Stanford Teaching MBAs How To Fight Open Source

[Claudio]

Reading this just made my blood boil.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid ... 22/2254228

[Patrick]

Elitist pricks!

[Claudio]

Agreed. The only good thing about this being made public is that it allows the open source community to anticipate the enemy. I can only wonder if this was a blunder on their part, or a way to "slip us a note", if you will.

[MattKingUSA]

"open source is having a serious effect on proprietary technology vendors."

That's a good thing. But those guys are bums, real bums.

[eddie]

Steve Ballmer: Stanford University Graduate School of Business. What a coincidence?

[Claudio]

Steve Ballmer: Stanford University Graduate School of Business. What a coincidence?

Ahhh....the plot thickens!

[MattKingUSA]

Steve Ballmer: Stanford University Graduate School of Business. What a coincidence?

Ahhh....the plot thickens!

That's what she said.

[dann]

Well, I really do not understand why it took so much time and money to come up with these obvious points. I mean really, it's nothing new compared to what is going on today. One point they did not make though, was make sure your product works and works well.

There is a consistent emphasis that Proprietary software cannot compete with Free or OpenSource Software because of the price. What is more indicative of this is not that they cannot compete because of the price, but that the price of their software and the support/service behind it is not worth the cost to the customer. Plain and simple.

Build a better product, provide the best support and service behind it and then you may have a leg up.

Using iTunes and the iPod as their example I think is a bit artificial. I think this because of other market effects that do not permit FOSS solutions to compete fairly in the marketplace. Specifically, I am speaking of DRM. Although given that Amazon offers drm free music it would be interesting to see Amarok or Rhythm box imcorporate the Amazon music service into their systems.

[Patrick]

Although given that Amazon offers drm free music it would be interesting to see Amarok or Rhythm box incorporate the Amazon music service into their systems.

I think it's only a matter of time for that to happen. Android will include the Amazon music store by default from what I've read. SUCK IT APPLE!!

[Claudio]

If Amazon were to allow integration of their service with something like RhythmBox or AmaroK (or any other player out there with some simple instructions), it would be tremendous. Those players already integrate wonderfully with Magnatune and other services like it. As it stands now, my iPod is still being used through iTunes on my Mac only because I do like the seamless integration that Apple offers. If this were to happen, it would push me over the edge to finally dump iTunes for good and move to something more open, and definitely something that I could possibly use across all platforms. Granted I would probably get a non-Apple player if this iPod were to die, but considering that it still works well I don't want to give it up willy-nilly. However, I don't want to be forever tied to Apple's iTunes lock-in either.

God willing this actually does happen.