This video
"20 Years of Linux" is long and rambling but I thought kind of fun. It's my generation's version of the "when I was a lad I had to punch tape with tongue" stuff I'd hear when I first started in computing (back in '88). Of course I didn't boot up Linux until about a year ago but hey I'm fully with the program now, and before 2000 I'd been a Unix user for over ten years.
I especially liked the comments from the Intel guy about use in developing countries - yeah you have to believe that China and others are going to want to avoid being sucked into the stinky foreign devil OS from team USA with its DRM lock down and who knows what hidden "features".
Of course China in particular has to balance use of Linux with keeping its own peeps locked down - something that Linux may hamper. Ultimately I'm guessing they'll just have to give up on that front, but really, if you get even 20% of China, India and Africa (plus South America too I guess) that's a boat load of Linux users that would outweigh 80% dominance in USA/Europe. So perhaps the ultimate death knell of global domination for Microsoft may be pure and simple demographics. The developing countries have out reproduced us rich white Windows weenies.
Maybe some day - I'd guess 10 or 20 years hence - you'll see Microsoft come around to focusing on what it is really good at, applications. We all know that most of their revenue comes from Microsoft Office and the like, so why should the OS matter? Which begs the question, if OpenOffice is so great and basically free would Microsoft be able to compete in that department? Maybe by then it will have found some new and prosperous application to make money from. This reminds me some what of my old company Wind River that made its fortune selling a proprietary embedded OS. Now it is running to jump on board the Linux revolution and reinvent itself as a Linux embedded systems company.
As I see it Linux is an economic market correction for the OS monopoly problem that Microsoft presents us with. In a well functioning market there should be competition and new technology should have a finite period during which its inventor, if a private corporation, should be able to exploit it to recoup development costs and some. After that time competition, innovation and evolution of technology should make that proprietary thing a cheap if not free commodity, after which the world can focus on expending its economic product on new things rather than pissing it away on the old.
To use new terminology the operating system should have slid into the "long tail" of computer technology years ago and we should all be spending our dollars on the bleeding edge. To some extent you could argue that is true, new and improved hardware is usually the bulk of cost of a consumer PC not the OS. But Windows still adds a mostly hidden $$ to each computer, as those who build bare bones systems well know, let alone those who try to buy a copy of Windows in a retail store!!! There is also the indirect cost in that being locked into Windows means we are locked into choosing from an expensive and restrictive application set for that platform - or at least we think we are (OpenOffice, Firefox and the rest not withstanding).
Think about it - what if Microsoft dumped Windows and rolled out a Linux distro. It would no longer have to devote huge and expensive resources to maintenance of the OS and Internet Explorer. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that all its Office tools could be developed to work completely with open source browsers, databases, mail servers and the rest thus allowing it to focus on innovation in those areas that it in any case extracts most of its profit. I think this is all a definite possibility but only thanks to that embryonic, but potentially monster market for Linux in developing countries.
Are there any roadblocks in the way of this potential revolution? Well I'm thinking that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and its follow ups may be efforts to stomp out open technology that could be used to build copyright infringing devices and technologies. And "homeland security" stuff like Patriot I and II may be used to try and outlaw technology that could build secret communications and storage systems. All of these could target Linux specifically as an infringing technology, a danger to society and a threat to "democracy".
As I believe I've blogged before (this doesn't feel like an original thought) I think its only a matter of time before someone tries to label Linux and indeed Open Source as a whole as "unpatriotic" and try to start a witch hunt against this pinko-liberal-evil threat to the country. Fortunately I think we've already come to far with Linux for that to succeed and I'm also inclined to believe that the country as a whole wont swallow it. Really the only thing that is holding much of the technologically stifling end of this threat up is the media business and that stands most to gain by exerting control over its output. As recent developments in decentralizing of media creation and distribution have shown, its only a matter of time before they are on the decline too (if it hasn't already reached that point).
