Re: [aclug-L] Microsoft's plans to kill Linux

[Karl Juhnke <fritz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, John Goerzen wrote:

> Well, as one person that's been a member of the free-software community for
> some time, perhaps I can shed a bit of light on the matter.

John, you are a powerful evangelist.  I'm glad I wrote my little piece, if
only for the opportunity to hear you rebut it.

I like your distinction between ease of use and ease of learning.  I still
must say, though, that for some users Microsoft products are both easy to
learn and easy to use.  If I buy a computer for exactly two uses, I
want a screen with two big buttons on it, one for each use.  If there
happen to be ten buttons on the screen, I want to be able to guess which
two are the ones I want.

If you think, for example, that emacs is easy to use once you have learned
it, I think you are nuts.  Clicking on buttons is flat out easier than
control-X control-V f z w ecaspe-76.  Sure, you can give me a hundred
things which are easier do to in emacs than in MS Word, but none of those
are clicking the print button.

I ponder my attitude towards cars.  I'm a guy who would be hard pressed to
check the oil, much less change it.  I look around for car expertise among
my friends, and I find almost zero.  What happened from thirty years ago
when every third teenage guy could take apart his car to the last bolt and
put it back together again?  Cars have gotten too complex, and expertise
has become narrowed to specialists.

Will the same thing happen with operating systems?  Maybe not, since code
is fundamentally different from machines.  Maybe the number of people
capable of contributing to open source will continue to rise indefinitely.  
Maybe the percentage of users who only want two buttons on their computers
will stop rising, and perhaps even fall.  Or maybe the number of schmoes
is irrelevant, as long as the hacker community is large enough.

> > I have never met a hacker who was at all sympathetic with ordinary
> > users.
> 
> Now you have. :-)

I think I have too, and I am grateful for it.  But maybe a clarification
is worthwhile here.  You are symapthetic with people who know little
about computers and want to learn more.  You are not sympathetic with
people who know little about computers and _don't_ want to learn any more,
but want to use computers anyway.

> Seriously though, here's how the hacker culture feels about this.  We
> *like* new people to join.  Every hacker was a newbie once, too, and
> each new person that uses an open source operating system is somebody
> that could be a developer for that OS sometime down the road.

Again I say, you are a powerful evangelist.  Sign me up for the crusade!

> Microsoft has dominated the desktop since before the first line of
> Linux code was written.  This didn't hurt Linux then and it's not
> going to hurt Linux now.  I don't think Microsoft is going to go away
> overnight.  But eventually, something Open Source -- probably Linux,
> but not necessarily -- is going to overtake them.  It will happen, and
> there's nothing they can do to prevent it.  Except going open-source
> themselves.

I feel Linux vs. Microsoft sort of like I do about the K-State vs.
Nebraska football game, in that I don't know enough to predict who will
win, but I am very interested to watch them play.

But the football analogy is weak.  I appreciate your points about the
differences between corporate Microsoft and open source Linux.  Talking
about winners and losers conceals that they aren't even playing the same
game.

You say that Linux has never been affected by Microsoft.  I wonder if this
will continue to be true now that Microsoft is specifically targeting
Linux.  No, I'm not sure what they can do to Linux, but I imagine it is
more than zero.  On the other hand, maybe Microsoft's public relations are
so tenuous right now that they can't do anything overtly evil, lest they
be classed with tobacco companies and child pornographers.

It's great to hear you say that someday all software will be open source.
I hope you are right.

I can't resist a parting shot, though.  Why aren't all books free
already?  For example, surely the academic community at large could band
together and create an "open-source" biology textbook, but students still
pay fifty or a hundred bucks a pop for the lastest edition from Mr.
Science.  If the open source concept is in and of itself invincible, why
do academics of all people copyright everything they write?

In this light, the altruism of the open source community is even more
astonishing, and even more admirable.

I wonder what broader effects it might have if open source software took
over the computer world.  Maybe software is just the beginning...

-Fritz

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