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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:25am on 2003-07-31

"The evolution of today's software industry is confusing to many people because it is proceeding in exactly the opposite direction from previous technological revolutions. Previously, the rationalization of production has been associated with movement away from decentralized cottage industry towards a factory system organized around concentrations of capital. This time, the move is away from the factory system, towards a new form of artisanship and individualism critically enabled by cheap PCs and the Internet." (From the OSI Position Paper on the SCO-vs-IBM Complaint -- Eric S. Raymond being the principal author).

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There are 6 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dacuteturtle.livejournal.com at 06:09am on 2003-07-31
Ah, once again, I must disagree with Mr. Raymond. I believe that he critically misunderstands the nature of industry.

Mass Manufacturing is what encourages centralization. That is, an economy of scale. Thus, we have mass produced pipes, tools, and software. Microsoft is a perfect example of this. Likewise, big name titles such as Quicken and Adobe Acrobat are also examples of this. These do not seem to be decentralizing.

However, the factory system only works as well as an item is assemblable in a factory. Houses are the perfect example of this. Although many houses are built on the same floorplan, most are hand-assembled by many individual crafters or teams of crafters. The same is true of company web-sites and custom applications. No economy of scale is applicable here, so decentralization rules.

So if anything, in my humbl opinion, the current IT economy resembles the industrialized economy MORE, not less.
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Political bias?

posted by (anonymous) at 07:11am on 2003-07-31
That's a rabid Libertarian for you...will say anything, even in contradiction of the facts, or the evidence, to make it seem as though individuals are primarily responsible for everything good, and collective endeavours are primarily responsible for everything bad, and that economies of scale and similar group efficiencies just don't exist. (Ever have an argument with one of these rugged individualists about rural electrification initiatives and other loss-leaders?) Goodness knows that with Mr. Raymond, ideological considerations trump everything else, including the facts and good manners. :)

Interrobang
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Re: Political bias?

posted by [identity profile] dacuteturtle.livejournal.com at 08:04am on 2003-07-31
I second the opinion about manners.

From my humble point of view, the IT industry is not one industry, but a relationship of connected industries.

We have:
- commodity components (chips, ram, etc)
- commodity assemblers (pc's, scanners, printers)
- mass software (Microsoft, Quicken, etc.)
- Industrial components (massive raid arrays, medical chips, signal processors)
- industrial assemblers (routers, medical equipment, massive computers)
- industrial software (accounting systems, radar systems, factory system)
- artisan software (shareware, small cooperatives)
- local software (small business)
- custom applications (web pages, web games, small markets)
- information publishing (web pages, encyclopedias, etc.)
- research
- small merchanting and servicing (your local computer store)
- mass merchanting and servicing (BestBuy, CompUSA)
- accessories
- massive cooperative ventures (Linux, free stoftware)

Damn, I'm not even done the list of niches. You get the idea. Oversimplification = Not Useful to a Meaningful Discussion
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Re: Political bias?

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 10:11am on 2003-07-31
"From my humble point of view, the IT industry is not one industry, but a relationship of connected industries. "

Ah! Major light-bulb-over-head time (coupled with a "Doh!"). Sort of like the quote about "computer science" not being a single discipline. I think I'm going to stuff your observation back into my QotD file to get posted on its own later.
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Re: Political bias?

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 10:07am on 2003-07-31
"will say anything, even in contradiction of the facts, or the evidence, to make it seem as though individuals are primarily responsible for everything good, and collective endeavours are primarily responsible for everything bad"

I don't get that from this quote. All I see him saying here is that IT is different from what a lot of naive observers expect. (Whether he's right about other people's expectations is another question...)
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 10:04am on 2003-07-31
Hmm. So far (ignoring for the moment the next two comments), it sounds as though you're more rephrasing him than disagreeing with him. Basically that instead of "IT is backwards from the rest of the economy", it's more like, "IT gets mistakenly compared to industry when it should be compared to other things."

Anyhow, I'm glad I post quotes I'm not sure whether to agree with -- this way I get other folks' thinking on them.
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