3 ms·

These alarmist comments seem to be comically oblivious of much of computing history. If you have something open and better, it will prevail over closed products

by oefrha 5y ago

These alarmist comments seem to be comically oblivious of much of computing history. If you have something open and better, it will prevail over closed products; if you have something open and worse, you need to work on making it open and better, screaming “but they’re closed” doesn’t help.

BeefWellington 5y ago
I'm not sure that in computing history there's ever been the situation we have now of a software vendor owning so much of the market(s) that they can realistically afford to make this kind of move. Microsoft in the 90s might have been the only company positioned appropriately to try but compared with Amazon, Google, and Apple, they did not have as much of an "in" into people's daily lives the way all three of those companies do today. Unregulated capitalism leads to the company store, which is I think effectively where GP was suggesting things were headed.
- simonh 5y ago
  This is the way most of the computing market has worked most of the time. Mainframes and minis were this way, then almost all the workstation vendors had their own CPU architecture and OS (often a flavour of Unix). The only real exception, and I admit it is a huge one, in Wintel but outside that in house hardware/software development in tandem has been the norm. Furthermore this model is fundamental to the ARM architecture. The whole point is for licensees to develop SOCs with their own custom components on the same die. That's literally what a SOC is.
- zaphirplane 5y ago
  Windows is a massive “in”, your work and home device, your gateway to the *internet*. As an aside that is monopolistic behaviour which at least California and EU are in top of. Companies have to be careful exploiting their dominance in an area. maybe an “in” and dominance are different, if they are it doesn’t matter
deleted 5y ago
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userbinator 5y ago
If you have something open and better, it will prevail over closed products The problem is that "better" is being defined by the companies spreading the marketing propaganda about their products, and that has an unfortunate effect on the perception of the users. It's sad that most of the population would simply take it at face value if a company told them something was "better", but if you realise that making users unquestioning and under their control is ultimately a great way to extract more $$$ from them, it all makes sense.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  > The problem is that "better" is being defined by the companies spreading the marketing propaganda about their products Partially, but I don't think this is nearly as big of a factor as lots of FOSS people on the internet these days seem to think. Remember that RMS wrote a lot of the original GNU tools by himself and wrote the beginnings of GCC. Stallman could have just chosen to reject C and not write GCC altogether the way a lot of modern FOSS advocates seem to act about rejecting closed software. Unix and C could have been cast as proprietary enemies to reject, but he understood at the time that to gain traction, FOSS needed software that was usable for similar purposes as proprietary software. We can cry conspiracy all day but the hard work of building good products is what ultimately wins the day. (Network effects on modern social/messaging platforms are a much more complicated story however.)
caslon 5y ago
That's not exactly the truth. "Closed and worse" often does better than "open and better." It really just comes down to who has better salesmen. Microsoft, for example, licensed Windows to vendors for decades with the requirement they not have another operating system pre-installed. This killed both "closed and better" and "open and better" systems alike!
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Salesmen? Nah. They don't pay that game anymore. It's about who has more capital to aggressively out price competition, even by taking ridiculous losses. Or buy promising startups, or litigate potential competitors into oblivion. Diapers.com for example. It's not about anything close to sales and marketing.

by oefrha 5y ago

BeefWellington 5y ago

I'm not sure that in computing history there's ever been the situation we have now of a software vendor owning so much of the market(s) that they can realistically afford to make this kind of move. Microsoft in the 90s might have been the only company positioned appropriately to try but compared with Amazon, Google, and Apple, they did not have as much of an "in" into people's daily lives the way all three of those companies do today. Unregulated capitalism leads to the company store, which is I think effectively where GP was suggesting things were headed.

simonh 5y ago
This is the way most of the computing market has worked most of the time. Mainframes and minis were this way, then almost all the workstation vendors had their own CPU architecture and OS (often a flavour of Unix). The only real exception, and I admit it is a huge one, in Wintel but outside that in house hardware/software development in tandem has been the norm. Furthermore this model is fundamental to the ARM architecture. The whole point is for licensees to develop SOCs with their own custom components on the same die. That's literally what a SOC is.
zaphirplane 5y ago
Windows is a massive “in”, your work and home device, your gateway to the *internet*. As an aside that is monopolistic behaviour which at least California and EU are in top of. Companies have to be careful exploiting their dominance in an area. maybe an “in” and dominance are different, if they are it doesn’t matter

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

userbinator 5y ago

If you have something open and better, it will prevail over closed products The problem is that "better" is being defined by the companies spreading the marketing propaganda about their products, and that has an unfortunate effect on the perception of the users. It's sad that most of the population would simply take it at face value if a company told them something was "better", but if you realise that making users unquestioning and under their control is ultimately a great way to extract more $$$ from them, it all makes sense.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
> The problem is that "better" is being defined by the companies spreading the marketing propaganda about their products Partially, but I don't think this is nearly as big of a factor as lots of FOSS people on the internet these days seem to think. Remember that RMS wrote a lot of the original GNU tools by himself and wrote the beginnings of GCC. Stallman could have just chosen to reject C and not write GCC altogether the way a lot of modern FOSS advocates seem to act about rejecting closed software. Unix and C could have been cast as proprietary enemies to reject, but he understood at the time that to gain traction, FOSS needed software that was usable for similar purposes as proprietary software. We can cry conspiracy all day but the hard work of building good products is what ultimately wins the day. (Network effects on modern social/messaging platforms are a much more complicated story however.)

caslon 5y ago

That's not exactly the truth. "Closed and worse" often does better than "open and better." It really just comes down to who has better salesmen. Microsoft, for example, licensed Windows to vendors for decades with the requirement they not have another operating system pre-installed. This killed both "closed and better" and "open and better" systems alike!

robbedpeter 5y ago
Salesmen? Nah. They don't pay that game anymore. It's about who has more capital to aggressively out price competition, even by taking ridiculous losses. Or buy promising startups, or litigate potential competitors into oblivion. Diapers.com for example. It's not about anything close to sales and marketing.