LWN pointed to an article about Linux on the desktop which
I recommend. It's written by Bryan Pfaffenberger, Associate
Professor of Technology, Culture, and Communication at the
University of Virginia. He uses half a dozen clever turns
of language which are likely to make you chuckle:
http://noframes.linuxjournal.com/articles/currents/0031.html
He predicts that the much-decried difficulty of use argument
is not relevant to Linux's coming victory in the mass market.
(Eerily reminiscent of Christensen's observations about
disruptive technology, for those who have read The Innovator's
Dilemma.) Linux will win for the same reasons that PCs were
victorious over the Mac, Pfaffenberger says.
If he's right we will be inundated by the unaware some day:
"How's Linux doing in the pull department? Forget ease of use.
Law No. 1 states that, to paraphrase the common saying in the
real estate industry, what matters is "price, price, price."
Part of the difficulty here is that there isn't a huge
perceived gap between the hardware costs, as there was in the
Mac versus DOS days. The real cost gap is in software--but then
again, consumers don't really perceive this (yet). They don't
realize that they've paid for the Windows operating system that's
shipped with their computers. They do realize they haven't paid
for the version of Office they're using-and that's because they
know perfectly well that it's pirated. So Linux doesn't have
much pull as yet. And it's not because the desktop environment
is incomplete, or that there aren't enough applications, or yadda
yadda yadda. It's because people haven't yet perceived that Linux
is cheaper. They haven't done so because, if you accept the
Business Software Association's terminology, most of them are
hard-core criminals who care nothing about intellectual property
or the law. [...] But the pull picture is about to change.
And that's because push is about to come into it. Big time.
"You've heard about the various rumblings from Microsoft
concerning moving its customers to subscription-based services.
What's going on? It's simple: Customers aren't upgrading.
They don't really understand the need to keep paying Microsoft
over and over again for the same products. That's bad, but for
Microsoft, there's something even worse. All those old copies
of Windows and Office don't incorporate the surveillance and
anti-piracy technologies that Microsoft plans to deploy in its
forthcoming products, such as Office XP. In case you haven't
heard, Office XP will "acclimatize" itself to the specific PC
you install it on. Microsoft says that this will improve your
"experience." What it's really going to do is make it all but
impossible to install the software on any other machine.
Goodbye piracy, hello subscriptions.
"I could cite numerous additional examples to make my point,
but I believe that Microsoft is cranking up to a level of arrogance
and stupidity that will make Apple look like a small-time,
amateur player. And I've focused here on consumers. I believe
the amount of ill will among Microsoft's corporate customers
is building up to a Tsunami--the same type of consuming,
all-cleansing explosion that resulted in IBM losing a good
slice of its customers in the aftermath of its 1970s and early
1980s "connector conspiracies", and racking up the biggest
quarterly loss in U.S. corporate history."
After reading this article, and chuckling, and then reflecting
upon it some, I was startled by a new light: the retail market
doesn't need to be introduced to free software. Much of the
retail market is already using free software, and has come to
expect it - at least in the inaccurate sense that much software
isn't visibly paid for. The operating system comes with a
computer, its price hidden. Applications are "free" because
they're pirated. And no one will be happy to have free beer
taken away...
Seriously, this is the first time I've seen in print a suggestion
that piracy may form a significant part of the consumer mindset.
-Bill
--
"We have to make a management decision"
Jerry Mason, Morton Thiokol, Inc.
27 January 1986
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