You may be missing the author's point. Why there is a substantial desktop Linux user community, including myself, the economics and logistics available to compete with Microsoft in that space are too prohibitive to be successful at the global market and enterprise level. The existence of alternative desktops remains novelty to the business community, and almost wholly self-supportive. Alternatives are unable to compete with the shear number of dollars behind the desktop competitor.
Just as the Soviet Union (please forgive the analogy -- this is not meant to imply any 'leftist' agendas) folded under enormous pressure to spend enormous captital, both monetary and with labor, on an arms race that it couldn't win, the author makes a point that for success any movement must know when to compete, and know when to change its strategy.
The Linux community is fragmented on this. The community has grown from a small, fiercly dedicated group to a large entity that includes "late-comers" who are interested more in the business and efficacy of Linux in the enterprise than a costly project competing with a monilith now supporting in part in its practices by the goverment.
The enterprise market is wide-open. As a technologist who has worked on many disparate systems for many different clients and projects, including the top New York-based investments banks and a very large softdrink company, the last few years have shown this. Companies are confusing, switching platforms to Sun, back to Microsoft, then to IBM. There is a very low-level of overall satisfaction when compared to the desktop market, this is shown by the frequency on which companies switch and mix enterprise software solutions. There are "Shops" dedicated to platforms ( Java 2 Enterprise Edition seems to have invoked loyalty), but there still isn't one clear leader across the whole of the business world.
By devoting its full attention to the enterprise market, the Linux development community and its supporters can take advantage of this confusion and present a viable alternative for the global marketplace. The grass-roots opinion makers and traditional developers in the enterprise software world are the same kind of techies that embodied the Linux movement, with comparable skill levels and experience. They are not "Aunt Tillie", for Aunt Tillie can't make a decision on something that she knows nothing about. When they see proof that a solution is fast, reliable, and economical, they will buy into it. IBM sees this
and is exploiting it, but why should big business be able to co-opt a open and publicly owned movement? If those same developers working feverishly on new desktops and clone applications could get together and work on promising applications like Enhydra (http://www.enhydra.org) and turn them into free, compatible, and supported alternatives to BEA WebLogic, WebSphere, and MS.NET, Linux could own the enterprise market and make a lasting impact on the future of the open-source movement. doctors4bob
"The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society." -- --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson,
1813
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Just as the Soviet Union (please forgive the analogy -- this is not meant to imply any 'leftist' agendas) folded under enormous pressure to spend enormous captital, both monetary and with labor, on an arms race that it couldn't win, the author makes a point that for success any movement must know when to compete, and know when to change its strategy.
The Linux community is fragmented on this. The community has grown from a small, fiercly dedicated group to a large entity that includes "late-comers" who are interested more in the business and efficacy of Linux in the enterprise than a costly project competing with a monilith now supporting in part in its practices by the goverment.
The enterprise market is wide-open. As a technologist who has worked on many disparate systems for many different clients and projects, including the top New York-based investments banks and a very large softdrink company, the last few years have shown this. Companies are confusing, switching platforms to Sun, back to Microsoft, then to IBM. There is a very low-level of overall satisfaction when compared to the desktop market, this is shown by the frequency on which companies switch and mix enterprise software solutions. There are "Shops" dedicated to platforms ( Java 2 Enterprise Edition seems to have invoked loyalty), but there still isn't one clear leader across the whole of the business world.
By devoting its full attention to the enterprise market, the Linux development community and its supporters can take advantage of this confusion and present a viable alternative for the global marketplace. The grass-roots opinion makers and traditional developers in the enterprise software world are the same kind of techies that embodied the Linux movement, with comparable skill levels and experience. They are not "Aunt Tillie", for Aunt Tillie can't make a decision on something that she knows nothing about. When they see proof that a solution is fast, reliable, and economical, they will buy into it. IBM sees this and is exploiting it, but why should big business be able to co-opt a open and publicly owned movement? If those same developers working feverishly on new desktops and clone applications could get together and work on promising applications like Enhydra (http://www.enhydra.org) and turn them into free, compatible, and supported alternatives to BEA WebLogic, WebSphere, and MS.NET, Linux could own the enterprise market and make a lasting impact on the future of the open-source movement.
doctors4bob