Re: Bitkeeper licence issues

Roman Zippel
2002-03-21T19:15:03Z

Hi,

On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Alan Cox wrote:

> Work for me. I've run a profitable small open source company, I've worked
> for Red Hat.

Wow, that kind of answer I had expected the least. :)

> Think about it this way. There is no reason to suppose that the concept
> of the Innovators Dilemma does not ultimately apply to nations.

Innovator's Dilemma is an interesting theory, but I think it simplifies
things too much. I haven't read the book, so I can only judge from
various reviews I've read. It seems to concentrate too much on the
actual trigger and neglects the necessary conditions. The major flow
here is, it assumes that all participants play nice and fair.
Take for example MS, they don't have to innovate that much by
themselves, they just buy it. The interesting point here is that their
biggest threat is now a technology which is not really disruptive, but
rather a technology they can't buy.
With nations it actually becomes worse, as soon as politics and economy
come together there is no fair play anymore. A developing nation may get
an advantage in a specific area, but the industry nations will do
everything do prevent that they will get too powerful. The developing
nations are mostly useful to exploit their resources be foreign
companies, which expect from their goverments to "protect" their
investments.
Don't make the mistake to just look at hitech industry, this is still a
growing market (only the gold rush is over). Other more traditional
markets are already divided and tightly protected.

> Hans Reiser's team of Russian wizards is simply a couple of years ahead of
> everyone else moving all real software development to the czech republic
> and india, the phone support to the philipines and the hardware to
> taiwanese and chinese bulk build to order.

I agree, although the "couple of years" are debatable in these fast
changing times. :)
Another thing to consider is that software development currently is
still somewhere in the middle ages. Everything is still copied by hand
and the Gutenberg press of software development hasn't been invented
yet (there are some interesting developments, but I don't think we're
there yet). Software development is still a very expensive process, good
software design requires developer, which must be very capable in
several areas and at the same time still has to do lots of boring
repeating work. Most development which is moved to india is also the type
of development which is most likely to be automated by better tools. So if
india just relies on this it will be hit very badly.

bye, Roman