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Re: Viability of Linux companies (Was Re: A Linux Today story has been mailed to you!)



On Mon, Apr 16, 2001 at 10:29:07PM +0530, Raju Mathur wrote:
>     Arun> I won't say something as radical as - how much money has RMS
>     Arun> made by selling Emacs manuals ? Have you tried comparing the
>     Arun> amount of money product companies make and software service
>     Arun> comapanies make in the market today ?
> 
> Have you had a look at most software and hardware companies' support
> and service strategies today?  They're all shifting focus from product
> to service, including MS.
> 

And why are the companies with the market monopolizing products (Sun,
Oracle, MS) expected to make the most of the service revenues (if and
when it happens) ? Lets not count the chicken prematurely. Some
people learnt their lessons the hard way on Nasdaq.

[...]

> 
>     Arun> And all these people would be:
> 
>     Arun> (a) Paid by the government (b) Be in a research lab or
>     Arun> university and do linux under the garb of research
> 
> Maybe they'd be paid by SGI.  Or IBM.  Or Compaq.  Or HP.  All of whom
> invest significantly into Linux.

They'll also polish your shoes for free, if they can sell you more hardware.
Got any software company in your list ? Sorry, forgot: in your world
software and company don't go together.

> 
>     Arun> Most of them don't have a viable economic model to sustain
>     Arun> themselves.  They're usually exceptions, rather than the
>     Arun> rule and being rewarded by their employers for being
>     Arun> exceptional. That model just doesn't scale.
> 
>     Arun> Again, compare it to the *BSD world - where most people have
>     Arun> a viable economic model to sustain themselves.
> 
> I still don't see IBM putting in $1.3B into *BSD.  And Linux outsells
> all the BSD's put together anyway, so let's not talk about a losing
> product.

IBM owns http://www.whistle.com/ which employs several BSD developers.
Why didn't the biggest embedded systems software company in the world,
which has 40% market share go with Linux ? Find out at 
http://www.windriver.com/

In fact, I'd say, in every instance that I've seen, the market leader or
the "winner" in your lingo, refuses to go with linux. It's the "losers"
that open source their products.  (Sun vs HP/SGI/IBM on UNIX, Oracle
vs Inprise, Windriver vs everyone else, MS vs Netscape on the
browser). I'm yet to see a market leader open source their product by
buying into the GNU philosophy.

Linux is the hype of the day and everyone is trying to cash in on it.
Are you saying that IBM will get the $1.3B back by selling manuals ?

Talking about losing products, MS has the same argument against Linux.
And there is no convincing proof that the _profits_ made by Linux
companies is any more than *BSD companies. (Note: I'm not talking
revenue or market share here).

>     Arun> 100% of the web server market is also useless and
>     Arun> unsustainable, if it doesn't pay you any money.
> 
> Umm, go back and read the first few lines again.  Try to distinguish
> between product and service.  I earned more money last year than 99%
> of India's population, without writing a single line of proprietary
> code and without touching a single piece of proprietary software.
> Looks sustainable enough to me.

Sure, Linus T spent 8 years in school writing Linux. Doesn't
mean that's a viable business model capable of supporting an industry.

> 
> Just because a particular individual can't do it doesn't mean it can't
> be done.
> 

Also, just because a particular individual can do it doesn't mean that
everybody else can or will be able to do it. What about the Rs xxxx 
crore (it usually causes a floating point overflow error in my brain)
made by "software exports" by the Indian IT industry ?

If you're saying that you're happy doing Linux consulting, good for
you. But if you're saying that's a great model to encourage innovation in
software, supporting families of good software engineers,  I think the
numbers are very telling.

Bottomline: open source is a good idea, works well in a lot of places.
But drinking too much of that kool aid could have some harmful after
effects.

	-Arun