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S01 E17
4 Oct 2021/01:39:25

Economics and Open Source

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: October 4th, 2021

Economics and Open Source
We’ve been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it’s not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for October 4th, 2021.
In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on October 4th included Edwin Peer, James Todd, Peter Corless, Matt Campbell, jasonbking, Simeon Miteff, Josh Clulow, Ian, Joe Thompson, Dan Cross, Tom Lyon, Tim Burnham, and vint serp. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)
Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them:
  • Mark Jones Lorenzo (2017) Endless Loop: The History of the BASIC Programming Language book
  • [@3:11](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=191) Tim’s excellent tweet
  • [@5:38](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=338) Growing up with BASIC
  • [@8:03](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=483) Braille ’n Speak PDA (intro video), BASIC programming
  • TI-BASIC language
  • [@10:39](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=639) Speaking program reading off system calls in real time 
    • snoop could output to /dev/audio
  • [@13:39](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=819) Joel Spolsky (2002) Strategy Letter V blog
    • Bryan’s (2004) The Economics of Software blog
    • Software “maintenance”
  • [@20:02](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=1202) Cathedral and the Bazaar, wiki
  • [@26:07](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=1567) Open source as something in the commercial best interest of a business 
  • [@30:29](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=1829) Document editing as a service. Services and open source
  • Richard Stallman on SaaS
  • [@33:34](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=2014) The Joel Test link
    • Joel’s (2007) Strategy Letter VI blog
    • “Everybody wants to be a platform”
  • [@38:58](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=2338) Joel’s take on Sun 
  • [@44:44](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=2684) Window toolkits, “cross platform”, write once run anywhere
  • “Write once, debug everywhere”
  • What’s the directory separator on MVS? or Stratos VOS?
  • [@51:40](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=3100) James’ experience working on Tomcat 
    • Joel’s (2002) Lord Palmerston on Programming blog
    • Graphics toolkits, Electron/Web vs Native
  • [@1:05:21](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=3921) “OpenSolaris downloads are potential buyers for the ZFS appliance”
  • [@1:06:17](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=3977) Jason Hoffman “The Sun does not shine on me” 
    • Strategy cannot make up for poor execution
    • Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz didn’t travel to meet customers
    • Demoing to a hostile audience
    • “Asteroid named Linux on a collision course” tweet
  • [@1:13:20](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=4400) Open-core, AWS services, monetizing open source 
    • “People will pay for a service”
    • Could Apple open source?
  • [@1:18:43](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=4723) Packaged solutions; giving mom a linux box. Free software: free for whom? 
    • Support relationships. People want support
  • [@1:22:05](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=4925) Why didn’t Sun embrace Linux? 
  • [@1:25:33](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=5133) “The writing was on the wall for Sun..” 
    • x86 price-performance
    • “Couldn’t you buy like 100 x86 computers for that price?”
    • RISC machine in-fighting, while Intel undercuts the market
  • [@1:31:01](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=5461) Josh’s work on frustrating hardware configuration
  • [@1:33:25](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=5605) Peter’s experience as a Sun customer 
    • Vertical scaling, but not so much horizontal scaling
    • Clusters of cheap commodity hardware outperforming big multiway boxes
    • Importance of open source for big internet companies
    • Traders used Sun workstations, for fast trading
  • [@1:38:39](https://youtu.be/JDd8xGSP9DA?t=5919) Oxide is bringing up their first server boards!
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We’d love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!