Monopolies restrict supply and offer their goods at prices above equilibrium price, the opportunity cost of the resources used to make the goods. I am writing a short paper about this since it is a piece of thinking I revisited while developing my thoughts on free software, but is not central to those thoughts. There remain those who still think that monopolistic domination of markets is a legitimate business goal and that public policy and regulation should not inhibit this “free” market tendency. A review of the theory of the firm shows that monopolies restrict supply, raise prices and make super-profits. …
Barcelona
I travelled to Barcelona with Mrs L. and on my return went up to London and travelled by Tube to deliver a presentation to Kable’s “Open Source in the Public Sector”, which reminded me of the weekend in Barcelona, both the prices and experience were better in Spain, although I didn’t travel on the Metro during a rush hour. As I landed, the day before, I received a message that Oracle had bid for Sun Microsystems, I also reflect on the helpful people at Heathrow. This post includes a slide show of my Barcelona pictures. …
Open Source, the price is right
I shall be speaking tomorrow on “Open Source, Free the right price!” and shall be posting my slides here. I have been busy reading up my undergraduate economics to remind me of what I learned then and check that it hasn’t changed. I borrowed Beggs, Fischer and Dornbusch’s “Economics”, since I got rid of my text books years ago and this seems to be the modern equivalent. The presentation covers some theory of the firm, poses community vs. a supply chain, IP Law and its impact on the software supply chain and finishes with some conclusions about free. …
Consumerism & Sedimentation in the IT industry
A think piece on the effect of consumerisation in the datacentre, it ends looking at consumer market share battles and asking why the ISPs care about brand; I suppose it’s because consumer sales organisations like Apple and Google, to preserve their brand value are dis-intermediating the Telcos and NEPs/system vendors from the supply chain. …
ICT 2008, Lyon
I got into the conference in time to hear the words of welcome from the Mayor of Lyon, and the opening panel discussion. The panel was chaired by Viviane Reding, …
HP folds Vodoo into its mainstream
It seems that HP are merging their Vodoo line of games PCs into the mainstream. I wonder if Dell will follow with Alienware. The human synergies aren’t so compelling. HP still knows how to design systems and possesses an engineering capability, this is not as obviously true at Dell, and the relative brand values are different.
ooOOOOo
Originally posted to my sun/oracle blog, republished here in July 2016. …
Revolutionary business, revolutionary I.T.
My colleague, Ambreesh Khanna, presented on how the growing use of micro-finance, is changing IT architectural requirements, and the risk management criteria. [There’s a number of references on google, or exalead, but the Guardian reported on how Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace prize 18 months ago.] …
FLOSS, innovation and competiveness in the EU
While serving on the NESSI sterring committee, I got hold of a copy of “Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies sector in the EU“. There is a press release at Cordis here. and a slideshare version here. …
What management values
This is a pointer to an article on my sun/oracle blog, originally called Geeks & Suits. A you can see, I have changed the title. I made a video with the Sun’s EMEA head of pre-sales together with a Chris Gerhard. I used my and Chris’s dress code as an excuse to segue onto the dichotomy of style, knowledge and power in modern business. The original article is not well written. I was able to quote a recent poll in Management Today and reviews of Nick Carr’s “IT doesn’t matter”, both suggesting that the tradition that management values …. itself has and will continue. This means that in a modern knowledge based business they will under value the geeks, those with the knowledge. …
Knowledge & Wealth
I picked up a free copy of the FT (Financial Times) yesterday. Its not normally a paper I read, but tucked in the middle was a book review of “Knowledge & the Wealth of Nations”, by David Warsh, the editor of Economic Principals. The book examines the development of economic theory in the light of the central contradiction in Adam Smith’s insights, that specialisation creates …