

Open Source: The Capitalists' Choice - bensummers
http://siriusit.co.uk/blogs/16-jun-2010/open-source-capitalists-choice

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amalcon
This doesn't seem to advocate for _open source_ , so much as for _open
standards_. The problem he observes with MegaCorp Office 2010, as he
transparently terms it, is not that it's difficult for the general public to
add features or fix bugs. The problem is that it's nearly impossible to
compete with due to network effects, and that problem would be alleviated by
an open standard.

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rbanffy
"Open Source promotes a more efficient market because competition is not shut
out so easily".

The problem the article describes is more in the open-standards direction,
however. It also confuses communism with dictatorship, an idea I thought we
left behind around the 80s.

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rbranson
It also tends to remove the inefficiencies of duplicated work as over the long
haul, open source projects tend to merge and dominate, after a phase of
intense competition between rival projects. This means software developers
spend more time creating unique software, which is significantly more
productive over re-implementing the same commodity software over again. This
is REAL economic value. Just look at what the very mature GCC project has done
for so many platform companies and developers in general. It's also much
cheaper to procure open source software, because there's no purchase
justification, budgeting, or sales process.

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andrewtj
As there is no other implementation of what I'm working on in the open that
works, this piece, save for the comment on generating competition (which I
think would validate the service), would actually argue more for keeping my
service's code closed.

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ZeroGravitas
He's explicitly not arguing from your perspective. If you had the choice of
running a railway monopoly then you'd be crazy to throw that opportunity to
price gouge customers away too.

He's saying we shouldn't celebrate such acts as free-market capitalism since
they don't provide the benefits to society that free-market capitalism does.

~~~
andrewtj
_He's explicitly not arguing from your perspective._

Ah, but he needs to:

 _If you had the choice of running a railway monopoly then you'd be crazy to
throw that opportunity to price gouge customers away too._

Regular folks know this too, and no one wants to do business with a company
that is perceived as making naive decisions.

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VMG
Very shallow analysis. In a free-market system nothing stops you from
competing with closed source software (for every meaningful definition of the
word "competing"). The comparison with railways is just silly.

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strebler
Of course it helps companies - we'll give away the fruits of our labor for
nothing! It's beautiful, but really, I think no other profession is as naive
as we are.

~~~
rbanffy
You give away a part of what you do in exchange (or optional retribution) to
using what others gave you.

I am using a very powerful Unix-like OS under a very nice GUI and typing it on
a browser and none of them would exist if lots of people and companies hadn't
donated code, time and resources to these projects. I am happy they did and I
am willing to share some of what I do to make this whole ecosystem better.

I also share because if I didn't, I would have to maintain my code
independently and a great part of it does not give me any product or
competitive advantage - it's my cost. When I give them back, I can count they
will be part of the whole and they will be maintained by others in case I fail
to do it. When I do it, others share the cost of maintaining it, reducing
mine.

It's actually pretty dumb to keep everything to yourself.

