

Jaron Lanier: "Long Live Closed-Source Software!" - hhm
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/dec/long-live-closed-source-software/

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bitwize
If you look at the software that people actually use to do things -- compose
music, design an airplane, edit a video, design a logo, lay out a brochure,
etc., virtually anything besides computer programming -- the best-of-breed
tools are proprietary and exist only on proprietary platforms (typically
Windows or Mac).

This is because to just about everybody except computer programmers, the
interface is the application, and considerable time and money have been
invested in things which are more important than beautiful code -- things like
usability, "looking pretty", and functioning in a way that mirrors how the
intended audience things. This is something that programmers are notoriously
poor at; for example programmers-who-are-also-musicians are likely to come up
with music tools that make sense to them but utterly baffle nonprogrammer
musicians. (Think Csound, Rosegarden, etc.)

Things like AutoCAD are innovative not because they contain fancy new
algorithms but because they enable large chunks of the population to do things
that they couldn't do before. And AutoCAD is proprietary, expensive, and runs
only on Microsoft Windows.

In short, it's looking more and more like proprietary software is what has
brought us real freedom.

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kungfooguru
Is this a joke? PageRank (academic paper, right?)... Flash (what kind of ace
in the hole for closed source is that??)... And closed development is not
necessarily closed source! And the iPhone running Linux would not make it a
worse (or necessarily better) product. They would have to release their
modified kernel code but that is it. How would this effect the final product?
This has to be a joke article, or this guy is truly ignorant. Yet, he claims
to support open source at times...

~~~
prxi
I find it highly amusing he's comparing highly exspensive hardware [iphone] to
software that many people make in their spare time.

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bayareaguy
_An honest empiricist must conclude that while the open approach has been able
to create lovely, polished copies, it hasn't been so good at creating notable
originals._

Hmm. <http://www.well.com/~jaron> seems to be running Apache, which I think
has always been notable open source software.

As for being "original", its only predecessors are NCSA's httpd and Tim
Berners-Lee's original httpd.

Apache is much more "original" than the iPhone, which seems to me a "polished
copy".

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henning
From what I can tell, this guy is a stoner who never actually does anything.

His webpage is ugly as shit (he has no taste, which you have to have if you're
a do-nothing spectating whiner), too.

His arguments are bullshit. Nearly all implementations of advanced programming
languages are open source and Google's core Internet-scale infrastructure is
built on customized open source software.

~~~
nailer
"Google's core Internet-scale infrastructure is built on customized open
source software."

Yes, but Google infrastructure isn't considered as innovative as Pagerank,
which is proprietary.

I personally disagree that ranking pages by the amount of sites that link to
them is properly patentable in terms of being non-obvious to an engineer
skilled in the area, but that's off topic.

PS. Your whole post should be: "Nearly all implementations of advanced
programming languages are open source and Google's core Internet-scale
infrastructure is built on customized open source software." Everything else
is playing the man.

~~~
henning
PageRank is indeed proprietary, but it's proprietary more like a trade secret
rather than proprietary like proprietary software that gets put on your
computer and you have no idea whether, e.g., it's calling home and violating
your privacy.

The guy is pretty annoying and I can't resist taking cheap shots at him,
sorry.

~~~
dreish
"The guy is pretty annoying and I can't resist taking cheap shots at him,
sorry."

Especially when he introduces terms like "encapsulation" and "testing" that
don't seem to be connected to anything other than his bad analogy. I can't
figure out what he's on about and I'm not especially motivated to, since I'm
pretty sure he's looking for a pattern where none exists.

It looks to me as if inspiration and invention have happened throughout
history independently of the circumstances of being employed by a company
seeking to make patented and copyrighted products out of them, or being a
hobbyist committed to sharing software.

PageRank is a ridiculous example. Isn't it proprietary specifically to try to
gain an advantage over Google spammers? And why would a hobbyist start a
PageRank-like project in the first place? I'm not convinced Google's decision
to keep it secret is optimal, given the success of free and open email spam
filters, but they have enough smart people working there to come up with a
reasonable solution to the problem anyway.

Speaking of spam filters, I'd say those represent a far better example of
innovation than anything Lanier could think of, and virtually all of that
innovation has happened in free software.

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jsnx
The author doesn't really seem to get what Linux does:

 _My guess is that a poorly encapsulated, communal gloop of organisms lost out
to closely guarded species for the same reason that the Linux community didn't
come up with the iPhone: Encapsulation serves a purpose._

Since when did Linus and friends come up with hardware? Does he mean the
"community of people who rely on Linux as the core of their product offering?"
-- would he then include Apple in the BSD community?

By his own criterion, Apple would be the perfect shop for OS innovation -- but
I guess they just weren't feeling innovative that day and switched to FreeBSD
instead. By doing so, they got the benefit of _evolution_ \-- not as snazzy as
innovation, but something open source has excelled at for its long life.

~~~
bayareaguy
Good point about Apple and OS innovation.

Wasn't Apple the company that had nearly a decade of abandoned "next
generation" operating systems (Pink, StarTrek, Raptor, NuKernel, TalOS,
Copland, Gershwin) before finally buying NeXT (based on open-source Mach from
CMU) and later establishing a cooperative coexistence with FreeBSD.

~~~
jsnx
Innovation is often understood to mean one of two different things -- pushing
boundaries and changing the world, and filling a niche that no one else is
filling. They are different things. I'm sad to say it, but I think the first
kind is often rooted in dreamy hubris, and thus fails; while the second one --
which is all about a willingness to serve -- does not appeal to the pride of
entrepreneurs and will always be in demand in consequence.

The pace of innovation in computing will never again match that of the sixties
or seventies -- lots of stuff has been built, has proven its value and been
recorded in the Book of Wisdom. Whenever you think, "I know, let's build a
such-and-such...", nowadays, you can be pretty sure it's been done at least
half a dozen times. We really should emphasize looking back, to learn from
history -- now that there is some.

As far as I can tell, the only computing field that does a good job of that is
system administration -- experience, mentors and an appreciation for the "old
ways" make up an integral part of that discipline.

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mynameishere
The vast bulk of software is proprietary.

Some software is very generic and has a 1:100,000,000 ratio between itself and
potential deployments. The same linux distro can work for billions of people.
This kind of wild efficiency allows free software to be viable in a bottom-
line sort of way--selling books, consultations, support, etc.

Most software has a ratio like 1:1 (custom software) or 1:10000 (industry-
specific stuff). Open source is just completely impossible here. People need
to make money, like it or not.

~~~
jsnx
Most software is not innovative, though -- and innovative software has rarely
been incentivized correctly. (How much is Xerox making for inventing the
Macintosh?)

The author is one of many criticizing Open Source for failing to kick UNIX out
of the white room, the sort of thing that, in its scope, would definitely be
one to millions.

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herdrick
Yeah, I've been wondering about Richard Stallman lately too. His searing
experience was seeing the LISP world going commercial and closed... why did he
choose to copy Unix instead? Was it just to piggyback on Unix's incumbency?
That wasn't so strong at the time anyway. I should re-read Steven Levy's book
"Hackers", the answer is probably in there.

~~~
jmzachary
I thought the thing that pushed Stallman into open source nirvana was that he
couldn't get code to printer drivers to make the printers work in his lab.

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wyclif
It's as if the entire article is one long troll.

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omouse
What does this guy do other than write articles where he name-drops?

~~~
jmzachary
He used to be a big deal when Virtual Reality was a big deal. Nowadays, I
guess he writes articles where he name-drops. Having said that, I enjoyed
reading his article.

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gojomo
Another way to think about whether closed-source sometimes has a place:

What if, by law, all software had to be open-source? Do you expect there would
be more, or less, innovation? More, or less, diversity of implementation?

(I love open source but think the prospect of outsized returns from
secret/proprietary codebases attracts _some_ innovation and diversity we
wouldn't otherwise have, especially in places where software creates a core
competitive advantage -- investing, Google-scale cluster operations, domain-
specific expert systems, etc.)

~~~
jsnx
Well, what if, by law, you had to ship the source when you ship the software?
That's as much as any Open Source license demands.

Software As A Service remains completely protected -- would it be so bad if
people who wanted to cash in had to offer services instead of products?

