Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Why Open Source Matters to Apple
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | It's nice to have a large number of options, and this competition leads
> | to better software. There's not enough variety in software on OS X right
> | now (at least not in comparison to the Windows world), and Apple hopes
> | to improve that by strongly supporting both the standard developer
> | community and the open source development community.
> `----
>
> http://www.osweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2302
Ironically, there is a sybiotic relationship between OSS and Commercial
software. It's actually been that way since the earliest days of
ArpaNet back in the late 1960s.
OSS software is user and administrator driven. An end user or
administrator needs a quick and dirty hack to do something useful. He
doesn't need to make it super-friendly, he doesn't need to make it
super-fast, he doesn't even have to document it other than perhaps a -?
option on the command line so that he can remember what it does 6
months from now.
But even the no liner routines (true) end up getting passed around.
And they fall into the hand of a manager who wants to give it to his
team. Pretty soon you have 50 people using it and they add features,
then you have the usual attrition and reorganizations, and suddenly
people go to other departments or other companies and you have 500
people using it (lynx). Eventually, someone decides to formally
document it, add some extra help functions, and maybe even create a
nice simple front end interface in python or perl/tk, he puts it into a
repository, and you have 5,000 people using it (viola). Pretty soon,
some organization decides to port it to something like Windows, and you
have 500,000 people using it (cello). Then anothert team decides to
merge the best features of the different versions together, release it
in a nice friendly package, and create wrappers and drivers that allow
it to run on lots of platforms, and you have 5,000,000 using it. Then
some commercial interest decides to create a knock-off product which is
inferior but functional, and they try to sell it to the masses, and you
have 50,000,000 using it. Then the OSS organization integrates more
and more enhancements from it's user base, most of whom are unhappy
with the inferior product offered by the commercial vendor, possibly
forming different groups to support different variants, and you
suddenly have 500,000,000 using some variant of what was once a simple
1,000 line 5 user utility.
Commercial software starts from a publisher focus. The publisher tries
to find out where there are needs that aren't being met, or where
there might be a need for something he can produce. Hopefully, it
won't be an area saturated by competitors, like BASIC for a computer
that doesn't even have an operating system, and you get about 5,000
users. Since you are the only player, or one of the few with a solid
reputation, even if it's only for pissing people off at conferences,
you get new contracts to provide new services and you get 5 million
users. You can't just do what your competitors do (now that you have
them), you have to look further. A good place to look is open source.
You begin adding features from Open Source, treating it like public
domain, and begin folding more and more of this technology into your
offerings and that will get you to 50 million users. You look to find
ways to capture key decision makers and get them so "addicted" to your
"formula for success" that they think they can't live without you. You
use a carefully managed blend of incentives and threats to make sure
that your competitors never get a significant foot hold which gets you
100 million users. But with no competitors, you still need to find
incentives that will get people to upgrade, to replace older versions
of your product with newer versions. You have to look for ideas by
looking at Open Source. You look for the OSS projects that have hit
the 5 million user mark, and use that to drive 50 million in upgrades
and replacements.
Apple never made it to getting a "lock" on the key decision makers of
major companies. But they see an opportunity. If they can provide an
offering that provides the best of open source that Microsoft ISN'T
offering, and the best of commercial applications that are designed for
Windows and commercial applicationt designed for UNIX workstations,
there is a good chance of increasing their market share and getting a
huge increase in sales. The tactic has worked. Mac is now selling
about 12% of the market. White boxes are another 20%, and "SWWRFL"
(Sold with Windows, Ready for Linux) machines from HP, OEM, Dell,
Gateway, and Sony now make up an additional 30%. Only about 1/3 of the
machines sold are still "Windows oriented" machines, and those machines
are mostly being sold at a loss.
Microsoft is trying to push Vista, but the betas don't look promising.
Most of the highly touted features are already available on Linux and
Mac, and many of the ones being touted don't seem to be working all
that well in the beta eveluations.
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