29 Dec
2005
29 Dec
'05
7:07 a.m.
On Wednesday 28 December 2005 16:19, Dinesh Shah wrote:
Even though Apple was great technology, IBM PC and Microsoft took
the market. Why? Because, despite many problems, people show value
in buying PC over MAC.
So does that make the MAC useless. And M$ took market by innumerable
illegal business practices and continue to do so, rather than any
inherent value in it's product. Practices like forcing Hitachi to
remove BeOS from any machine with windows. If anything M$ software
continue to be far more useless than ever before.
Of course one may continue to pull wool on customers, choosing to
ignore everything else in return for money like the M$ peddlers do or
one may choose to enlighten the customer and work hard to provide a
lasting solution and make more money in the long run.
That is precisely why it is of such great importance and essential
that those who know this keep reminding others. All other values are
really only beneficial side effects of this.
--
rgds
jtd
Hi Terrence,
On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 15:02, JTD wrote:
The point I am trying to make is to make available the technology
to people in most efficient method available to you with prevailing
market conditions.
Business is about markets. Technology is about pushing the engineering
and scientific frontier. Irrespective of it's use or misuse. Science
and tech will reach (mass) use when several existing mechanisms
relevant to business (and thoroughly irrelevant to sc & tech) learn
to deliver those. It's not the scientist or technologist job to
create value for business.
I
don't agree with the above reasoning. If any technology,
however superior, can not reach the people, I would consider it
useless and worthless.
Partly true or false - it depends what point in time u make the
observation and what is your definition of "value and
worthiness".
That includes even using "Middle Man" for delivery and choosing the
correct delivery model. In '70s and '80s WalMart was the right
delivery vehicle. In '90s and new millenia it's Amazone and eBay.
:-)
I am not berating middle men (a very essential and important component
in any society) but pointing out it's irrelevance to technology.
Remember technology is for the benefit of mankind not
the other way round. It is really sad that many people just
talk of technology for technology's sack.
like the MIT lab where personal computing started? Or some pokey
place with two college kids making apples from ICs? or a few
developers writing the next revolution?
People don't buy technology for the sack of technology, they buy
the technology for the immediate and future benefit he will get out
of his investment in technology.
This is 100% correct. Also, success of FOSS will not be derived
from FREEDOM alone. People has to see the "value" in the FREEDOM
available to them in FOSS. More over FOSS has to solve the real
life problems for large scale adoption. And the real problem
solving is done by those "Middle Man" like RedHat, Novell/SuSE,
Debian, IBM, Terrence etc... :-)
The idea
behind FOSS is to make technology available and
accessible FREELY to people. The attitude of some people in
FOSS, technology for the technology's sack, is hurting the
FOSS, apart from many other reasons.
I think not. Since it is foss those feeling hurt can pick the
code and fork it with pleasure - X.org, uclinux, rtlinux. As long
as the technology is FOSS someone can always pick up broken
threads and weave it into a useful blanket.
Well, by what other tangible means can you attach/access "value" to
"products" and/or "services"?
Customer satisfaction. Me having fun. Engineers feeling happy. Do
these translate to monetory value? maybe but it is not going to
reflect on my business in a very very long time.
Gandhi was able to show great "value" in Khadi and "Swadeshi". Can
FOSS do the same?
In short as long as there is freedom all the
contradictory forces
will resolve them selves over time. Skew it with legislation like
DRM or patent laws in the guise of helping the inventor and u get
screwed.
Not really, people does not attach to much importance to freedom.
See what is the status of Khadi and "Swadeshi" in India today?