Re: [tlug] Hula

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Ulrich" == Ulrich Plate <plate@example.com> writes:

    Ulrich> IBM was making from consulting (80 percent of total
    Ulrich> turnover)

Calling whatever IBM is doing "consulting" does not help understand
whatever it is that they are doing.  Nor is it at all obvious how open
source fits into whatever they're doing, except as a way to kneecap
Microsoft.  And SuSE is a completely different barrel of potatoes; if
those two are the CFO's models, no wonder he's confused!

Don't confuse wishful thinking about how OSS is "right" with the
success of some companies that happen to also do OSS.

    Ulrich> There's a very interesting research report*

Nah.  It's a rigged model.  It starts by assuming that programmers are
unskilled labor (but that some are more talented than others), that
closed-source managers are unable to determine whether their
programmers are productive or not, and that even if a programmer turns
in excellent performance that the managers somehow recognize, he won't
be paid more.  Anybody who can't show that in that context OSS hackers
have more fun, higher pay, and better sex had better bail out and get
an MBA.

What _would_ be interesting would be a model which gives their
assumptions as theorems.


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.