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

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Nov 13, 1998 at 02:46:16PM -0600, Karl Juhnke wrote:

> 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.

This, here, is ease of learning.  I remember the (apparently now dead?)
concept awhile back, particularly among some pseudo-GUI DOS programs, where
they had beginner, intermediate, and expert modes.  The beginner and
intermediate modes would simply hide some menu options, so that there was
less to wade through

> If you think, for example, that emacs is easy to use once you have learned

You're asking for trouble if you disparage my emacs :-)

> 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

This is an exaggeration.  However, I disagree on general principle.  I will
not say that it is easier to learn the emacs keys than it is to learn to
navigate menus with a mouse.  XEmacs, though, nicely shows you the relevant
key sequence on the menus, so you can see what it is and use it yourself
later if you want.

One key benefit of this is that my hands never have to leave the keyboard. 
It is exteremly annoying to me to have to reach over for the mouse to do
something, like change the word-wrap settings.  It is much faster, and
easier, to press two or three keys on the keyboard.  And a lot of them are
pretty close to each other; ie, C-x C-s to save (hold ctrl down, and just
hit xs, which are right next to each other.)

The idea is that they're designed to be easy to type and easy to remember. 
Not easy to learn.  If you get proficient in emacs, if you're not a
hunt-and-peck typist anyway, you'll almost always be faster than in a
mouse-centric editor.

> things which are easier do to in emacs than in MS Word, but none of those
> are clicking the print button.

Emacs isn't a word processor.  But in XEmacs, File->Print or click on the
Print icon in the toolbar.  If you haven't tried XEmacs, give it a try. 
It's much easier to learn (!) and has a more powerful GUI.

> 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.

Here's a interesting difference between the camera analogy.  Wtih cars, for
instance, if you don't check/change your own oil, you're only out a few
bucks.  With cameras, you've lost better picture quality as well as a few
bucks.  :-)

With most, but not all, cars, it's not that hard to check the oil.  But the
hassle involved to change the oil may be worth paying somebody else to do it
even if you know how, so this is a bit of a different beast, I think.

> 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.

The last item ("number of shmoes is irrelevant") is my basic belief.  I also
believe that the number of people contributing to open source will continue
to rise for the forseeable future.  The nice thing is that you don't even
have to know how to program to help.  People can write documentation, write
web sites, etc. to help directly.  Or, do things like install Linux for
friends to help indirectly.

> 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.

This could very well be true; I had not thought of that distinction before,
and at first glance, it seems to be correct.  Perhaps my goal is to make
them want to learn more.  Once they realize that there's something better
than Windows out there, and know it can really benefit them, then there is
the desire to learn more about it, I think.

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

Cool!  (You already are <g>)

> 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.

Hehe :-)

The cool thing, though, is that you can actually play in the game.

> 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.

Excellent point, and you said it better than I did :-)

> 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

Well, they have been targeting Unix in general for years.  If anything, it
would have hurt Linux more when it was not yet mature (ie, before kernel
2.0).  On a technical basis, their assault on Unix could effect Linux too. 
But Linux is faster, sleeker, and more powerful than most commercial Unices,
so Linux has been eating away at *both* camps.

What's more is that some commercial Unices are now supporting Linux as 1) a
way to keep people using their older hardware (ie, lots of older Sparcs run
Linux), and 2) a way to battle Microsoft for low- to mid-range servers.

> 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.

Hehe :-)

And open source now is getting a lot of press in the mainstream media, so it
won't be very easy for Microsoft to escape this either.

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

So do I.  I have no doubt that most will be within a few years.  All may
take longer.  But companies are already using it as a competitive advantage
(Netscape).

> 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

You're very perceptive.  Richard Stallman saw the same thing, or similar
actually, and has started a "free documentation" project, and related
things, a couple of months ago.

> 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?

There are some important differences here.

First, it's much more expensive to publish a book in print than it is to
make a copy available for download on the Internet.  This economic reality
is one point.

Secondly, textbooks are not really research or academic research
publications in most cases.  They're designed to help students learn about
the research that has been done already.  They generally don't talk about
the research itself.

The useful analogy would be University researchers publishing their results
online (as some WSU CS dept. professors do, for instance) or in
widely-distributed journals of their area of research.  These are generally
distributed in the same abstract concept of free software.  Ie, Einstein
wanted his discoveries to be widely-spread.  His money didn't stem directly
from them; rather, he was paid by Universities, for giving lectures, etc.

> 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...

I'd love to see a world where you can cite a NY Times article, or even copy
it for a college class discussion or something, without paying them $100 a
copy.  (One of my professors this semester has been battling with them about
this.) 

-- 
John Goerzen   Linux, Unix consulting & programming   jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx |
Developer, Debian GNU/Linux (Free powerful OS upgrade)       www.debian.org |
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