6 Things to Know About Linux
I am subscribed to enough user groups that everyday Linux (and other Free Software Foundation's, FSF's, GNU's Not UNIX systems, among other UNIX systems) is oversold to people, people foolishly try to explain Linux or, far worse yet, start using some already misguided discussion of Linux to market one Linux distribution against another. Most completely miss the concept of community developed software, which is where much of the differences lie, and not in some sort of ideology of "free" or "less evil" or "anything but brand X." In fact, many of these arguments are as far away from community developed software as you can get.
With that said, there are six (6) things about Linux to know, and I don't care if you're Richard Stallman, you should know these (and people like Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Parens and Linux Torvalds clearly do). I mean, some people have already beaten the "Linux is a UNIX-like OS, not a Windows-like OS" like a dead horse. Let's go even beyond that ...
1. What the Pricetag on Windows Buys You
When you buy Windows XP, you are not buying a $50-200 product. And when you buy MS Office, you are not buying a $200-600 product. You are buying licenses, and it costs Microsoft virtually next to nothing to reproduce them in comparison. Therefore, you are funding a multi-billion dollar software bundling and marketing service. Now before you think I'm demonizing Microsoft, hear me out.
Those billions of dollars go to sign licensing agreements to ensure Windows is bundled with multimedia codecs, license agreements to intellectual property (IP) rights to patents such as on 3D gaming, and countless other, 3rd party solutions that would not and could not be used without their permission. You pay for the right to get to use those in your everyday computing -- from when you receive the computer system from the Tier-1 PC Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) who pre-installed your Windows version to a specific and exacting form. Or when you get other software that is explicitly designed for your system, or the hardware you buy at the computer superstore who are largely Microsoft partners -- all guaranteed to work together!
Now, of course, this money goes to market those partner products, licenses and solutions. Which means you are not only gaining access to them, but you are using a system that actively promotes them. A system that holds a 90+% share of the computing market, a market of exclusion and inclusion. Products designed to work today and for a good 3 years, as not only do most consumers upgrade their computers every 3 years, but most businesses, business accounting/depreciation and business management terms have 3 year cycles. But more on that in a minute.
2. What Is Community Developed Software All About?
Community developed software, poorly called Free Software (aka Freeware), more appropriately termed Freedom Software -- or Freedomware for short -- is about a community bonding together to share information. That means people pushing aside most intellectual property (IP) rights, helping one another solve problems and otherwise coming up with good, solid and -- most importantly -- repeatable approaches and universal interfaces aka "open standards" to how systems and software should work. But the real key to ensuring that community developed software works on the premise of both individual choice (I choose to work for a public good, but I am not forced to) and non-exclusionary participation (I don't discriminate against others, even ones I do not like), without bias.
E.g., even the SCO Group, currently disliked for much of its more recent legal actions (outside of its initial contract dispute with IBM) and more recent anti-Linux marketing approach, has full rights to use and distribute various, mission critical Freedomware in its UNIX products.
Freedomware development and use thrives on open standards, as anything freely redistributable without written licensing agreements, negotiations and other inhibiting, non-technical aspects. At the same time, Freedomware survives on the protections of IP itself, as it could not exist in a market of IP if it did not hold its own. It is just that those who choose to join community developments choose to share their IP, instead of horde it, so all may benefit. The result is that innovation in software occur much faster -- and have resulted in nearly all solutions you use today, even on Windows (which we'll get to in a minute). And open source and open standard systems, software and formats do work with each other without fuss, as long as people work together.
The downside is that Freedomware does not gain access to proprietary IP. That means unless an open standard has taken hold in the public, Freedomware cannot likely support it. Although "clean room" compatible software and "reverse engineering" efforts (which are always the "last resort") attempt to make Freedomware compatible with proprietary systems, by their very nature, community software is a legal mindfield for proprietary IP (and sometimes vice-versa). The community cannot simply license proprietary IP to be freely shared like a private entity could.
3. Commercial Companies and Community Developed Software
Now some will quickly point to commercial companies now selling community developed software. For the most part, many of these organizations are small. So while you may pay $50-100 for their software, which seems "reasonable" to the cost of Microsoft's -- that funding only amounts to maybe $50,000/year, maybe $500,000/year for a common Linux distribution. Now what does that go towards? It barely pays enough for the Internet update servers, a few management individuals and other administrative details. The rest of the support is done by volunteers and other individuals outside the organization. And it most definitely does not leave room for such private organizations to license proprietary IP, which might have legal issues in merging with community developed software for the public to freely use.
Now there are other companies, ones selling a $150-3,000 OS, with $500-15,000 add-ons. Such companies are Red Hat. Red Hat, like some of its predecessors including Cygnus who Red Hat has since absorbed, built its entire commercial model on giving away all of its IP, and giving away all of its software, and then still turning around and charging money for what you could get for free. So what does Red Hat with its $50+M/year software funding through subscriptions? It spends that money procuring more software and making it legally redistributable, largely those software components that fund its repeat licensees -- businesses and server software. Such software components like filesystems, directory services and the like. Red Hat relies on more community developments, even those it helps fund indirectly with its massive number of in-house developers, in a non-supporting role. And under no circumstances does Red Hat license proprietary IP that it cannot give away at some point.
Which leaves only a few other companies. Hewlett-Packard has many focuses, and has more recently started to share some of its IP and work with Linux, one of the greatest of notables. And while Sun Microsystems has largely been one of the poster-corporation for open standards, many of which Linux benefits from today, it has only more recently discovered what sharing its IP and source can do. IBM has largely treated Linux as a product for expanding its proprietary solutions and services line, although IP has donated many patents (IBM being the world's foremost patent holder) that were troubling Linux developers in more recent months.
So these companies, among others, have been sharing to some extent, helping bring some proprietary IP to be freely used. But that still does not solve the "inclusion" of what 90% of users have in Windows. Unless we look at that "other UNIX-like" platform.
4. Why MacOS X is the "Other" UNIX-Like Platform That People Like
Apple MacOS X is the UNIX-like platform that people say is "better." By "better," let's put it back in terms of #1 above. Apple is a company with significant funding to sign licensing agreements, guarantee a good amount of hardware compatibility, work with larger companies and -- most importantly -- has the necessary cash to spend on marketing. Apple didn't invent MP3, they got recording studios on-board to make money distributing their works in MP3. Apple didn't invent the MP3 player, they were just the first company, and with enough money, to market a single line of products. And most of all, Apple has the most experience in understand its consumers, bridging the leading-tech to the closet-geek consumer.
That's why when you go to the Superstore, even those that don't cater to Apple, hardware often works with Apple, and some software is available for Apple. Apple has the money to deal with both the licensing and marketing aspects -- not as far as Microsoft, but enough so "it just (typically) works when you get home." No messy codecs to download, no video drivers to obtain, no legally questionable software that is not included, etc... And they have the money to support their efforts.
5. UNIX Invented It, Microsoft Bought the 3rd Best (Leftover) and Marketed It
Everything was invented on UNIX or UNIX-like platforms. The graphical user interface (GUI), the Internet, the office suite, the web browser, the media player (let alone "eye candy" / "skinned" media player), etc..., etc..., etc... Most people assume otherwise because they are part of the 90+%. Even newer Linux users continue to assume, because they did not grow up with UNIX/Linux. But the reality is that in the free sharing of ideals, open standards and open source have always been where things have been invented. Not only that, but if legally allowed, Microsoft uses open source, and when not, it buys the 3rd Best product (usually the minority "left over") and markets the hell out of it.
Who's to say what is better? If you read most any review on an office suite, the comparison is often made based on how MS Office works, let alone MS Office compatibility -- something that MS Office itself fails against older versions of its. It does not take into consideration components that MS Office does not have, and in many cases, did not implement long ago, let alone how well other office suites maintain compatibility with themselves and their old documents over time. When it comes to internet browsers, it's not about what features are supported (let alone cross-platform standards), but how well it renders Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows-only sites (let alone how well some browsers "fool" sites into thinking they are Microsoft browsers, because some of their code degrades features -- even MS IE on MacOS X!).
People find it surprising when they use Corel products and find features that not only surpass MS Office in capabilities, not only read their old formats far better than MS Office reads its own, but reads even older MS Office documents better than newer versions of MS Office can. That's one of the major reasons organizations that need 3+ years of document longevity -- such as those in law and medicine -- still run Corel, although quite modern and powerful versions (and not 16-year old WP 5.1). Or those who adopted StarOffice in the early '90s that had features that MS Office still does not have, let alone still reads its old file formats as well. Corel and StarOffice today, along with IBM SuiteSuite and others, are moving to support or already support fully documented XML standards. Microsoft's incomplete 2003 XML disclosure which is not even used as the standard in MS Office 11 (2003), is not even being used for the new, supposive XML standard in MS Office 12 (2005), and full disclosure is still forthcoming.
Again, open standards and open source are open for all to see. The OpenOffice, now OpenDocument, standard has been fully published and open to extensions -- even from Microsoft -- for over a half-decade. Microsoft is legally free to use the exact code in its products, yet it will not. At the same time, open source is not allowed to use proprietary IP from Microsoft. And since proprietary hold with an ever-changing format -- using control of a distribution channel such as the Tier-1 PC OEM and computer superstore retail channel -- is the exclusionary/inclusionary factor, this is not a technical issue.
6. The Distribution Channel is Not a Technical Problem
Linux will continue to have compatibility issues with proprietary IP, no matter how much reverse engineering or even some outside donations occur. The core company, and its core partners, that control 90+% of all computer distribution -- the 4 components: system, peripherals, OS and applications -- have a very good profit model. To support Linux is to break that model.
The peripheral vendor who wants to sell you a cheap printer, then make a lot of money on supplies, then force you to upgrade the next time you change your system or OS. The system vendor who wants to sell you a new system when you want a new OS. The OS that you require when you get a new application that doesn't run on the old. It makes no sense for the peripheral vendor to expend money to write drivers for an older, unsupported OS when they won't get any more money for it. There is no sense for the OS vendor to maintain application and system support for long term as it gains them no further revenue.
Especially when 90+% of American consumers go into a computer superstore, or to a Tier-1 PC OEM, and expect to get a new computer with new peripherals with a new OS and new applications every 2-3 years, or businesses that have a 3 year accounting cycle, or managers who can justify budgets every 3 years (or their predecessor was so fired). And in each and every case, who cares if it doesn't work, old files aren't accessible and otherwise useless in 3 years?
So to prevent others from writing compatible drivers, compatible software, compatible OSes, is to not share that information. And without that information, Linux cannot have drivers, compatible software and compatible OS interfaces. Furthemore, to keep costs of hardware down, today's storage devices, printers, scanners and almost everything in a system is software-based anyway, with little hardware. Even if generic Linux software drivers are written (and in many cases they are to support just about any feature), the vendors make little changes in the software licensed from 3rd parties that Linux, in the best case, only supports 500+ variants of a product of literally thousands of OEMs that made changes.
Conclusion
Which is why if you are seriously considering any type of community software -- such as Linux -- you have to recognize that you won't always be able to buy the hardware on-sale at the superstore, or be compatible with the latest, proprietary IP application software or be able to view the latest, MS IE-only web sites with Windows-only media formats. Only vendors who have funding to both license and market have clout to work with proprietary IP, with one of the few, UNIX-like platforms being Apple's MacOS X -- but even it has some limitations in comparison to Windows. If you need that proprietary IP, you're probably far better paying the $50-150 for Windows, another $50-100 for system utilities, and locking down Windows tight, security-wise (although it will probably break a lot of your Windows applications) than run Linux.
At the same time, Linux and even community developed software (some of which is available for Windows) works "out of the box" with open standards, other open source software, well designed hardware (especially so and better than Windows in many cases) and, most importantly, drivers, interfaces, terminology and -- especially -- data formats that are virtually eternal. That's why UNIX-like systems have a heafty following, especially by established users, even more and more non-technical, application-focused these days. Linux also caters to enterprise management more fluidly with enterprise packaging and roll-outs -- which can be a catch-22 and curse for more "home consumers" who "just want it to install." Especially when it comes to well designed, multiuser, "I don't trust you to control the system at a 'superuser' at any time" defaults in UNIX-like systems.
Which is why Linux is slowly but surely moving from the Internet platform to the data center to the corporate desktop -- for control, security and managability, many of which are of not only not user focused, but an intentional hinderance at times (at least compared to "how Windows works"). Which is why the superstores still don't cater to Linux. Which is why no Linux companies have spent the significant resources to gain proprietary IP and roll out a partially proprietary desktop version of Linux (which will probably prove to be a legal impossibility with Linux for the most part -- unlike a BSD-based, legal Apple MacOS X, long story). But give corporate adoption time.
Because it might be the corporation that starts to force you to run StarOffice at home to be compatible with the office.
Final Thoughts
How far that can Freedomware on Windows turn into and make in-roads into the proprietary IP clique and distribution channel that opens up to Linux in general? No one knows yet. I'm doubtful it can break into a majority, because it's hard to fight licenses and marketing that costs real money to obtain. Only when everyone agrees to share will it.
But as a staunch man of Libertarian ideals, I'm not about to tell people that must use Linux. In fact, the most I'd ever regulate is open standards, and to only a limited extent. Forcing people to use something against their will, no matter how wrong, misguided and self-inflicting I think they are, is taking away their choice. And when a community moves from choosing to work together and accepting those who do not to the point of forcing everyone to work with them, that's when that other "commu" prefix word becomes reality. Choice is freedom, and why community developed software is very American, because it's all about choice -- including the right to choose a proprietary piece of software.
In fact, if it delivers values, which much proprietary software from other companies (than the one everyone likes to hate), there is nothing wrong with it. Companies like Corel have done this for decades. But when you mandate a private corporation and monopoly through legislative requirements, it's no longer choice, but the facist economic model. Which is why open standards can be very American as well, because it forces both community organizations and private corporations to win on their merits -- of which, many private corporations can and do better than community organizations, when it comes to open standards.
With that said, there are six (6) things about Linux to know, and I don't care if you're Richard Stallman, you should know these (and people like Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Parens and Linux Torvalds clearly do). I mean, some people have already beaten the "Linux is a UNIX-like OS, not a Windows-like OS" like a dead horse. Let's go even beyond that ...
1. What the Pricetag on Windows Buys You
When you buy Windows XP, you are not buying a $50-200 product. And when you buy MS Office, you are not buying a $200-600 product. You are buying licenses, and it costs Microsoft virtually next to nothing to reproduce them in comparison. Therefore, you are funding a multi-billion dollar software bundling and marketing service. Now before you think I'm demonizing Microsoft, hear me out.
Those billions of dollars go to sign licensing agreements to ensure Windows is bundled with multimedia codecs, license agreements to intellectual property (IP) rights to patents such as on 3D gaming, and countless other, 3rd party solutions that would not and could not be used without their permission. You pay for the right to get to use those in your everyday computing -- from when you receive the computer system from the Tier-1 PC Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) who pre-installed your Windows version to a specific and exacting form. Or when you get other software that is explicitly designed for your system, or the hardware you buy at the computer superstore who are largely Microsoft partners -- all guaranteed to work together!
Now, of course, this money goes to market those partner products, licenses and solutions. Which means you are not only gaining access to them, but you are using a system that actively promotes them. A system that holds a 90+% share of the computing market, a market of exclusion and inclusion. Products designed to work today and for a good 3 years, as not only do most consumers upgrade their computers every 3 years, but most businesses, business accounting/depreciation and business management terms have 3 year cycles. But more on that in a minute.
2. What Is Community Developed Software All About?
Community developed software, poorly called Free Software (aka Freeware), more appropriately termed Freedom Software -- or Freedomware for short -- is about a community bonding together to share information. That means people pushing aside most intellectual property (IP) rights, helping one another solve problems and otherwise coming up with good, solid and -- most importantly -- repeatable approaches and universal interfaces aka "open standards" to how systems and software should work. But the real key to ensuring that community developed software works on the premise of both individual choice (I choose to work for a public good, but I am not forced to) and non-exclusionary participation (I don't discriminate against others, even ones I do not like), without bias.
E.g., even the SCO Group, currently disliked for much of its more recent legal actions (outside of its initial contract dispute with IBM) and more recent anti-Linux marketing approach, has full rights to use and distribute various, mission critical Freedomware in its UNIX products.
Freedomware development and use thrives on open standards, as anything freely redistributable without written licensing agreements, negotiations and other inhibiting, non-technical aspects. At the same time, Freedomware survives on the protections of IP itself, as it could not exist in a market of IP if it did not hold its own. It is just that those who choose to join community developments choose to share their IP, instead of horde it, so all may benefit. The result is that innovation in software occur much faster -- and have resulted in nearly all solutions you use today, even on Windows (which we'll get to in a minute). And open source and open standard systems, software and formats do work with each other without fuss, as long as people work together.
The downside is that Freedomware does not gain access to proprietary IP. That means unless an open standard has taken hold in the public, Freedomware cannot likely support it. Although "clean room" compatible software and "reverse engineering" efforts (which are always the "last resort") attempt to make Freedomware compatible with proprietary systems, by their very nature, community software is a legal mindfield for proprietary IP (and sometimes vice-versa). The community cannot simply license proprietary IP to be freely shared like a private entity could.
3. Commercial Companies and Community Developed Software
Now some will quickly point to commercial companies now selling community developed software. For the most part, many of these organizations are small. So while you may pay $50-100 for their software, which seems "reasonable" to the cost of Microsoft's -- that funding only amounts to maybe $50,000/year, maybe $500,000/year for a common Linux distribution. Now what does that go towards? It barely pays enough for the Internet update servers, a few management individuals and other administrative details. The rest of the support is done by volunteers and other individuals outside the organization. And it most definitely does not leave room for such private organizations to license proprietary IP, which might have legal issues in merging with community developed software for the public to freely use.
Now there are other companies, ones selling a $150-3,000 OS, with $500-15,000 add-ons. Such companies are Red Hat. Red Hat, like some of its predecessors including Cygnus who Red Hat has since absorbed, built its entire commercial model on giving away all of its IP, and giving away all of its software, and then still turning around and charging money for what you could get for free. So what does Red Hat with its $50+M/year software funding through subscriptions? It spends that money procuring more software and making it legally redistributable, largely those software components that fund its repeat licensees -- businesses and server software. Such software components like filesystems, directory services and the like. Red Hat relies on more community developments, even those it helps fund indirectly with its massive number of in-house developers, in a non-supporting role. And under no circumstances does Red Hat license proprietary IP that it cannot give away at some point.
Which leaves only a few other companies. Hewlett-Packard has many focuses, and has more recently started to share some of its IP and work with Linux, one of the greatest of notables. And while Sun Microsystems has largely been one of the poster-corporation for open standards, many of which Linux benefits from today, it has only more recently discovered what sharing its IP and source can do. IBM has largely treated Linux as a product for expanding its proprietary solutions and services line, although IP has donated many patents (IBM being the world's foremost patent holder) that were troubling Linux developers in more recent months.
So these companies, among others, have been sharing to some extent, helping bring some proprietary IP to be freely used. But that still does not solve the "inclusion" of what 90% of users have in Windows. Unless we look at that "other UNIX-like" platform.
4. Why MacOS X is the "Other" UNIX-Like Platform That People Like
Apple MacOS X is the UNIX-like platform that people say is "better." By "better," let's put it back in terms of #1 above. Apple is a company with significant funding to sign licensing agreements, guarantee a good amount of hardware compatibility, work with larger companies and -- most importantly -- has the necessary cash to spend on marketing. Apple didn't invent MP3, they got recording studios on-board to make money distributing their works in MP3. Apple didn't invent the MP3 player, they were just the first company, and with enough money, to market a single line of products. And most of all, Apple has the most experience in understand its consumers, bridging the leading-tech to the closet-geek consumer.
That's why when you go to the Superstore, even those that don't cater to Apple, hardware often works with Apple, and some software is available for Apple. Apple has the money to deal with both the licensing and marketing aspects -- not as far as Microsoft, but enough so "it just (typically) works when you get home." No messy codecs to download, no video drivers to obtain, no legally questionable software that is not included, etc... And they have the money to support their efforts.
5. UNIX Invented It, Microsoft Bought the 3rd Best (Leftover) and Marketed It
Everything was invented on UNIX or UNIX-like platforms. The graphical user interface (GUI), the Internet, the office suite, the web browser, the media player (let alone "eye candy" / "skinned" media player), etc..., etc..., etc... Most people assume otherwise because they are part of the 90+%. Even newer Linux users continue to assume, because they did not grow up with UNIX/Linux. But the reality is that in the free sharing of ideals, open standards and open source have always been where things have been invented. Not only that, but if legally allowed, Microsoft uses open source, and when not, it buys the 3rd Best product (usually the minority "left over") and markets the hell out of it.
Who's to say what is better? If you read most any review on an office suite, the comparison is often made based on how MS Office works, let alone MS Office compatibility -- something that MS Office itself fails against older versions of its. It does not take into consideration components that MS Office does not have, and in many cases, did not implement long ago, let alone how well other office suites maintain compatibility with themselves and their old documents over time. When it comes to internet browsers, it's not about what features are supported (let alone cross-platform standards), but how well it renders Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows-only sites (let alone how well some browsers "fool" sites into thinking they are Microsoft browsers, because some of their code degrades features -- even MS IE on MacOS X!).
People find it surprising when they use Corel products and find features that not only surpass MS Office in capabilities, not only read their old formats far better than MS Office reads its own, but reads even older MS Office documents better than newer versions of MS Office can. That's one of the major reasons organizations that need 3+ years of document longevity -- such as those in law and medicine -- still run Corel, although quite modern and powerful versions (and not 16-year old WP 5.1). Or those who adopted StarOffice in the early '90s that had features that MS Office still does not have, let alone still reads its old file formats as well. Corel and StarOffice today, along with IBM SuiteSuite and others, are moving to support or already support fully documented XML standards. Microsoft's incomplete 2003 XML disclosure which is not even used as the standard in MS Office 11 (2003), is not even being used for the new, supposive XML standard in MS Office 12 (2005), and full disclosure is still forthcoming.
Again, open standards and open source are open for all to see. The OpenOffice, now OpenDocument, standard has been fully published and open to extensions -- even from Microsoft -- for over a half-decade. Microsoft is legally free to use the exact code in its products, yet it will not. At the same time, open source is not allowed to use proprietary IP from Microsoft. And since proprietary hold with an ever-changing format -- using control of a distribution channel such as the Tier-1 PC OEM and computer superstore retail channel -- is the exclusionary/inclusionary factor, this is not a technical issue.
6. The Distribution Channel is Not a Technical Problem
Linux will continue to have compatibility issues with proprietary IP, no matter how much reverse engineering or even some outside donations occur. The core company, and its core partners, that control 90+% of all computer distribution -- the 4 components: system, peripherals, OS and applications -- have a very good profit model. To support Linux is to break that model.
The peripheral vendor who wants to sell you a cheap printer, then make a lot of money on supplies, then force you to upgrade the next time you change your system or OS. The system vendor who wants to sell you a new system when you want a new OS. The OS that you require when you get a new application that doesn't run on the old. It makes no sense for the peripheral vendor to expend money to write drivers for an older, unsupported OS when they won't get any more money for it. There is no sense for the OS vendor to maintain application and system support for long term as it gains them no further revenue.
Especially when 90+% of American consumers go into a computer superstore, or to a Tier-1 PC OEM, and expect to get a new computer with new peripherals with a new OS and new applications every 2-3 years, or businesses that have a 3 year accounting cycle, or managers who can justify budgets every 3 years (or their predecessor was so fired). And in each and every case, who cares if it doesn't work, old files aren't accessible and otherwise useless in 3 years?
So to prevent others from writing compatible drivers, compatible software, compatible OSes, is to not share that information. And without that information, Linux cannot have drivers, compatible software and compatible OS interfaces. Furthemore, to keep costs of hardware down, today's storage devices, printers, scanners and almost everything in a system is software-based anyway, with little hardware. Even if generic Linux software drivers are written (and in many cases they are to support just about any feature), the vendors make little changes in the software licensed from 3rd parties that Linux, in the best case, only supports 500+ variants of a product of literally thousands of OEMs that made changes.
Conclusion
Which is why if you are seriously considering any type of community software -- such as Linux -- you have to recognize that you won't always be able to buy the hardware on-sale at the superstore, or be compatible with the latest, proprietary IP application software or be able to view the latest, MS IE-only web sites with Windows-only media formats. Only vendors who have funding to both license and market have clout to work with proprietary IP, with one of the few, UNIX-like platforms being Apple's MacOS X -- but even it has some limitations in comparison to Windows. If you need that proprietary IP, you're probably far better paying the $50-150 for Windows, another $50-100 for system utilities, and locking down Windows tight, security-wise (although it will probably break a lot of your Windows applications) than run Linux.
At the same time, Linux and even community developed software (some of which is available for Windows) works "out of the box" with open standards, other open source software, well designed hardware (especially so and better than Windows in many cases) and, most importantly, drivers, interfaces, terminology and -- especially -- data formats that are virtually eternal. That's why UNIX-like systems have a heafty following, especially by established users, even more and more non-technical, application-focused these days. Linux also caters to enterprise management more fluidly with enterprise packaging and roll-outs -- which can be a catch-22 and curse for more "home consumers" who "just want it to install." Especially when it comes to well designed, multiuser, "I don't trust you to control the system at a 'superuser' at any time" defaults in UNIX-like systems.
Which is why Linux is slowly but surely moving from the Internet platform to the data center to the corporate desktop -- for control, security and managability, many of which are of not only not user focused, but an intentional hinderance at times (at least compared to "how Windows works"). Which is why the superstores still don't cater to Linux. Which is why no Linux companies have spent the significant resources to gain proprietary IP and roll out a partially proprietary desktop version of Linux (which will probably prove to be a legal impossibility with Linux for the most part -- unlike a BSD-based, legal Apple MacOS X, long story). But give corporate adoption time.
Because it might be the corporation that starts to force you to run StarOffice at home to be compatible with the office.
Final Thoughts
How far that can Freedomware on Windows turn into and make in-roads into the proprietary IP clique and distribution channel that opens up to Linux in general? No one knows yet. I'm doubtful it can break into a majority, because it's hard to fight licenses and marketing that costs real money to obtain. Only when everyone agrees to share will it.
But as a staunch man of Libertarian ideals, I'm not about to tell people that must use Linux. In fact, the most I'd ever regulate is open standards, and to only a limited extent. Forcing people to use something against their will, no matter how wrong, misguided and self-inflicting I think they are, is taking away their choice. And when a community moves from choosing to work together and accepting those who do not to the point of forcing everyone to work with them, that's when that other "commu" prefix word becomes reality. Choice is freedom, and why community developed software is very American, because it's all about choice -- including the right to choose a proprietary piece of software.
In fact, if it delivers values, which much proprietary software from other companies (than the one everyone likes to hate), there is nothing wrong with it. Companies like Corel have done this for decades. But when you mandate a private corporation and monopoly through legislative requirements, it's no longer choice, but the facist economic model. Which is why open standards can be very American as well, because it forces both community organizations and private corporations to win on their merits -- of which, many private corporations can and do better than community organizations, when it comes to open standards.
2 comments:
That's really an amazing writeup focussing community based software, IP and proprietary software. And the most touching of all - the freedom of choice.
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