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ESR's Desktop Linux 2008 Deadline
jesboat noted Eric S. Raymond and Rob Landley's essay about what the Linux community must do to achieve dominance entitled "World Domination 201". It says
"Idealism about open formats will not solve our multimedia problem in time; in fact, getting stuck on either belief in the technical superiority of open source or free-software purism guarantees we will lose. The remaining problems aren't technical ones, and none of the interesting patents will expire before the end of 2008. We've got to ship something that works now. If we let this be a blocking issue preventing overall Linux adoption during the transition window, we won't have the userbase to demand changes in the laws to untangle the screwed up patent system, or even prevent it from getting worse. It's a chicken and egg problem, demanding a workaround until a permanent solution can be achieved. We can't set the standards until after we take over the world."
This really misses the point.
WHY would I adopt linux ?
contrary to what people may thing , security is just not that big a deal; (the New York Times had a story this fall about how most ID theft is people you know - family, friends)
People will adopt linux when there is a reason.
The moral from what most be far and away the #1 success of linux/open source/whatever you want to call it is firefox.
People like me downloaded and used fire fox cause it was better then IE.
let me repeat that: firefox did something usefull
The M$ stuff was , if people even knew about it, irrelevant.
Rather then worrying about stuff you can't fix, like driver support, worry about patenting, and giving to the open source community, but not the closed source community, rights to software that does things people want.
If you build it, they will come - remember what made the pc revolution in the first place: visicalc. It did something, and people were willing ot put up with the insanely poor clunky $$ performance of pre AT IBMs. (I'm not talking about nor care about the small % of the market that bought amigas or whatever - need to focus on the big picture)
You MUSST have the patent, to keep MS/sun/ibm etc out
One thing that might work in small science orientated companies is server side OS, so we can get rid of these stupid pcs and put everything back on the server where it belongs (contradicting myself a small market [in tech companies, there are a lot of instruments that generate digital data, such as spectrophotometers, etc etc, and having seperate pcs for the data is a real disaster]])
what might this killer app software look like ?
How about wiki/slashcode/my sql apache package that grandma can download and install ? (wiki has no quality control, you get that from the slashcode)
how about school software, that both trains the kids and runs the schools std web stie, etc - there is a large market that is cost sensitiv, and allows you to capitilize on linux's strengths.
how about a set of high school and college text books, with closed problem sets for teachers, driven by the insane cost of textbooks ?
those are pretty pathetic ideas
MS is just so easy. I am probably going to get a new laptop after xmas, to replace my 2001 HP, and it is so easy to get the default and so hard to get the linux - WHY should i bother
Answer that, and linux will take over the world. But forget about anyone caring about M$ as a driver.
And who, exactly, will do this pressuring? Linux users, while consisting of a large number of rabidly anti-payware fanatics, are by no means the stooges of ESR, RMS, Linus, or anyone else. Linux reigns in the server market where, frankly, nobody needs to pressure anyone for anything because we already have all the device support we need. In the desktop market, OTOH, end users are perfectly willing to be practical about things and simply use binary blobs where they're available, or - *GASP!* - NOT USE LINUX when it lacks proper device support for whatever they've got.
Linux users are not a class interest. They are not a community. They're people who happen to use Linux. Period. Full stop. Just because Eric has delusions of grandeur about taking over the world doesn't mean everyone else is going to jump on the bandwagon at wag their fingers at vendors for not bending over backwards to support them.
At the end of the day, this is just more hot air from the master of cranial flatulence himself and amounts to fuck all in the real world. Linux has achieved dominance in the server market, and that's pretty much where it's going to stay. If anyone has a problem with this, I would suggest doing something other than listening to the local Open Farce blowhard for advice. Change can happen, but it will not happen because ESR says so.
Linux will always be the people's operating system, made by people for people.
No, Linux has never been the "people's OS". It has an entrenched by nerds for nerds culture. It remains the "geek's OS". "People's" implies a far larger segment of the population than are willing *or* capable of embracing Linux.