Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on April 27, 2007 10:03 AM
Funny thing is, when I saw the subject of your post, I thought it was going to be about RMS.
Don't get me wrong, I have tremendous respect for his accomplisments in software and with FSF; we quite simply would not have what we have today without him. Free software, including Linux distros, would not exist at we know it, if at all, were it not for Richard Stallman.
That said, if you read/listen to what RMS has to say on political subjects, he does indeed sound like a a sixties radical style communist. The guy is utterly full of crap on politics and economics.
Metcalf's problem is he takes some things that may be true of RMS (I suspect very strongly that he's a closet commie, or something very much like one, and he's not even terribly closeted about it) and applies them to the entire Free software movement, the entire open source movement (and doesn't get the differences between the two), and then goes on to make rash accusations and predictions based on that.
(Note: while RMS may be very communistic, I'm sure he's not a communist in the Mao/Pol Pot/Stalin sense of the word; while many communists believe in violence, murder, and the end of communism justifying any means whatsoever, others are peaceful and law abiding. The Japan Communist Party uses exactly one weapon: the ballot box. Not with much success, but they are a law-abiding group, and that is paramount.)
I missed his rant against Linux and open source back at the time he wrote it, but I was already a Linux user then and could already see the tide starting to turn, as did many others in the FOSS camp.
Now, in 2007, we see Microsoft truly being pressed by Linux. Sun, also pressed, as open-sourced both Solaris and Java. Vista is not doing well compared to how Windows 95, 2000, and XP did when they were launched. IBM and Sun support Linux strongly. Linux is huge in the server space, and is making some headway on the desktop. Open source applications like Thunderbird and Firefox are taking real marketshare and mindshare from Outlook Express and IE. Two of the most popular relational databases are both open source (Postgresql and MySQL).
People have often used the Gandhi quote about Linux and the FOSS movement: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." FOSS today, and Linux in particular, have been in the thick of the "then they fight you" phase for a good while now, and the transition into the "then you win" phase is beginning.
That doesn't mean Microsoft and other proprietary vendors will dry up and blow away; they will always have a place. However, five years on, Linux is likely to have a significant and growing share of the desktop market, especially in emerging economies. If major distros such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Novell/SuSe are successful in exploiting the window of opportunity that Vista is surprising, five years on the combined market share of Linux and Mac will be really making Microsoft sweat.
I'll make a bold prediction here: in five years, Microsoft executives will be reading the tea leaves and preparing for the day when Windows has less than a fifty percent market share.
Heck, I'll make a foolish prediction to go with my bold one and say there's a small chance that five years from today, the 50% milestone may have already been met by Linux and Mac.
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Re:sustainability
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 27, 2007 10:03 AMDon't get me wrong, I have tremendous respect for his accomplisments in software and with FSF; we quite simply would not have what we have today without him. Free software, including Linux distros, would not exist at we know it, if at all, were it not for Richard Stallman.
That said, if you read/listen to what RMS has to say on political subjects, he does indeed sound like a a sixties radical style communist. The guy is utterly full of crap on politics and economics.
Metcalf's problem is he takes some things that may be true of RMS (I suspect very strongly that he's a closet commie, or something very much like one, and he's not even terribly closeted about it) and applies them to the entire Free software movement, the entire open source movement (and doesn't get the differences between the two), and then goes on to make rash accusations and predictions based on that.
(Note: while RMS may be very communistic, I'm sure he's not a communist in the Mao/Pol Pot/Stalin sense of the word; while many communists believe in violence, murder, and the end of communism justifying any means whatsoever, others are peaceful and law abiding. The Japan Communist Party uses exactly one weapon: the ballot box. Not with much success, but they are a law-abiding group, and that is paramount.)
I missed his rant against Linux and open source back at the time he wrote it, but I was already a Linux user then and could already see the tide starting to turn, as did many others in the FOSS camp.
Now, in 2007, we see Microsoft truly being pressed by Linux. Sun, also pressed, as open-sourced both Solaris and Java. Vista is not doing well compared to how Windows 95, 2000, and XP did when they were launched. IBM and Sun support Linux strongly. Linux is huge in the server space, and is making some headway on the desktop. Open source applications like Thunderbird and Firefox are taking real marketshare and mindshare from Outlook Express and IE. Two of the most popular relational databases are both open source (Postgresql and MySQL).
People have often used the Gandhi quote about Linux and the FOSS movement: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." FOSS today, and Linux in particular, have been in the thick of the "then they fight you" phase for a good while now, and the transition into the "then you win" phase is beginning.
That doesn't mean Microsoft and other proprietary vendors will dry up and blow away; they will always have a place. However, five years on, Linux is likely to have a significant and growing share of the desktop market, especially in emerging economies. If major distros such as Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Novell/SuSe are successful in exploiting the window of opportunity that Vista is surprising, five years on the combined market share of Linux and Mac will be really making Microsoft sweat.
I'll make a bold prediction here: in five years, Microsoft executives will be reading the tea leaves and preparing for the day when Windows has less than a fifty percent market share.
Heck, I'll make a foolish prediction to go with my bold one and say there's a small chance that five years from today, the 50% milestone may have already been met by Linux and Mac.
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