Others have covered the weaker aspects of Meyer's article
<http://www.sdmagazine.com/features/2000/03/f4.shtml>, rather than
re-cover the same ground I'd like to offer a different take, taking up
just a few of his, almost aside, points.
Background
==========
Meyer is the 'inventor' of the language Eiffel, which has strong
Object Oriented ideas embodied.
One other well respected idea of Meyer's is 'design by contract' :
a piece of code performs this task under given conditions.
Meyer is well respected, however Eiffel has not been a 'popular'
success, in the same way C, Perl, C++, Java have been.
There may be many reasons for this, possibly one was that for a long
time there was no 'free' implementation of Eiffel.
Popularity of Microsoft.
=======================
Almost as an aside, Meyer asserts that Linux advocates should be
grateful to MS: the growth of Intel machines with MS software has
driven hardware prices down.
This is both plausable, and unprovable. It is hard to predict what
would have happened without MS's software and / or tactics.
Meyer castigates Sun for not producing a mass market product at about
the same time as MS was trying to develop Windows.
Again, this is in the realm of 'what-if'. I would think the most likely
outcome for Sun, had they done this, would to end up something like
Apple. Sun boxes (as are Macs) are produced to a standard that
many PC clones are not, hence tend to be more expensive.
Production of 'Free Software'.
=============================
Meyer focuses on the writing of software, the reasons people are able
to produce free software. He contends that this source (e.g.
University funding) should be acknowledged, even to the point of its
name.
I detect some pique here, but the interesting thing here is how
Meyer sees the software 'production' process. Meyer seems to see
this process as the author offering a finished product, and users
gratefully accepting it. I don't see it this way.
One of the critical aspects of software is that there is a feedback
loop between authors and users. This loop (nexus is another way of
looking at it) is critical to the long term use and popularity of
software.
In the 'free' software world, there is a great deal of connection
between author and user. Users are testers, and many commit a lot
of time to testing and bug reports.
Problems of Software.
=====================
Meyer doesn't mention the following as problems with both 'free' and
proprietary software, but since his article has spiked some interest
I thought I'd offer these for thought.
* popular software products tend towards a 'winner takes all'
position. Often not deliberately, a particular piece of software
tends to dominate, forcing other good, worthwhile, projects to
whither.
I tend to think this is why people take such extreme positions,
barracking for their team.
* Along with 'winner-takes-all' recognition of software, authors and
software houses tend to get disproporionate 'rewards' for software.
That is, the spread of wealth (for example) could be more even. This
is true even with free software.
* Free ride effect. If more people, especially those who have
benefited, could be encouraged to contribute to free software, we'd
all be better off. There are large groups of people unwilling or
unable to contribute. If we could unlock this vast store....
The only way I can envisage this is something like a tax. I remember
one proposal (was it Stallman?) that proposed a royalty system for
musicians based on popularity.
Something to think about. Obviously there are many, many problems
with this approach.
Jamie
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