Notebook / Archives / "economy & business"

In a comment on Pyrasun 2.0 - The Spille Blog: Action Hippo Rangers!:

Ha! As the population of the world increases, the sum of its IQ remains a constant.

Great article on what seems now to be called ping-pong development, or “how to surf on technologies”.

In an article dealing with knowledge workers, Managing for Creativity by Richard Florida and Jim Goodnight (CEO of SAS Institute), on the Harvard Business Review, can be read:

Stimulate their minds. SAS operates on the belief that invigorating mental work leads to superior performance and, ultimately, better products. It does not try to bribe workers with stock options; it has never offered them. At SAS, the most fitting thanks for a job well done is an even more challenging project.

Okay dokay… So why not not paying them at all? It's stupid. Yes, you can create great products when you are starving, but on day to day, you need to be happy, and being happy necessitates minimal earnings. Stock options offer an opportunity to knowledge workers to become more aware and responsible for the financial future and fate of their company… Why are companies like SAS succeeding? Simple answer that stands front in the title of the article: creativity. So why shouldn't money go to the workforce of the company? Indeed just another stupid theory for the manager to keep all the money. Nevertheless, with a little more money, the ideas inside this article are meat for thought.

(Via Slashdot entry Managing for Creativity)

Via "OSNews" - “Enterprise and Server Software to Become Commodity”:
In "NewsForge: The Online Newspaper of Record for Linux and Open Source" - “There may never be another software billionaire”:

I think that the “restaurant business” is a good analogy for the “software business”. When you are creative and come with new ideas, really new ideas, you have your chance, a fighting chance at success. Nevertheless I know that there will always be opportunities in area close to software engineering. It's the reason why after I graduated from a computer science engineering school, I choosed to go on in the deep world of cognitive sciences: being wider, the next century might offer jobs for billionaires in this domain.

(On "Kuro5hin": “OpenXP: From Shareware to Free Software”):

Return of the living dead

OpenXP is a testimony to the open source model. An ancient DOS application which was already as good as dead was revived and became relevant again simply by being released as open source software. OpenXP now joins the fray of excellent mail/news software that is freely available (such as Ximian's Evolution, KDE's KMail, and the newsreader PAN). That makes you wonder how much other good old DOS software is out there that could be brought back to life.

This article mention the “gift economy”: “a gift economy means everything is free, but it also means that everyone - or almost everyone - must contribute”. A gift economy deals with synergy and reputation too, points which I think are problematic in open source software (partly). Maybe I will write more on my point of view someday.

Via "OSNews" - “Steve Jobs the Best Paid CEO in US”:

Steve Jobs (Apple Computer, Inc.) was paid more than 116.3 millions of dollars last year (according to Forbes). Steve is now the most well paid CEO in US. OSNews suggests, if we consider Apple's main income comes from Mac machines (743,000 sold out in 2002), it represents an average $155 “Jobs Tax” on each computer bought by a Mac user.
Although we must interpret those numbers correctly (the same thing happened in 2001, Fortune told that he got 872 million of dollars and Steve decided to lighten this affair), we can see that Jobs is going on cashing in spite of the the biggest tech down turn in probably 20 years.
But the question is now: is Steve Jobs overpaid? He kept Apple profitable, launched new computers (iMacs, iBooks), a wonderful new OS (Mac OS X) and so on... However, all these ideas were in the wind, yes... he only made them become real.
So, if Apple would probably have done better keeping its cash, paying more employees, reducing prices, investing in R&D... why this situation?
The answer might be somewhere else, as someone said in an OSNews comments:

The United States version of the Dalai Lama.

I mean he is *so* enlightened and really made computers enlightened too! Steve has devoted his entire life to bringing common computing to the common (wo)man to the joys of enlightenment through the most enlightened Operating System and colored plastic.

They say just being in the presence of Jobs brings one to enlightended states of oneness. Even his helicopter is enlightened!!

Nevertheless “Macs are NOT made by elves living in the Magic Kingdom”, so maybe Jobs could apply a modesty function to his income.

“If Unix development philosophy is small pieces loosely joined, Microsoft's philosophy is big chunks tighly coupled.” (Jason Kottke)

This sentence must be read as an echo of Small Pieces Loosely Joined { a unified theory of the web } from David Weinberger.
This is a clever remark ; however I think Microsoft's philosophy is more based on a Russian nesting dolls philosophy...

(From "kottke.org": “Larry Ellison in a dream world”)

Via Erik's Weblog (Monday, March 31, 2003 [@469]):
In "NewsForge: The Online Newspaper of Record for Linux and Open Source": “Open Source needs centralized PR, not development”:

I disagree with this idea that open-source projects must stop competing. Competition between developers leads to a creative process and, following darwinian laws, this process lets only the best projects survive.
I also disagree when the author is saying that freshmeat.net is “primarily useful to "inner circle" people who already use or work on open source software.” The search engine of freshmeat.net is very useful to find a project which can feet your needs, and only the knowledge of freshmeat.net's existence is necessary. In fact, it would be more useful to make a greater promotion of this wonderful “vital resource”!
And finaly, I do not think we need a “unified "Linux and open source public voice"”, IBM is already here (eveywhere?). The diffusion of the open-source spirit will result of the swarming penetration of open-source developers in companies and from education of individuals.

Via "OSNews" - “Is the GPL Completely Misunderstood?”:
Chris Davies wrote his point of view about the GPL in an editorial. Excerpt: “If you develop software that allows someone to make millions of dollars from your efforts, why should you not be entitled to some of that money?”. This sentence shall be linked with the growing numbers of interviews where we can read IBM flattering Linux open-source developers: the notoriety for the developers, the money for IBM...