O’Reilly: I would go further than the fact that the licenses don’t work. I would also point out that these applications are fundamentally different in that their interfaces are composed much more of data than they are of just software. My basic premise is, “Let’s stop thinking about licenses for a little bit. Let’s stop thinking that that’s the core of what matters about open source. And that’s not to say that they’re completely unimportant, it’s just that they can blind (us) to other things that are perhaps more important.
IDGNS: Like what?
O’Reilly: The commoditization of software. Open source is a contributor to the commoditization of software, but it’s not the only contributor. Open standards lead to commoditization. The Web browser is proprietary, but it’s a commodity.
Basically, we’re really seeing the development of something that’s analogous to hardware with the IBM (Corp.) PC. If you look at what happened to the hardware business, there was a transitional period where everybody tried to play by the old rules. It wasn’t until Dell (Computer Corp.) figured out that, no, the rules really are different, and the business levers are different, that we saw somebody figure out how to really leverage commodity hardware.
Ian Murdock, the guy who started Debian, and now runs a company called Progeny (Linux Systems Inc.) is right on track with this. Instead of seeing Linux as a product, he sees Linux as a set of commodity software components he can put together for different purposes.
IDGNS: Isn’t that how IBM sees Linux?
O’Reilly: Absolutely, but I would say that IBM’s current strategy with open source is very close to the Compaq (Computer Corp.) strategy in the early days of the PC. There were a whole bunch of vendors who took this commodity thing and tried to tweak it and improve it and add value in some way, and differentiate themselves that way. And so (with) WebSphere, for example, (IBM says) “OK, we’ll put together a bunch of open source components with a bunch of proprietary components and we’ll bundle it up in some way that everybody will say, “OK, I guess I’ve got to pay for it.” That’s a lot like Compaq’s strategy.
Somebody will come along eventually and put together the complete open source stack. If you look at the history of the PC, the Compaq strategy didn’t fail. It’s just that the Dell strategy was marginally better. The whole essence of the Dell approach was build to order, and I think we’re going to see the emergence of that business model for Linux.