The following will make almost no sense unless you've read about Mitch Kapor's venture, and then Don Park's reaction. Even then, you'll have to take your chances.

Destroying Value

To Don: I think I see where you're coming from. You don't want to see software given away like so many AOL CDs, because then people will associate it with worthlessness. (AOL is constantly trying to combat this by making their CDs appear more valuable, disguising them in DVD cases and biscuit tins.) You go on to say OSAF's path toward bundling free software "leads to the destruction of value".

Too late! The programs are already free. Every new computer and online service comes with mail software. (Outlook Express, Apple's Mail.app, and the free web-based services are among the many.) On the PIM side, Palm Desktop is free for download. These are what end users see, and you can't dismiss them as "poor-quality open source". Since you're talking about perception, note that even the expensive email programs look free; for most corporate users, the full Outlook client is preloaded before the computers hit their desks. (To go further, you could even say that for the corporate IT managers who actually buy Outlook, it comes as a kind of freebie with Microsoft's Select agreement, as part of the deal to get a better price on Office.)

So you can't complain that all of a sudden, OSAF will make good software passé through wide distribution. There's widespread free software already, before open source even enters the picture.

If your argument is that OSAF's program is going to be better than the ones already out there, that just sounds good to me. More competition. The others will be pressured to get better themselves.

Wishful Thinking

The three spells you would cast with your magic wand are well-chosen. They would probably do a good job of starting a pure market-driven economy in PIM software. People would research and buy the best program, leading to competition and innovation. Generally, this would help everyone by leading to better products and lower prices.

You oppose OSAF because it doesn't fit into this world, and thus prevents you from effectively using the wand (unless you also used it for a fourth, anti-OSAF, spell).

But you don't even have the magic wand. None of us do. The Justice Department had something close but passed up the opportunity to use it.

You're trying to protect a fantasy. It's been widely commented that no commercial company is going to try to launch and sell a full-fledged competitor to Outlook or Office. So there is no competitive market or "ecosystem" to destroy. The word ecosystem itself is meant to mislead; it implies something delicate. A true competitive market is all about companies undercutting and outdoing each other, shaking things up instead of protecting the status quo.

Making this kind of software free and bundling it ensconces it as a basic service. It increases the standard of living for everyone. Then the software market can move on to newer and better things. Would you be happy if, 50 years from now, the software market had not advanced, and companies were selling recognizable email clients and PIMs as system add-ons for $40? I'd prefer it if we found a way to treat the status quo as a baseline and focus our efforts on moving up from there.

Even given the continuing existence of free software, even given Mitch Kapor's $5 million jump-start (which would be nothing to a large software company), if a new company can make a much better product, then they can sell it. This is actually a good argument for a BSD-style license (which rumor has it OSAF will use). The new company could build just the new part, and their costs wouldn't include re-implementing everything that had come before.

Since every company only has a finite amount of resources that can be put into making a new product, a leg up to begin with could also improve software in general, both free and commercial. And allowing new competitors to enter the market more easily would actually help start a real market after all. That, of course, is a bit of open-source plus software-market utopia, but it's more realistic than magic-wand plus software-market utopia.

Taken on Eddy St. in Providence. (The small words on the sign say "Inquire Within".)

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