Skeleton in Linux closet?

[Jeffrey Watts]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Bradley Miller wrote:

> I doubt they'll die off by not doing things "our way".  They've
> succeeded up till now without doing it "our way" and I don't see any
> mass exodous happening anytime soon.

There's plenty of room in the software market, but it's real hard to sell
someone a product that is functionally equivalent to a free system (as in
beer) but costs money, especially when the Free (as in liberty) system has
so many other advantages.

Would you pay $2.00 a gallon for Hy-Vee milk when Dillon's milk was given
away free as a loss-leader?  This isn't a fantasy, this is real-world
economics.  

The only way you could make money by selling something someone else is
giving away for free is if your product is either superior in quality or
if you offer superior support.

Microsoft especially has demonstrated that they don't match up to Linux in
either regard.

If you want an example of a company that is dying off due to Linux, look
no farther than SCO.

> Companies can only get so far with out some real money behind them and
> an advertising budget to boot.
>  Could you imagine ads for Linux during the SuperBowl?  Those don't
> come cheap and they would sure get the general public thinking about a
> Microsoft alternative.

Word of mouth sold Linux (and Netscape and DOOM and ICQ and Napster and
Perl and the WWW and a little thing called the Internet).  In '95 the
Internet was all the rage -- did you see any ads from the IETF during the
Superbowl?  No.

I personally don't give a damn if any company makes a dime off of Linux. I
don't care if Linux becomes the dominant OS.  Remember, without Evil, Good
has no meaning...  We've already demonstrated that we now have a choice,
and that's all we ever cared about.  Maybe _you_ care about seeing Linux
become the standard in business, but I personally don't care.

Point is that this is a _revolution_, not a new product.

Either existing business will adapt (see SGI) or get squashed (see SCO).
Either way, any company making a significant percentage of their revenue
from operating systems (and to a lesser extent software) will get their
business model destroyed.

Look what Microsoft did to Netscape.  Netscape was making like 50% of
their revenue from selling their browser.  When Microsoft gave IE away, it
destroyed Netscape.  It made their business model obsolete in a heartbeat,
because it made a significant revenue-generating product of theirs
worthless.

When Linux is ready for the desktop (next year?), the "value" of Windows
will evaporate.  The only reason there is still any money in operating
systems is due to Microsoft's monopoly.  Do you honestly think that we'd
be paying the same amount of money for an OS in '00 that we were in '85?
Moore's law does not predict this (even though it doesn't specifically
apply to software).  $100 for an OS is an artificial price due to a
monopoly.

> It's sort of like this in comparison to cars and such.  You can show
> people on paper that XYZ car whips another car in every aspect but it
> comes down to it it's what the person really wants.  On paper the
> Camaro bests the Mustang in every way, yet there are tons more
> Mustangs sold every year.

What if the Camaro was given away for _free_?  Would people buy Mustangs
then?  Sure a few would buy them, but not many.  Personally, I'd be really
happy with my new, shiny, FREE Camaro.

J.

o-----------------------------------o
| Jeffrey Watts                     |
| watts at jayhawks.net            o-------------------------------------o
| Systems Programmer            | "A much-heard theory is the         |
| Sprint - Systems Management   |  similarity between Microsoft and   |
o-------------------------------|  Borg practices.  However, this     |
                                |  would seem unlikely because the    |
                                |  Borg never charge for              |
                                |  assimilation, let alone force a    |
                                |  drone to upgrade his or her        |
                                |  implants every three years."       |
                                |  -- Segfault.org                    |
                                o-------------------------------------o