[Discussioni] [Fwd: My Lengthy Harangue (was advice sought (really: fundraiser status))]

[Simo Sorce]

Questa mi sembra molto interessante, una cosa su cui meditare.

Simo.

-----Forwarded Message-----

From: Bill White <bill.white a griggsinst.com>
To: Jean_camp a harvard.edu
Cc: fsb a crynwr.com
Subject: My Lengthy Harangue (was advice sought (really: fundraiser status))
Date: 30 Jul 2002 15:19:15 -0400

On Tue, 2002-07-30 at 10:49, L Jean Camp wrote:
> But this is not a performance art, or if it is a 0 marginal cost performing 
> art.
Please explain why this is relevant.  He's doin' something and people
aren't payin' him.  Many people want to do things for which there should
be financial support, but for which there just isn't.

I think this list would have less discussion and more sense if there
were fewer economists on it.  An economist create a lovely, complicated
explanation of what happens when SW is free, filled with terms with vary
narrow meaning, like "marginal cost" or "network exterality" or "price
elasticity".  A non-economist would say "They didn't send me a bill, so
I'm not paying."   If you don't charge for something, people won't pay
you.

>From my standpoint, as a practicing engineer with 20 years of
programming experience, and no years of economic experience, the only
reason free SW makes sense is that business is not really about profit
after all.  That is, businesses with more than about 50 employees are
not about profit.  They are about people carving out territory.  Let me
give you an example, which is just one of many.

I once worked for a large PC graphics hardware manufacturer.  They had a
group in the home office in Toronto which did the 2D driver, and a group
in Marlboro, MA which did the 3D driver part.  They had an OEM contract
with one of the big PC houses, but the customer's test application was
not working on our hardware.  It would run up to a particular point, and
then hang.  We pretty quickly found out that it hung when we called the
2D driver to get a buffer.  We told the 2D group it was their problem,
and they said it was ours, that they weren't going to work on it, and
that they were not going to give us the source to the 2D driver since it
was their source, and not ours after all.  The Toronto VP outvoted the
Ma VP, since he was on site in Toronto with the P.  I spent three weeks
trying to find the problem, single stepping through assembly language in
their driver and in the Win95 kernel, making no progress at all.  The
customer did amazing things to try to be helpful, including overnight
shipping systems to me.  By overnight I mean they got my mailing address
at 1900 one evening, and the system was in my office at 0800 the next
morning. Of course, the VP of engineering was in my cube twice a day,
and the sales support guy was on the phone every two hours, trying to
help me. Then one evening, I happened to be talking to another engineer
by phone to Canada on an unrelated matter, and I mentioned the problem
to him.  He zipped up the sources, made me swear that I would never
identify him by name, and mailed them off to me.  Four hours later I had
the fix, which I was able to mail to them.

What's the point?  Well, the 2D manager knew that he was in competition
with the 3D manager.  Only one would be promoted to be director of
software.  The VP in Mass knew that *he* was in competition with the VP
in Toronto, and only one would be promoted to whatever it is that VPs
get promoted to.  The other manager and the other VP would be laid off
for not performing.  So, the 2D manager had to stifle the 3D manager's
chances.  The Toronto VP knew that *he* had to stifle the Ma VP's
chances of succeeding.  So, both combined to make the Ma manager and VP
fail, even though it might have cost the company a multimillion dollar
account.

This seems like it might be an isolated case of mismanagement, but I'm
not so sure.  I went to the graphics company from a VLSI testing
company.  The software director would not let the hardware engineers see
the driver sources, even though their cubicles were next to each other
on the same floor.  I started thinking about it, and in every company I
have ever worked, there has been some kind of similar situation, where
one manager decides that it's in his best interest to hobble some other
managers, even at the expense of corporate goals.  Of course, as we go
further up, the managers are looking out for their own personal profit
at the expense of the shareholders and investors, and at the expense of
the employees.

So, again, what's the point?  The point is, if the SW is free, and
released under the GPL for everybody in the world to see, these kinds of
territorial games are not possible.  That's why free SW is good for
business, and that's pretty much the only reason as far as I can tell.
-- 
Codex Gratia Codici.
bill.white a griggsinst.org                 Griggs Research Institute
-- 
Simo Sorce - simo.sorce a xsec.it
Xsec s.r.l.
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tel. +39 02 2399 7130 - fax: +39 02 700 442 399
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