LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 00:33:35 +0930

Re: commoditi[sz]ing?

On Wed, May 30, 2001 at 08:26:24PM +0930, Richard Russell wrote:
> 
> > That article has included the perplexing word "commodity" for
> > the zillionth time, and I still don't understand how
> > marketing people use this word.
> >
> > Could someone please explain it?
> 
> IANAM (I am not a marketer) but my interpretation is that it means that the
> item in question is becoming a commodity... which means that it is becoming
> like the "commodities" we see talked about on the news -- minerals, grains,
> meat, etc -- as opposed to a tailored product. ie, it's becoming somethign
> where there is little differentiation between suppliers. For eg, the
> difference in suppliers of wheat is small... it's mainly the ability to
> deliver and the quality of the grain that matters. There is nothing
> intrinsicly superior about Australian wheat over American... they all sell
> for the same price, etc... another eg is oil -- it's $USx per barrel no
> matter who supplies it, and one oil is pretty much the same as another.
> 
> I think that makes it clear...

Richard,

I'm very grateful to you for that.
Ever since the Halloween documents, I've been trying to figure it out.

The commoditised versus tailored axis fits every use I've
seen of this term.

And this explains why MS is so afraid of commoditised protocols
and software.

In fact, it also suggests that MS sees protocols as software.
I.e. they don't know the difference between a protocol and an
implementation, which every protocol engineer knows are two
completely different things.

So when MS people say that protocols are becoming commoditised,
that translates to "protocol implementation software is
becoming commoditised, because the protocols are open,
non-proprietary standards".

This convinces me more than ever that MS people just don't
understand the way the Internet and Unix worlds work.
In these worlds, standards, standardised interfaces,
standard file formats and open specificiations are all _good_.
That's because we want interoperability, portability etc.
But in the MS world view, these things are bad, because
they are the opposite to monopolisation. You can't be a
monopolist if interfaces are standardised.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

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