Re: the free software paradigm [was Re: Amazon used lisp & C exclusively?

Kent M Pitman wrote:
[I've boldly changed the header rather than have this intertwined with
an unrelated discussion. IMO it's worth the community periodically
confronting this as a integrated part of language issues, since the
question always exists at the end of developing a piece of software:
how do I deploy it, not just technically but commercially. As such,
I don't think this thread is off-topic. If you do, feel free
to ignore the thread.]

Ken Tilton <kentilton@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Rajappa Iyer wrote:
Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

...Stallman is an idiot? Nothing wrong with that, I am glad for the
company. Just can't believe so many people think they are getting
something for "free" when in fact all the FSF does is cripple the
economics of the software industry and cost all of us better tools.

Perhaps we'd need hard data backup (anyone has the IP of the gateway
to parallel universes?), but it seems to me the software industry is
much better today with freedom software than it was twenty years ago
with only proprietary software.

I don't know who said that, nor why they think this.

The "software industry" is a commercial enterprise. A commercial
enterprise makes money on something one competitor can do that another
cannot.

This is an overly simplified view I think. The "software industry"
contains many players, including academia and the hobbyist, of which
*one* is 'commercial enterprise'. Commerce is not the be-all and
end-all in software. Within commercial enterprises the abilities of the
respective organisations seems often to have little to do with success
in the marketplace.

The bottom line is you have to sell people something they want (and
possibly convince them that they want it along the way in order to do
so!). People do not always want 'the best' (or if they do, are unable
to recognise it).

If Food Company A has seven ovens Company B has five, then
Company A has a strategic advantage. But if both have five, and you
buy five more for each compahy, then probably Company A and Company B
cannot make a dime more than they could before. The price of food may
come down, but Company A and Company B are not any better off. That's
how it is with free software. Free software adds to what programs can
do, but it doesn't add to the "industry" at all. The industry simply
can't afford not to use every piece of free software offering it's given,

In my experience this isn't true at all. In my day job I'm a Java
developer. I write web apps using IBM's WSAD (identical to Eclipse in
nearly every way), on a proprietary OS (Win2k) targetted at a
proprietary server platform (IBM WebSphere running on an IBM z series
mainframe). There are free alternatives to all the software at least,
and cheaper alternatives to the hardware. The business doesn't go for
the free though -- so there must be an angle here where "the industry"
CAN afford not to use every piece of free software available.

and consequently will
(a) mostly never develop any other way of solving that problem
[because the cost of developing an alternate solution is non-zero
and the economic system already models the cost of dealing with
that problem as "zero" so has no more money to devote to that]
(b) mostly will require more complex solutions to problems in order
to make money (this will put uneducated workers out of business
since they can't compete, will force re-education of moderately
educated workers just to keep up with the economy at current levels).

Automation (of which software is a large part) exists as a commercial
endevour purely to put (usually uneducated, but in general any and all)
workers out of a job.

Do we seriously believe that commercial enterprises are too stupid to
understand Kenny's point that the cost of commercial solutions in cash
is less than the equivalent cost in employees time of using free
solutions? If this is the case then they deserve to go out of business
IMO.

Does it benefit the end-user? Yes and no. It kills competition on the
underlying issue, so if they like the free component that everyone now
depends on, then it helps them. If they wish someone would develop
an alternative, they may wait forever. And if someone ever creates a
better one just to be nice, will that person be rewarded? No, only the
people who deploy it will get the credit, and they'll have to pass
none of it along to users. Is that freedom? Not in my book.

--->8--- snip AServe / HyperMeta bit --->8---


So, you're free to conclude that there's nothing interesting I might
have ever produced if I'd been given enough money to do so. But if
you think I've ever had an interesting idea that it might have been fun
to see me pursue, then it's not a huge stretch to say that the
introduction of Aserve led directly to my not getting to explore the
other ideas I might have had for how to go interesting places with
web-based Lisps in future releases. Why should I bother? The culture
has spoken clearly: We don't want innovation--not if it costs us a dime.
We want to pay ONLY for specific solutions to specific problems that
business wants solved, and as far as individual personally driven
creativity, we will operate at every point to sabotage the chances
of anyone making a buck. ... all in the supposed name of freedom.


Business will also pay for solutions to problems that it didn't realise
it wanted solved, if you can convince them they need it solving. An
additional benefit is these kinds of solutions are likely to fly under
the radar of the hobbyist for quite a while, so the market might be a
lonely place long enough for somebody to make some money there.

It's difficult to make money at the hobbyist end, agreed.

And you're free to conclude that I'm just whining about lost money, but
I'm not. I didn't make the money I thought I should have, and indeed
that annoys me. But what really annoys me is my lack of ability to BUY
the software I want, because now I can only buy from BIG BUSINESS.


It annoys me that there's so few different types of (desktop) computers
I can buy; that market hasn't contracted because of the hobbyist. It
annoys me that so many small breweries have been bought out, so I can
pretty much only buy beer of massive breweries; I find it frustrating
that so many car manufacturer's have gone to the wall (even if the
marques survive to some extent). This is the nature of 'the market' --
consolidation into a small number of big businesses, and a number of
small companies scraping by in the market who cater to the bespoke /
hobbyist end of the market.

I totally agree with your sentiment above, but the realist part of me
asks "what other alternative is there?". I think what you describe
would happen, sooner or later, with or without free software.

I can HOPE that free software will develop what I want, but I can't
make it happen without funding the entire development--something I
can't afford.

I can HOPE that big business will develop what I want, but they mostly
care about things the community at large wants, and they won't invest
in niche markets like, say, productivity tools for smart programmers.
There's more money in "yet another realplayer clone" because there are
ways that the intellectual property channels or advertising channels can
be leveraged.

I can develop it myself at enormous expense since I have to do all the
work that I probably don't have time for. But then I have to give it
away and still have no hope of getting the next thing I need because
no one will reward my effort "in kind", or else I can try to sell it
and wait for a "free software sniper" to re-implement it and try to
undercut me for no other reason than to make sure I don't make back my
investment or... shudder... make enough profit that I could afford to
try inventing something else that's cool.


This may be the effect, but I seriously doubt it's the motivation.

So what really bugs me is not that I can't sell innovative things,
it's that I can't buy them. Because the things I want are not being
produced any more because everyone I know who'd like to do these kinds
of things knows it's a losing proposition any more.

The market has changed. If you're spending $80-100k on a platform, I
guess it's chump change to pay another $1-5k for these kinds of tools
for your developers (who must be smart if you're spending $100k+ on
them!). Unfortunately when the platform costs <$2k it's harder to
justify and there probably aren't enough smart developers to make money
selling them tools at $100.

The real problem here is not the hobbyists, its the fact that the
(government and commercial) money has evaporated (or moved elsewhere at
least). This is just another side-effect of the AI winter if you will.
For now at least this battle is lost.

There is a solution to this though -- unfortunately it would mean
working outside Lisp (currently).


And who says the tools have to be vanished? An open question is where
Lisp environments now would be now if so many of you were not spinning
your wheels on free Lisps. Hell, a few of them are scraping by
anyway. If certain Lispniks had half a brain and simply bought a
commercial license, maybe franz could stop pricing ACL like hen's
teeth and ease up on their whacky licensing fees.

I agree completely.


Where would Lisp environments be now if the AI winter never happened?
Where would they be if all the hackers stayed at MIT? Where would they
be if Java had never happened and more people actually used Lisp
instead? How about if Symbolics hadn't seen themselves as a hardware
company and licenced the software environment at reasonable prices?

We could play this game all day...

Conversely, where would CL be without Spice Lisp? My understanding is
that this was free software, and formed the basis of lots of commercial
CL systems initially. Would anybody have picked CL up at all if not for
this free implementation? How long to get a CL to market without Spice?
Is this an example where something free acted as somewhat of a catalyst
in the market, if not an essential element?

(Which makes it a bit ironic in the context of my grumbling about AServe.
But I don't think Franz meant to sink my business with AServe--I think they
just didn't understand the full implications of what they were doing.
I like to think they've learned from that, although I don't know if they've
actually changed any policies on free software. My company certainly changed.
It started out hoping to create and license interesting software, and has
largely abandoned the idea that it can make money that way.)

I used to have a neighbor who would sometimes cut my lawn for free
because my lawn was small compared to him and he didn't mind doing me
the favor. But I used to insist on paying him anyway. The issue
isn't the favor--favors are well-intended. It's the bookkeeping. He
can't trade a favor he's done for me to get something from someone
else. I told him, if I do something for you, I'll bill you back and
you can give me back the dollars. But if I don't, you've got the $10
that says you did something for me, and you can trade on that with
anyone, not just me.

And there's nothing wrong with making a profit because if others charge
back, they'll make their profit, too.

It's not possible for *everybody* to make a profit. Somebody,
somewhere, has to pay (or do) and make a *loss* (perform a service or
sell goods for 'less than they're worth') in order for the economy to
work.


What free software really rewards is people who don't contribute. It
gets them a ton of stuff but requires nothing from them. Moreover, it
fails to compensate those who have contributed a great deal from people.


Not only. Yes, people who don't contribute benefit (but they can then
contribute to other parts of the economy instead). Whether the
contributors are compensated or not is kind of in the eye of the
beholder I guess (bearing in mind hobbyist recompense is not necessary
of the dollar value kind).

But nooooooooo, you geniuses have to save all that money and stagger
along with crappy tools at a third my productivity, losing all
that... oh. no, I forgot, Stallman says your time has no value. Or
that you are evil for expecting anything for that value. Super.


You don't understand the concept of a hobby, do you? :-) The fact
(obviously disputable) that in this case the hobby destroys the market
is an unfortunate side-effect that the market (and marketeers) will
have to learn to live with somehow I guess.

-Duncan

Indeed.

.