Here's an Article that ATTACKS Corel and "Open Source":
Saturday, September 25, 1999
Corel joins the free software cult
Recent rise is fuelled by conversion to 'open source' religion
Paul Kedrosky
National Post
It is called the Slashdot effect. When a Web site is mentioned (and linked to) by the popular Web-based news site, slashdot.org, that site is usually brought to its knees. Everyone from Forbes magazine to The New York Times has been a victim of the effect; a Slashdot link acts like an open sluice gate for over-eager surfers to bombard your site. The latest example? Corel Corp.
With Corel's share price now rebounding, you might think things are on the mend at the edge-of-disaster software company. They're not. Instead, Ottawa-based Corel is up to its usual tricks, with chairman Mike Cowpland bobbing, weaving and generally doing whatever he can to convince shareholders that the moribund software company is anything but. And he has found new fools to separate from their money at Slashdot.
What is Slashdot? The Web site is a tree house for techies, a place where enthusiasts fulminate all day, every day about all things computer-related. They're mostly interested in so-called "open source" software: in a nutshell, free software from anyone but Microsoft. You may have heard of Linux, the free, cryptic and over-hyped operating system, but that is just one example. The main idea is that Linux-like free software stands a better-than-even chance of unseating the evil followers of Bill Gates at Microsoft Corp.
In a nutshell, the Slashdot folks are self-appointed missionaries for the open source faith. And the open source missionary business is going strong. The wildly busy Slashdot site gets almost three-quarters of a million page views a day, an astonishing statistic for a site created and managed out of a suburban house by two under-25 Minnesotans, whose site was recently purchased for about $6-million (US).
The way the Slashdot effect usually works is this: An article appears on the site; it includes mention of another site; Slashdot-ers click in lemming fashion on the link; and the other site obligingly crashes from the flood of visitors. In Corel's case, however, it isn't a Web site crash that's been the main result -- it's the rise in Corel's share price, the beneficiary of the over-enthusiastic bunch at Slashdot. Corel has been tipped as an open source play, and Slashdot-ers are flooding into its shares the way they normally flood other companies' Web sites.
You can't overestimate how passionate open source advocates are in promoting their cause. Criticize open source, suggest that free software is a quirk of recent history, something having more to do with techies who have too much time on their hands than anything else, and you're likely to be not just attacked, but shouted down and generally volunteered for burning at the stake.
It is strange, true, and more than a little disturbing how any mildly interesting technology becomes the focus of this sort of religious cult. For example, advocates of technologies as obscure and banal as defunct personal computers (Apple Computer), palmtops (PalmPilot) and operating systems (Linux) waste little time creating a Supreme Being in whom they vest blind faith. In the case of Apple Computer, it's Steve Jobs; in the case of Linux, it's a pompous Finn named Linus Torvalds.
The deity of choice, through pronouncements, weaves a skein of articles of faith around a few central tenets. In the case of Apple, the tenet is that "we're different." (Apple advocates, with their constant refrain about being different, always remind me of a scene in Monty Python's film Life of Brian. In it, Brian, whom a crowd has confused with Jesus, stands at a window demanding the crowd disperse. He tells them they're all individuals and need to think for themselves. "Yes, we're all individuals," the crowd replies in unison.)
In the case of Linux, the central tenets are free software, good, Microsoft, bad. If followers renounce any of those articles of faith, perhaps by using a Microsoft product, they induce accusations of apostasy, over-the-top reactions akin to what might have been seen in mid-century Salem. And if outsiders refuse to become believers, they are either besieged in missionary fashion, or shunned in that annoying smarter-than-thou way that techies have perfected.
In Corel's case, the pitch is that the company is rolling out a family of open source products: an operating system, some tools, and on and on. But there are all sorts of questions. How do you make money on free? The usual open source refrain is MBA-style razor/razor-blade prattling: You give away the software, planning to make money on ancillary services. And what services are those? Uh, you know, services. Truth is, other than O'Reilly and Co., a maker of mid-priced manuals for all this free, undocumented software, examples of companies building profitable businesses around free are scant.
Will Corel be different? No way. The company's core products long ago stopped growing, and ever since then, shareholders have been treated to the sight of the attention-addled Mr. Cowpland casting about for quick fixes. First it was taking on Microsoft in office software, then it was network computers, and now it's Linux. Put bluntly, Mike Cowpland is no convert to the Linux faith. He is merely doing what he does best: saying whatever he can to convince shareholders, the credulous media, and in this case, Slashdot, to buy his latest litre of snake oil.
So, has Corel found open source religion? Sure it has, the same way that cynical death row inmates find God. Both see that the end is near, and in their desperation, will do or say anything to forestall the inevitable.
Paul Kedrosky is an assistant professor of business at the University of British Columbia. |
