Feature: The End of the Tour

Stewart Rosenberger has written an interesting piece about what the success of Linux means for the users out there who are currently using it. Will it mean that the pioneers will move on to other places? Is this already starting-rather then Linux fragmenting, the user base fragmenting? Click below to read more-it's well worth it.

This is not about Open Source. The Open Source movement has taken a once-ridiculed development model and hammered it into a commercially viable bandwagon that the entire industry is just now scrambling to get onto. Open Source is to be praised for the control and flexibility it has brought to programmers and users alike. This is not about Open Source - it's about Linux. I make this distinction now because, while at the moment they are seen as something of a package deal, one is a revolution and the other is nothing more than a twinkling fad in the eyes of the computer industry.

The Linux community has done what only a handful of other organizations can lay claim to. It has posed a genuine threat to Microsoft's near monopoly over the desktop market. And those other organizations, like IBM, Apple and Netscape? They had hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal and they still failed. Well, it looks like the Linux community may just succeed, and for good reason too - they have more developers and testers than any single platform has ever had behind it. And more importantly, those developers and testers enjoy what they do. They enjoy what they do to such an extent that most of them are doing it for free. Microsoft cannot, and has never been able to, say that about its Windows platform.

To these millions of developers, testers, and users, Linux is far more than just a simple operating system. It's a way of life. It's a religion. It 's a holy crusade against the enemy in Redmond. However, on top of all that, and even underneath it, the people who use Linux do so because it's theirs. Linux is theirs, not in the Open Source sense that they are free to change and distribute it as they see fit, but in the sense that no one else is using it. Even with the community's millions of members, they are still a very small minority in the larger scheme of things and, although most will fiercely deny it, that's the way they like it.

This is meant for all the "world-domination" types who want to see Linux on every desktop in the world: You don't know what you're asking for. The day that 51% of the world's PCs run Linux is the day that you start running OpenBSD or some other, lesser-popular, OS.

And why will they abandon ship? They will blame companies like RedHat, SuSE, and Caldera for commercializing their precious operating system. They' ll claim that Linux's architecture is inherently inferior. They'll say it's not as scalable, not as portable, and not as secure as the latest-and-greatest OS. But while the reasons they give may have some merit, they won't be the truth. The truth is they'll abandon Linux because in their eyes, it will have joined the ranks of Windows as a sell-out. They'll leave because Linux isn't theirs anymore.

No one will notice either. The change will be gradual as more and more members of the Linux community move on to greener pastures. And as the tide begins to swell up against the old majority, a new community will spring up with it's own culture and icons. The elite will poke fun at "Linux Lusers" and their monolithic operating system. And why shouldn't they? Anyone who's serious about computing will be using the super-portable Hurd microkernel, right?

This doesn't have anything to do with Linux as an operating system. Linux could be the most perfectly stable, portable, scalable piece of code ever imagined and what I've predicted would still be inevitable. The Linux community isn't about using Linux - it's about feeling special. I know that sounds trite, but it's accurate. When Linux (and in particular its desktop environments, such as KDE and GNOME) have matured to a point where they are useable by the average joe, today's Linux users aren't going to feel as unique. They will seek other venues of being better than average. Some will call themselves "power users". Others will become sysadmins professionally. The rest will leave.

It bears repeating, so I will say it again: This is not about Open Source. Just because Linux is GPL'ed, doesn't mean it's immune to the sell-out syndrome that I've described above. People claim that because Linux is held under the GNU Public License that no one company can dominate it. This is true. They say that hackers like Alan Cox, Mandrake, and Linus Torvalds will continue to improve upon Linux at their own pace, regardless of what outside media and industry influences are saying. This is also probably true. The point, however, is that the Linux community, as a whole, will not stick around to watch. They won't want any part in the corporate-sponsored demographic-pandering mainstream beast that Linux will have become. GPL'ed or not, they're going to hate Linux.

This is not to say that Linux hasn't already revolutionized the computer world, because it has. What the Linux community has accomplished in the past few years can only be called "amazing" - It has been a watershed in the history of Free Software and an overall Good Thing (tm). Regardless, Linux is transient. The OS itself may continue on for some time, but the people who made it what it is won't.

It happens in art. It happens in music. And now it's happening in software. What was once an underground alternative is now becoming mainstream and commercial. The masses are coming for your kernel and you're calling them on. Once the door is open, it cannot be closed again and the Camelot of Linux will fall.

Stewart Rosenberger

foogle@adelphia.net

Foogle on Slashdot

Comments

Good point....

[Patman]

...and I can easily see this happening. Fact is, lots of Linux users are caught up in the "love-it-cause-it's-cool" bandwagon. If you read some of the Linux ng's, you'll see quite a few people who seem to be installing it because people tell them it's "cool". Even worse, though, is the people who insist that Linux is the do-all, be-all, and end-all of operating systems. Those people are delusional - Linux ain't the answer to everything. And Microsoft isn't always the wrong answer, either.

Moving on -- to DEBIAN!

[Eric Green]

If "commercial" Linux gets too popular, we'll move on, for sure -- to Debian! After all, the Debian folks have already proven that they're capable of being stubborn and contrary enough to keep the faith of the "early adopters", what with their stubborn insistence upon keeping "dpkg" when everybody else has moved to "rpm", their unwillingness to have a standard system configuration framework a'la "yast" or "linuxconf" or "coas", and their emphasis on making sure that their distribution is "pure" (i.e. untainted by any hint of proprietary software).
And you know what? It's working. Debian already has the most reliable distribution, making Red Hat look like Bug Hat, and will swiftly become the refuge of all the hackers who feel that the "commercial" distributions are just too popular.
Of course, some folks will also move to the *BSD's. FreeBSD in particular may be popular because a) all the popular Linux commercial software runs on it (so you can be "different" without sacrificing!), b) the "ports" collection is so huge that few people will miss any Linux-specific programs that are being created out there, and c) it has MUCH fewer bugs than the typical commercial Linux distribution these days. Especially in their "C" library -- glibc2 has proven to be a disaster of major proportions, with at least three incompatible versions (2.0.6, Red Hat's "2.0.7", and 2.1) out there, all of which are buggy in various areas, and all of which are HUGE. On the other hand, the FreeBSD kernel just isn't "fun" enough for the hard core hackers. It has too long a history and is too settled. All the neat research stuff, like logging filesystems, the "tree"-based file system, etc., is being done for Linux.
Of course, eventually the hard-core WILL move on to something else... but the availability of non-commercial distributions like Debian will delay that for far longer than you may think.

-E

I welcome the day

[Bruce Perens]

I welcome the day when Linux is so commercialized that some people leave it for another free software system. I'll count that as having won. Linux kernel development will wind down eventually, but it won't matter to applications. Any of those newer systems like the Hurd can be made to run the same applications, and will be.

Thanks

Bruce Perens

OS Loyalty

[daviddennis]

Actually, it lets some of us keep our loyalty to more ancient operating systems. For instance, I really love the SGI Irix environment (I'm writing this on an Indigo2).

Because of the commonality between modern systems, I can run all the cutting edge Linux applications I need on my SGI box. So I get the best of both worlds.

D

----

I hope it comes true...

[Brandon Hume]

My first home-run Unix-like OS was Linux... 1.0.x
kernel, Slackware, and it was a blast. I felt
that the Linux community back then was very
different. They were trying to improve the world-
open standards, viewable source, nifty utilities,
and most of all having FUN. And they weren't
just doing it for their toy operating system...
they were making it available for everybody,
recognizing that Linux wasn't the only non-MS OS
in existance and making sure their benefits could
be passed around.

Then, I got myself a sparc and set about learning
Solaris. During that time I rarely booted into
Linux on my PC, and kinda lost track of the scene.
When I came back to it a couple of years later, I
wasn't pleased with what I saw. The whole
attitude had changed. It wasn't just "run this
OS because its neat", or even "run this OS because
its not made by Microsoft". The theme was "run
Linux because Linux is better than absolutely
anything and if you disagree you're in big
trouble". We've noticed this latter attitude
before, there have been Slashdot articles on this
"frothing advocacy".

I started noticing posts from Linux users forced
to use Solaris at work or school... all too often,
the post boiled down to "Hey, why doesn't Solaris
do THIS, Linux does THIS, why does Solaris suck so
much?" I'd check out the other Unix newsgroups
and notice the same attitude, just replace
"Solaris" with the name of the OS in question.
And usually the feature the said user was having
a seizure over was a simple thing, like gzip or
the pretty network configuration gizmo. Linux,
for power users? It doesn't seem like it anymore.

But, OK. Everyone has a right to the little
features they've gotten used to, and hey, some
of them ARE cool. So, I sit down to try and port
some of these things to the OS I'm currently on.
Uh oh. It uses inline assembler, completely
uncommented of course. Or, its completely reliant
on the bastardized Linux kernel headers. Or it
needs a "convenience" device that exists on Linux
despite the fact that the stuff could be done
completely fine at the application level. And
let's not forget the hordes of other utilities
and libraries I have to port/install just to get
that far. What happened to the portability I was
familiar with? What is this stuff... open source,
yet proprietary? How does that work?

Of course, if I worked hard enough, I could
probably get it going. But why? I'd be just
completely rewriting the whole thing, to add a
measure of portability that could have been easily
added during initial development if the coder had
thought of it. But why would s/he do that? Who
is stupid enough to run something OTHER than
Linux?

This pure, narrow vision is why *I* no longer run
Linux. We can see it here in knee-jerk reactions
to some "Ask Slashdot" questions. A user wants
to build a pop/smtp server for a bazillion users.
Another wants to construct a high-availability
database server. What's the best choice for a
good news server? How about a closet print
server?

Always, 90% of the replies are "use Linux". It
doesn't matter that DG/UX has some of the best
high-availability tools around. I've personally
seen an RS/6000 running AIX munch some absolutely
insane mail loads. Four of the top five Usenet
transport servers are Solaris boxes. And hell,
if you've GOT the NT license, why not stick it on
the free box and stick it in the closet to print?
Its one of the few tasks its good for. But the
reasoned, use-the-right-tool responses get
drowned out under the "use Linux because its cool"
followups.

I think Linux has some of the niftiest gadgetry
I've seen in an OS. It certainly manages to
support every device in existance, and its a great
thing for the environment, reducing the number of
PCs that end up in the landfill every year. I
won't begrudge it that. But why can't I play?
Why am I an idiot because I won't use it at every
opportunity?

I certainly hope this "migration" happens sometime
soon. There's nothing specifically wrong with
the OS, but the people seem to be getting stale
and sedentary. Maybe a new project would shake
it all up again.
--
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/

Time devours all things.

[Signal 11]

Time devours all things. Fifty years ago, lasers were the realm of science fiction. Now they're used everywhere. People used to think the moon was a perfect sphere - until we landed on it and saw for ourselves it was not. Old technology will be cast aside in favor of better technology. What you've said could have been said in fewer words. This isn't about linux. It's not even about open source. It's more philosophical than that.

Of course linux will disappear. When it does, most people won't even care. Something new will have arrived. Only time will tell what that new "something" will be. In fifty years historians will laugh over the simplistic technology we have today, and wonder how we ever made it to where they are.

Live in the present, not the future. You can't change the past. You can't change the future. You can only change the present. So.. what are you waiting for? Go out and code. Make new friends. Change the world.

--

No, it's about Freedom

[Gleef]

Unlike the author of this article, I don't claim to speak for everyone. I know he doesn't speak for me, and I strongly suspect he doesn't speak for many people. First off, he talks of the "Linux Community" as if the label is useful, as if it describes a monolithic community with common beliefs. Secondly much of what he ascribes to the "Open Source Movement" is stuff done by the "Free Software Movement", an older and very different movement. Thirdly, he falls into the common trap of equating commercial and proprietary, which irrecoverably muddles his argument.

There are many communities out there, with much overlap between them. There's the Linux Community, the Free Software Community, the BSD Community, and so on. You cannot say that the Linux community is here because of some holy crusade against Redmond, some clearly feel that way, for most it's a lesser or non-issue. They are here because they like to hack on their own system, or they are here because Linux works better for what they want to do. None of these people are wedded permanently to Linux, but none of them are likely to leave just because Linux becomes the majority system. Also, just because Linux becomes the majority system doesn't mean it has "joined the ranks of Windows as a sell-out".

I'm sure there are some who are so committed to being a part of something unpopular as to act the way the author describes, but they are solidly in the minority. People might leave the Linux community eventually, but the reasons will be "it's not as much fun anymore" or "system X does what I need better". And those will be the real reasons, not rationalizations.

Secondly, the Open Source movement as a whole has done nothing about development models. ESR, the originator of the Open Source movement described existing development models, not only didn't that change the models, but it was before there even was an Open Source movement. What the Open Source movement did was threefold. It tried to repackage the Free Software Movement into a business suit, it tried to downplay the benefits of Freedom in software (since Freedom is apparently scary to businesses), and it started the push to coerce businesses to change their licensing schemes.

You predict a dire future for Linux, "[The Linux Community] won't want any part in the corporate-sponsored demographic-pandering mainstream beast that Linux will have become. GPL'ed or not, they're going to hate Linux." I have a little more faith in the community than the author does. The corporate influence has been here for years. Most distributions of Linux over the past year and a half have included a commercial compiler (egcs), and people cheered! Why? Because commercial does not equal evil. I for one am not fighting against commercialism, I am fighting against proprietary software. Many companies have been very helpful against this, including Cygnus and RedHat. Also, the GPL is not the only protection against such evils as the author describes. The distribution of packages is the other. It doesn't get into the kernel unless Linus says so. Most packages have similar reins.

In conclusion, I agree, it's not about Open Source, but it's also not about being a fickle part of a counterculture. For most of the community, it's about "Having something that works". For me, it's about Freedom, plain and simple.

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Re:No, it's about Freedom

[Gleef]

Yeah, you're right on many of your points. However, he does predict a dire future for Linux, he predicts that the Linux community will hate Linux. That's a dire future if you ask me.

You write "if your vehicle became so popular it outran your ideology, would you stick with the vehicle? This author of this article is betting you'll ditch the vehicle. Frankly, I'm inclined to agree with him." I don't understand what you are saying here. If you are saying "If Linux became no longer Free, you would ditch it", I probably would, but I see no way of that happening without major changes to the world today. If you are saying as the original author did, "If Linux became popular, you would ditch it", I certainly would not ditch it just because it became popular.


Now, as for explaining Freedom as if I were defending it in a philosophy class instead of a soapbox, here goes. Note, I am limiting my discussion to Freedom in a software context, which is clearly defined, as opposed to Freedom in the abstract, where there is much dispute over the definition.

Before I talk directly about computers and software, let's look at a simpler, but related situation, a simple tool, say a rock. At one point way back in our evolution, we knew nothing about rocks, they would usually just sit there. If we were unlucky we might stub a toe on one, or one might fall on us in an avalanche. At some point, someone took a rock and realized you can do something with it, perhaps they figured out how to break open nuts, perhaps soften hides, perhaps use it as a weapon, or any one of hundreds of things you can do with rocks that we take for granted today. Regardless, before this person figured out the trick with the rock, hundreds might have figured out the exact same thing, but it didn't matter because nobody shared the knowledge. Once this person shares the knowledge, it has a chance of surviving, it has a chance of becoming part of humanity's arsenal of technology, and spurring on further innovations in other people. The knowledge is not the important thing, the shared knowledge is important.

Given that, if a person (Oog) figures something out, they decide whether or not it's worth telling someone else (Ug). When Ug hears it, they get to decide whether it's worth passing on. Should Oog have the right to prevent Ug from passing on the knowledge? I say no. Knowledge of how to do things is too important, it should not be kept hidden. There is no good way of forcing Oog to share, but once it is shared, Oog should not have the means to coerce Ug to keep quiet about it.

That is how we learned how to use rocks to crush nuts, that is how we learned how to build a machine to remove seeds from cotton, that is how we learned how to tell a computer to edit our letters. It's all the same, the computer is just a tool, and software is just knowing how to tell a computer how to do something.

The shrinkwrap software industry depends on preventing the user from sharing software. Let's us as an example a program to balance your checkbook. A mainstream, shrinkwrap software company will give you the instructions for your computer to balance your checkbook, but they won't let you give those instructions to anyone else. Furthermore they won't let you use their instructions to let you figure out how to tell the computer yourself, and they won't let you modify the instructions to your computer to suit your needs. This is not good for civilization, because it is restricting access to our collective technology. Our society is poorer because of the restrictive license than it would be if it were Free Software.

These arguments apply to all forms of technology, whether it's how to run a computer, or how to suture an artery, or how to run a business. I focus on the software aspects of it because that's what I do, I'm a programmer.

On a personal level, it's pretty obvious that Free Software is a good thing ("Wow! I can use it and it's free! I can share it with my friends!"). I hope I've made it clear that it's a good thing on a societal level, given the assumption that "Technology, that is collective knowledge of how to do things, is a good thing for society". I think that's sufficient to defend Free Software from a philosophical standpoint. If you disagree, let me know.

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Re:No, it's about Freedom

[Gleef]

OK, let's say that it's three years from now, Linux is on 70% of the machines out there, and most Linux users are just normal folks, small businesspeople, people managing home finance, kids (and adults) playing video games. Practically none of these people care about Free Software, even a little. Would that be enough to make me leave Linux? No. I will use whatever suits me best, and what suits me best is a Free operating sytem that is usable? powerful and flexible. Currently Linux suits me best. Do the millions of people who don't care about freedom make Linux any less Free? No. Any less usable or powerful? Still no. Any less flexible? Probably more flexible. If, say HURD matured and became more powerful and/or flexible, and was just as Free as Linux, I might consider moving, but the presence or absence of millions of "heathens" wouldn't be a deciding factor. Unless the laws change (and they'd have to change in much of the world simultaneously), the Freedom in Linux is intrinsic, it isn't a perception of Freedom, it's built into the package, and you can't just take it away.

As for your other point, yes, I was describing the operational good that comes from Free Software (and sharing knowledge in general). You want to know if Freedom in this sense is intrinsic or operational. Freedom in this sense is just a shorthand for "The Freedom to Share Knowledge". Just to break down the phrase, knowledge would be an intrinsic good; sharing knowledge would be a means of increasing the intrinsic good, knowledge, so it would be technically operational; the freedom to share knowledge would be removing obstacles against increasing the intrinsic good, and also technically operational. So, technically speaking, Freedom is operational, and "Knowledge is intrinsically good" is the axiom on which my whole argument rests. Taken as a whole, "Freedom to Share Knowledge", is intrinsically good, becuase it is an intrinsically good concept (Knowledge) immersed in an environment (Freedom and Sharing) that serves to protect and maximise this concept. So whether "Freedom" is an intrinsic good, or "merely" an operational good depends on semantics, it depends on how narrowly you are asking the question.

Yes, both RMS and ESR are making utilitarian arguments. One major difference, as you noted, is that RMS is explicit about the moral component, I would say that ESR is implicit, he considers Freedom the moral path, but knows that most people don't like having other people tell them about morality, so he dodges the issue deliberately. RMS doesn't care that people don't like hearing hard truths, he tells them anyway. Another major difference is where RMS says that Freedom is important, and created an environment (the GNU project and FSF) where Freedom can flourish, ESR doesn't worry about current developers as much, and focuses his attention outwards. ESR will try to evangelize and push businesses over to his point of view, RMS will just point out what a business is doing wrong (or right) without trying to change them. They've got (almost) the same goal, but very very different ways of trying to achieve it, and a lot of personal baggage that encourages snide comments and bickering between them.

You talk about "the thing desired", and "might get what they wanted" as if there is an end to all this. There is no end, there is no goal. Gathering knowledge is a continuous and endless process. Freedom is part of what's needed to encourage and support this process. It's a part that I focus on because it's the part that's been most lacking and neglected nowadays, particularly in the software world. So, yeah, Freedom is a means not an end, but it's an important means, so it's still about Freedom.

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Re:The Next Big Thing in Operating Systems

[scrytch]

MudOS has zero security in the driver. I've been looking for a better MOO than MOO lately, and I looked at LPmud, and none of the drivers cut it. One mudlib has a domain-based security system, but without driver security, it's a breach waiting to happen.

Won't cut it for what I need. Besides, I'd really like to see a MUD run X.