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Red Hat Invades Washington
Paul Coe Clark III writes: "I caught Michael Tiemann, CTO of Red Hat, in Washington yesterday and grilled him about the DMCA, the SSSCA, the Sklyarov case and the future of Linux."
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The most interseting comment in that i/v -
that he thinks the PC desktop market is dead, and that other markets (embedded, appliance-led products, networked devices) are the way forward, was not picked up by the interviewer IMHO.
'...all show high projected growths, except for PCs. Tiemann taps the dismal PC projection] That is what I'm saying is dead..'.
How is RH addressing these markets? I am sure they are, but more clarity would be nice. I work with Interactive TV boxes in the Uk, and we dont care about the OS, and neither do the consumers.
It's the middleware that counts. Pace boxes running Liberate middleware run VX Works OS, but as a developer for the Interactive box I'm not allowed anywhere near that level of code. So, is RH gonna go for the OEM market, or is it going to what is the *equivalent* of the desktop and build OSs that fit nicely with higher level code?
Nope, I'm not making much sense, but as this is, after all, as he has said, an entirely different market than the one he's used to, I'd like to know more.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
I'm impressed. Very good interview. I thought the most interesting part was about the PC being dead, and the question as to whether or not Microsoft has killed the market. It really is a good question to ask, and I think they are partially responsible. People don't feel the need to buy new machines because the old one does everything they think they want. But that idea ignores the fact that competition is all but ignored. Thank God Apple is doing such great things right now, I think they are the ones who will have higher growth than the rest of the industry simply because they are offering really compelling reasons to upgrade.
;-) but I think that perhaps we need to push beyond what's out there in this space.
I think the other factor is that the machine itself doesn't seem to be a limiting factor anymore, it's the connection to the internet. Most people can't take advantage of their fast processors, because everything these days is focused on the pipes to the network. I've got to give McNealy at least partial credit for the whole "the network is the computer" deal, it's become very true. People seem to just use their machines as emailers, browsers, and muedia downloaders/players. True, all the other stuff like word processing is there too, but the fact that communication has become the real killer app of the industry shows where improvements need to be made.
I think he's right to focus on the devices that need embedded Linux, since those markets will continue to grow through phones, PDA's, and whatever niche devices people will come up with for specific industries. However, to say that the PC is dead is a little shortsighted. It's just stalled and waiting for the bandwidth to catch up.
Speaking of which, I think the big killer app for linux, if someone can come up with one, will be a new, or at least cheap and easy, way of communicating. Apache, PHP, and SAMBA are all focused on this, and they are the apps we always point to as big successes. I mean, the whole movement is successful because of the ability for us to communicate and cooperate to make an OS! Shouldn't the apps really reflect that? Maybe it's that we're all geeks and not so good at communicating (just browse -1 to see that
I don't know, this is all pointless rambling. I'm obviously no better, or else I'd have some actual idea in mind rather than half-baked theories. Still, I believe that the PC is now a tool for communication rather than productivity. The productivity is still there, but it's not the primary purpose any more.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Translation: we could do it, but we won't make any money on it, M$ has effectivly blocked us there so we are going to look elsewhere.
He's wrong. Packaging a slick easy to install set of desktop software was a great Red Hat strength, and there is great demand for what they offer. They need to position themselves as the solution to the problems of propraitory code: programs that don't talk to each other, shifting "standards" that waste work, poor security, and massive IT budgets that churn junk all day without being able to fix anything. They have not done a good job of getting the word out about specific issues and how they have a solution. No one else in the US has the training network, name recognition and ability to do what they can. The market is there, you just have to make it happen. Think of Sony and the Walkman. The demand was there, despite a downturn in consumer electronics. Sony just created the product that people really wanted. Red Hat will only be defeated if they give up, or start acting like M$ themselves.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
All OSes are evolving towards the same ultimate endpoint: An embedded control system for TVs.
Somehow, I am disappointed. I had thought that computers had more potential than that.
First off, this comment was moderated as "Funny". I don't think it's funny nearly as much as it's poignant and interesting.
And I'd like to make a counter-statement. I won't discredit Waffle Iron's opinion; it's a valid one that many people share. But my vision of the future of computing is different.
Nowadays, most of the family units with disposable income have a TV and entertainment center in their living room, family room, or den, and a TV in their bedroom. They also have a spare bedroom, office, or a nook in the same room as their TV that has a desk with a computer on/under it. Often, older children still living in the household will have their own TV in their room and a computer under their own desk. Most of the time, the home computer will be used primarily for entertainment, much as the TV is used.
That's a heck of a lot of devices devoted to entertainment in each household. In many of these rooms it would make sense to combine the units, but there are some primary issues that we, as consumers, can't decide on.
The question that needs to be answered is whether we would prefer to have the TV move to the computer, or the computer move to the TV. This is the same as asking whether we want to sit in a desk chair and watch our scheduled content and videos from three feet in front of a 17" screen at 1200x800 resolution or whether we want to sit back on our couch in order to type our e-mail on a 540 scan line CRT.
Time and technology changes all things. Over the next decade, most of these people will replace their TVs for a new one with 1080 or 1200 scan lines. That's adequate resolution for computing. And User Interfaces are much more accessable from the couch nowadays. But I can't ever imagine wanting to watch all of my entertainment from a desk chair three feet from a 17" screen.
In the end, there will be computers and TVs, separate, for purchase by consumers like Waffle Iron, because he represents a market that would buy such products. I represent the market that would buy a unified product, and I believe that my perspective will become more ubiquitous as time and technology advances, so eventually we will see all of our computing technology being built (modularly) into our TVs. I don't find this the least bit disappointing, I see it as an inevitable reality.