Get APLawrence.com by RSSInformation wants to be free
Information wants to be free -- because it is now so easy to copy and distribute casually -- and information wants to be expensive -- because in an Information Age, nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.
- Stewart Brand
The first part of that quote has often been a rallying cry of the Open Source folks, and the second part is often the response they get from the folks who sell rather than share.
While not arguing with the idea that information can be very valuable, I do think we are at the beginning of a major shift in that regard.
First, Stewart Brand was wrong: information wants to be free not because "it is now so easy to copy and distribute casually". It has always wanted to be free or, more accurately, we have always wanted information to be free. Still more accurately, what we really wanted was that other people's information be freely available to us. Whether or not we wanted to share our own intellectual property depended upon what was in it for us. That's no different than our attitudes toward any other resource, from food to sex. However, when a resource is easily available, we do often want to give it away. Of course there is still an exchange there: admiration, status, gratitude, and the possibility of guilt debt. Every couple who has discussed whether or not they "owe" dinner or a party to other friends understands that. "Gifting societies" give away food etc. for status, to ease tensions and avoid conflict, and so on. If you read about gifting societies, they are only possible when food etc. is cheap and easy.
Information used to be much harder to obtain than it is today, both in terms of direct access and in the myriad ways it is presented (the cost of finding it at all and the cost of understanding it once you find it). The invention of written language was an important step in making information more easily available, and so was the printing press, but it is computers and the Internet that have really done the most.
One very specific type of information is computer programs. Speed and cheap storage have made programming easier and therefore less expensive. Programs that once could only be written in assembly language now run quite reasonably in Perl. The Internet makes it easy to both find and share these programs, so both advances in hardware and the open nature of the Internet contribute to making programming cost less.
There's also the matter that once you start sharing programs, the cost of additional programs can become less because of what has already been done. I think we're seeing that with Linux rather plainly right now, but I suspect we're only at the beginning. People build upon what others have done, and provide better and better applications.
My belief is that this trend will intensify and will drive all but the very best commercial applications out of the marketplace. It won't be that you cannot compete with Open Source, but that it will take tremendous resources to do so. We see that now: the "easy" apps have already pretty much killed off their commercial counterparts (note how much more bundling Microsoft has had to do).
More difficult endeavors have hung in there, but can only do so if they stay way ahead: while the current Open Source competitors for QuickBooks etc. are too weak to really compete, they are already far better than what the commercial versions were originally. It may take many years for the "free" versions to get good enough to be competitive, but I don't see how that cannot happen: it seems inevitable. At a higher level, it might be decades before you'd see an Open Source competitor to SAP, or it might just never happen at all; some projects might need too many resources to be done in the Open Source arena. But then again, we surely once thought that only governments could build space-going vehicles; yet today (because of cheaper technology) we see private enterprise starting to be interested in that. So, given time, perhaps everything will fall to the Open Source model.
Further reading:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/forum/copyright/intro.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/forum/copyright/barlow2.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/forum/copyright/lessig2.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/forum/copyright/stefik2.htm
Technorati tags: open+source copyright
Have you tried Searching this site?
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X support by phone, email or on-site: Support Rates
This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more. We appreciate comments and article submissions.
Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.
Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.
We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
I sell and support
Kerio Mail server
Click here to add your comments
"At a higher level, it might be decades before you'd see an Open Source competitor to SAP, or it might just never happen at all; some projects might need too many resources to be done in the Open Source arena."
An Open Source replacement for the hideously expensive (and clunky, in my opinion) SAP may be closer than one might suspect. Consider the fact that the concepts that were used to develop SAP are hardly anything new. In the 1970's, ERP-like applications were developed for the then-new minicomputers. For example, a package called Manbase, which had much of the functionality of SAP, was developed for use on MAI Basic Four minis -- this was some 20 years ago. About the only thing Manbase didn't do was look-ahead production scheduling, which given the performance of the hardware at the time, probably would have been more a hindrance than a help.
Going further back, literature published in the 1950's and 1960's detailed how computers could be used to handle complex manufacturing schedules and their associated (and equally complicated) inventory management issues. The required knowledge for building an ERP package has existed for nearly 50 years and software of one form or another has been around for at least 30 years.
I believe the development environment needed to build an Open Source version of SAP already exists. I don't see the development of Open Source ERP any more difficult than the development of Linux itself. Both are complicated pieces of software with readily-quantified requirements. The only real difference I see is that the need for Linux was nearly universal in the computing community. Right now the need for an Open Source SAP is less so. But it will change, and soon, methinks.
--BigDumbDinosaur
"At a higher level, it might be decades before you'd see an Open Source competitor to SAP, or it might just never happen at all; some projects might need too many resources to be done in the Open Source arena."
An Open Source replacement for the hideously expensive (and clunky, in my opinion) SAP may be closer than one might suspect. Consider the fact that the concepts that were used to develop SAP are hardly anything new. In the 1970's, ERP-like applications were developed for the then-new minicomputers. For example, a package called Manbase, which had much of the functionality of SAP, was developed for use on MAI Basic Four minis -- this was some 20 years ago. About the only thing Manbase didn't do was look-ahead production scheduling, which, given the performance of the hardware at the time, probably would have been more a hindrance than a help.
Going further back, literature published in the 1950's and 1960's detailed how computers could be used to handle complex manufacturing schedules and their associated (and equally complicated) inventory management issues. The required knowledge for building an ERP package has existed for nearly 50 years and software of one form or another has been around for at least 30 years.
I believe the development environment needed to build an Open Source version of SAP already exists. I don't see the development of Open Source ERP as being any more difficult than the development of Linux itself. Both are complicated pieces of software with readily-quantified requirements. The only real difference I see is that the need for Linux was nearly universal in the computing community. Right now the need for an Open Source SAP is less so. But it will change, and soon, methinks.
--BigDumbDinosaur
"At a higher level, it might be decades before you'd see an Open Source competitor to SAP, or it might just never happen at all; some projects might need too many resources to be done in the Open Source arena."
An Open Source replacement for the hideously expensive (and clunky, in my opinion) SAP may be closer than one might suspect. Consider the fact that the concepts that were used to develop SAP are hardly anything new. In the 1970's, ERP-like applications were developed for the then-new minicomputers. For example, a package called Manbase, which had much of the functionality of SAP, was developed for use on MAI Basic Four minis -- this was some 20 years ago. About the only thing Manbase didn't do was look-ahead production scheduling, which, given the performance of the hardware at the time, probably would have been more a hindrance than a help.
Going further back, literature published in the 1950's and 1960's detailed how computers could be used to handle complex manufacturing schedules and their associated (and equally complicated) inventory management issues (Wight's writings on the subject of MRP are standouts in this area). The required knowledge for building an ERP package has existed for nearly 50 years and software of one form or another has been around for at least 30 years.
I believe the development environment needed to build an Open Source version of SAP already exists. I don't see the development of Open Source ERP as being any more difficult than the development of Linux itself. Both are complicated pieces of software with readily-quantified requirements. The only real difference I see is that the need for Linux was nearly universal in the computing community. Right now the need for an Open Source SAP is less so. But it will change, and soon, methinks.
--BigDumbDinosaur
Don't miss responses! Subscribe to Comments by RSS or by Email
Click here to add your comments
If you want a picture to show with your comment, go get a Gravatar