[10318] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Debating the NII "Truisms"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
Fri Feb 18 17:32:29 1994
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 20:10:45 -0500
To: Peter Deutsch <peterd@bunyip.com>, com-priv@psi.com
From: bcox@gmu.edu (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
Peter Deutch wrote:
>Actually, there's more to it that whether they can "own
>it". Corporate purchasing agents get asked lots of
>questions about such issues as system maintainability,
>on-going support, their prospects for interaction with the
>software used by their customers and suppliers and more
>(and remember, to companies without their own internal set
>of UNIX geeks maintainability does not mean source, it
>means access to somebody else's set of geeks.
I ultimately took my dialog with Glenn Tenney offline, but your response
caused me to dig up one of the messages which says exactly the same as
you're saying.
Sorry for the bandwidth, but the duplication seems necessary. So many
people keep saying the exact opposite that some redundancy seems called
for.
A sufficient supply of high quality information age goods for these gigabit
infrastructures to carry are simply *not* going to be available for free.
They cost far too much to provide, and that investment has got to be
recovered from somewhere.
Brad
>Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 21:58:48 -0500
>To:tenney@netcom.com (Glenn S. Tenney)
>From:bcox@gmu.edu (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
>Subject:Re: Debating the NII "Truisms"
>
>>Perhaps you missed a portion of my point... It was not that no one would
>>buy the pre-state software, rather that no U.S. company would take the
>>pre-state software and turn it into a product. The lab director told me
>>that U.S. companies said they wouldn't base a product on the free software
>>because everyone could have it (ie. they wanted an exclusive and couldn't
>>get it). The Japanese company saw the potential value in the post-state
>>and did make a product out of it. Sadly, I am told, there was not much
>>difference between pre and post state...
>
>Sorry, you're right. I did misunderstand the distinction between seller (your
>point) and buyer (mine). However I think the same discussion of value applies
>nonetheless.
>
>Perhaps this bit of history will make my point clear. I've personally been
>responsible for building software products to approximately the definition of
>"product" that most programmers use; i.e. it runs insofar as I've tested it,
>is adequately functional, has a ReadMe file, commented source code, etc.
>
>Then as a member of the management team, I've observed the real costs of
>getting it from this stage (waste product) to commercially viable product.
>Really doing a professional job of testing, porting it to other platforms,
>paying a sales/marketing staff, packaging, sending people to stand in booths
>at trade shows, etc.
>
>I can personally testify that my part (as the innovating programmer) to the
>value of the ultimate product was negigible in financial terms (my salary vs
>ultimate development costs); completely dominated by the boring old marketing
>stuff mentioned above, by *at least* an order of magnitude.
>
>This is why I have some sympathy for those American companies, astute enough
>to see that this lab (assuming programmers no more diligent than I) had only
>invested $1 of the $10 of what it would ultimately take to turn this waste
>product into a commercially viable product.
>
>Which is not to say that the Japanese company's astuteness wasn't even
>greater, assuming they actually did turn a profit in the end.
>
--
Brad Cox; George Mason Program on Social and Organizational Learning
Fairfax VA; bcox@gmu.edu; 703 968 8229 voice 968 8798 fax
