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Linux Advocacy Hurts
sundae writes "For those who are into Linux advocacy,
check
this little piece from WinInfo before you
pointlessly brand any critizism as FUD, then attack the
author and everything else related. This article criticize the
way many pro-Linux sites, such as /., only whine about how
the Mindcraft study was funded by Microsoft and ignored the
fact that the study actually *did* happen. "
My opinion is that the Mindcraft study is completely invalidated
by using an optimized Windows box and a vanilla Linux box. Its
that simple. I'm kinda bummed that this article fails to
mention this, instead implying that the Mindcraft test
was reasonable. But don't miss the point- we're our own
worst enemy. I got CC'd on a lot of criticism of
this report, some of you guys did an excellent job
of fairly ripping the report to shreads. Others... well...
didn't.
There is a critical flaw in Mr. Thurrott's comparison of Linux advocacy and the advocacy of systems such as the Amiga and OS/2.
Both OS/2 and Amiga were dependent upon commercial success in order to remain useful for their users. Without commercial success, a proprietary system will fail to propagate; it will not be marketed or advertised; it will no longer be upgraded; most of its application development will cease; and, as the rest of the industry moves on as usual, it will fall behind technologically. (This last is true even if at its birth it was technologically superior to more commercially successful systems.) In short, it will not remain useful for the majority of its advocates, because they are dependent on circumstances outside their control for its viability.
Linux-based systems are not limited in this way. The vast, vast bulk of Linux's growth has not been due to commercial marketing. Because of the nature of free software, it is not dependent on any company's profit in order to keep being maintained and upgraded. Commercial success can be a benefit to Linux (though it can also be a peril -- see my post here) but commercial failure can never kill Linux.
How does this change the meaning of advocacy? In the case of a proprietary system (and this applies as strongly to the MacOS, which I favor, as to Amiga or OS/2) a significant portion of the advocate's motivation is to prevent his/her own investment in his/her favored system. This investment is not merely the amount of money the advocate has spent on software and equipment; his/her training and expertise as well as other forms of psychological investment (pride, for instance) also form important parts of it.
In psychology and sociology there is a concept known as cognitive dissonance. When a person has a large psychological investment in an idea or movement, that person does not want to see that idea disproven, or that movement fail, because it would mean that all his/her efforts and strivings for that idea or movement become worthless. The advocate's thinking is altered (not to say "blurred") by his/her interests. This is not a mental disorder; it is a part of our everyday thinking. We do not want our projects to fail because it would mean our effort has been wasted -- and so we work harder. We do not want our children to become drug addicts and criminals because it would mean that the love and care with which we have treated them has come to naught -- and so we love and care all the more, and teach all the better.
The advocate of Linux-based systems is not in this position. Linux cannot become wasted effort, because it is free. When we advocate Linux, we are doing it perhaps out of generosity (Let the rest of the world experience such a good system as I use!), perhaps out of abhorrence for lesser systems (Windows is so awful! Let's get rid of it!), or perhaps just out of desire to see our own work be more widely used (See what a good kernel patch I made!) -- but it is not out of fear that all our efforts will be wasted.
The proprietary-system advocate, on the other hand, is in a position even worse than that suggested above: Not only does s/he have to fear that his/her investments will be wasted, but because the system s/he favors is strictly under someone else's control -- that of its owner -- the advocate has very little influence over whether it succeeds or fails. The programmer of Windows applications may desire Windows to maintain its dominance on the desktop, but s/he can do little to ensure this. The Amiga users could do nothing to stop Commodore's mismanagement, and cannot guarantee that AmigaOS's present owners will do better.
Proprietary-system advocates can do three things: they can hope; they can beta-test; and they can raise a fuss. Open-system advocates can do so much more, that there's really no comparison.