Ingres Paints a Rosy Picture

If you have a good memory, you might recall a 2003 research paper from Goldman Sachs called “Fear the Penguin”....

On Open Enterprise blog.

More Analyst Cluelessness

Yesterday in "the other place" I was berating Gartner for its inability to understand the reality of open source, and now here's someone else from that strange world of "research" that simply doesn't understand the basics - in this case, digital music:

Music cannot just be 'for free' anymore than cars or houses can 'just be for free'. If people aren't paid, they don't make the product.

Sigh. Once more, then, children - and do pay attention at the back: music is digital, cars and houses are analogue. You can make copies of digital music for effectively zero cost (it exists, but it's too small to measure); you cannot easily make copies of cars or houses, and certainly not for vanishingly small cost.

As for the second part, ever heard of something called free software? Variously estimated as worth tens of billions of pounds, most of it is created by people who aren't paid. And even if they are, that's not a necessary pre-condition for its creation, simply a reflection of the health of the business ecosystem that has grown up around it. If there weren't people who got paid, free software would stil exist - as it did originally.

Similarly for Wikipedia: nobody gets paid, but look at the results. In just a few years it has succeeded in creating an unmatched respository of human knowledge, to the point where it is pretty widely regarded as the first place to look stuff up, despite its undeniable imperfections.

As with Gartner, this seems to be a case of analysts simply telling their clients what they want to hear, rather than what they need to know. Hence my general contempt for the breed, with a few honourable exceptions - RedMonk and the 451 Group spring to mind - that both know what they are talking about, and tell it as it is.

Gone for a Burton

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source Business Models

As readers of this blog may recall, in general I'm not a big fan of analysts, since they seem to offer very little other than a re-statement of what was blindingly obvious six months ago. But there are honourable exceptions.

Take, for example, this insightful presentation by Brent Williams, a self-styled "(temporarily) Independent Equity Research Analyst". It's unusual because it manages to combine a good understanding of the open source model and world with some grown-up economics. The result is well-worth reading.

I don't think Williams will be independent for long. (Via Once more unto the breach.)

Why Analysts Are a Waste of Skin, Part III

Because they admit it themselves. (Via TechDirt.)