Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 21:26:58 -0500 From: Tim McMillen <timcm@umich.edu> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com> Cc: "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: OT: non-Unix history (Was: FreeBSD vs linux) Message-ID: <0101242126580D.24525@tim.elnsng1.mi.home.com> In-Reply-To: <14959.34171.23487.493965@guru.mired.org> References: <14957.31196.939559.889627@guru.mired.org> <3A6F78B5.70AE5FB4@nisser.com> <14959.34171.23487.493965@guru.mired.org>
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On Wednesday January 24, 2001 20:46, Mike Meyer wrote: > Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com> types: > > Tim McMillen wrote: > > > Many did. But empirically many vendors either gave up support > > > for Unix altogether or only supported a few Unix types because it > > > was simply too expensive to provide support for them all. > > > Do you think anyone really develops for Windows because > > > of it's technical superiority? Of course not. They develop for > > > windows because of its ubiquity. They can write the program > > > once, learn on ... > > > > Nice argument. Does not explain the initial take off of either DOS > > or Windows, though. Far from it, actually. > > Correct. See the "Good enough is best" paper for that :-). Wow, I just read that paper and there are some elements of gold in it's analysis. Nicely done. I would assert that the rise of MS had a lot to due with timing and luck with the "Good enough" philosophy, a small bit of extreme shrewdness. When IBM came out with the PC it was uniquely timed and positioned pricewise to be a hit. However it was too cheap and weak to run Unix as they would have liked. Enter MS-DOS. It was the only thing that could run on it at the time. It was whipped out quickly enough and timed correctly to get a hold. The genius in what Microsoft did was the way they liscensed the OS cheaply and retained the rights to it. Remember at that time MS was the small fry and IBM was the giant. For MS to retain the rights to their little, "Good enough" (thanks Mike), was quite a coup. Add that to they way they managed to get people to pay money for the development kits for it and tada, we have MS-Dos on every IBM compatible in the land. They also managed to get people to use (and even pay for) their APi's and development kits to write for the new OS. That was their second piece of business genius. I think Jordan Hubbard describes this a little better in his article about MacOSX at: http://www.salon.com/tech/review/2000/11/17/hubbard_osx/index2.html Though I haven't read it since it came out. DOS didn't have any of the adantages or features that the better operating systems of the day had, but it had just enough, and it ran on the PC!!! Unfortunately that's all it needed to take hold with the masses. After that the ubiquity of MS and the uncanny way they managed to crush competitors with a mere mention of putting out a similiar product, and we have the giant and the monopoly we know today. > > It it is indeed marketing, then it is a moot point. Maybe we'll Not marketing in the advertising sense we often think of, but shrewd marketing nonetheless. I hate many things about MS and their software, but they never would have gotten to the position they have without doing a few things well. That they certainly do and did, but it's just the severity of the things they do wrong that makes it so hard to swallow. > > know - to bring it back to its origins <g> - when KDE and Gnome > > merge. > > Oi, I can see it now - all the features of both, four times the > memory of either. I use KDE and like it, but wow, I fear that day!! Can you say code bloat, crash/explosion in 23 languages? Tim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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