Between everyone here I continue to learn a helluva lot about what's going on with Linux vs. everything else, and am always grateful for it, particularly for the input from md and Ben recently. So, while having nothing much to contribute at this time other than congratulations and thanks for such intel and opinion, my best wishes from northern Vermont as the snow begins? to melt away and the sugar sap is running steady.
Old Farmer Davy Pavilion Farm (1806) West Montpeculiar VAX/VMS and OpenVMS ex-operator, sys admin, and "infrastructure analyst" and Alpha fan (hey, remember the AlphaServers? running VMS, NT or Red Hat while using practically zip for RAM or disk space???) (engineers, developers and sys admins went first to NT then to India then to Linux) DEC and HP-UNIX sys admin WinNT sys admin Windows Servers sys admin Red Hat sys admin Unemployed (until md needs a bodyguard and/or door gunner for his travels worldwide) On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 2:10 PM, Jon 'maddog' Hall <mad...@li.org> wrote: > O.K., I will wade in here. :-) > > For the most part, Ben is right. Vendors who completely control both > hardware and software can make the "best" products, if your definition > of "best" is a limited market of items, and you are willing to pay for > them. MVS, VMS, Digital Unix. Rock solid, stable, scalable. REALLY > EXPENSIVE. > > A lot of Microsoft's problems have to do with drivers that come from > different vendors, trying to control different controllers that fit into > buses that are not that well documented. One mistake in a driver > (inside the monolithic kernel) and BAM! Lockup and blue screen. I am > amazed that Microsoft's eco-system can actually boot at all. > > >> Apple could have > >> crushed MS by now if they had gone with the GPL attitude instead of > >> picking BSD so they could keep all their toys to themselves. > > >Yah, I'm not buying that. If all you needed was the GPL, Linux > >would already have crushed Microsoft. > > Ben, I think you are under-estimating your own argument about inertia. > > Inertia is all about acceleration, not really speed. In 1991 Microsoft > was already going 50,000 mph and accelerating and Linux started from > zero, with almost zero acceleration. In 1994 a lot of the vendors > seemed as if they were going to give the server market to WNT. There > were a lot of people saying that "Unix was dead". > > After twenty years Microsoft is still accelerating, but I think it is > accelerating at a slower pace, and FOSS is accelerating at a faster > pace, but has still not caught up. Then there is distance traveled, or > "speed over time" (in this case, installed base). It may take a very, > very long time before FOSS has the same installed base, much less > "crushing Microsoft". > > Apple has existed for about the same time as Microsoft, and still has > about the same market penetration as twenty years ago. Its acceleration > is a lot slower, and more or less allowed it to keep the same desktop > and server market share (or maybe lost server market share in that > time). > > >(When Linux first came out, you also had a fleet of commercial Unixes, > >Novel, several BSDs, OS/2, BeOS, and all sorts of other bit player > >platforms. Today it's all Microsoft, with Apple and Linux nipping at > >their heels. > > Sadly, and from a "choice" and "research" viewpoint this is true. But > the fragmentation meant that unless any of them reached critical stage, > they would be just what you said "bit players", and would have died > anyway. > > > Absolutely correct! However, the fact that's it's a hard problem to > >solve doesn't mean it isn't a problem. Indeed, the fact that it's a > >hard problem is why it hasn't been solved yet, and why the best idea > >anyone has come up with is sheer persistence over time. > > Yupolutely! And in May of 1994 I came back from meeting Linus Torvalds > and made a presentation to my Digital Unix management at DEC that had as > a final bullet on the last page: > > o Linux is inevitable! > > They asked me what that bullet meant, and I said that no one could stop > Linux. My management laughed. > > Now Digital Unix is dead and most of them work for Red Hat. > > What I meant by "Linux is inevitable" was that the concept of designing > a FOSS ecosystem with community was inevitable. "Linux" itself may > migrate, fork, evolve, etc. but the model is here, and it will > accelerate. > > When I worked for Bell Labs in 1982 I heard someone say "I do not know > what the next operating system will be, but I bet it will be based on > Unix." I answered "I don't know what the next operating system will be, > but I bet it will be called Unix", meaning that the operating system > would evolve maintaining the same name. I was only wrong by a couple of > letters. :-) > > md > > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ >
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