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Wed, 05 Nov 2003
Cringley on Microsoft and Open Source
Robert X. Cringely thinks that Microsoft misunderstands Open Source. I bookmarked this a while ago, but am just now getting to post about it. Cringely comments on the skill and dedication of various flavors of developers, and also on the existance or non-existence of product roadmaps.
At the core of Ballmer's remarks is a fundamental misunderstanding not only of Open Source, but of software development as an art rather than as a business. Cutting to the bone of his remarks, he is saying that Microsoft developers, since they are employees, are more skilled and dedicated than Open Source developers. They are better, Ballmer suggests, because Microsoft developers have their rears (presumably their jobs) on the line. All those lines and all those rears are part of a road map, he says, and because of that road map the $30 billion plus Microsoft gets each year isn't too much for us to pay, so the model works pretty well.

This is nonsense. It is nonsense because Steve Ballmer, like Bill Gates before him, confuses market success with technical merit. Microsoft's product roadmap is a manifestation of a business plan, and what matters in Redmond is the plan, not the map, which is in constant flux. How many technical initiatives has Microsoft announced with fanfare and industry partners, yet never delivered? Dozens. That is no roadmap.

If Microsoft developers rampantly fail to produce good software, but the company exceeds earnings estimates anyway, how many of those rears will be actually on the line? Very few, and maybe none at all.

He does raise an excellent point about product roadmaps. What good is it to have a roadmap that you fail to execute on? Is that really better than allowing a system to grow organically? Historically, the "professional" software industry's record on roadmaps isn't really all that good.

Food for thought as I go into the world of full time open source development...

[23:10] | [computers/open_source] | # | TB | F | G | 0 Comments | Other blogs commenting on this post
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I work at the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF).
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