Reply to Message
pretty much the case, to a point
You're absolutely right about Microsoft being the first to effectively market OSes to the masses in a palatable form. Granted, Apple and a couple others also did much the same, but didn't have the advantage of the open architecture commodity hardware on which DOS ran, and as such they fell by the wayside.
Of course, it wasn't so much Windows that captured the masses as DOS. The reason Windows came to dominate parts of the market is that Windows provided a natural upgrade path from DOS, whereas other OSes did not. Now, it's the commonality of the Windows platform and its applications that keeps many businesses wedded to Windows.
There are now Exchange replacements and Exchange-compatible clients that run on Linux to ease the transition, but a transition is still required for many businesses. As a result, a lot of IT customer base is migrating to Linux from Windows, but at the same time there's a lot that isn't migrating.
The entirety of the Windows business functionality set is facing the same circumstances. There's a great deal of inertia that makes it difficult to migrate away, but at the same time it's getting easier to migrate every day, and as such more such migrations are occurring all the time. To paraphrase Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope, the tighter Windows tries to grasp the market the more of the customer base will slip through its fingers.
You seem to miss some important points of understanding of the open source development community, and the Linux community, however. Notice that Linux isn't a "product", it's a community: there's no need to "win", only to succeed. Programmers develop open source software like Linux because they want good software, not because they want to market it to the masses and close some "competitor" out of the market. Increasing frustration with the Windows platform is driving more development for and adoption of Linux platform solutions, and that will only increase with time.
Very little proprietary software, if any, need be developed for Linux. In fact, Linux is already a success, and has been for years: it's just becoming a more widely applicable success as time continues. More people are able to share in that success. Windows, meanwhile, relies upon Microsoft's market dominance: if that falters significantly, Windows (as a proprietary product) will simply cease to exist. With Windows, it's about "winning" and "losing", because Windows is a proprietarily controlled "product" of a competitive corporation. It's not just about success for Windows, it's about market share. Unfortunately, that places it at a long-term disadvantage because it must maintain market share against a "competitor" (Linux) that doesn't need market share, and as a result of that it can grow organically and evolve to suit the needs of the people who use it, rather than trying to trap them into using it.
Microsoft's fear of losing market share becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy against which it must continually struggle. Considering my distaste for market dominance business practices, this doesn't bother me one bit.
In any case, the moment enough people want a Linux-based replacement for a Windows application to warrant working on such a thing for a fair number of programmers in their off-time, the replacement will arise. It has happened before, and it will happen again. It's happening right now.
Nobody needs 100% adoption of Linux. Those of us who use Linux just want to maintain a critical mass of developers, which is easily achieved, and want to get a critical mass of developers involved with those applications we want to have available, which happens all the time. That's quite good enough for me. I don't need any centralized, cohesive marketing effort, because I don't care one whit for market share statistics, excepting their usefulness in disproving broken arguments like the usual "Windows is only more vulnerable because it's more popular!" triteness.
I currently work for an IT consultancy. Of our clients, about 20% are Windows-only shops. The rest are varying degrees of Windows/Linux mix. Some of them are looking at the potential uses of migrating desktops to Linux, wiping out "vertically integrated single-vendor solution" hostageware entirely, and one or two are pondering replacing Windows desktops with Macs. We're providing them the best analysis and advice we know how, and will support their hardware, software, and networking needs regardless of what decisions are made (within reason, of course). We'll use whatever works best for our clients as well.
We try to anticipate future directions, though, and familiarize ourselves with the technologies that might be required. As such, I'm the Linux expert at the consultancy, and a certain familiarity with the characteristics of Linux is a necessary part of anyone's job around here, and the same general familiarity with Windows is also important (where I'm also one of the experts, actually). Using what works for our clients doesn't consist of finding out what they have on-site and just supporting it. We make sure we know what to recommend to make things run more smoothly, and that often involves Linux.
Of course, it wasn't so much Windows that captured the masses as DOS. The reason Windows came to dominate parts of the market is that Windows provided a natural upgrade path from DOS, whereas other OSes did not. Now, it's the commonality of the Windows platform and its applications that keeps many businesses wedded to Windows.
There are now Exchange replacements and Exchange-compatible clients that run on Linux to ease the transition, but a transition is still required for many businesses. As a result, a lot of IT customer base is migrating to Linux from Windows, but at the same time there's a lot that isn't migrating.
The entirety of the Windows business functionality set is facing the same circumstances. There's a great deal of inertia that makes it difficult to migrate away, but at the same time it's getting easier to migrate every day, and as such more such migrations are occurring all the time. To paraphrase Princess Leia in Star Wars: A New Hope, the tighter Windows tries to grasp the market the more of the customer base will slip through its fingers.
You seem to miss some important points of understanding of the open source development community, and the Linux community, however. Notice that Linux isn't a "product", it's a community: there's no need to "win", only to succeed. Programmers develop open source software like Linux because they want good software, not because they want to market it to the masses and close some "competitor" out of the market. Increasing frustration with the Windows platform is driving more development for and adoption of Linux platform solutions, and that will only increase with time.
Very little proprietary software, if any, need be developed for Linux. In fact, Linux is already a success, and has been for years: it's just becoming a more widely applicable success as time continues. More people are able to share in that success. Windows, meanwhile, relies upon Microsoft's market dominance: if that falters significantly, Windows (as a proprietary product) will simply cease to exist. With Windows, it's about "winning" and "losing", because Windows is a proprietarily controlled "product" of a competitive corporation. It's not just about success for Windows, it's about market share. Unfortunately, that places it at a long-term disadvantage because it must maintain market share against a "competitor" (Linux) that doesn't need market share, and as a result of that it can grow organically and evolve to suit the needs of the people who use it, rather than trying to trap them into using it.
Microsoft's fear of losing market share becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy against which it must continually struggle. Considering my distaste for market dominance business practices, this doesn't bother me one bit.
In any case, the moment enough people want a Linux-based replacement for a Windows application to warrant working on such a thing for a fair number of programmers in their off-time, the replacement will arise. It has happened before, and it will happen again. It's happening right now.
Nobody needs 100% adoption of Linux. Those of us who use Linux just want to maintain a critical mass of developers, which is easily achieved, and want to get a critical mass of developers involved with those applications we want to have available, which happens all the time. That's quite good enough for me. I don't need any centralized, cohesive marketing effort, because I don't care one whit for market share statistics, excepting their usefulness in disproving broken arguments like the usual "Windows is only more vulnerable because it's more popular!" triteness.
I currently work for an IT consultancy. Of our clients, about 20% are Windows-only shops. The rest are varying degrees of Windows/Linux mix. Some of them are looking at the potential uses of migrating desktops to Linux, wiping out "vertically integrated single-vendor solution" hostageware entirely, and one or two are pondering replacing Windows desktops with Macs. We're providing them the best analysis and advice we know how, and will support their hardware, software, and networking needs regardless of what decisions are made (within reason, of course). We'll use whatever works best for our clients as well.
We try to anticipate future directions, though, and familiarize ourselves with the technologies that might be required. As such, I'm the Linux expert at the consultancy, and a certain familiarity with the characteristics of Linux is a necessary part of anyone's job around here, and the same general familiarity with Windows is also important (where I'm also one of the experts, actually). Using what works for our clients doesn't consist of finding out what they have on-site and just supporting it. We make sure we know what to recommend to make things run more smoothly, and that often involves Linux.
Posted by apotheon
28th Jul 2005
