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An Open Source Tipping Point?
jg21 writes "Over at LinuxWorld there's an article arguing that open source will be propelled to market predominance by the same disruptive mechanism that brought Sony, Microsoft, and others to be market leaders at the moment. 'The improbable is possible - leaders have been dethroned in the past,' writes the author, who is also apparently the producer of an upcoming documentary entitled, 'The Digital Tipping Point' to be released in September 2005. The story refers to a corroborating article from South Africa and to Clayton Christensen's Seeing What's Next which backs up this general idea."
Maybe MS has already recognized that the OS is a commodity product, and they don't care if linux succeeds. MAybe MS has already put the OS on a low priority, recognizing better ROI from office or integration of entertainment. In the long run, all technology becomes a commodity, and only monopolies (att ) or truly exceptional companies (ibm) who can reinvent themselves. can command high prices for more then a few years. So, in that sense,the demise of MS is inevitable. My dad always used to talk about the linotypers union: in the 40s and 50s, they were gods: nothing got printed without thier ok. today ?
Look at the UI. Look at the applications. The basic look and feel hasn't changed significantly since 1995. Almost every new technology "innovation" has been either bought or copied (poorly) by Microsoft.
OSS' growth has been more viral, more grassroots, more innovative than the top-down "we know better than you" approach that Microsoft has successfully imposed on its users in the last 5 years. It is with this suppression of innovation that Microsoft has directly spawned and contributed to the open-source revolution!
On another note, after 10 years on Wintel, I switched to Macintosh recently. After 5 minutes inside of OSX, I experienced more innovation and creativity than I had on Windows for as long as I can recall.
Thank-you Microsoft for helping me switch to truly useable applications.