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ESR: 0.75 billion Linux users 5 years from now
Mike_Miller writes "In a recent interview with ESR in BusinessWeek, ESR calculates that, in 5 years, there will
be 750 million Linux users (a conservative estimate). Wouldn't that be great!?!
" I think one of my favorite parts is the title: "I want to live in a world where software doesn't stink." But this number should be fairly easy to hit-my cloning project has been doing quite well.
Consider: the "middle class" of this planet- probably numbering a billion people or more- are the people in developing third world countries earning about $3,000 USD/year. These people constitute a _huge_ market for computers and OSs- if the package costs $200 or less. That is about the equivelent of a $30K/yr person buying a $2K computer. Purchasing the standard $2,000 computer for these people would be like purchasing a $20K computer on a $30K salary.
The problem is that Microsoft is uninterested in this market- why? Because they want to charge $200 for the OS alone, sans computer. You need an OS that can sell for $10, or better yet $5 per copy, which runs well on a variariety of low-end hardware (ARM chips, low-end PPCs, 68Ks, 486's, whatever you can get on the super-cheap) and small memory foot prints, with internationalization capability, but with a decent user interface.
Linux fits this bill with flying colors. 80% of that 750 million people will probably be people who've never owned a computer before- and who aren't living in America or Europe.
Everything I've said here also applies to BSD, BTW.
To me, the ideal OS is one that is open and hackable for the programmers who want to hack it, yet is completely anonymous to the non-hacker user.
That is, to the non-hacker, the OS should be easy to set up and configure, then he can just forget about it. It runs solidly with little maintenance.
It should be like the firmware in a VCR. Nobody knows or cares who wrote the code in a VCR. If it works as advertised we just transparently use it and everyone's happy.
I think open source OS's have the greatest chance of achieving this. They are driven by the needs of the people who use them, and clearly, they are the most robust OS's in terms of reliability and resistance to crashing.
I mentioned that the OS should be anonymous. For the non-hacker, it should do its job quietly with minimal fanfare. Windows is the antithesis of this. That stinkin' flying windows logo, or other distinctly MicroSoft icons are in your face with virtually every click of the mouse! And they say open source developers have big egos!
I think this aspect of Linux, will eventually be a huge part of its appeal to a large market.
Maybe ESR hasn't noticed that lately Apple has been making major changes to the ROM architecture in their machines.
The Toolbox ROM is practically a thing of the past at this point. Mac OS 8 shipped with a full image of the ROM on the CD, beginning Apple's strategy of "ROM-in-RAM". Mac OS 8 (and later) will boot on some late-model IBM Power Series (800-series) machines.
Apple's latest version of this strategy is known as the "New World ROM", which is a ROM that only contains the essential boot information. The new G3's all read the Toolbox from the boot drive. Most of Apple's new PCI machines are fully Open Firmware compliant.
Should Apple open the Mac OS source, it will be useless without the Toolbox, since for all intents and purposes the Toolbox *is* the Mac OS.
Personally, I find it highly unlikely that Apple will open Mac OS. The primary indicator is Apple's Darwin strategy. Apple is not opening the source for the UI or other higher-order functions; these things represent Apple's technology advantage.
The point of this is that Apple has, for many years now, been steadily moving toward a more open hardware platform. The prevailing opinion in the Mac community is that we will soon see new efforts by Apple to support compatible hardware platforms under conditions that are far less detrimental to Apple as a company than their previous attempts at cloning.
Remember, Apple isn't a software company, nor are they truly a hardware company. What Apple *is* is a *design* company. The fact that Apple frequently has to invent new technologies to support its design vision is the proof of this statement.
Not that we wouldn't all like to see numbers like that, but come on. That's 13% of everybody on the planet, give or take. I don't think even Windows has managed to get that far.
Unless, of course, ESR is counting in this total:
Anyone who is running Linux on their desktop
Anyone who is connecting to a network with a Linux server
Anyone who is on the Internet (sooner or later they'll hit a Linux server)
Anyone who knows somebody connected to the Internet
20 million, I might believe. 30 million would be fantastic. But ~3 times the population of the United States? Sorry, but I think not.
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