Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
On Jan 11, 2006, at 23:50, Graham wrote: I've rarely seen this explained so succintly, a definite addition to my quote file. Thanks Thanks, Graham. I have turned it into a blog posting[1] so I can find it again when I need it. S. [1] http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink?entry=free_r_d - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
On Monday 09 January 2006 11:41 pm, DC Parris wrote: Greetings! I am responding to an article that claims Microsoft invests $50b/year in RD - as if the libre software community doesn't invest in RD. I believe it does. Can the OOo team help me quantify what gets invested in RD? I am also contacting some other major projects, but would like to get some input from the folks at OOo. Don I appreciate everyone's input. My article on this has been published: Linux News raises questions about Microsoft's alleged $6 billion per year investment in RD. Is it money well spent, or are they just throwing it away? How does their investment compare to that of the Libre Software community. http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/51763/index.html Enjoy! -- Web Developer Oakdale Christian Fellowship http://matheteuo.org/ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
On Tue, January 10, 2006 21:37, Simon Phipps wrote: On Jan 11, 2006, at 02:24, Steven Shelton wrote: Simon Phipps wrote: I was with you at the beginning of that, Don, but I'm surprised to hear you saying free RD given what you've written on LXer recently. It's not free/gratis. It costs every one of us time, many of us money as well. As the cost of the R D is not bourne by a single entity, you're right that it's pointless to try to estimate a dollar value for it unless you also establish the exchange rate. But it's not free/gratis. Each community member invests according to their ability and goals, and they do so because they expect to see a return on that investment on their own terms and timescale. I think that what he was saying is that it's free to the company that takes advantage of it, not to the people who actually do the RD. While there are contexts in which it's perhaps reasonable to say that, *in the context Don is discussing* I'd assert that's missing the point. That only works if you think you're an island[1]. Each of us has to put in effort, and each of us will yield a return. Saying that compared to Microsoft's $50bn investment all of F/OSS is free both perpetuates the abuse of the word free and perpetuates the idea that open source is about freeloading. It only matters in Don's original context though. Not worth an argument :-) S. [1] http://polyticks.com/home/Visions/NoManIsl.htm My point was that companies may not be paying for the RD. Still, your point is well taken, and is part of my point. Don -- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ Hey man, whatever pickles your file! - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
Another route would be to question the basis of MS' claims for investing $50 bn in RD. After all, what are the visible results, we'd expect some results, right? I am fairly skeptical that far from the full amount is actually used for research or development. One reason for this skepticism is that for a while MS' form 10k, 10q and corrections seemed to suggest that marketing was the largest expense. When people started laughing at them publicly for it, there came a series of high profile announcements proclaiming the emphasis on RD. http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?type=10dateb=owner=includecount=40action=getcompanyCIK=789019 I don't know how one would dig deeper, but I suspect a lot of Microsoft's budget under the heading 'research and development' is in practice still used on marketing and/or legal fees. -Lars Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Software patents endanger the legal certainty of software. Keep them out of the EU by writing your MEP, keep the market open. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
Simon Phipps wrote: I was with you at the beginning of that, Don, but I'm surprised to hear you saying free RD given what you've written on LXer recently. It's not free/gratis. It costs every one of us time, many of us money as well. As the cost of the R D is not bourne by a single entity, you're right that it's pointless to try to estimate a dollar value for it unless you also establish the exchange rate. But it's not free/gratis. Each community member invests according to their ability and goals, and they do so because they expect to see a return on that investment on their own terms and timescale. For some, the return is in the form of social good achieved, for example in enabling communities in the two-thirds world to function on equal terms with the globalisers. For others, the return is achieved in de-positioning commercial competitors who believe closed is a commercial advantage. For some, the return is achieved in the sustaining of a market in which their services have commercial value. For some, the return is achieved through the commercialisation of a software product built with code from the community in which they participate. For some, the return is a sense of satisfaction in working with software. All of these and more are in-play, and the dollar value of the investments is not really subject to analysis. To describe the work of each of these community members as free/ gratis is to allow the framing of the conversation by the old world. The truth is that each open source community is built from a diverse mix of participants, each present on their own terms and for their own purposes and each working at cost to themselves in order to achieve the return they seek, without concern over either the costs or goals of other community members. /Each member is responsible for covering their own costs/ and because of that there's a level playing field for all participants. So please don't say we're here providing free RD. The actual investment is huge, I would guess of the order of trillions of dollars for the aggregate F/OSS communities globally measured in US salaries. But no-one ever sees that cost because the F/OSS community is constructed from individual project communities each of which bears its own cost in exchange for its own return on its own terms. It's a different model and we collectively need commentators to realise that distributed participation is not the behaviour of anti- commercial crazies but rather the effective response of a global software community to globalisation by monopolists. Please instead say measured the same way, the investment of the FOSS community of communities undoubtedly exceeds Microsoft's by an order of magnitude or more, but that's not relevant to the way F/OSS works. Take the opportunity to reframe the conversation. Warmly, Simon I've rarely seen this explained so succintly, a definite addition to my quote file. Thanks -- Graham Lauder OpenOffice.org Marcon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Gold Assessor Trainer http://www.theingots.org Member Opendocument Fellowship http://www.opendocumentfellowship.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
On Wed, 11 Jan 2006, Alex Fisher wrote: [snip] They spend it on research and development for sure... Researching the market, and developing their marketing ploys, researching their competitors patent portfolio, and developing their own The term Research and Development can mean anything you want it to (a bit like statistics, really). [snip] Then it will be important for Don's article to at least address the divergence between the definition MS uses and the definition used by everybody else. A harder, but maybe with more results would be to find out how much of the mythical $5bn MS is really spending on RD. On the humorous side of things maybe the dictionaries distributed with MS product include the MS definitions? e.g. Last night two guys tried to innovate my wallet near the Greyhound station. or I couldn't get extra tickets to the game because scalpers we researching and developing them for three times the original price. or Prisma had a full page study in the paper about a 15% discount next Saturday. or When the drive shaft on my car shattered, it cost me 1200 to get that feature repaired. That car is getting so many features these days it's probably time to buy a new one. -Lars Lars Nooden ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Software patents endanger the legal certainty of software. Keep them out of the EU by writing your MEP, keep the market open. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
Hello Don, DC Parris wrote: Greetings! I am responding to an article that claims Microsoft invests $50b/year in RD - as if the libre software community doesn't invest in RD. I believe it does. Can the OOo team help me quantify what gets invested in RD? I am also contacting some other major projects, but would like to get some input from the folks at OOo. I think you may want to differentiate between hard budget spending in the context of a corporate RD effort and the way RD wors in FOSS communities. You can for instance ask to Sun, Novell, or Red Hat how much they are spending for desktop Linux (OOo only would be too narrow for real RD), but that would really be the visible edge of the iceberg. Also, note that innovation happens elsewhere and that many new successful FOSS projects started out of nothing and became funded and populated by people paid by companies. I think Beagle is a good example of that, but I may be wrong. Hope this helps, Charles. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 23:41 -0500, DC Parris wrote: Greetings! I am responding to an article that claims Microsoft invests $50b/year in RD - as if the libre software community doesn't invest in RD. I believe it does. Can the OOo team help me quantify what gets invested in RD? I am also contacting some other major projects, but would like to get some input from the folks at OOo. Don To compare like with like, you may need to look at developer manhours per annum generated by Microsoft compared to the open-source community... John - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
On Tue, January 10, 2006 13:42, John McCreesh wrote: On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 23:41 -0500, DC Parris wrote: Greetings! I am responding to an article that claims Microsoft invests $50b/year in RD - as if the libre software community doesn't invest in RD. I believe it does. Can the OOo team help me quantify what gets invested in RD? I am also contacting some other major projects, but would like to get some input from the folks at OOo. Don To compare like with like, you may need to look at developer manhours per annum generated by Microsoft compared to the open-source community... John Here's the general gist - which I have communicated to most of the folks I've contacted: The gist of my article is that RD for GNU/Linux and FOSS has to be considered on a different basis than Microsoft's approach. As an example, Microsoft may well spend $50 billion/year in RD. Against the backdrop of what they distribute, it seems like they're throwing money away. After $50b, a WMF vulnerability puts 600 million users at risk. On the FOSS side of the house, no single company has a need to invest $50 billion/year because they are essentially getting free RD, and much of that goes unaccounted for. Don -- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ Hey man, whatever pickles your file! - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
On Jan 11, 2006, at 02:24, Steven Shelton wrote: Simon Phipps wrote: I was with you at the beginning of that, Don, but I'm surprised to hear you saying free RD given what you've written on LXer recently. It's not free/gratis. It costs every one of us time, many of us money as well. As the cost of the R D is not bourne by a single entity, you're right that it's pointless to try to estimate a dollar value for it unless you also establish the exchange rate. But it's not free/gratis. Each community member invests according to their ability and goals, and they do so because they expect to see a return on that investment on their own terms and timescale. I think that what he was saying is that it's free to the company that takes advantage of it, not to the people who actually do the RD. While there are contexts in which it's perhaps reasonable to say that, *in the context Don is discussing* I'd assert that's missing the point. That only works if you think you're an island[1]. Each of us has to put in effort, and each of us will yield a return. Saying that compared to Microsoft's $50bn investment all of F/OSS is free both perpetuates the abuse of the word free and perpetuates the idea that open source is about freeloading. It only matters in Don's original context though. Not worth an argument :-) S. [1] http://polyticks.com/home/Visions/NoManIsl.htm smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
Simon Phipps wrote: I was with you at the beginning of that, Don, but I'm surprised to hear you saying free RD given what you've written on LXer recently. It's not free/gratis. It costs every one of us time, many of us money as well. As the cost of the R D is not bourne by a single entity, you're right that it's pointless to try to estimate a dollar value for it unless you also establish the exchange rate. But it's not free/gratis. Each community member invests according to their ability and goals, and they do so because they expect to see a return on that investment on their own terms and timescale. I think that what he was saying is that it's free to the company that takes advantage of it, not to the people who actually do the RD. -- Steven Shelton Twilight Media Design www.TwilightMD.com www.GLOAMING.us - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Marketing] Investing In Research Development
Hi Don, DC Parris wrote: Greetings! I am responding to an article that claims Microsoft invests $50b/year in RD - as if the libre software community doesn't invest in RD. I believe it does. Can the OOo team help me quantify what gets invested in RD? I am also contacting some other major projects, but would like to get some input from the folks at OOo. Don Thinking in percentages, I always get the impression that MS works with the 20-80 rule: 20% quality, 80% marketing. Seeing the rare ocurence of OOo-advertising, 90-10 at least is appropriate for OOo, IMHO. Greetings, Cor -- - - - - - - - - - - -Cor Nouws- - www.nouenoff.nl - - - - - OOo - - - - - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
