Is it Time to Open Source Windows? - <AUTHOR> http://starter.io/is-it-time-to-open-source-windows/

<comment><USER4> I'm the author of the article thanks to all of you for getting into the debate!

To radmuzom who says I have no clue about MSFT in the enterprise is mistaken. Actually I worked in enterprise IT as a Systems admin for many years, so i do have some clue that MSFT makes a lot of cash in the Enterprise. Obviously, Office, Sharepoint, Excel Services, SQL Server, former Azure etc.

I'm no Windows hater -- I clung to windows 7 as my team all went MacOSX and I always have been totally agnostic about this stuff, really just using the best tool for the job is my motto.

I'll tell you, the Windows File Explorer still kicks ass on the damned Finder. Don't get me started on Google. Anyway.

In fact if you check my resume, I was CEO of a startup that built one of the first Java Spreadsheet SDK for Excel by reverse engineering the Excel file format in Java and selling to the big enterprises that depend upon Excel. I did this over 12 years, and sold the company (Extentech) in 2012.

We also competed with Microsoft as an Open Source company by providing a great open source product called OpenXLS (sf.net/projects/openxls)

I am pretty much an Enterprise Java/Excel expert at the byte level, and know the business models around Enterprise software and open source as a weapon of choice in this area is something I've studied for years.

So aaanyway, not like my feelings are hurt, but I do know a thing or two about both Open Source, Microsoft, and Microsoft products for the enterprise and Consumer.

Maybe read author bios before assuming you can judge what the author knows.

Your point that your bank will never switch from windows in a million years or whatever is kind of ignorant because just the fact that Windows goes open source will not magically rip the OS from your phone or uninstall itself from your bank PCs.

That would be done exactly how?

And to those that say Microsoft cannot afford it... Of course it will come at a huge price -- but what else are they going to do with their cash to re- establish relevance as the PC fades away and their Mobile initiatives have sputtered mightily (to date...)

Sure there would be pain, like any major pivot. But the pain of being _forced_ to commoditize and give away Windows by Google Chrome and iOS and maybe someday Firefox Phone or Ubuntu will be greater -- it is pretty much happening as anyone with eyes can see.

To all those that say Windows revenue is untouchable: why did Windows 8 upgrade cost 1/5 of WIndows 7 upgrade? Was it because Microsoft _wanted_ to make less money??? No, it was price pressure from Apple and Google (and some lesser degree Linux.)

The thing folks here are missing is that in the innovation cycle and product lifecycle, Windows is at deaths door. Selling operating systems is an EOL business model. Operating Systems are totally commoditized at this point.

Anyway my basic ideas are that if you consider the _big picture_ of clinging to a shrinking userbase and sales models of the past -- MSFT would be smart to at least take the reigns of this shift and make a major _pivot_ away from current business model.

In other words, to all that say "Windows is XX% of total revenue Yadda we can _never_ change that math" \-- I say this is probably what Steve Ballmer has been saying all along as the ship has been slowly sinking.

It will be 20% of revenue, then 10%, then 0% -- because that will be the trajectory of Windows _market share_.

With open source, you become the ultimate competitor on Price -- and you go for Market Share -- the very thing that Windows is going to inevitably lose here in time.

As for "is it even possible"?

To answer your thoughtful questions: First off, MSFT R&D and programmers would keep their jobs and would still develop windows, in other words, the same level of "quality" (debatable) you get in Retail windows would be there PLUS you'd get code review, patches, and feature enhancements from the community.

Community managers are well able to corral these types of changes into a commercial product just ask Jono Bacon over at Ubuntu (yo Jono) ... anyway... the open source OS is well traveled path by now, and MSFT has well more than enough resources (engineering/marketing) to do it. THat said, maybe there is a lot of bad code in there they don't want public?? Who knows. Too many nasty inline comments about Steve Jobs perhaps?

To sukuriant, these objections to open source software from non-open source developers are pretty long in the tooth -- in fact many companies make money by "giving away razors and selling the blades" \-- open source business models are no different. But a company that is used to a huge monopolistic revenue stream and major margins on licensing revenue is simply not psychologically ready to grok this point.

An old non-tech saying that serves us well in this industry where copying and redistribution come at zero cost: "Give it away in order to Keep it."

-john

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I follow your argument. Do I have this right, you are arguing MS should open source Windows, because Windows is losing market share? If so there is a huge leap in logic I'm not getting here, the first being that making windows open source isn't a clear path to becoming a market leader again.

If you want to argue that MS should open source windows, then you should also describe possible business models for the new open source MS, otherwise its just wishful thinking.

At the end of the day, open source Windows is just a pipe dream unless you can provide some hard numbers that 1.) Giving up revenue for marketshare is a sound business decision (after all Apple could just give away OS X for free on _any_ machine and get more marketshare, but its not). and 2.) Enterprise companies actually care about having an open source Windows.

<comment><USER4> Pipe dream, perhaps. I don't think it's likely move from Redmond, that is for sure. Totally practical or a guaranteed success? I would not suggest that.

That said, a big move is in order. Not a product, not a new CEO, but a new mindset being delivered to the public.

Open sourcing a core product is a solid post-Ballmer, industry-mind-blowing sort of move that they totally need to rekindle the developer base for the mobile/cloud/wearable/etsy/kickstarter era. Acknowledge and embrace commoditization -- it is a modern "aikido" style strategy move. Use momentum to gain momentum and throw the opponent.

Fighting the inevitable is just ugly and once you lose face (confidence of developers aka R.I.M.) the downhill slide is just that much uglier. Keep in mind they have made some grievous PR moves by missing Tablets and mobile phone market (so far!) For example, Ballmer said iPhone was not going to gain marketshare: [http://allthingsd.com/20130824/beyond-monkey-boy-its-a- steve...](http://allthingsd.com/20130824/beyond-monkey-boy-its-a-steve- ballmer-quote-tacular/)

So it's maybe(?) time for some humility and "going back to the base" which in Microsoft's case probably means their developers.

Think about it... Microsoft spent unbelievable sums developing their army of Microsoft developers -- VARs, consultants, and IT developers who were all sold on the Microsoft stack because all of these software products are marketed and sold to be used as a developer platform and as a gateway to riches selling 3rd party apps to Windows users.

I think we all know where this story is heading. Many dedicated Windows devs are now eyeing Apple's appstore with envy or retooling their skills to use Google AppEngine or Linux on AWS or whatnot -- just because that is where the money is and it seems as if mobile is the end-user platform of the near future, and MSFT is not getting there with Mobile Windows yet.

They're not even exciting us by putting out a WinWatch or a WinGoggles to walk around with in some future utopian vision. Only now 5 years after iPhone do we see a great tablet and phone operating system from them.

So they don't own the high ground with developers they once held as the "one and only platform king" and they don't own our vision of the future as well.

In this way, specifically, I think this is how Windows is _different_ \-- if it went FOSS, this army of developers would instantly become twice as empowered. It's a real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take control of a situation that is heading somewhat downhill, before it becomes a desperation move, thus actually attracting said intelligent, self-interested open source developers.

Platforms _do_ benefit from Market Share growth due to the network effect, and vendor lockin of building apps on a platform (cost of switching is really high...) and the fact is that once market share is achieved that MSFT and the 3rd party devs (see above) can sell even _more_ of the proprietary stuff that only runs on Windows (a shrinking number at this point...)

When it matters, to replace Windows license revenue, simply "give away razors, sell blades" by replacing Windows license (contract) revenue with support (contract) revenue.

The support is provided anyway, of course you don't tell Fortune 500 CTO to pound sand if there's a bug.

So just change the game a bit. Make the same (or more) money. Go from being hated (UGH another windows upgrade) to loved (WHOO MSFT Open Sourced Windows! frees up budget for new Windows application development let's buy some SQL Server!)

And in practical terms, here's what the invoice lineitem looks like:

SKU-100 | $99/year | Enterprise-wide Guaranteed Bug Response 1 hour Turnaround / per user / annual subscription - Open Windows 2015

The open sourcing process will be somewhat expensive but can be done in tandem with Windows 9 release and really stir up some action on the Operating System front.

They cannot rest on laurels, Google will sooner or later get that magic Chrome OS up to snuff and it's open source people and if it gets market share they will clean up on services.

Google: Giving away (ChromeOS) selling (Google Online Services). It's not that revolutionary of an idea.

In the end, revenue and profits of Windows is maintained through support subscription and Enterprise add-ons.

There could be a lot of new revenue models that seriously benefit from a FOSS Windows like developer training fees and AppStore royalties, but the entire Windows developer world including Mobile becomes open and fresh, new and promising, and with less risk, more security, and a brighter mobile future.

It's just an idea... worth considering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate to throw cold water on an otherwise appealing idea, but this would make absolutely no business sense for Microsoft. Windows is Microsoft's core business. In fact, if anything, Ballmer's tenure was successful if only because of the fact that he grew Windows and Office profits by such a huge amount. If they start giving Windows away for free(which they would have to do in order to open source it, or give it away for free with support contracts) they would lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue immediately. Which would be tantamount to just saying 'Fuck it' and going home.

I love open source, and there are times when it does make financial sense for a business to open source something, but this is not one of those times.

The reason Google gets away with giving away Android for free is because it gives them a channel to promote their search business. The search bar on Android and Chrome, which always has and will always use Google by default, cultivates their core business, Google search. What third product beyond Windows and Office does giving away Windows for free serve? There is none.

<comment><USER7> FOSS doesn't have to be free. It's entirely possible to sell software and provide the source.

The real problem is that it's not clear _how_ to charge for FOSS.

<comment><USER8> Well, Red Hat somehow manages to make over $1B per year selling FOSS.

So, I'm not sure it's right to say that it's not clear how to charge for FOSS. You sell a branded, licensed, and supported bundle of it to businesses, while simultaneously collaborating with the community on a free, unsupported, differently branded version that moves more quickly and is more experimental.

Now, the question is, can you make as much as Microsoft makes on this kind of model? There are tons of people who are perfectly content to use unsupported, unlicensed versions of their software, in the form of CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora, or other distros which incorporate a lot of software that Red Hat primarily funds development on. Likewise, there would probably be a lot of people who figured it would be cheaper to stop licensing Windows, if possible, and deal with support issues themselves (or via other "distros" of Windows which were supported but cheaper or free).

<comment><USER9> Couple of things you have wrong here:

1\. RedHat make pretty much most of their money from support, training/cert and consultancy services, not _selling_ F/OSS.

2\. Your comment:

"There are tons of people who are perfectly content to use unsupported, unlicensed versions of their software, in the form of CentOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora"

RHEL is licensed under the GPL, they can't really change that and they can't not release the source, so CentOS, SL, Fedora (and Oracle Linux) are not actually unlicensed, they're GPL licensed distros from the RH upstream. Yes they may be unsupported, but they're certainly not "unlicensed" (or illegal/rip-offs if that's what you meant by unlicensed).

RedHat have no choice but to make the RHEL source available. You also forget that the Fedora folks feed back into RHEL a lot of cutting edge stuff that's stable.

<comment><USER8> 1\. That's actually not true; I even checked before posting. Check out their annual report, page 43: [http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/RHAT/2659386793x0x581...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/RHAT/2659386793x0x581760/6FEDF811-091A-49BB-8EB2-83C31DC561AB/Annual_Report_062512_Final_Bookmarked.pdf)

(numbers are in thousands)

> Subscriptions ... $ 965,575 > Training and services ... 167,528

They do, in fact, make most of their money from subscriptions (yes, _selling_ FOSS), not training and services.

2\. I apologize, I was unclear. I was referring to licenses that bore revenue, not all licenses. You need to buy a license to run RHEL, even if you can run all of the same actual software (just without the branding) in the form of CentOS or other distros. I didn't really mean "unlicensed", since obviously all of the software is under the GPL or other free software licenses, I meant "without buying a license from Red Hat". I was not trying to imply people were ripping off Red Hat, just that they aren't paying for it.

And no, I don't forget that Fedora feeds back into Red Hat. I explicitly listed Fedora as part of the strategy for how to make money selling free software; you sell a supported, branded, stable version to corporations, and release a free, frequently updated, bleeding edge for the community. That second part is important because it helps drive innovation, and allows you to take advantage of collaboration from outside contributors, while still deriving revenue from your enterprise distro.

I'm just not sure if Microsoft could continue to make the kind of money that they do, if they chose to go a Red Hat route, as there would be a large number of people who would choose to run free-as-in-beer distros (the Windows equivalent of CentOS or Fedora) rather than a paid version of Windows. Red Hat shows that it is possible to get people to buy paid licenses for free software; but I don't know if there are enough people for that to be a strategically viable move for Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It will never happen.

Windows is so dominant in the OS marketplace that the toughest competition Microsoft faces when trying to sell a new version of Windows isn't a competing product; it's _old versions of Windows._ Windows 95 had to compete with Win 3.x. Windows XP had to compete with Win95/98\. Windows 7 had to compete with XP. And so on.

The biggest lever they have to make customers do the upgrade is that Windows is closed source. That means the only place you can get support for it is from Microsoft. So if Microsoft says "there will be no support for Windows XP after 2014," that means exactly what it says -- either upgrade by then, or learn to live on your own in the wilderness, like some kind of IT mountain man.

If Microsoft open-sourced Windows it would allow other companies to pick up and support old versions of the software, independent of MS' product lifecycle. And that would make it possible for customers to sit on old versions effectively forever. Which would make selling _new_ versions extremely difficult.

<comment><USER11> Ugh... could you imagine if someone was able to maintain Windows XP security updates on their own? The corporate world would never move on! Developers would be supporting XP and IE8 for an eternity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's written by a author who has very little clue that Microsoft's primary customers are large enterprises, and not the "average consumer".

"Users have embraced the productivity of simple and mobile… And there's no going back!" \- Does this even make sense? I work for a large bank with around 50,000 employees - and it is absolutely essential that we are provided with an operating system which is familiar, supported, stable and able to run the thousands of applications already being used internally. The company will never ever - at least in the next 50 to 100 years - switch from Windows simply because it does not make any business sense to do so and will come at an immense cost to shareholders.

And let me add that I use a Windows 8 mobile, and it is one of the finest mobile operating system I have ever used. Apps run in 512MB RAM as smoothly as my wife's Android Sony Xperia which is almost four times as costly (and four times or more as powerful). I have never been satisfied more with an OS.

<comment><USER10> In my experience enterprise customers tend (after a time lag of several years) to get dragged kicking and screaming into using whatever their employees use at home.

Enterprise IT said time-shared mainframes were just fine. Employees bought their own PCs and liked them. Eventually enterprise IT was buying PCs.

Enterprise IT said text-mode interfaces were just fine. Employees bought their own GUI systems and liked them. Eventually enterprise IT was buying GUI systems.

Enterprise IT said desk phones were just fine for everyone (except top execs, of course). Employees bought their own cell phones and liked them. Eventually enterprise IT was buying cell phones.

Enterprise IT said BlackBerries were just fine for everyone. Employees bought their own iPhones and liked them. Eventually enterprise IT was buying iPhones.

Etc., etc., etc.

Of course, the larger the enterprise the longer the time lag. But it's rare to see a business that planted its flag on "X is just fine" not eventually hauling that flag down.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but unlike most __programmers __, people (restricted to bank employees in my original example)

1\. Love windows, even though they may use an Iphone.

2\. Find it very productive to get work done. That is because it IS a brilliant operating system for all categories of users (including programmers).

3\. Have jobs (a lot of them) because of Microsoft Office. As of today, there is simply no alternative - anyone who claims otherwise is lying or has an ulterior motive. And no one cares that you can write Python macros in OpenOffice/LibreOffice.

<comment><USER10> And 25 years ago they had those jobs because of Lotus 1-2-3. Until they started demanding Office.

And 35 years ago they had those jobs because of VisiCalc. Until they started demanding 1-2-3.

Etc.

50-100 years is a _long_ time, is my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If Windows was open-sourced, it would end up even more of a mess for the average person. OEM's would customise and skin every last bit of it. It would become a monster.

<comment><USER14> Well, from the point of view of the user it is happening now. Just check all the crapware that comes "by default" with any Windows machine (Dell, I'm looking at you).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article author here again:

Quick point: I never said it was _likely_ \-- my feeling is MSFT will take the typical "innovators dilemma" track to irrelevance and disruption because of the lack of agility and ability to make this type of big move.

But as for practicality another quick point: just becuase it is open source doesn't mean MSFT can't use a custom license that avoids 90% of these objections. It could be strict GPL and really nobody would want to fork that damned thing so it would likely not splinter much and with the awesome developer community of Windows devs that could be immediately brought "in the inner circle" of code, I think the Open Windows FOSS community could be second to none.

And so you could see huge amount of security patches and other bugfixes being corralled into the codebase which would improve quality and big banks etc. could fix their own bugs or build custom features at will.

A standards body could even give a huge degree of assurance to Enterprise IT that MSFT wont consumerize or unilaterally change license terms from year to next, thus reducing risk.

Those that doubt open source business models should realize that Google and Amazon AWS are massively open source (and without that "give it away" attitude of their core offering would be nowhere) and derive huge benefit from the contributions of the FOSS community.

This is real bottom line value folks.

</comment><comment><USER15> Um, the Windows division of MSFT brought in $19.2B of their $78B in total revenue. I'm no expert, but giving up 25% of your revenue is no way to run a company.

<comment><USER16> You could have said the same about Amazon before they launched Kindle

<comment><USER12> Amazon's core business is retail, not technology. I am excluding AWS, Mechanical Turk, etc. in this discussion. So selling the Kindle at a loss makes sense to them given that it will used by consumers to purchase retail goods (books, movies, music, etc. in the case of Kindle). Microsoft's core business is Windows - what would they sell if they give it away for free? Tetris?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I _suspect_ that Windows is full of cross-licensed patents, or licensed code, which would make open-sourcing it fairly challenging.

It would be super cool if it ever happened though.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm with everyone else that as written the proposal makes no sense, but there may be big portions of Windows, including probably almost all of the kernel, as well as much of pre-XP versions of Windows, that can be released as open source without much revenue impact. Same probably goes for portions of .NET, Office, etc. In fact .NET and Visual Studio probably make the most sense. They should strive to move .NET closer to where Oracle is with Java/JVM.

The problem with Microsoft's platform strategy at this point is that they control too much of everything, which means third parties cannot meaningfully compete and contribute to the ecosystem, which of course leads to a vicious cycle. There's a middle path somewhere that allows Microsoft to open-source enough that their open-source stack is competitive, but not such that it cannibalizes their existing businesses.

<comment><USER19> In fact, people has proposed releasing XP as open source so that security updates can continue to be produced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't really matter whether it is time or not since it is never going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a practical matter this would most likely be a total non-starter - <USER3> all that licensing revenue in one fell swoop would probably not be palatable to shareholders.

As a thought experiment, however, it is plenty enticing.

Vulnerabilities would be easier to find (at least at the outset), but with such a huge and slow-moving install base would probably be more serious.

I would imagine "translation" projects such as WINE and Mono would either massively accelerate development, or drastically drop off depending on how many *nix users would move to the new platform.

<comment><USER22> > As a practical matter this would most likely be a total non-starter - <USER3> > all that licensing revenue in one fell swoop would probably not be palatable > to shareholders.

Recasting licensing charges to large OEMs as "brand certification" charges that are required to use the Windows trademark, and incorporating support pricing schemes that encourage those who want to purchase support to also purchase certified Windows from Microsoft or with hardware from brand- certified OEMs is probably pretty straightforward, and probably preserves a big chunk of the licensing revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> chadwickthebold -- just because it's open source does not mean they wouldn't charge businesses and enterprises equivalent support fees which is basically what the Enterprises are paying for. Oh wait you think they want Windows for the Tile-UI? No it's the supported, mission critical apps.

Also they make more money if they retain and grow market share through open sourcing this commoditized platform code by selling more Office, Sharepoint, etc. to the even more enthusiastic users and developers that the FOSS move would likely provide.

Opening the code does nothing to revenue if they choose to sell the same basic Enterprise packages but remove the per-seat Windows license revenue (only) and replace it with "per seat" tech support and priority bug fixing.

How is it that something so abstract as a software license sale can become like the rock of gibralter in people's minds?

OMG this completely invented human abstraction can _never_ be changed???

Ballmeresque thinking, in my opinion.

I've spent more time over the years explaining basic "give away razor sell the blade" Open Source business models to really smart people. Still baffles me that software licensing is the only thing people seem to grok.

Oh one thing never mentioned: this would finally bring an end to Windows piracy...

</comment><comment><USER23> Developers and engineers are attracted to open source because it is well documented, because most open source projects share a common logic (derived from UNIX), because they know it.

An open source version of Windows wouldn't be attractive for open source — free software developers.

It would be nice though if it happened.

EDIT: The author of the article seems to treat open source as a buzz keyword. His writing is quite offending.

<comment><USER4> Sorry i offended! What was offensive to you? Actually I built and sold an open source Java Spreadsheet SDK so I'm 'in the zone' with MSFT product and FOSS business models. I do not see FOSS as a buzzwordm in fact, in this context as a business model strategy to revive a faltering product/brand.

I agree the code might not be attractive, but what about all of the Windows developers that would suddenly have the same benefits that Linux devs have had over the years. I think the current free software devs may not be into it. But a whole new crop of FOSS advocates might take up the Open Windows cause.

<comment><USER4> also, sadly, FOSS as a 'buzz keyword' is pretty out of fashion so i wasn't being controversial for its own sake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Forgive me if I'm missing something -- but how does open sourcing windows mean giving it away for free? They can still sell an open source OS, right?

If the argument is that it would be too easy to steal; well, it's already beyond trivial to pirate windows.

<comment><USER25> If it were open source it would be legal to copy it. Large corporations and OEMs that wouldn't consider pirating Windows would be happy to switch to using it for free.

<comment><USER24> Surely that depends on the license though? It would be possible to license open-source windows in such a way that corporations and OEMs couldn't distribute it without paying a license fee.

<comment><USER26> Such a license would not be an open-source license.

<comment><USER24> What? Surely this falls under the free-as-in-beer vs free-as-in-speech distinction? What about RHEL? -- that operates on a paid open-source model.

<comment><USER26> And there's multiple free version of RH that are basically identical other than the branding and support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe.

They should definitely open source .net now though. They aren't showing it the love it deserves

<comment><USER27> Really? Are you kidding? .NET as it stands, is way ahead of other virtual- machine environments. What are you basing this on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nokia's Symbian was open source when it had more smartphone market share than ios and android combined. Open sourcing alone isn't going to help Microsoft gain traction in the mobile world any more than it did for Symbian.

<comment><USER4> good point. but I think windows and symbian are qualitatively different.

windows is such a massive install base and such 'critical infrastructure' that unlikely it would vanish like Symbian -- the cost of switching as many on this thread have pointed out is high and nobody is suggesting Windows be dumped for XYZ so...

it's the dominance of windows that means they still have a _good strong position_ to do this and control the process.

because of its still dominant position it would only likely increase market share thus relevance, thus developer interest in a virtuous cycle.

cannibalize your products before someone else does... a good rule to follow in this biz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Though I'd love to see this happen, it never will. The reason is that MSFT is driven and run not by engineers and programmers but by business people that would see this as a losing situation because every copy of Windows that they don't sell isn't $ in the MSFTs bank account.

In other words, why would they give away something that they could sell. They can sell the OS as well as apps for the OS, it's a winning business model for them.

Prime example, [http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/windows-7-microsoft- profits...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/windows-7-microsoft- profits-34-5/)

<comment><USER30> Just a question, though I do work for MSFT as a disclosure:

What does being an engineer/programmer have to do with selling something that I could give away?

Do only business majors have garage sales instead of giving everything of theirs to Goodwill? Do only business majors create pies that they sell, rather than give away? What about authors and their works? Do only the business majors of that profession sell their things, rather than give them away for free on internet forums?

<comment><USER4> Hi Sukuriant,

As a developer, I share the concern that one's work has value and should not be 'given away'. But the reality is our work is a commodity, and a business can use and sell commodities in the most profitable competitive way.

So this just means moving pieces around on the table a bit. You can still make money, and in fact save money and make more money by focusing on the true alignment with your customer that Microsoft is veering away from.

From what I know of the Enterprise, new versions of Windows are a huge risk and expense, hardly the big picture alignment with the customer that a company should have.

Does the Enterprise customer want to deal with a desktop Windows 8 rollout?

Instead, borrow from the SaaS playbook by focusing on support and continuous releases instead of gigantic monolithic product releases that upend the universe and cause CTOs migraines around the globe.

To replace Windows license revenue, simply "give away razors, sell blades" by replacing Windows license (contract) revenue with support (contract) revenue. The support is provided anyway, of course you don't tell Fortune 500 CTO to pound sand if there's a bug.

So just change the game a bit. Make the same (or more) money. Go from being hated (UGH another windows upgrade) to loved (WHOO MSFT Open Sourced Windows! frees up budget for new Windows application development let's buy some SQL Server!)

And in practical terms, here's what the invoice lineitem looks like (share with your boss??!?!)

SKU-100 | $99/year | Enterprise-wide Guaranteed Bug Response 1 hour Turnaround / per user / annual subscription - Open Windows 2015

<comment><USER30> Microsoft's corporate strategy is well outside of my control or understanding. I only mentioned being a Microsoft employee because in conversations about my company, I have to tell people that I work for them. That said, I was speaking in the general sense, not in the specific sense of Microsoft

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yeah, serious misunderstanding of the Windows market here. They absolutely kill enterprise. And they do it selling the platform and the software that runs on it, too.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think most likely MS openly supported, APL based .NET system would do far more magic for now. Next should be Windows Mobile.

</comment><comment><USER33> What is superior in windows explorer? Is that sarcasm?

<comment><USER4> Sarcasm, actually no, I am sure Windows File Explorer few advocates in the wild.

Personally, I really prefer the Windows File Explorer over Finder or Gnome/KDE with its file system integration with apps (right-click open with), easier more powerful search capability, very easy cut/paste from right+click as well which in OSX is only "copy" \-- so to "move" a file requires a copy, go find the new location, paste, then go delete old location.

Not really debate-worthy just personal opinion. Do you know a better way to cut/paste files in Finder? I'm eager as I'm on a mac (and otherwise love it)</comment></comment>


Is the need for uploading to sites like GitHub dampening the quality of code? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Computer-Programming/Is-the-need-for-credibility-by-uploading-to-sites-like-GitHub-dampening-the-quality-of-innovative-code

<comment><USER2> Why do I have to sign in with Facebook to see the page? Do you have an alternate link?</comment>


Rid yourself of long email threads with micromobs - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/03/01/micromobs/

<comment><AUTHOR> It turns out to be a pretty complicated problem. Every single email client and device formats email forwards differently. The technical challenge is to take the input from a fwd'd thread, account for which client it's coming from and then reformat it in a way that makes sense. Not to mention the fact that the text towards the bottom of a forwarded thread (the earliest messages) is messy and can be difficult to comprehend. Parsing garbage and turning it into something useful is a hell of a challenge.

<comment><USER2> It actually does look kinda interesting. But what's with all the spambot comments?

<comment><USER3> I don't think they're bots. I recognize about half the names, and though they may not be regular HN contributors, they're real people (some of 'em, at least).

<comment><USER4> Definitely some spam: the trevania, salimmadjd and gavrielh accounts were created less than 30 minutes ago. Billshander has had an account for some time, but only posted in this and one other Micromobs thread, both less than 30 minutes ago.

It's distasteful.

<comment><USER5> I think it's worth differentiating between spam accounts, and new accounts. They are not the same thing.

I'm sure that a lot of the folks on HN are here because someone in a startup emailed the other folks they know in startups and said "check out my thread on HN and give me a vote". That's how I first found out about it and YC.

Spam might be distasteful, but I don't think there is anything distasteful about someone from a startup introducing other startup founders to the site and asking them to get involved. It might take new members of the community a while to learn the rules, but there is no innate correlation between being new and being a spammer. And HN isn't normally an elitist place where length of tenure implies respectability. I don't think anyone wants to see it turn into the tech community equivalent of a country club.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Next challenge for Micromobs is to import HN thread to a mob. #Hackermob

</comment><comment><USER7> love the service.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great service!

</comment><comment><USER9> micromobs is a useful way to move email threads to a discussion forum.

</comment><comment><USER10> Vanquishing the "reply all" button. Go micromobs!

<comment><USER11> Amen!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Micromobs is great - definitely helps keep my email sane!

</comment><comment><USER13> Killer application - it's a real game changer.

</comment><comment><USER14> Love the service, I think this will be the tipping point year for micromobs

</comment><comment><USER15> Really clever! I guess the challenge would be keeping users in the group rather than reverting back to email the next time a big discussion is about to start. Are there tools to keep users updated? Like a daily digest maybe?

</comment><comment><USER16> I have been using micromobs and like their service. It is a crowded space, so hope they can iterate on functionality quickly enough to find their sweet spot</comment>


Hacker News Disappoints - <AUTHOR> http://www.onebigfluke.com/2012/07/hacker-news-disappoints.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Originally titled after my Tweet:

"Hacker News has gone to shit; help me find a good editor for a replacement"

<https://twitter.com/haxor/status/225088232721879040>

Just another example of how things are done around here

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha.. They've changed the title to this post 3 times. Good going, guys!

Edit: Anyways, if you want to repurpose this thread for constructive criticism that's fine. I'd rather this site fixed things instead of searching for a replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Subjective. All the things you marked as not interesting were actually quite interesting to me.

Sure, maybe the content has changed a bit from being completely startup centric, to more generic lifestyle subjects. But the quality is still quite high in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to read about general lifestyle why aren't you just reading GQ? There's nothing wrong with high quality posts about that. But "Hacker News" isn't the right venue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In general I agree with the OP...somewhat. Over the last few months or maybe a year or so, I feel an increase in less interesting articles. Maybe there are just too many people and submitters now on HN and its getting diluted. (All just my opinion of course)</comment>


Analyze Github commits to know which convention is popular - <AUTHOR> http://sideeffect.kr/popularconvention/

<comment><USER2> Maybe this is intended to be obvious, but it is not to me. Is this actually counting the number of _commits_ that show a particular convention, or is it showing the number of _occurrences_ of said convention?

The web site states "number of commits" (without really discussing methodology) which is, frankly, not at all interesting to me. Is a commit of 100,000 LOC weighted equally to a commit of one LOC? Are these projects internally consistent or no? Do projects eventually _become_ internally consistent?

<comment><USER3> Number of occurrences, by the looks of it. Each match (per line) increments its counter by one.

[https://github.com/outsideris/popularconvention/blob/master/...](https://github.com/outsideris/popularconvention/blob/master/src/parser/python- parser.coffee)

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I was wondering the same thing. I feel much better knowing that 93% of lines are kept to 80 characters than 93% of programmers never use more than 80.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The site seems to stop after having one of the language icons selected. There's a "Loading..." graphic, then it disappears, then nothing. Is anyone experiencing the same issue?

<comment><USER5> Perhaps some kind soul can put up screenshots of whatever should be seen? (At least for Python & Javascript, which is what I'm interested in.)

<comment><USER5> I can finally see the charts. Whoever made the necessary tweak, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the methodology for the 'Line length is over 80 characters' ? A lot of lines of code have less than 80 characters, no matter what the conventions are. What would be interesting is the percentage of files that have not a single line with more than 80 characters and the other files. It would be more obvious to see who doesn't care about 80 characters.

<comment><USER3> For python, it seems to consider tabs as 4 spaces and take the character count of the line. [https://github.com/outsideris/popularconvention/blob/master/...](https://github.com/outsideris/popularconvention/blob/master/src/parser/python- parser.coffee)

It seems to only look at commits, (so it doesn't consider the entire file, though it's certainly possible to do)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice charts. I'd be curious about number of spaces, particularly for JS: 2 spaces seems more common in the Node community, but I see a lot of 4 as well. Perhaps it has to do with whether the author is more comfortable with Ruby (usually 2) or Python (4).

My current company goes against the grain by using snake_case instead of camelCase in JavaScript code. It weirded me out at first, but considering our backend is Python, it's nice not to switch conventions.

<comment><USER8> I've come to really enjoy using the conventions of the language to keep things clear when writing css-rules that are intermixed with javaScriptVariables talking to a ruby_backend emitting jsonEncodedObjects.

Keeping things js-named helps keep my mind in the path of JavaScript conventions instead of Ruby ones in situations like array_of_things.pop and arrayOfThings.pop()

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I completely agree. It starts to get a bit confusing when you have a BackEndInCSharp that goes through a javaWebServer before reaching iOS. We tend to have a hard time being consistent once we get to iOS, but that's due also to the fact that we've just merged three different teams (each without a specific standard...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool idea. I would love to see more languages and conventions added. I will say the background image at the top (the code with the focus explosion effect) gives me a headache though. The site looks better without the image.

</comment><comment><USER11> Python's PEP8 recommends underscores for functions, method names and instance vars, but the stats are showing a break down of camelCase with and without first capital letter (which shouldn't really be relevant).

<comment><USER12> Are you sure you are looking at the Python page? I don't see a category for variable names.

<comment><USER13> Clicking on Python returns the Scala page here. I cannot get to the Python page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's wrong for Java. "final" is not what is usually called a constant there, "static final" is. Also, who ever uses special prefixes for statics?!

</comment><comment><USER15> I think there is a problem with _" Type of Parameters Definition"_ for Javascript.

      Followed by space
        def add(a:Int, b:Int) = a + b
      Using space in before/after
        def add(a:Int, b:Int) = a + b
      No space
        def add(a:Int, b:Int) = a + b

I'm not seeing any difference between those three.

<comment><USER8> Looks like that was fixed in [https://github.com/outsideris/popularconvention/commit/fc731...](https://github.com/outsideris/popularconvention/commit/fc731892f63a961bfb3c7b1544a170b87f765de3) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel bad for tab-lovers. A crushing defeat :)

<comment><USER17> The problem is that a lot of "tab-lovers" mean "pressing tab" which, in most editors will insert spaces.

[http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs-spaces.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/tabs-vs- spaces.html)

<comment><USER15> I think most tab lovers mean "tabs to indent, spaces to align". The 'unholy third option' here: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/04/death-to-the- space-...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/04/death-to-the-space- infidels.html)

Delightfully this is what Go has settled on.

 _(Who actually presses their tab key anymore? Even vim does that for you.)_

<comment><USER18> It's not that bad in go though because you should just run gofmt every time you save. It's bad when you have to do it by hand.

<comment><USER15> I don't see why it should be bad to do by hand. I have never experienced any difficulties with this style when using any other language in Vim.

<comment><USER18> Many people do not enjoy the rote task of administering whitespace by hand, and consider it a problem better left to computers. I'm sure there were some people who thought maintain ledgers was no problem before spreadsheets. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, who thought that auto-indenting editors were a pointless luxury. That doesn't make your opinion wrong, but I think you'll find it's rare in a few years.

<comment><USER15> It is a task perfectly suited for automation though... I'm not sure why you think it should be any harder to automate than any other style. Find your base indentation level, insert the proper number of tabs. Find your beautification alignment level (already done by most autoindenters. Any autointender that doesn't do this is leaving this task to the user anyway regardless of the scheme being used...), insert the proper number of spaces.

[http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_space...](http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_with_tabs,_align_with_spaces)

[http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SmartTabs)

Intellij also has this capability, and likely other editors as well.

I prefer to do it by hand, but that is nothing but my personal preference. It has nothing to do with the scheme itself. If someone is opposed to doing things by hand, they don't need to do this by hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very cool idea, always interesting to see this kind of data.

My only feedback would be to put the language names as well as logos. I had no idea what those last two languages were, and waiting for the hover title text is a bit tedious (not to mention some people may not realise you can do that)

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting, though at no point does the site actually say what language it's analyzing. I recognize the javascript and java icons, and I'm guessing that since the third one is a snake, it's python, but I have no idea what the last one is.

<comment><USER21> It's Scala. The icons have a title attribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only one who couldn't recognize the Scala logo till I saw the HTML source?

<comment><USER23> Mystery meat navigation! I couldn't identify Python or Scala.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good idea. Needs more conventions. And more languages of course.

<comment><USER25> Agreed, very cool idea. Would love to see it expanded upon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If your favorite language isn't here, another trick you could use is adding 'site:github.com' to your Google searches.

</comment><comment><USER27> There is a typo, for Java the last item says "Use special prefix fot staticvar"

</comment><comment><USER28> strikes me as odd it doesn't offer ruby as a choice when Github started life and became popular catering to Ruby/Rails devs

</comment><comment><USER29> The stats are the same for Scala and Python ...

<comment><USER30> And for JS. Whoops :P</comment></comment>


Code Is Fashion: Current Programming Trends - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ericflo/code-is-fashion-3d5583e8a6f8

<comment><USER2> Strong typing, declarative code, containerization, microservices, reactive systems...trendy?

I've been doing all that in Java for 20 years. Break out the flannel and turn on the Oasis CD... The dream of the 90's lives on in this Portland coder's trendy world!

<comment><AUTHOR> This time there's less XML</comment></comment>


Ask HN: CMS for mostly static brochure-ware style small business websites?  - <AUTHOR> Looking for recommendations for content management systems for mostly static brochure-ware style small business websites that we freelancers are so often asked to do.
Features needed:
* Easy editing by people comfortable in word processors (the client)
* Easy to make use of an HTML template (standard header, content area footer, single CSS file, etc.)
Don't need:
* A blog or news section
* A forum, a guestbook, comments on pages, social media add-ins
* Abstractions for pages, movable content modules, etc
Given enough time and energy I could roll my own, but I'm sure there are packages out there already. I should be able to host Ruby/Rails or PHP apps easily enough.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Wordpress.

It's a startlingly competent CMS these days, and for "easy editing" it probably can't be beat - it's well built from an editors backend perspective, and there's no end of more or less useful tutorials about using it(and nearly everyone knows someone who's used wordpress before).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for responding.

I've tried Wordpress for this purpose in the past, and just took a look at it again, but since I don't need, and in fact don't want a blog or comments, these are just extra complexity that need disabled. In the several minutes I looked, I could not even find a global comments disable option. (Unless this is different for Wordpress.com hosted blogs.)

Also, Wordpress has such a bad reputation for security that I would be hesitant to use it even if it offered the best in page organization and editing. This could just be a consequence of it being the biggest target, but its not something I want to deal with.

<comment><USER2> I hear you, but if your experience is with pre version 3 intallations of Wordpress, I will urge you to try again - they started getting a lotof stuff right in the 2.8-2.9 timeframe, and the version 3+ releases are, as I mentioned, really quite good little CMSes.

Have a look at <http://www.tokens.com.au/> for example.

On the security reputation front, yeah, Wordpress does have a somewhat deserved bad rep, but the only times I (or any of our customers) have been bitten, it's been ultra-cheap shared hosting that's laelyt blame (along with Wordpresses php-reliance and it's need for guessable-path world writeable directories in the web root...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Take a look at Concrete5. Fantastic, contemporary UI that is very quick on the uptake. Simple templating, built-in search, form builder, extensible, add-on modules, free and for-pay templates, good developer community.

We've worked with Wordpress, Drupal, DNN, and others, but C5 hits the sweet spot and is always our preference.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm an evangelist for ExpressionEngine. Open-architecture, built on CodeIgniter. Lots of add-ons, many free. Very easy tag-based template language.

</comment><comment><USER5> I quite like: <http://www.couchcms.com/> as well. Not used it in anger yet, but planning to.

</comment><comment><USER6> www.cushycms.com is pretty usable for that purpose.</comment>


S&P Cuts China's Credit Rating, Citing Risk from Debt Growth - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-21/s-p-lowers-china-s-rating-to-a-from-aa-says-outlook-stable <comment><USER2> Timing is key, as China party leadership head into their fall meeting. Expect some face-saving "reset" rather than outright default. But still, very bullish for dollar vs emerging markets. And adding to already deflationary picture for global macroeconomy.

Kyle Bass' original analysis of the China credit bubble is also worth revisiting.

The $34 Trillion Experiment: China's Banking System and the World's Largest Macro Imbalance

[http://im.ft- static.com/content/images/42972ca8-d72e-11e5-88...](http://im.ft- static.com/content/images/42972ca8-d72e-11e5-8887-98e7feb46f27.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I want people to remember US in late sixties. If somebody has good enough memory, he will recall that US citizens were legally forbidden from owning gold and even simple golden jewelry until 1974 (Nixon struck the gold standard just 3 years before).

The schizophrenic policy was "We redeem FX dollars in gold, but not let any of our own citizens have it. Instead, the treasury will own your own gold for you."

China tries to do the same trick with savings and assets of its citizens and companies.

Except that for gold and silver, we have luxury apartments, lumps of jade, exotic industrial commodities stockpiles, bitcoins, FX certificates, and other novelties.

<comment><USER4> gold jewelry was not illegal until 1974. It was "hoarding" of gold coins or bars worth over $100 (1933 dollars = ~$2000), and rarely enforced. any actual use of gold as a part of something was exempt.

<comment><USER3> >actual use of gold as a part of something was exempt.

Certainly not in its entirety, the same "articles containing gold clause" was used very creatively by courts to issue confiscation orders for jewelry for sure. That was my BLAW101 essay subject, something I spent few hours on digging court records.

The "rarely enforced," does not mean that it had no effect. Effectively, people were forced to sell their trinkets, and buy stuff on the market with that money if they didn't want to loose all of the value of their savings.

<comment><USER4> so you agree that when you said US citizens were legally forbidden from owning simple golden jewelry you were telling less than the whole truth?

<comment><USER5> A good book on a similar topic was "The Chastening" by Paul Blustein. This was about the currency disasters of the late 90's, which interestingly also took place at a time people thought we were in a tech bubble (we were).

This time period was also known as the "Southeast Asian Financial Crisis". To this day there are still empty 60 story skyscrapers in Bangkok because of how bad it was.

A big lesson from that event are that foreign currency reserves are never enough.

Korea had something like $300 billion in foreign currency reserves and was wiped out in days. $3 trillion is a lot, but adjusted for China's population, and the fact that they will need to use those reserves to last 1 year maybe 2, and they start to look much smaller.

Also this kind of a crisis would not be like a tech bubble. Tech Bubbles are bad, but they do not invoke the banking system. If the banking system falls, the general rule of thumb is a minimum 10 year recovery.

It's worth noting that this is the position adopted by George Friedman in his book "The Next 100 Years" where he predicts the fall of China and also North Korea by 2030 at the very latest.

Also check out "This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly" by Carmen Reinhart from Princeton University Press.

The Chastening: Inside The Crisis That Rocked The Global Financial System And Humbled The Imf [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1586481819](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1586481819)

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767923057](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767923057)

This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691152640](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691152640)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now do you understand why the Chinese government is attempting to ban Bitcoin? Chinese people are scared of their currency and want an easy way to convert theirs into a non-traceable one in case the country descends into a depression.

<comment><USER7> Why does anything and everything has to do with bitcoin? There are hundreds of trillions of CNY in circulation compared to ~1 billion USD worth of bitcoin being traded everyday. Compared to forex the volume of all cryptos combined is a drop in the bucket.

>Chinese people are scared of their currency and want an easy way to convert theirs into a non-traceable one in case the country descends into a depression.

There is a lot of talk of potential deflation cycle coming in, and in that case holding fiat is clearly the wiser option.

<comment><USER8> Legally a Chinese citizen can only move up to $50k USD out of China per year (and they have to report those expenses) [1]. There are various techniques wealthy Chinese use to get around this but BTC had the ability to be the one of the easiest and least-traceable. Not everything traces back to BTC but it is a telling sign of a larger trend.

1\. [https://www.inman.com/2017/01/03/new-rule-china-may- affect-o...](https://www.inman.com/2017/01/03/new-rule-china-may-affect- overseas-real-estate-purchases/)

<comment><USER9> As someone who has lived in China I can testify that this is a falsehood.

The issue is getting the money out of the bank into some other asset in the first place. If you have that much purchasing power in a Chinese BTC exchange you probably already have a number of other means by which you can extract your money.

The hard part isn't what to do with your money -- it's what to do with your money to get it out of the bank and get it into another asset.

AFAIK it is not trivial to purchase that much BTC in China, so the level of attractiveness isn't as you assume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lots of people in this thread failing to understand why the US has a higher credit rating. The US has had a stable political system for 200+ years (leaving aside the Civil War), and has a court and political system that investors have confidence in can respond to financial crises.

It's not even about the US government's assets which it could sell, it's about the awesome ability of the US government to raise revenues by raising taxes.

For example, US taxes as as a percentage of GDP have mostly fluctuated between a ~22-17% window. Right now, they're at 17%. They were almost 20% during WW2. That 3% respresents a half-trillion of revenue it could collect per year. Current US interest payments are $266 billion per year. There is ZERO chance of a default and everyone knows it. The situation with China is way more opaque. No one knows what their long term ability is to make continuing payments, nor does anyone know if what would happen to their political stability if there were a financial crisis.

And as a last resort, since most world debt and trade is conducted in US dollars, the US government can literally print money to settle its debts, both domestic and international.

If US tax receipts went to 25% of GDP, that's $1.4 trillion per year of interest payments, or paying off the debt in less than 20 years.

Now, the common response would be to claim that raising taxes would reduce GDP growth, but the data doesn't show a strong correlation (higher growth has occurred during times of higher taxes and vice versa) and in any case, it's a lagging signal. All in all, US fundamentals are reasonably good, and the country is well equipped to deal with its debt relative to other aging social democracies. Moreover, if the Trumpsters don't screw up immigration with their xenophobia, the US fertility rate and immigration rate protect it against the kind of demographic inversion you seeing in other countries which poses a huge problem for entitlements.

I have optimism for China's long term outlook, but there's way too many unknowns from lack of transparency to trust investing money in it.

</comment><comment><USER11> "China is a country with a huge store of domestic savings and a still tightly controlled capital account. China doesn't rely on foreign funding."

'nuff said.

<comment><USER12> This explains why there aren't external forces that can check the growth in credit.

But there has been an explosion in debt within China, financing ultimately non-productive investment. Even with a positive external debt outlook, you can get wild economic imbalances within a country via uncontrolled credit creation. The hangover could be profound.

To put it another way: why do you think centrally-planned economies are frequently outpaced by capitalist economies? Misallocation of resources. Debt binges are similarly distorting.

<comment><USER13> What specific misallocation of resources are you referring to? The housing developments? I'm not convinced those are wasteful, yet, even if the developers go under.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fact of the matter is, having a dirty float exchange regime and beggar- thy-neighbor trade policies will eventually come back to haunt the country that engages in these practices.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think there is one fundamental point people should understand when pondering macro issues: for a closed system the amount of savings is equal to the amount of debt. Every dollar of debt is a dollar of savings for the debt holder and vice versa (the first part is always true; for the second part to be true we can either take a narrower view of what savings are or we can view "debt" a little more expansively to mean all financial assets -- the key is that claims are always matched by obligations). So China having a lot of debts is equivalent to Chinese having a lot of savings since most of the debts are held domestically. With that in mind maybe people can get a better perspective on the "what if" the credit boom stops.

<comment><USER16> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional- reserve_banking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking)

<comment><USER17> Ya, my thoughts exactly. I think the reserve ratio for Chinese banks is less than 20% ATM; and that doesn't include off the book shadow loans.

A lot of the extra liquidity is being sopped up directly into real estate. It never even hits the real economy.

<comment><USER15> "A lot of the extra liquidity is being sopped up directly into real estate"

It doesn't really work that way. People who buy lose liquidity but people who sell gain liquidity. Cash just changes hands. The question is what are the side effects of these transactions. In this case lots of apartments get built. Many of them empty. You may not regard that as the real economy. But is digging up gold to put in a vault or mining bitcoin any more real?

<comment><USER17> No, they aren't. It isn't doing anything useful, just acting as a speculative asset. It isn't developing the economy so that production is increased later on. Gold and bitcoin mining similar don't create value either (for gold's usage as a speculative asset).

<comment><USER15> With their real estate boom people will eventually live in larger and more modern housing units. The process to get there may be more wasteful than necessary but it can be eventually productive even from a very utilitarian perspective.

During the dotcom boom much more fiber capacity than needed were built but they were eventually absorbed. It was a misallocation of capital at the time and companies went bankrupt for that. But it was eventually not all waste.

<comment><USER17> Ha! The last time I looked at apartments in Beijing (late 2015) was depressing. Rents for 10k RMB/month, sells for $1 million USD, has one bathroom with a crappy wet floor shower (rental, the for sale places were completely unrenovated of course). Those buildings are also not meant to last more than 20 years without extensive maintenance (Chinese overbuild on concrete to take adavantsge of unskilled migrant labor, this leads to serious maintenance problems, but the CCP sees it as a feature rather than a problem), they start looking depilated after 5.

My wife owns a villa in a tier 88. It is a nice place, but the standards are so different, the lack of indoor heating makes me wonder how it could ever be livable.

Also, China lacks a property tax, so housing is seen as a speculative asset. It is really just like gold or bitcoin. Lots of house aren't even lived in (e.g. See ghost cities that have completely sold out but no one wants to actually live there).

<comment><USER15> Right. And keep in mind that Chinese GDP per capita is about one fifth of the U.S. If everything in China were up to US standards Chinese GDP would be 3 times that of US.

<comment><USER17> Wait, we are talking about a $1 million apartment here, even in SF that would get you something ok, but in Beijing, you would hardly get anything at all, it is just insane.

China already has developed world real estate prices even in tier 3s, while the quality is still developing world. it is definitely in a huge bubble that will pop eventually.

<comment><USER15> How much of the $1 million apartment is the price of the land? How much of the land price can be accounted for by things like very large investments in infrastructure such as the subways and preferred access to top universities that are still relatively low cost?

Anyway yes if they overbuild then one day they will have to build less. Remember the labor supply that are willing to do construction jobs will also be decreasing rather quickly. Right now they still have a generation of construction workers who are relatively skilled and who are still cheap to hire. Overbuilding now is not super stupid considering the demographics.

<comment><USER17> These are all tall apartment blocks, so land is involved, but is amatorized ofer many units.

Construction workers are unskilled by design (farmers from the country side, not even high school educations, construction is basically a jobs program for them). The techniques they use to compensate will result in higher maintnence costs later on down the line. It isn't stupid considering what they have, but the resulting buildings become dipilated rather quickly, why pay $1 million for that? And if I can rent that place for a cheap 10k rmb/month anyways, why would I bother buying?

<comment><USER15> I agree it is not a good investment based on the cap rate, unless the rent will be rising quickly to much higher levels. But as Keynes has pointed out long ago, investment for most people is like the beauty pageant. "It is not a case of choosing those [faces] that, to the best of one's judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those that average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees." (Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936).

What I found interesting is that many bubbles have some rational elements otherwise they would not have formed in the first place. Take Beijing real estate: do apartments with convenient access to subways sell for a lot more? do apartments in districts with better ranked schools sell for a lot more? If yes you see people are still pricing utilities and the market is functioning at the micro level. It is just hard to pin down why the overall price level is so high:

\- for most people who live in their own apartments, the price is quite irrelevant (they don't want to sell as they need a place to live);

\- people who hold empty apartments probably subscribe to the "beauty contest" theory of investments (they may rationally think the price high but they couldn't think of a better way of investing);

\- as far as the government is concerned the wealth redistribution caused by the high real estate price is in the right direction esp. when compared to a stock market bubble: high land auction price means more money to build infrastructure; high ownership ratio means older people who are less educated with lower income benefit more and while the young suffer they are more educated and can expect their income to rise rather quickly.

Despite the high real estate price Beijing population had been increasing rapidly (would have been even higher growth if not for government control in place). If China on a whole eventually stalls out at Taiwan's level (where Taipei suffers from similar real estate phenomenon) China would have succeeded beyond what most people expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does it have anything to do with the fact that Russian, China and other BRICS are banding together to have Oil sold in Chinese currency?

[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-09/01/content_314...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-09/01/content_31408818.htm)

<comment><USER19> > _Does it have anything to do with the fact that Russian, China and other > BRICS are banding together to have Oil sold in Chinese currency?_

No. If there's an industry S&P has a conflict of interest with, it's bankers. Derivatives, how Wall Street mostly trades commodities, don't care what their underlying asset is denominated in.

I believe your question arises from what I refer to as the petrodollar fallacy. The U.S. dollar is used, globally, because Americans buy lots of stuff. Exporters who sell to Americans naturally end up with U.S. dollars. They could sell those dollars for their own currency, or they could invest them in U.S. dollar denominated assets. (Or they could hold them to further buy stuff from other people.) Our deep, liquid and largely politically indifferent financial markets, huge base of consumers and lack of capital controls underwrite the U.S. dollar's global popularity [1].

Given the United States is, again, a major oil producer, what other people trade their oil in is largely irrelevant to American financial interests. Would certain 3-letter agencies prefer Iran have to sell for dollars? Sure. Is that of even the most vanishing concern to Wall Street? No.

[1] _Historically, the U.S. dollar supplanted the pound sterling after World War II. The U.S. Treasury, through Harry Dexter White, hard coded the dollar into the Bretton Woods system [a]. He could do this because the United States was the only industrialized power untouched by the war. (We also had a nuclear monopoly.) Either way, nothing to do with oil._

[a] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system)

<comment><USER18> What you forget in your analysis is that oil producers are not necessarily happy to exchange oil for dollars. They do that out of necessity, for the lack of an alternative. After all, any holder of wealth would be more than happy to diversify their holdings instead of "trusting" on the miraculous power of the dollar. The petrodollar is just the canary in the coal mine. Once countries are able to create an alternative to the dollar in that very crucial market, other industries will follow, especially at a moment when China is becoming the number one market and offsetting the industrial production of the US.

<comment><USER19> > _oil producers are not necessarily happy to exchange oil for dollars. They > do that out of necessity, for the lack of an alternative_

The U.S. dollar is not the world's sole reserve currency [1]. At 65% it's dominant, but Euros, pounds, yen and francs are also used and freely traded. Nobody _has_ to accept dollars. It's just the easiest [2]. (Because we consume a lot and have deep, reliable financial markets.)

In any case, who do you think is pushing for more reserve currencies? Hint: the people who make money when people have to convert between reserve currencies.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency)

[2] _Anecdote: friend, former treasurer for a major European airline, found it easier to buy planes from Airbus in U.S. dollars than Euros. They would sign a contract denominated in euros and settle in dollars. Even if that meant swapping euros for dollars and then back again. Why? Because everyone had loads of dollars and is this familiar and comfortable with dollar mechanisms for moving large sums. Nobody forced anyone to do it this way. It was just, strangely, easier._

<comment><USER18> This is not different at all from the situation of the pound sterling at the beginning of the 20th century. Of course it is easier to deal with US dollars, this doesn't mean anything for the health of this currency in the long term.

<comment><USER19> > _This is not different at all from the situation of the pound sterling at > the beginning of the 20th century_

Nothing is permanent. My point is arguing (a) S&P cut China's credit rating to defend dollar hegemony is absurd on multiple levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hasn't the S&P credit ratings lost all credibility? They were the ones lableling worthless deritatives triple A ratings during the financial crisis? had

</comment><comment><USER21> So let me get it, China, the biggest producer in the world and with a culture of saving a lot of money by it's citizens get a downgrade to A+. While at the save time, the US government's debt passed 20 trillions and American in debt with no savings got AAA rating.

Yea, it makes a lot sense

<comment><USER22> _China, the biggest producer in the world_

Of what? Sneakers? Its GDP is smaller than America's (though maybe not with PPP corrections).

 _a culture of saving a lot of money by it 's citizens_

Too bad the savings go to malinvestments. Good luck securing ROI from ghost cities: [https://www.wired.com/2016/02/kai-caemmerer-unborn- cities/](https://www.wired.com/2016/02/kai-caemmerer-unborn-cities/)

And Sri Lankan airports: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/07/31/china- to...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/07/31/china-to-sri-lanka- we-want-our-money-not-your-empty-airport/#633074ba1beb)

 _American in debt with no savings got AAA rating_

The Federal Government has tremendous assets: [http://business.time.com/2013/02/05/the-federal- governments-...](http://business.time.com/2013/02/05/the-federal- governments-128-trillion-stockpile-the-answer-to-our-debt-problems/)

We could pay off the debt with a land and spectrum auction tomorrow and people would clamor for more.

I'd rather hold dollars than yuan and that's not just because I speak English.

<comment><USER23> > Of what? Sneakers?

If trade with China stopped today, how quickly can the United States re-tool up to supply the enormous demand for PCBs, basic electronic components like SMD resistors and capacitors, microcontrollers, transformers, chokes, cables, wifi chips, antennas, power transistors, PLAs, LCD displays, OLED displays, solar modules, and the myriad other goods on which our modern society increasingly relies?

"Sneakers" is a cute little jab, but A GDP predicated on the consumption of televised football and mocha lattes is qualitatively different from one predicated on the production of goods upon which reliance the profligate NFL viewers are blissfully unaware.

At some point, even if that point is measured in centuries, the producers and savers eventually win over the gluttonous consumers. China is playing a long game with a long-term vision, securing rights over natural resources around the world, acquiring critical control over global supply chains, and artificially pegging the Yuan down to fool us into thinking that the value of passively watching Netflix is (as measured by GDP) greater than that of the construction of ever-faster pick-and-place machines.

Meanwhile, we look only to the next quarter and goose our EPS with low- interest stock buybacks, and realistically believe that mindless consumption of pixels is a more solid foundation for an economy than producing the "picks and shovels" used to deliver those pixels.

<comment><USER24> > _China is playing a long game_

the majority of people in the west, the US especially, thinks all china does is make cheap walmart crap. it's perfectly fine to say horrible, racist things about the chinese. nobody seems to care.

what's really happening is the chinese government runs the show and facilitates the dumping of cheap stuff into the west to manage expectations/anxiety about their rise, and to fund the real manufacturing and mineral extraction empire. if your competition doesn't take you seriously, that's a net asset, not a liability.

"All warfare is based on deception."

<comment><USER25> > it's perfectly fine to say horrible, racist things about the chinese.

No it's not. The common criticisms have absolutely nothing to do with race.

<comment><USER24> well sure, you can falsify my statement by simply not classifying anything as racism. i think the gleeful enthusiasm shown by people relentlessly china- bashing is telling, especially since they seem to do it all the time, as if they've found a loophole to freely express their hatred.

if nothing else it's a great little vehicle for racists to hop onto guilt- free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dis-sys S&P? the one which repeatedly offered triple-A ratings to those junk securities before the GFC? It was sued by both US federal and state governments, eventually had to pay $1.5 billion fine for its wrongdoings.

Maybe S&P should fix its own credibility debt first?

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-03/s-p- ends-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-03/s-p-ends-legal- woes-with-1-5-billion-penalty-with-u-s-states)

China has over $20 trillion saved, S&P calls it a debt problem and downgraded their credit rating.

US has about $20 trillion debt, S&P is totally happy about it and gives it a triple-A rating.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-25/with-21-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-25/with-21-trillion- china-s-savers-are-set-to-change-the-world)

[https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current](https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current)

S&P is still the same old S&P, it didn't change in the last decade.

<comment><USER26> How do you think they should do that, and why are you responding so defensively? It seems to me that the only way for them to build up credibility is to never repeat the mistake they made last decade - but you seem to think that they should respond to their mistake by ... never downgrading a credit rating despite seeing issues? That doesn't make sense.

<comment> dis-sys China has over $20 trillion saved. S&P choose to downgrade its credit rating. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-25/with-21-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-25/with-21-trillion- china-s-savers-are-set-to-change-the-world)

US has a real debt problem, yet S&P choose to give it a triple-A rating.

This is not credit rating, it is an IQ test.

<comment><USER19> > _China has over $20 trillion saved_

From where did you get $20 trillion? The data I see show $3.5 trillion for the United States versus $5.4 trillion for China [1]. U.S. depository institutions hold over $9 trillion in savings [2]; this doesn't count savings held in stocks and bonds, the majority of Americans' savings.

In any case, private savings aren't really relevant to a country's credit rating. Ability and willingness to pay are. If the U.S. Treasury defaults, one can sue. If China defaults...you're just screwed.

[1] [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNS.ICTR.CD?location...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNS.ICTR.CD?locations=US- CN)

[2] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WSAVNS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WSAVNS)

<comment> dis-sys > From where did you get $20 trillion? The data I see show $3.5 trillion for > the United States versus $5.4 trillion for China

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-25/with-21-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-25/with-21-trillion- china-s-savers-are-set-to-change-the-world)

[http://www.smh.com.au/business/china/with-28-trillion-in- sav...](http://www.smh.com.au/business/china/with-28-trillion-in-savings- chinese-are-set-to-change-the-world-20150625-ghy4x1.html)

> If the U.S. Treasury defaults, one can sue. If China defaults...you're just > screwed.

which government got recently shutdown for its debt problems?

<comment><USER19> The Sydney Morning Herald article you cite [1] measures "deposits". The comparable figure in the United States is $12 trillion [2]. The comparison is misleading, however, since few U.S. institutions, financial or non-financial, "save" in deposit accounts. (This is true in a China, too.) All this comes down to the murky definition of "savings," which are in the end largely irrelevant to national credit concerns since "credit" is trying to quality their probability of seizure (through default, expropriation or other means).

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/business/china/with-28-trillion-in- sav...](http://www.smh.com.au/business/china/with-28-trillion-in-savings- chinese-are-set-to-change-the-world-20150625-ghy4x1.html)

[2] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DPSACBW027SBOG](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DPSACBW027SBOG)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Habitat (podcast) - story of six volunteers picked to live on a fake planet - <AUTHOR> https://www.gimletmedia.com/the-habitat <comment><AUTHOR> This may seem like an advertisement, but I recently stumbled upon this podcast, and thought others here might enjoy it as well.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an equivalent of lean or agile for recruiting? - <AUTHOR>

This is more or less a random thought, but I've noticed that recruiting has basically continued to do business the same way for decades with no major disruptions to their business process.<p>Everyone says that recruiting is broken, so is a fundamental change to the way recruiting is done be appropriate? If so, what would it look like? <comment><USER2> Work with people in a freelance capacity first. It's kind of tricky because it can be perceived as dishonest. But as long as you're open and serious about it, and convey that to the candidate, it can work.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's definitely interesting, but I was thinking more recruiting as an industry. That feels more like a recruiting hack, which may be where industry disruption starts.</comment></comment>


Diagnostics with Tracing, a Unified Instrumentation System for Rust - <AUTHOR> https://tokio.rs/blog/2019-08-tracing/ <comment><USER2> Hi! I'm the author of the post & the primary maintainer of `tracing`— happy to answer any questions!

<comment><USER3> Hi Mycoliza! One of the authors of OpenTelemetry here. It would be great to see an OpenTelemetry implementation in Rust. If you're interested in bootstrapping a group to work on that, please let me know!

<comment><USER2> We absolutely want to integrate with OpenTelemetry, and I'd love to work with the OpenTelemetry community on that. We have an issue ([https://github.com/tokio-rs/tracing/issues/89](https://github.com/tokio- rs/tracing/issues/89)) tracking integration with distributed tracing systems --- it would be great to get input from OpenTelemetry folks if any of y'all are interested!

<comment><USER3> Cool beans!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this use a thread local approach, or a Go-style ctx parameter? Since it's async I expected to see the ctx approach, unless the underlying async executor/framework also supports a thread local-ish capability?

<comment><USER2> This is a great question, and the answer is "it's complicated". The core `tracing` libraries don't use either; instead, they provide an interface for `Subscriber`s (the pluggable component that collects & records trace data, kind of like a logger but fancier) to implement a way of tracking whatever contexts they care about. The typical approach is for the subscriber to track a current span per thread, but they could implement something else.

`tracing` instruments futures by wrapping them with a future combinator that enters a span each time the future is polled; the `#[tracing::instrument]` attribute will do the same thing under the hood when used on an `async fn`. This is kind of analogous to the Go-style context parameter, in that the contexts are stored in structures or on the stack, except that users don't have to manually pass the context around.

The core library provides an option to set the `Subscriber` that collects trace data in a scope; this does use thread-local storage. However, the default dispatcher can also be set globally (like the `log` crate), and the use of thread-locals is feature-flagged so it can be turned off by `no-std` users.

Finally, I have some thoughts on an abstraction for "context-local" storage that allows the user to customize the context that's used to shard the data. This could be used like a user-space version of OS thread-locals when threads are present, but it could also be used by bare metal code for (say) having a context for each CPU core. This would allow subscriber implementations to track a span per thread by default, but let embedded or kernel-mode users override this without having to reimplement the rest of the subscriber logic. This is still in the early stages though.

Hope that all makes sense; I'm happy to answer any further questions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how much can be infered from runtime execution to create useful traces..</comment>


'Blade runner' makes unprecedented Olympic debut - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/04/sport/pistorius-london-2012/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

<comment><USER2> How people can think that a couple of metal and plastic sticks is able to outperform a fully functional set of calves and feet is mind boggling.

I completely support his inclusion and hope he can make the finals.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The only runner in history who runs a faster final 200m split then his first 200m.

How this is allowed with able bodied athletes is beyond me.

<comment><USER3> Why? He has a different profile – overall, however, no advantage.

If runners with double amputations consistently win gold medals and basically exclude those without double amputations then it's the time to think about something (but not excluding those runners, I would rather suggest regulating their gear first – like the swimsuits that were more heavily regulated during the last years).

Anything else is a panicked overreaction by confused able-bodied people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Comparing this to swimsuits doesn't seem fair to me. Everyone is able to purchase the same swimsuits.

This is impossible...barring everyone chopping off their legs and getting a carbon fiber pair instead.

To say he has no advantage in races that can come down to hundreds of a second is crazy to me.

<comment><USER3> He is far from winning. Let's worry about this when he (or others with double amputations) are constantly winning, shall we?

I think we have no right to exclude him at this stage.</comment></comment></comment></comment>