More from McVoy.
You may recall my previous post pointing to a Forbes article about BitKeeper. It sounds like Larry is speaking out more. In fact the title is a quote from Larry.
Here is the article http://www.forbes.com/execpicks/2005/05/26/cz_dl_0526linux.html
Some more gems
But McVoy says it is simply not possible for an innovative software company to sustain itself using an open source business model.
We believe if we open sourced our product, we would be out of business in six months,” McVoy says. “The bottom line is you have to build a financially sound company with a well-trained staff. And those staffers like their salaries. If everything is free, how can I make enough money to keep building that product for you and supporting you?”
and
“One problem with the services model is that it is based on the idea that you are giving customers crap–because if you give them software that works, what is the point of service?”
and
“The other problem is that the services model doesn’t generate enough revenue to support the creation of the next generation of innovative products. Red Hat has been around for a long time–for a decade now. Yet try to name one significant thing–one innovative product–that has come out of Red Hat.”
and most especially
“The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That’s easy. It’s way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new. But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it’s true.”
and
It costs a huge amount of money to develop a single innovative software product. You have to have a business model that will let you recoup those costs. These arguments are exceedingly unpopular. Everyone wants everything to be free. They say, ‘You’re an evil corporate guy, and you don’t get it.’ But I’m not evil. I’m well-known in the open source community. But none of them can show me how to build a software-development house and fund it off open source revenue. My claim is it can’t be done.”
and
And though open source software may be “free,” sometimes you get what you pay for, McVoy says. “Open source software is like handing you a doctor’s bag and the architectural plans for a hospital and saying, ‘Hey dude, if you have a heart attack, here are all the tools you need–and it’s free,'” McVoy says. “I’d rather pay someone to take care of me.”
This is all pretty funny to me. I don’t dislike Open Source, I do dislike GNU. My thoughts on this have always been that Open Source really isn’t economically feasible to the people doing the work unless they can choose what they make available. Here is someone else saying it who is in the middle of all of it. So you can still have people who do use it and work with it and extend it but if they use GNU and try to disseminate it they don’t have a choice in how they do it. Companies don’t like giving away IP, it isn’t a good business model. This makes GNU so it isn’t sustainable long term without charity. You have to have the charity to support the people writing stuff they don’t mind giving away.
