Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 18:26:54 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Are we fighting a losing battle? (ramblings) Message-ID: <15014.53710.910976.69576@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <20010307161527.A37768@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> References: <20010307161527.A37768@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> types: > > Sigh. After reading the news about Maxtor, and HP not open sourcing > OpenMail right now, and .NET taking shape, and Sun shooting itself in the > foot, and Office XP on schedule, and so on... I just wonder if we are > fighting a losing battle? Depends on what battle you're fighting. If you're fighting to dominate the desktop - or even the server market, I'd say yes. That's a marketing battle, and MS is clearly excellent at playing that game. I predicted years ago that NT would eventually win the server market, because MS has the resources to keep trying until they provide a product that is good enough for most users in that market. At that point, people quit installing NT (or now 2K), watching it fail, and installing Unix - they just install NT and ignore Unix. Popularity has never been a big deal for me. I tend to choose the best tool for the job at hand, without to much worry about popularity. Sure, it means I wind up with a lot of orphans - but while I've got them, I've got the best tool I can get. Frankly, I always look askance at lists of "what FOO needs to do to succeed", which inevitably mean "become very popular" when they say succeed. I'd rather have a *better* tool than a more popular one. HTML is a good example - I've been working the web since before Mosaic (aka Netscape) was founded as a company. The damage Netscape and MS have done to HTML made it much more popular, and a much worse tool - to the point that I'm no longer looking for web work, because the tools disgust me. Linux is another one. Those trying to make Linux popular have made it so much like Windows that I consider it unusable (but there are some distributions I think are reasonable). However, I'm all for those people succeeding. It's *much* easier to run FreeBSD in a world where Linux has some brain share than one where it doesn't. If I ask about "Linux-compatible" things, people don't think I'm crazy. > None of these things by itself mean much, but > when you add Win2k's stability, the anti-trust case falling apart, and the > continuing fragmentation of the open source community in so many ways (lack > of focus and lack of commercial developers to produce much-needed desktop > software), i just can't help but wonder if BSD and maybe even Linux will > just end up as a passionate but tiny minority who insist we have the best OS > for so many things, but really just end up doing file and web serving. I think you're choosing the wrong battle. The battle to fight is for awareness. Don't worry about market share - worry about mind share. If we can get to the point where people don't *assume* you have a Windows box just because everyone they know has one, that's a win. Even if most of them have never heard of FreeBSD, and think you mean Linux, it's still a major improvement over the state of the world in 1998. Once most people are aware there is some choice, then is the time to worry about making one. If you're talking about Open Source vs. Closed Source systems instead of MS vs. the world - it's still the same. The difference is the target audience - making system and project managers aware there are viable alternatives is the goal. Getting to the point where most are willing to consider another alternative *before* MS fails, rather than after, is a win. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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