Competition is a Feature, not a Bug

by Tim Lee on May 14, 2007 · View Comments

Reading through the comments on this post on the economics of open source, I was surprised to find the following comment by Tony Healy of the Institute for Policy Innovation:

Clearly, free software is a big boon to Google and every other large corporation, just as low wages are. But neither provide benefits to programmers. Many advocates of open source actually have explicit open source lobbying roles with corporates, but misrepresent their claims as being in programmers’ interests. That is, their job is to lobby for free inputs.

Unfortunately the progamming profession is young and has no awareness of its own interests, nor consciousness of labour market disciplines that are part of the structure of older professions. Also, the lack of access barriers removes the consciousness of their own value that is implicitly taught to people entering other professions.

I would be fascinated to know what “labor market disciplines” and “barriers” he’s referring to, and which “older professions” he thinks programmers should be emulating. Maybe he thinks programming should be more like the medical profession? Or the real estate industry?

It’s absolutely true that increased competition often drives down the wages of producers in a particular industry. It may very well be that by eliminating barriers to entry in the software profession, free software is exerting downward pressure on wages in the software industry. (although it also makes them more productive, so my guess is that it will actually lead to higher wages in the long run) In either case, it’s bizarre to see somebody from a nominally free-market organization citing the intensely competitive nature of the market for programmers as a problem that needs to be solved. As he himself notes, competition among producers means lower prices for consumers. If that’s the effect free software has on the software industry, isn’t that something we should be celebrating?

View Comments Posted in: Open Source, Open Standards & Peer Production

  • Amen! We should be celebrating better options as consumers, and there is long term value derived from producing something that a lot of people use on a regular basis. Maybe it doesn't render itself in an immediate financial gain, but achieving "expert" status or being widely recognized allows one to charge more for their time due to increased demand.
  • If you want to use KDE as an example, then SuSE would have had to write KDE from scratch to match what Apple did with their desktop user interface. What Apple did was the equivalent of writing X.Org, Qt and KDE all by itself instead of just submitting a lot of patches. That is why I scoff at your comparison.
  • Mike:
    My exact point is: IF Apple can be said to make their own OS, then so can SuSE be said to make their own OS.

    If you disagree come up with some rationale criteria for distinguishing the two, as I have given you plenty of examples where SuSe contributed interface improvments as well as integration of filesystems into the kernel that SuSE has done.

    E_f
  • Aqua is part of the operating system. It is Apple's look and feel for their OS, which makes it part of the OS. What Apple did was they rebuilt NextSTEP when they built OSX, and to do that they had to take some of the same parts like Mach and a big chunk of FreeBSD. However, OSX is, in many practical ways, a very different operating system. You just don't seem to want to admit that they did a lot more than take FreeBSD and modify it. They aren't using the FreeBSD kernel, they've added a lot of features to the kernel, added a lot of their own proprietary APIs, the whole user interface itself from the ground up (window system upward) is based on Apple's proprietary code, etc.
  • Mike:

    If you agree that Aqua is not part of the Operating System, then we aren't arguing about much.

    SuSE added more to linux than you are giving them credit for--they wrote much of the original code for the Reiser FS. ReiserFS was availble with SuSE before it was available as part of the stable linux kernel, for example. And if you want to talk about interfaces, SuSE contributed much to KDE.

    So what I am saying is that Apple has gotten out of the 'OS' business in a major way, since they started using Free BSD code.

    And also there is no legitimate reason to say, just because a firm uses code from the GPL commons, that they don't produce an OS.

  • The part that Apple plays with, the gui, and to some extent the filesystems, but that's a holdover from when they had their own OS.

    Try running the software for MacOS X without Quartz, Aqua, OpenSTEP, Core***, etc. if you think that it is just that simple.



    The GUI is not even part of the Mach OS kernel, as is the case with nearly all modern OS's...

    I never said it was. You said that it is just FreeBSD warmed over, which is pure bovine excrement. It doesn't use the same kernel or the same windowing system, hell, even most of the APIs are at least practically OS X-exclusive if not excusive. I don't deny that they started from FreeBSD, but to call OS X a FreeBSD rip off is absurd since it is so radically different.

  • Mike:

    The part that Apple plays with, the gui, and to some extent the filesystems, but that's a holdover from when they had their own OS.

    Every indication is that Apple is less and less interested in OS parts other than the GUI, such as filesytems and scheduler etc.

    The GUI is not even part of the Mach OS kernel, as is the case with nearly all modern OS's...
  • interesting survey of open source developers: 69% have also done work for proprietary software companies.

    We might be seeing the same kind of effect as we do with bloggers who are also published authors, or musicians who make a sample track available for download, or football players who show what they can do in their college careers. Signaling behavior. But that kind of moderate approach wouldn't be nearly as quotable as either the hardcore Stallmanista or Randroid factions of the debate, so it's likely to get lost in the noise.
  • Noel, I'm not going to do your research for you. If there are so many examples, it shouldn't be hard to link to a couple.
  • Tim, review Cnet and tell me how many stories you find on Microsoft cross-licensing with other firms.

  • enigma_factory,



    Aple does not make an OS anymore-they repackage FREEBSD. Yes, they do tweak the interface--but so does SuSE.

    Tweak? Enigma_factory, you don't know what you're talking about. You are speaking from a point of ignorance on this subject if you actually think that. OS X's entire GUI is different from what FreeBSD users have from the ground up. The kernel is a completely different one. It's built on Mach with extensions such as the propriety IOKit API. Do you know about other OSX APIs like CoreData and CoreImage?

  • Mike:

    Aple does not make an OS anymore-they repackage FREEBSD. Yes, they do tweak the interface--but so does SuSE.

    SuSE, with the effort they put forth for multiple disk partition formats -- XFS, ext3, ReiserFS and (until recently) JFS, does more kernel level Os work than Apple does.

    Yes, they do produce an OS--because the GPL gives them the power to use an immense amount of code, in the GPL commons. MS has to license and pay for the code they use, because they elect not to use GPL code.

    My point is that using GPL commons is an immense competitive advantage. You can call it 'repackaging' if you want, but that is just a semantic distinction, in my book.
  • Noel, got an example? I'm sure there are a few cases where Microsoft incorporates software developed elsewhere into its products, but I would be very surprised if there were very many in Microsoft's core products.

    Mike, Apple makes extensive use of free software under a BSD-style license. While it's certainly true that they spend more than most Linux vendors on Mac OS X (and probably spend more even than Red Hat), that seems like a difference of degree.
  • ***Most of their "product" is in fact the work of others outside the company.***]

    MikeT, a good percentage of Microsoft and Apple technologies are developed outside the firm. These companies license intellectual property from others; specialist firms that excel in niche areas of technology. These outside firms are merely "inputs" for Apple and Microsoft; and they are paid for their intellectual property. FOSS development on the other hand, where volunteer developers are merely inputs for Red Hat and IBM business lines, have no formalized process of integrated external inputs. I wonder what would happen if Red Hat and IBM had to pay these developers.

  • enigma_factory,



    The benefits to the consumer are never mentioned, and the fact that a very small firm, like Mandriva or SuSE, can produce an OS superior to MS is seen as a bug. The fact is the business model that open source supports is necessarily extremely lean but that is to everyone else's benefit.

    Those companies don't produce an OS. They repackage and release a modified OS. There are no open source companies that I know of that do the sort of pure, original development work that Microsoft, Apple, Sun and others do on operating systems they sell to the public. The reason is very simple. No open source company today could afford the costs of making an OS that sophisticated on its own. Even Red Hat does not have the resources to plunk down $1.9 billion of its own money to build an OS from scratch capable of matching even Debian 3.0.


    It is dishonest to suggest that these companies are OS producers in the same sense that Apple and Microsoft are. They don't put anywhere near that much original effort into their products. Most of their "product" is in fact the work of others outside the company.

  • Tim writes: "You've never heard of lawyers or doctors doing pro bono work?"

    Yes, everyone has heard of pro bono work, but in any other field, its not called a religious revolution, and those doing it do not believe that pro bono work will replace paid workers. Further, those who undertake pro bono work usually have jobs, whereas with FOSS volunteers, their reward is a paid job (the entire touting freedom thing is just to make themselves feel better that they are unemployed).
  • Tony,

    Very few occupations would celebrate a business model that encourages them to donate their work for free, especially when the beneficiaries are big corporations.

    Really? You've never heard of lawyers or doctors doing pro bono work? Obviously, they wouldn't do work that only benefits big corporations, but the nice thing about free software is that it's made available to everyone, rich and poor alike.

    Also, I don't understand what it means to "fight to maintain their salary levels and business." My understanding of market economics is that wages are set by the force of supply and demand. Short of monopolistic limitations on entry into the market, there's not much that any one programmer can do to affect them. So when occupations (such as doctors, lawyers, or skilled union laborers) are "fighting to maintain their salary levels," they're usually doing it through monopolistic means like occupational licensure. I assume that's not what you're advocating, but I'm at a loss to understand what you think they ought to be doing.

    Finally, I didn't mean to imply that IPI tells you what to think, and I apologize if I gave that impression.
  • Tony Healy
    Tim, I was referring to the fact that people entering other highly trained occupations learn and are taught to value their expertise. Very few occupations would celebrate a business model that encourages them to donate their work for free, especially when the beneficiaries are big corporations.

    Regarding the lack of entry barriers for programming, I'm not saying that's bad. I think it's good. But I am saying it's a factor in the relative naivity of programmers in many business situations.

    I also refer to the confusion so prevalent in open source discussion, where the benefits to buyers are presented as also being benefits to programmers. They're not. Other occupations all know they have to fight to maintain their salary levels and business, because customers want them as cheaply as possible.

    Programmers on the other hand have often been sucked in. And these days there are significant corporate efforts aimed at encouraging this model.

    Also, the Institute for Policy Innovation is a think tank, not a PR firm. It doesn't tell me what to write or think.
  • There is a persistant strain of thought critical of open source which only sees the detriments to software producers, and a particular type of large capital intensive integrated producer.

    The benefits to the consumer are never mentioned, and the fact that a very small firm, like Mandriva or SuSE, can produce an OS superior to MS is seen as a bug. The fact is the business model that open source supports is necessarily extremely lean but that is to everyone else's benefit.
  • "Unfortunately the football-playing profession is young and has no awareness of its own interests."

    Work on open source and you're betting on your own future value as an expert developer, author, speaker, or whatever. Work on proprietary software and you're betting on your employer's stock options. Or hedge your bets and work on some of each -- most open source contributors also write proprietary software.

    There's also the signaling value of "I can write useful code and cooperate with a project" which hiring managers have trouble finding out from a job interview.

    Plenty of programmers have put lots of work into software that they no longer have the right to use, in exchange for options that turned out to be worthless.

  • I think by "Labour market disciplines" he's referring to the now quaint practice of getting paid for the fruits of your labors. Just a guess.

    More seriously, contributing to open source involves the excercise of free will, and sometimes (maybe even often) generates down stream economic benefits for the contributor in the form of better jobs or whatever. But if it weren't for the free will part we'd all be railing about how corporate America is using open source as a mechanism for getting lots of free labor (or maybe just labor subsidized by other companies). I think there may be more than one perspective on this.

    In a way it's not unlike the stories my grandfather used to tell about how his company made a fortune on his and his colleague's patented inventions and just kept paying them a salary since they had had assigned away their rights. Maybe in some cases open source will come to be viewed as just another way that same basic transaction can occur.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post:

Next post: