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A) When IMHO the underlying argument is not quite honest. B) When it comes from an interested party. C) When there's enough of A and B that I feel it's intent

by yyyk 3y ago

A) When IMHO the underlying argument is not quite honest. B) When it comes from an interested party. C) When there's enough of A and B that I feel it's intentional. The underlying argument here would apply to some extremely profitable existing closed source software, so it's obviously not complete. Even closed source software which is strictly inferior manages to find some very profitable moats. As for the source, it comes from Google Research, which has done a very poor job of using their knowledge to benefit Google. The article downplays the failures (we couldn't have done anything differently, but it doesn't matter anyway since Open Source will consume all!), and doesn't even think about productization. The latter does give me a little bit of doubt: the article could also be emblematic of Google Research's failures and not 100% spin...

burnished 3y ago
Thank you for the cogent response. My reading was that this was personal opinion of a researcher, it seems like you are reading the deficiencies you note as intentional omissions whereas I am reading them as simple flaws. Does it change your perspective that this was aimed at a private audience? To me it came off as a blanket admission that they were not doing the right thing and needed to do something different to be successful. That may be the core difference, I read it as blame accepting whereas you read it as blame deflecting.
- yyyk 3y ago
  >Does it change your perspective that this was aimed at a private audience? Was it? Someone leaked the article to the press. Per the article, someone granted permission to publish the leak. I'm assuming that someone had standing to give said permission, either from Google Research or being the author. I can see a scenario when someone intentionally 'leaks' in order to put something in the public sphere without attribution. Perhaps I'm too uncharitable or too cynical. Still, I find the underlying argument too simplistic. At $WORK, we have some $SOFTWARE that certain $CLIENTS run on Windows Server. It would be cheaper if they ran it on Linux. I have good confidence it would work the same, and we could test with the typical deployment patterns. The typical $CLIENT attitude is to not even think about this ("We don't have anyone to manage a Linux deployment, and $$client of $CLIENT wouldn't even hear of Linux, we barely got a current deployment plan approved"). Arguing that Open Source Linux could do everything that Windows Server can or that Linux development speed is higher wouldn't do anything to change their mind - it's based on other factors, and even if we finally got past that there would be ROI to consider (compared to other things that could be done in the same time).

by yyyk 3y ago

burnished 3y ago

Thank you for the cogent response. My reading was that this was personal opinion of a researcher, it seems like you are reading the deficiencies you note as intentional omissions whereas I am reading them as simple flaws. Does it change your perspective that this was aimed at a private audience? To me it came off as a blanket admission that they were not doing the right thing and needed to do something different to be successful. That may be the core difference, I read it as blame accepting whereas you read it as blame deflecting.

yyyk 3y ago
>Does it change your perspective that this was aimed at a private audience? Was it? Someone leaked the article to the press. Per the article, someone granted permission to publish the leak. I'm assuming that someone had standing to give said permission, either from Google Research or being the author. I can see a scenario when someone intentionally 'leaks' in order to put something in the public sphere without attribution. Perhaps I'm too uncharitable or too cynical. Still, I find the underlying argument too simplistic. At $WORK, we have some $SOFTWARE that certain $CLIENTS run on Windows Server. It would be cheaper if they ran it on Linux. I have good confidence it would work the same, and we could test with the typical deployment patterns. The typical $CLIENT attitude is to not even think about this ("We don't have anyone to manage a Linux deployment, and $$client of $CLIENT wouldn't even hear of Linux, we barely got a current deployment plan approved"). Arguing that Open Source Linux could do everything that Windows Server can or that Linux development speed is higher wouldn't do anything to change their mind - it's based on other factors, and even if we finally got past that there would be ROI to consider (compared to other things that could be done in the same time).