Comment by kune | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kune | Hacker News Reader

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The article contains a number of problematic statements. One is for instance the statement that Linux destroyed value. It may have for the proprietary UNIX vendors. But this should be balanced by the value Linux and OSS has created overall. Cloud Computing would never have scaled the way it has, if there would be operating system licenses and cloud computing providers would not be able to modify the OS according to their needs. I doubt that the profits of the proprietary UNIX firms over their lifetime are larger to what Amazon Web Services makes in a month.

OSS is basically exploiting a network effect that aggregates a lot of smaller contributions to a large one. Learning how to use a specific open-source software is the contribution the corporate free riders make.

The question is, how can the maintenance work be decentralized and distributed. Kubernetes changes the release manager for every version, so distributes the work over time. As long we rely on the single maintainer the results will not satisfy expectations. BTW a commercial company providing the support needs to solve the same problem.

The statement about Linux "destroying value" reminded me of Bastiat's famous satire, The Candlemaker's Petition [1]. Saying that Linux is a net negative value because it reduced demand for proprietary Unixes is like arguing that the sun is a net negative value, because it reduces demands for light bulbs.

[1] https://fee.org/articles/the-candlemakers-petition/

The way modern economists analyze this, any transaction creates value for both the buyer and the seller.

If owning a Thingie is worth $60 for me and $20 for you, we both gain $20 when I buy yours, and the world is $40 richer. You can think of all wealth as created by trade from this perspective.

In the Linux case, it destroyed value for proprietary UNIX vendors, and created value for millions of UNIX users.

Sun's motto was the network is the computer for a reason.

Cloud computing is basically timesharing rebranded.

Even containers were already a thing in big iron UNIX, e.g HP-UX vaults introduced in 1998 thereabouts.

Linux and open source removes the capacity for people to compete against it commercially. It takes air out of the room. Why would we pay you when we can get this for free?

free as in 0 cost is very difficult to compete against unless you are 100, 1000x times better.

There is the value that would have been provided (generated) in revenue to UNIX manufacturers had Linux not existed and the value that exists with Linux being free. These are two numbers.

One is a tangible financial number, the other is another tangible financial number from profits not needing to pay for a UNIX manufacturer.

It's difficult to say what would have happened, but you cannot deny that prices for corporate UNIX DID in fact exist, and they were not getting paid due to the availability of the free option.

Also, remember that the UNIX manufactuerers would have produced value too, so you need to include the value produced by UNIX versus the value produced by Linux minus licence costs.

If you're using the argument that if everything was free then there would be infinitely more value than things being commercial, then why isn't everything free, if that truly produces more value?

I would expect everything to be free if that was truly the better option.

>It's difficult to say what would have happened, but you cannot deny that prices for corporate UNIX DID in fact exist, and they were not getting paid due to the availability of the free option.

Yes, this is the problem of "the seen and the unseen" in economics. Prices for corporate Unix did exist, and they are not getting paid now. That is the seen. What is unseen is the value that was created by having a cheap (Linux isn't free --- you still need to pay people to set it up, patch it, provide support, etc) operating system that was available to anyone with an Internet connection. Would Google exist without Linux? Absolutely not. Would the iPod exist without Linux? No. What about all the value created by smartphones?

When balancing all of those against the profits of proprietary Unix vendors, I feel comfortable in saying that the existence of Linux is a giant net positive for the world, even if it did result in the proprietary Unix vendors going out of business.

Yes, I accept all the value that was generated by Linux is tangible and it's extreme.

I'm thinking from the principle of work: if you do some work for someone and it is not reimbursed, then it's obviously good for the people receiving your work but not necessarily the people working.

It's not the revenue from corporate UNIX that I'm thinking of, it's the being reimbursed for your work problem. The potential value produced by the non-free thing was destroyed.

Earning money is hard enough as it is, but today everyone expects everyone else to work for them for free, with nothing in return. If people stopped working on open source for free, would the value still be created?

To reiterate my point in my comment: if free things produce more value than commercial things, why isn't everything free?

> Would Google exist without Linux? Absolutely not.

What are you saying? That Google as it exists now would not exist? That's probably correct. That no one else would have created an equivalent search engine? That's much less obvious.

> Would the iPod exist without Linux? No.

Why do you need a FOSS OS to make a portable digital audio player with a hard drive?

> What about all the value created by smartphones?

Why do you need a FOSS OS to make cell phones with integrated computers?

Since when does iPod have anything to do with Linux?!?

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