Re: [tlug] Sony: Proprietary Jailkeeper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Baby Steps for Command Line Backups

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim  <jep200404@example.com> writes:

    Jim> Sony makes good stuff, but are known for being amongst the
    Jim> more proprietary manufacturers.

Japanese manufacturers have always been very proprietary, except when
they're catching up.  This is deeply embedded in Japanese
manufacturing culture, not just in Sony.  It has to do with
organization.  Fred Brooks said that an organization is doomed to
produce architectures that reflect the T/O, I think he was quoting but
I can't find it.

Japanese organizations are, well, organic.  "Kaizen" is not designed
or systematic.  Now, if you're way behind, it's easy to see what to
do: you focus on those taillights!  And everybody (except ol' Deru
Kugi-kun, and you know what happens to him!) can agree on that.  But
once they get to the front, everybody wants to do their own thing.  In
"American" organizations (which open source development tends to be an
extreme of), the most expert gets to design the whole thing, and
people either go along or fork.  But in "Japanese" organizations,
things tend to be much more haphazard.

There's a classic example happening right now in semiconductor
processing.  The top Japanese semiconductor manufacturers are worried
because they can't match the American companies for high end stuff
like CPUs or even ASICs, while they're getting their butts kicked on
cost by the Asian tigers in commodity markets like RAM.  The proposed
solution, that all the companies have hit on, is advanced process
control (called EMS or something like that).  But guess what?  Every
company has its own version, all are good---and that's the biggest
problem of all!  They're squabbling over whose proprietary system will
become the standard.  Not for the profits, mind you, but to be
"right".

And in the meantime, developing and maintaining three or four systems
is eating up R&D budgets in 10-oku-en units.

I don't think Japanese organizations are going to truly be ready to
produce open systems for a couple of decades.


-- 
School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.