Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome. • Hacker News Board

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#51

Post by codinghorror » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 6:10 AM UTC

CodeMage wrote: post #14

As usual, Jeff mixes different concepts, does some hand-waving and comes to a stunningly weird conclusion. What Microsoft did with artificial memory limitation is ridiculous, unless someone comes up to offer a reasonable technical explanation. However, I find it equally ridiculous to jump from there to a conclusion that open source is better because it does no market segmentation. Let's keep one thing clear, if you'r…

Do you really believe that the 37signals approach is not effectively the same thing?

Consider the basecamp $99 plan vs the basecamp $49 plan:

100 projects / 35 projects vs. 20 GB storage / 10 GB storage

Do you really believe those extra 10 GB and 65 projects cost 37signals $50 a month to deliver to you?

Similarly, do you really believe that the cost of supporting 48 GB of memory versus 32 GB cost Microsoft $1000 per customer to build?

Wolf in sheep's clothing, exact same concept with Web 2.0 patina. Rich customers pay more.

Anyway, my argument isn't really about the money, but the mental friction. I'm sick of dealing with marketing weasel feature matrices

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#52

Post by jussij » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 6:12 AM UTC

ilyak wrote: post #34

CodeMage wrote: post #14

As usual, Jeff mixes different concepts, does some hand-waving and comes to a stunningly weird conclusion. What Microsoft did with artificial memory limitation is ridiculous, unless someone comes up to offer a reasonable technical explanation. However, I find it equally ridiculous to jump from there to a conclusion that open source is better because it does no market segmentation. Let's keep one thing clear, if you'r…

He didn't say that opensource is better ; he just said that you always get the best, 100%, full edition of it. However, this might be not true for dual-licensed software.

He implied it when he said 'opensource was awesome' and suggested the Microsoft offering was not.

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#53

Post by 10ren » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 7:03 AM UTC

10ren wrote: post #40

sho wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Osborne 1 didn't even have an HDD! You think HDs are slow, try 5 1/4" floppies for latency. Anyway, SSDs soon. I will not be sorry to see the back of spinning magnetic media of any stripe.

x3,000,000 for me (ZX81 with 16 K RAM pack - but if I'd stuck with the standard 1K, it would be... x48,000,000).

One version of Moore's Law predicts x1000 increase in 15 years (x2 every 1.5 years; 2^10 = 1024).

48GB isn't standard today. The ordinary amount in an average desktop PC is about 2GB. Therefore, in 15 years (2024), we can expect ordinary, standard desktop PC to have 2TB RAM.

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#54

Post by ZeroGravitas » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 8:40 AM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #51

CodeMage wrote: post #14

As usual, Jeff mixes different concepts, does some hand-waving and comes to a stunningly weird conclusion. What Microsoft did with artificial memory limitation is ridiculous, unless someone comes up to offer a reasonable technical explanation. However, I find it equally ridiculous to jump from there to a conclusion that open source is better because it does no market segmentation. Let's keep one thing clear, if you'r…

Do you really believe that the 37signals approach is not effectively the same thing? Consider the basecamp $99 plan vs the basecamp $49 plan: 100 projects / 35 projects vs. 20 GB storage / 10 GB storage Do you really believe those extra 10 GB and 65 projects cost 37signals $50 a month to deliver to you? Similarly, do you really believe that the cost of supporting 48 GB of memory versus 32 GB cost Microsoft $1000 per…

There is worse in the enterprise market, where they basically charge exactly what you can afford (sometimes a bit more) ratcheting it up as you get more and more locked-in. Read about software pricing economics and how you just have to suck it up till you hit the "Fuck You Oracle" point here:

http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/date/20040828#the_economics_of_soft...

Amusingly, it looks like he'll be an Oracle employee since they are now buying Sun.

(Note, this is "just business" as far as I'm concerned, i.e. about .7 on the weasel scale. What saddens me is organisations too short-sighted or misinformed to see the trap they are lumbering into as they are too distracted by salesmen with slick powerpoints, particularly if they are governments wasting my tax dollars)

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#55

Post by patio11 » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 9:50 AM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #51

CodeMage wrote: post #14

As usual, Jeff mixes different concepts, does some hand-waving and comes to a stunningly weird conclusion. What Microsoft did with artificial memory limitation is ridiculous, unless someone comes up to offer a reasonable technical explanation. However, I find it equally ridiculous to jump from there to a conclusion that open source is better because it does no market segmentation. Let's keep one thing clear, if you'r…

Do you really believe that the 37signals approach is not effectively the same thing? Consider the basecamp $99 plan vs the basecamp $49 plan: 100 projects / 35 projects vs. 20 GB storage / 10 GB storage Do you really believe those extra 10 GB and 65 projects cost 37signals $50 a month to deliver to you? Similarly, do you really believe that the cost of supporting 48 GB of memory versus 32 GB cost Microsoft $1000 per…

I'd agree, companies which sell software products by-the-license and companies which sell software products by-the-month are both in, essentially, the same business. They've both got price/feature matrices, even the lowly shareware company, which at the simplest level has a "Trial" and "Paid Version" two-column matrix. This is nothing to get worked up over -- it is a fundamental fact of our industry. We charge money for value, and value exceeds marginal cost by a stupendous amount.

I'm sick of dealing with marketing weasel feature matrices

This line would be funnier if there were an ironic marker or perhaps some indication that it was self-deprecating humor. As it is, it sort of sounds like you mean what you're saying. Which would be... interesting in light of your own business model, announced like two days ago.

http://www.stackexchange.com/

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#56

Post by samuel » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 10:11 AM UTC

That's nothing. When you want extra processor resources on an IBM iSeries, you only need to enter some code (after paying IBM big €€), and vóilá, your server will use some extra cores that were always there. I have heard Sun does the same, and probably others too.

All in all, it isn't that bad. At least there's an easy upgrade path. Probably you can't do that with Windows Server.

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#57

Post by CodeMage » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 11:24 AM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #51

CodeMage wrote: post #14

As usual, Jeff mixes different concepts, does some hand-waving and comes to a stunningly weird conclusion. What Microsoft did with artificial memory limitation is ridiculous, unless someone comes up to offer a reasonable technical explanation. However, I find it equally ridiculous to jump from there to a conclusion that open source is better because it does no market segmentation. Let's keep one thing clear, if you'r…

Do you really believe that the 37signals approach is not effectively the same thing? Consider the basecamp $99 plan vs the basecamp $49 plan: 100 projects / 35 projects vs. 20 GB storage / 10 GB storage Do you really believe those extra 10 GB and 65 projects cost 37signals $50 a month to deliver to you? Similarly, do you really believe that the cost of supporting 48 GB of memory versus 32 GB cost Microsoft $1000 per…

Consider the basecamp $99 plan vs the basecamp $49 plan:
100 projects / 35 projects vs. 20 GB storage / 10 GB storage

Do you really believe those extra 10 GB and 65 projects cost 37signals $50 a month to deliver to you?

No, I don't. What I said was "they offer different plans whose prices probably don't scale linearly with the costs behind them (in other words, they don't get the same profit across plans)". I acknowledged that the price is not a linear function of the costs and that they get more profit from more expensive plans. My question was "why is that evil?"

Similarly, do you really believe that the cost of supporting 48 GB of memory versus 32 GB cost Microsoft $1000 per customer to build?

I'm sorry if I sound hostile, Jeff, but I read your post before commenting on it -- did you read my comment before replying? I said that the artificial memory limitation is completely ridiculous (unless there's a valid technical reason for it). As I explicitly state in my other comments, I believe that's unethical.

Here's the summary of what I believe, a Cliffs Notes edition of my comments: Having rich customers pay more is not unethical, crippling the features of your product to extort money is.

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#58

Post by j_baker » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 2:21 PM UTC

> If I choose open source, I don't have to think about licensing, feature matrices, or recurring billing. I know, I know, we don't use software that costs money here, but I'd almost be willing to pay for the privilege of not having to think about that stuff ever again.

The grass is always greener on the other side isn't it? Don't get me wrong, FOSS has upsides, but segmentation isn't one of them. If time really is the cost rather than the cost of the software, FOSS isn't any better. The only difference is that nobody is artificially segmenting the market. The market artificially segments itself.

Think about it: do you use Debian? Fedora? CentOS? Or do you go with someone you can buy a support contract for like Red Hat or Novell or SuSE? Or would you rather go for a BSD flavor of nix? OpenSolaris seems to also be gaining popularity; do you choose it?

And once you get that sorted out, what webserver do you choose? Apache? Lighttpd? Nginx? Comanche? Are you doing Python? Then you also should consider CherryPy.

So, to summarize... sometimes I'd be willing to pay money to know that no matter what* edition I choose, I'm still buying Windows.

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#59

Post by shin_lao » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 2:59 PM UTC

CodeMage wrote: post #14

As usual, Jeff mixes different concepts, does some hand-waving and comes to a stunningly weird conclusion. What Microsoft did with artificial memory limitation is ridiculous, unless someone comes up to offer a reasonable technical explanation. However, I find it equally ridiculous to jump from there to a conclusion that open source is better because it does no market segmentation. Let's keep one thing clear, if you'r…

I sincerely think the aim of his posts is to please his audience, get attention.

The posts are more and more noisy, pointless and irrelevant. It looks as if he's forcing to write an entry regularly, even when he's got nothing to say.

You can always sum up a post as "X is very bad except when it's not" or "Y is very good except when it's not".

Re: Open source software only comes in one edition: awesome.

#60

Post by yason » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 3:34 PM UTC

Segmentation is a good thing also from the consumer/buyer viewpoint but "limitations" like this max O/S memory limit are absolutely spinelessly crippled blatant rip-offs, and have no correlation with the actual work required to make those features.

The same goes for the stupid restriction of the maximum of ten simultaneous network connections (can't remember whether it was inbound or both?) imposed in some basic Windows (Home? Professional? vs. Server?) editions.

An operating system shouldn't limit the capabilities of available hardware. They could reasonably decide to not support some heavy-duty server hardware at all except in the server edition. Or they could give the server edition a better I/O scheduler (that can handle large loads) or something to make it a must if you want to use Windows on a server.

But if I have a network adapter in my box I expect to be able to max it out in all imaginable ways regardless of the O/S "edition". Or use as much memory as I can physically fit in my box.