no need to Google search the simplest of tasks. If you are dealing with data - as in CSV files - then OpenOffice is your friend, MS Office just ruins it. This does not affect people doing glorified to-do lists and glorified receipts in Excel but if you are reading in data from some code you have written then OpenOffice is the more productive tool.
digi_owl 8y ago
depends on what segment you are looking at (phones anyone?). Never mind that MS have a long long history of playing dirty. I distinctly recall that back when the netbook first appeared, MS did a 180 on their efforts to kill Windows XP because Vista could not run on such low spec hardware. Never mind that later on you could find Dell selling Windows equipped netbooks with a rebate campaign that made the higher spec Windows variant actually cheaper than the lower spec Linux (Ubuntu) variant (what is the chance that MS was funding that campaign?). Damn it, these days Microsoft waves the OEM license fee for tablets with a screen below 9 inches.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  Malware shipped by laptop manufacturers on Windows laptops funds Windows being cheaper than Linux.
tomjen3 8y ago
I will grant you most laptops don't run an open source os, but most of the times they are probably running a browser -- and both firefox and chrome are almost open source. For mobiles it is a little different, because iOS locks people to their browser, but at least on Android users would be using Chrome. Heck I am typing this on a chromebook, simply because I realized 80% of what I do is webbrowsing anyway.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

by veddox 8y ago

> The open source business is thriving. Thriving, may be, but not exactly dominating the consumer market. The vast majority of software companies still keep their code well under wraps.

zeth___ 8y ago

The majority of servers are open source, the majority of consumer devices are open source, all super computers are open source. How is open source not eating the world?

veddox 8y ago
As long as MS Windows still has 89% market share on the desktop/laptop market [1], as long as Google still keeps core parts of Android under lock and key, and as long as all my friends still communicate with Facebook and WhatsApp, I think the claim that "the majority of consumer devices are open source" is a bit early. Look, guys, I'm not saying open-source isn't important! And I'm definitely not saying there aren't any great open-source programs out there! All I'm saying is: on the current market, most companies that produce software choose to distribute this software under a closed-source license. What's so hard to accept about this simple observation?! [1] https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share
- nine_k 8y ago
  Open source makes sense for widely used, preferably infrastructural things. Operating systems, various network servers, programming languages. Most companies' has a very limited audience and a very narrow purpose; it can't benefit from the network effect.
adventured 8y ago
You just named 0.1% of the revenue of the tech industry. Closed: Google search. Windows. Office. Facebook. Cisco. Intel. Amazon AWS. Amazon retail. Most Adobe products. Most Oracle products. iOS and most of what Apple does. Salesforce. Workday. Most of what nVidia does. Most of what Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and pretty much every other chip maker does. Most of what Samsung does. The core software of: PayPal, Square, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, et al. The list keeps going. Most of what every major tech company does is closed off. The tools are largely open source. The actual pieces of the companies that generate revenue are not. They love open source, when it isn't about their revenue generation. Ask Facebook to show us all of their source code. Nearly the entire tech industry is built on massive, closed products. Google search by itself generates more operating income every year than every public open source company combined, by a factor of ten. Ask Google to show you all the source code to search.
- zeth___ 8y ago
  That we no longer pay rents to the owners of the kernel is a huge victory for everyone. That you mistake market failures for successes is a rather sad reflection on the state of the soul of most technologists. The commodification of services that used to be cutting edge happens all the time, and if not for artificial patents would happen even faster.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - TimJYoung 8y ago
    Pay rents ? Do you think the Linux kernel just magically appears out of thin air ? If not, then someone is paying for the kernel development. If it isn't you, then that organization(s) or person(s) may have goals that are completely antithetical to your goals.
    - zeth___ 8y ago
      Or I develop part of the kernel for something I need for my day job, send it up stream to make my life easier the next time I to use it and someone accepts it for the same reason. You then need someone to pay what is essentially an administrator to keep track of the changes. The reason why a company would do that is because of the name recognition advantage they get from this. "Oh you need someone to tune your Linux performance for your super computer cluster, we have the guy who it's named after on staff."
      - TimJYoung 8y ago
        Yes, that does indeed happen, and is an example of where you're paying with your time. My point is that if you're not paying with your time, and most people are not, then someone else is paying for it. The rent doesn't go away, it's just getting covered by someone else.
        slrz 8y ago
ekianjo 8y ago
supercomputers are not open source. They may use a linux kernel but they need a proprietary compiler and a bunch of proprietary drivers to interface that are custom made. pretty bad example to pick.
- dpark 8y ago
  You’re asserting that so long as any code is closed, the platform is not “open source”. I disagree. When 99% of software on a device is open source, open source has clearly eaten than device.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    well for supercomputers you are really far from that kind of ratio. even desktop computers are far from 99 percent for that matter.
    - dpark 8y ago
      I bet you’re not that far from 99% on supercomputers running Linux. Drivers are not the bulk of the system. Obviously desktops aren’t at 99% unless you’re running Linux.
      - ekianjo 8y ago
        > I bet you’re not that far from 99% on supercomputers running Linux. Drivers are not the bulk of the system. No, compilers should also count, and i'm not just talking about drivers. Everything from data storage (file system) to data transfer between the different racks of a supercomputer is usually proprietary. Seriously, look it up. > Obviously desktops aren’t at 99% unless you’re running Linux. No, even your Linux desktop is far from being 100% open source. How about the BIOS? The Intel microcode? Even open source GPU drivers interface with proprietary interfaces on the actual hardware. And let's not forget that many Linux distros don't make it very clear if what you are installing is actually free software or a proprietary blob. The reality is that it's very hard to have something fully running on free/open source software from A to Z.
orbifold 8y ago
The relevant portions of a supercomputer are not open source: The MPI implementation, the compilers, the CUDA drivers, some of the tools to monitor the system, the fancy 3D AR wall software and so on...

Theodores 8y ago

In the article it mentions the once popular book 'Principles of Leather Tanning'. This probably sold really well but not as well as shoes, belts or other finished leather goods. People would probably have at least double the amount of shoes as copies of the book. The book was for the trade audience not the end consumer. Open source is a bit like that. Much like a book has to be read rather than merely used/worn, Open Source Software has to be cloned/forked/apt-get-ed/'make'd and so forth. Now if you were to buy a pair of leather shoes then the particulars of what chemicals and processes were required to tan the leather may well be learned from the 'Principles of Leather Tanning' but tweaked a bit to a proprietary recipe that could be kept 'under wraps'. Regarding the Open Source desktop applications, Libre Office is not a clone of Word/Excel/Access/Powerpoint. Same with Gimp, it is not a feeble clone of Photoshop. These tools may be able to use the same file formats but there is a different ethos to them. For some people the UX of Libre Office is far superior to MS Office - no ribbon and therefore no need to Google search the simplest of tasks. If you are dealing with data - as in CSV files - then OpenOffice is your friend, MS Office just ruins it. This does not affect people doing glorified to-do lists and glorified receipts in Excel but if you are reading in data from some code you have written then OpenOffice is the more productive tool.

digi_owl 8y ago

depends on what segment you are looking at (phones anyone?). Never mind that MS have a long long history of playing dirty. I distinctly recall that back when the netbook first appeared, MS did a 180 on their efforts to kill Windows XP because Vista could not run on such low spec hardware. Never mind that later on you could find Dell selling Windows equipped netbooks with a rebate campaign that made the higher spec Windows variant actually cheaper than the lower spec Linux (Ubuntu) variant (what is the chance that MS was funding that campaign?). Damn it, these days Microsoft waves the OEM license fee for tablets with a screen below 9 inches.

greglindahl 8y ago
Malware shipped by laptop manufacturers on Windows laptops funds Windows being cheaper than Linux.

tomjen3 8y ago

I will grant you most laptops don't run an open source os, but most of the times they are probably running a browser -- and both firefox and chrome are almost open source. For mobiles it is a little different, because iOS locks people to their browser, but at least on Android users would be using Chrome. Heck I am typing this on a chromebook, simply because I realized 80% of what I do is webbrowsing anyway.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]