open source and the linux version

[Peter Alcibiades]

The reason for the economic power of the open source model is the possibility 
of derivative works.  

This is the underlying reason why, were one consulting to Rev, it would be one 
alternative one would advise exploring in depth.  Not necessarily going down 
that route in the end.  But certainly exploring at a deeper level than some 
of the reflex-reaction comments about Open Source seen here, and looking hard 
at how money can be made in that environment.

Because how and whether it is possible to compete in an environment in which 
there are unlimited derivative works is the key issue facing the proprietary 
closed source software industry over the next ten years, for Rev just like 
anyone else.  Its worse if you are, in Porter's phrase, potentially 'stuck in 
the middle' in terms of scale:  not big enough to be a low cost producer, but 
getting too big to be a true niche only supplier.

To understand the power of derivative works, look at what happened with 
PythonCard.  The authors had a ready made scripting language in Python.  Then 
they had a ready made widget set in wxPython.  Their task in constructing 
PythonCard was fairly small scale.  Look at MurgaLua as another example.  The 
author had Lua, and he also had FLTK ready made and right there to  hand.  He 
just had to merge them.  On the other hand, if you were wanting to develop a 
card-model language in the closed source environment, think what you would 
have to do.  A scripting language, an IDE...it doesn't bear thinking about.  
But PythonCard was a manageable task because it is a derivative work.  
Exactly the kind of thing that the closed source model prevents and exists to 
prevent.  Because this is just "exploiting someone else's work".  Yes, and 
the Open Source movement positively aims at an environment in which this will 
happen.  When people get free markets, they do not necessarily do what you 
would like with them, or what Marx or Ayn Rand said they should or would do.  
They don't vote how you might like, either.

When some of you say on this forum that you wish 'Linux' would standardize on 
one distribution, preferably Ubuntu, this is what you are missing.  Ubuntu 
was a derivative work on Debian. One of ten or twenty.   Debian in turn is 
derivative on thousands of independently done applications.  This is why 
there are hundreds of distributions on DistroWatch.  Some people react to 
this by condemning the existence of all this choice as confusing - but it 
only exists because the market has produced and sustained it.

People may not like it, but this is the power of the model, and this is why it 
is not going away.  It is, contrary to the muddled feelings some people have 
about it, a typically free market phenomenon.  It is people responding to the 
needs and desires of users.  It is just that they are not responding in quite 
the way, and with the restricted motivations, that you were used to from the 
fifties and sixties, and that you wrongly think of as characterising open 
market behaviour.  

We also need to look at the end user.   

The situation the Rev Linux user finds himself in right now is a typical 
example of why end users move to open source applications.  We are currently 
on 2.6.1, when the rest of the world is on 2.8 and rising.  That is, they are 
two releases ahead of us.  Increasingly, we can't participate.  We cannot 
open stacks written in 2.7 and on.

And, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.  We cannot even find out 
when and whether a new version is coming out.  What are we to do?  Probably 
be patient, and hope, and console ourselves with the thought that the people 
involved in Rev are very pleasant, the product is great, and one day it will 
all work out.  In fact, the Linux beta will be out any day now.

But at some point, some of us will also quietly open up a browser, drift over 
to Amazon, and order Hetland's wonderful book on Python.  And while there, 
notice a very fine introductory book on Lua by Jung and Brown.  And think to 
ourselves, yes, I need a bit of insurance just around now.  After all, 
Hypercard was wonderful, had very nice people involved with it, and it did 
get orphaned, and there was nothing any of us could do about that, either....

Peter