Thanks Was: RFC: Educating the majority

On Jan 13, 2004, at 10:25 PM, Craig White wrote:


> His predictions about the demise of Microsoft may come true but
> regardless of what ESR believes, they will not simply fold up, even if
> the most dire of ESR's predictions comes true, it would take a long
> time
> for Microsoft to die off.

It's been well documented that MS takes its profits from Windows and
Office and uses them to prop up other aspects of its business that lose
money massively. MSN and XBox may be the best know but MS has heavily
subsidized its forays into the high end software market as well. Their
recent announcement that they are going to stop pouring money into the
dial-up service market may be the best evidence that FOSS is making a
dent.

(I would bet that Apache causes them a lot more grief than Linux though)

But the other side of that coin is that it costs then nothing to
authorize an OEM to put a copy of Windows on a machine. If they have to
lower the price to keep the business they can do that. It won't even
necessarily hurt profits since they can offset the revenue loss by
abandoning unprofitable lines of business.

ESR also seems to somehow have managed to avoid meeting people for whom
the thought of using anything but Windows just isn't on the radar.
These are generally those form whom using a computer at all come very
hard. They simply have too much invested in Windows to contemplate
changing.

> But this does lead to the issue which started the thread off in the
> first place - does Linux need us to proselytize on its behalf and I
> think that it's obvious the answer is now. The market has its own
> dynamic and generally, people will make the right decisions, sometimes
> for the wrong reasons but over time, things generally work out right.

Well the market for operating systems does have a dynamic and that
dynamic is classic natural monopoly that we all studied in Econ 101.
Given that, the sense people have that coexistence isn't viable over
the long haul is absolutely correct. I have watched the market evolve
from a place where there were many operating systems to the
Unix/Windows dichotomy we have today and I don't doubt that one of the
two will eventually fall by the wayside. Of course this might well take
the form of Windows becoming 'just another *nix' the way Mac OS did.

> For many people, they have picked up a copy of Linux somewhere, tried
> to
> install it and work with it only to get frustrated and conclude that it
> isn't what they're looking for. This leaves a lasting impression.
>
> As Matthew Szulik said some months back - Linux still isn't ready for
> everyone's desktop...I will simply add, Yet.

I agree that this isn't the time to evangelize Joe and Sally Sixpack.
There are a few more pieces that need to be filled in. That doesn't
mean that there won't be such a time in the (near) future.