Re: looks like it's happening everywhere but the US.

On Mon, 2003-10-27 at 10:20, Russell McOrmond wrote:
> 
> On 27 Oct 2003, Jan C. Depner wrote:
> 
> > > >	Multithousand employees, multibillion dollars in taxes.  'Nuff said?
> 
> Not in the slightest :-)
> 
>   There is an interesting assumption you bring in which is that if people
> were not employed by Microsoft they would somehow be on the welfare lines.  
> I've heard this used by both the right and left in politics to justify a
> lot of very unusual things.

	Read slashdot for a week and see how many times you hear someone
whining about "there are no software jobs because they're moving
everything offshore".  Not that I agree with that.

> 
>   I do need to ask what the basis for this assumption is?
> 
>   My analysis of the economics of this suggests that there are *more* jobs
> (and thus more taxpayers) in a distributed open collaborative based
> economy than a centralized monopoly based one.  The demand for technology
> does not get reduced if you move from a supply-side centric methodology of
> production (manufacturing) to a demand-side centric methodology (open
> collaborative models).  If anything the ability of the demand-side
> methodology to meet the actual needs of itself is greater than that of
> supply-side's attempt to meet demand with "one size fits all".
>   There would likely be an increase of technology creation that meets
> actual demands, making technology projects more successful to the bottom
> lines of the majority of the economy that are not technology suppliers.
> 

	I definitely agree but that's not what I was saying - once again, all I
said was that you weren't going to see a change in the foreign policy
anytime soon because Micro$oft is a cash cow at the moment.  I *hate*
"one size fits all"!  You do have to understand that not all systems can
or will be built by OS developers.  Some are too expensive to have the
equipment to work with and others are too boring.  There are people
begging for developers for the boring financial software.  Plenty of
developers available for digital audio/video though ;-)


> 
>   Open collaborative (and free market competitive) methodologies
> facilitate more people becoming involved entrapraneurs rather than being
> largely passive employees (surfs) of manufacturers.  The more diversity we
> have with economically independent entrapraneurs the stronger our economy
> will be: diversity strengthens economies in the same way as it strengthens
> ecology.  As a self employed person who has compared my motivations and
> those of other self employed people to those of employees in the high tech
> sector (Ottawa is known as Silicon Valley North), I know we are more 
> motivated to do a good job than surfs.
> 
> BTW: The following may also make an interesting read: 
> Unplugged: How Microsoft's Misunderstanding of Open Source Hurts Us All
> By Robert X. Cringely
> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031023.html
> 
> 

	Already read it.  There is one other reason that OS developers do a
better job.  It's peer review.  I know when I work on a piece of
software that everybody and their brother gets to look at it so I'd
better do it right.  At work I am a government serf but I still program
the same way ;-)

> 
>   As to the companies themselves paying taxes these monopolies are more
> likely to have political influence and thus more likely to pay less taxes.  
> We already see many cases of overly-large companies pitting political
> jurisdictions against each other in a race-to-the-bottom to be the "home"
> of this so-called "taxpayer".
> 

	Less taxes doesn't mean no taxes.  What would you rather have 2% of 1
billion or (the Canadian way) 18% of 1 million?

> 
>   As a taxpayer I want governments stop promoting (through existing
> categorical preferences for manufactured products built into procurement
> rules) and otherwise subsidizing incumbent business models.  I want them
> to use my tax dollars towards the public good.  When a government helps
> resource an open collaborative project everyone benefits:  FLOSS project
> participation and benefits span the entire of the economy (private,
> public, volunteer, etc) while "software manufacturing" product
> participation and benefits only include a small subset of the private
> sector.
> 

	I tend to agree with that but our methodologies would differ.  I think
that the government should mandate open standards thus taking away
Micro$oft's advantage.


>   Just looking at the private sector alone, more of the private sector
> would benefit from governments resourcing open collaborative projects than
> the current situation of paying royalty fees.  We get double benefit with
> the open collaborative projects as governments pay less money (due to
> resource multiplication that happens in open collaborative models) for
> open collaborative technologies, and we get the direct benefit of the open
> collaborative advancement of the technologies themself.
> 

	The problem here, as I have pointed out before, is that some projects
won't have an OS solution or will have a substandard one.  While I don't
want to have to get by Micro$oft's "standard" formats when I want to buy
something I also don't want to have to prove that the only OS solution
is junk.  This is a difficult balancing act.


> > You lost me there.  How am I paying twice for something I don't use?  I
> > didn't even pay once for it ;-)
> 
>   How are you paying?  Inefficient spending by government costs all of us.
> With "Software manufacturing" not only are you not getting the benefit of
> technology advancement paid for through tax money, but you are having to
> pay royalties for technologies that would otherwise already exist.
> 

	Where is the latest OS hyperspectral imagery data editing software? 
Where is the latest OS multibeam sonar editing software?  How about
airborne LIDAR bathymetry software.  These will not only not exist, they
will never exist in OS form because the collection systems cost millions
of dollars.  I just can't see a Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman
shelling out 12 million dollars so he can work on LIDAR software.  And
please don't say that the government will fund it.  The way that works
is the same way that ADA worked when we were paying attention to it.  If
you asked a company to build a product for you it would cost an order of
magnitude more if you wanted it in ADA.  A company will do exactly the
same if you spec OS.  If you think the government pays enough to keep
good programmers you are sadly mistaken.  I work here because, for some
unknown reason, I think it matters.  I can make a lot more money in
private industry.


	BTW, I'm enjoying this discussion immensely ;-)  I think it's always
good to bat around different ideas and views.



-- 

********************************
Jan C. Depner
Code N43T
Naval Oceanographic Office
1002 Balch Blvd
Stennis Space Center MS, 39522
228.688.5609
********************************

I'm a programmer with a soldering iron, and I'm not afraid to use it.