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Harvard Concludes Linux Will Remain Second Best
watzinaneihm writes "A Harvard Study which uses formal economic modelling to determine "Will OSS ever displace traditional software from its market leadership position?" came to a (not so?) surprising result. Linux is likely to remain second best as long as Microsoft has a first mover advantage."
Now that Macs are developing/supporting a BSD based OS, I think Linux will also lose some desktop share here as well.
In fact, I know of a few friends who chose to get a MacBook and keep OSX on it because they described it as "Linux with more hardware support" (or at least better support directly for the Mac). Not saying this is true, but that it is another well supported Unix alternative.
Surprisingly enough, I'm finding the exact opposite to be true.
;)
I've talked at length about how I deploy an entirely Microsoft-enabled enviroment for my college. 600+ machines, all running XP and Office 2003. 24 servers, all 2000/2003. A pretty typical Microsoft-enabled environment really.
However, I've personally just gone down the Linux route for my work laptop, and I'm giving projects like Edubuntu serious consideration for older, non-Vista compliant hardware.
I have no doubt that companies with ££££s to throw around will buy new machines that are pre-loaded with Vista, and they'll inevitably begin the Vista rollout come SP1. But big business is not everything; I know many of my fellow network managers in education are giving serious consideration to OSS solutions.
We're educating the business people of tomorrow, and if they are introduced to OSS at a younger age, I think we'll see some interesting changes somewhere down the line.
Well, I hope so...
When we (and by we, I mean the linux community) hit a larger portion of user base, say 10% of desktop market (if that will ever happen) linux is going to be well known, and I don't mean that just by the name, but people will actually from time to time use a computer that has linux installed.
Then and not until then will my mother think "why do I need this windows for anyway?" and might try linux out on the home computer. Then the kids start getting used to it (from home, school and most important, friends) and the adoption to linux REALLY hits, because no household will pay $$$ for an operating system if they know one that's usable for free. Not to mention the applications.
Alongside, user friendly distros such as ubuntu, mandriva and feodora will grow even easier to use (as a matter of fact, I think ubuntu is easier (and faster) to install than windows XP or 2000).
It is like saying Tiger Woods will remain number one as long as no one comes along who is better. Or this guy will live as long as he does not die.
You need to go to Harvard to come to lame conclusions like this? Nah, you need to go to Harvard to write escape clauses like this. If Linux become dominant you just declare, "MSFT no longer has the first mover advantage, so I am right". If Linux fades to obscurity, you can go "See, I told ya, Linux will never become numero uno"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As with economists, you could lay all of America's business professors end to end and still never reach a conclusion.
Linux does not aim to be best, second best or ninety-third best. Take Debian: it aims to provide a free universal operating system. How well it does, in the perception of others, is only incidental to Debian's core purpose. So, looking at all this in terms of winners and losers or best and worst is largely illusory. Linux is doing just fine and does not have to hit some arbitrary bar - such as overtaking Microsoft's market share - to continue to do just fine.
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A lot of us aren't in OSS for the the ride to the top. I personally couldn't care if 1% of the population used OSS or 99%. As long as I have the freedom to use the software that I want when I want to, then things are fine with me. And _that_ is one of my peeves against the Microsoft Corp.: by the very nature of their marketing/functioning the people who use their software tend to be drones in that they know not how to function with anyone else doesn't have the dam 4 colored Windows logo all over them.
I like Linux and the majority of OSS tools that I use because I prefer them to their Window's based counterparts, with a few exceptions. I have found that explaining to someone that Linux is "better" than Windows is like explaining gold is better than silver - they have a jewelry box full of a silver and their minds just aren't willing to absorb new information on that topic - and why, they think they are happy with what they have. All that will happen is that eventually, I will not know enough of Windows to troubleshoot their machines anymore
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
In case people haven't noticed, linux has not only caught up, but surpassed Windows, in terms of stability, modularity, customizability, ease of install, maintainability of the code base, etc.
That last one - maintainability of the code base, is a killer. There will be no Windows after Vista. Even Microsoft has alluded to as much.
BTW - That "etc" I mentioned includes REPUTATION. What is the reputation of linux vs windows? Ask any virus-writer.
If you are selling garden hoses, the cost of switching to a competing brand is just the replacement cost of a garden hose. If a company is switching software from one vendor to another, the switching cost is considerably more than just plain cost of new software. Like changing the garden hose requiring you change all the plumbing fitting and pressure valves in your home! The first mover advantage is directly proportional to the switching cost. Where are Lycos and Hotbot now? All vendors know that and they strive hard to increase the switching costs, from AutoCAD, Ansys, Fluent, Cadence, to Oracle, MSFT every dominant vendor in the market tries as hard as possible to make it inpossible to switch.
The reason why garden hoses, light bulbs and tires have low switching cost is because of standardization. Standards defined by independant third parties, not by the manufacturers themselves. People, consumers and corporations are beginning to understand the issue, as seen the recent moves by Massassuchetts to mandate ODF as the archival format for its documents. It is inevitable that people will see the advantages of interoperability and standardization. The first mover advantage will diminish as consumers level the playing field by demanding interoperability and standardization. At that time the "second mover" into these fields will be OSS with value added services.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You can make the entire discussion as complex as you want, but there is only one reason why Linux doesn't succeed on the desktop market: Most commercial application are written for Windows, among them are a lot of specialist applications like ERP systems and to name another example "analysis software which interoperates with an advanced metal detector to detect explosives in the ground". With these kind of applications you can't just switch to an alternative, because there are just too few that match your needs and often NONE of them support Linux. The only way for Linux to succeed in these kind of settings is to make Wine work flawlessly. While Linux suits my home needs and server needs -very well-, it's useless on the desktop at the company I work for.
If you measure things on a complexity of say 0-100, then there's only a limited range of that which is profitable. That is, there's no money in making notepad clones and there's no money in extremely complicated features noone is able to use. However while there is OSS software that's trying to make money, a lot of it does not. Even in the darkest post-OS/2 days when Windows was completely dominating Linux evolved in a market that was essentially dead. That kind of development can't be stopped.
That is why I think OSS software will slowly consume normal COTS software, because they will keep going after the commercial companies say "Well, we've now added every feature with a tolerable ROI". I'm not quite sure about the timescale, but I think the OSS software base is only in its infancy. Imagine 10, 25 or 50 years down the road, how many software packages have matured to a point where they're everything a user expects from a word processor/graphics editor/media player etc., feature-complete and bugfree.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The summary is not as much fun as the article, which declares Microsoft's future dependent on FUD, sabotage, intentional waste and dumping rather than code quality. The whole summary reasoning boils down to, "It will be like this tomorrow because it's like this today." Even M$ knows that's not true. What M$ and IBM did to DEC used to keep Bill Gates up at night, and still might despite all of his ill gotten wealth. The authors have much more interesting things to say and do not really conclude M$ will always be around. The authors, while they do overplay the importance of an undefined "network effect" don't make such a gross error.
The authors don't really understand free software development but they do understand what M$ must do to stay alive. They understand the M$ network effect, which is difficulty working with people who don't have the latest and greatest M$ crap, but completely miss the free software networking effect and much of free software's social benefit. The more free software does, the more it will be used and the more it will grow. It's a power function, not dependent on large organizations and we are still at the very start of the curve.
One of the key flaws I found in the author's reasoning was this:
However, with a monopoly, the efforts to develop new software and improve the platform are directed towards one system only and this may turn out to be better from a social welfare perspective.
That's seriously flawed for two reasons. First there is no such thing as a "Linux Monopoly". It's only freely publish standards that make it look like a coherent whole and it's only M$ intentional ignorance of those standards that keeps both systems from interacting freely. The second, they seriously underestimate the size of the free software community and it's growth potential. The free developer community is and will allways be larger than the non free community. The whole point of the non free monopoly is to charge people money to participate. Free participation will never cost more than time and effort. GCC comes with most GNU/Linux distributions and there is a fantastic library of source code for every purpose no further than a network request away. The cost of a full version of M$ Visual Studio is close to $800, after you have paid the OS tax, and you need to buy a new one for each programmer every year or so. How economists could miss such a basic part of their model as cost of raw materials is beyond me, but part of it is a flawed assumption that free software is dependent on government and business support:
This questions the social desirability of policies aimed at guaranteeing Linux's survival. ... This [corporate] support is important because there are tedious portions of the code that would rarely be developed spontaneously by members of the Linux-developer community.
Wile corporate and government participation are welcome, studies don't bear out the necessity of their involvement. Companies and governments are going to increasingly use free software because of the tremendous flexibility and cost savings. There are hosts of things you just can't do with non free softare and most programmers spend all of their time making things work. Most programmers would be just as happy or happier with free software as long as it does the job.
Recognition of all the evil things M$ must do, while common here, are welcome from economists and business types. Formal recognition of the SCO and other FUD attacks, dumping by "piracy", the Halloween Documents, even sabotage of free software by "encouraging forks" are nice to see in print from a "respectable" organization. Remarkably, nowhere is there a statement that M$ has or must improve the quality of their code. Their conclusion is telling:
We conjecture that there are multiple equilibria and that the use of FUD to mold perceptions about future value becomes crucial.
Essentially, M$'s future is depends on lies. That's not a very bright future. Admission to that fact is all it takes for them and all of their intentional waste to dissapear.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.