Path: news.isu.edu!newsfeed.micron.net!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!198.138.0.5!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.dejanews.com!nnrp1.dejanews.com!not-for-mail From: r.e.ballard@usa.net Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: What if MS wins? Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 06:33:28 GMT Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion Lines: 250 Message-ID: <6ncl7o$utm$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> References: <6mvk6n$n0m$1@nnrp1.snfc21.pbi.net> <3593A920.5E87@remove.muenchen.this.org.junk> <6n0db5$3ir$2@news-2.news.gte.net> <3597B44A.C67FAA77@hotmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.99.5.134 X-Article-Creation-Date: Wed Jul 01 06:33:28 1998 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.0.34 i686) Xref: news.isu.edu comp.os.linux.advocacy:154008 In article , bhurt@visi.com (Brian Hurt) wrote: > > Paul Doherty writes: > > >And truer still is the fact that potential people who may consider > >Linux for businesses also have to take into account that the people > >currently offering "support" for Linux online may get tired, bored, or > >interested in some newer OS that comes out, and discontinue said > >support. When there's no profit motive and no payment given then what > >guarantee is there that Linux will even be around in a few years?? This is the same mentality that was present around the Internet in 1992. The standards which constituted the Internet were very public, source code for everything was available. Becker's KA9Q drivers and the DOS version of the system were supported almost entirely by volunteers. In January of 1992, I took on a project for Landmark Education. The course was intended for you to create a possibility, enroll 20 to 25 people into a project related to that possibility, and create an organization that would fulfill the project "Even if you died". The possibility I chose was to "Create Abundance on the Planet" through the "Outrageous Combination of the National Science Foundation Network, Businesses and Commercial Carriers, and Non-technical users using Windows software. I enrolled the management of Softronics, who had hired me to do a TN3270 implementation, into creating a shareware terminal emulator product called "SoftWindows", complete with TCP/IP for Windows. Two weeks later, I enrolled the director of frame relay sales for MCI into bidding for the NSF network at cost, on condition that the lines could be subsidized with business traffic on the same links. Two weeks after that, I asked the comp.os.unix group to come up with a version of UNIX that could be sold for under $100 and would run on a 386/16 PC. In March, someone sent me the FTP location of Linux 0.92 which I shared with several others in the newsgroup and several corporate users. It was very primitive, but within a few months, most of the GNU source had been ported, Sun had contributed it's former Sun/386 code to the project, and within less than 12 months, the Linux system was comparable to UNIX systems such as SparcStation 5 workstations. Though I had "died" (had moved from Colorado Springs to New York and spent 6 months porting X11 to the ES/9000 mainframes), the project continued, with my contributions being made via e-mail. In January of 1993, I joined Dow Jones and was made accountable for "alternative distribution" including DowVision, and putting Dow Jones on the Internet. In addition to working with Dow Jones, WAIS inc, and the Mosaic developent group (eventually became Netscape), I also began enrolling a number of local newspapers (including the New York Times, the L.A. Times, and a list that eventually grew to over 6000 publications into putting their content on the internet using Mosaic compatible HTML servers such as the NCSA or CERN httpd servers. These servers were prototyped using Linux, and when viability was proven, were transferred to Sun servers. Many publications stayed with Linux anyway. I also enrolled about 500 fidonet and WildCat BBS operators into creating Terminal servers to enable local dial-up access to the Internet. Larger sites grew from POPs to full fledged ISPs. In 1993, there was very little "profit" in the Internet. The "smart money" was riding on Novell, which sold at nearly $50/share. The top Online-Services were AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve, with less than 1 million users each. My boss used to say "Why do you work so hard for these nickle and dime outfits". I would say "Because 6 or 8 of them will be bigger than microsoft is today". If you were one of those who had bet your money on any of the new upstarts, including Yahoo, Infoseek, Lycos, Netscape, Digital Express, BBN, or any of about 20 of my other "seed projects", you would be very rich today. Many of my postings to the mailing lists and newsgroups have the word "kismet" embedded in them. This is from the Broadway Musical Kismet. A fool, stood beneath an olive tree. what a wondrous thought said he. So he rose, and he told it to the sky and where was I? Beneath the tree! I overheard his reverie. Why be content with an olive, when you could have the tree. Why be content to be nothing, when there's nothing you couldn't be. Why be contented with one olive tree, when you could have a whole olive grove? Why be content with a Grove when you could have the world. Each kismet posting, when followed at the time it was posted, was ultimately worth over $1 billion to the companies who were able to execute the suggestion. I have remained "Independent", which allows me to continue to make kismet postings, and to advocate new breakthroughs such as Linux. The net result has been to increase the gross global product and make it possible for enterpreneurs in all 7 continents to create whole new levels of economic abundance. Vint Cerf, the father of the internet, remained very reclusive for many years, because he was nearly deaf and had difficulty speaking effectively. For similar reasons, I have avoided the public spotlight. I have appeared in a few stories about Career Mosaic. What I have offered is the strategies and thinking that enable people to turn a few thousand dollars into billion dollar companies. > You know, I've never compared the Usenet support of Linux to Microsoft > support. That's an apples to oranges comparison, which I try to avoid. I > have compared the commercial support Microsoft provides to Windows to the > commercial support Redhat, Caldera, SuSE, etc. supply to Linux. I don't > expect a company to depend in any manner on an OS supported soley by the > internet (no matter how good that support is currently)- for the reason > you mentioned among others. There will be hundreds of ways to make money on Linux. You can sell new or used PCs built from parts or purchased as "junk" from fortune 500 corporations. Linux makes it much more profitable and lucrative. You can provide consulting and support services. This can range from creating HTML and CGI/ModPERL scripts to providing e-mail or dial-up support. Compared to the cost of supporting NT, Linux is a bargain and still profitable. Businesses often need strategic projects which are designed to match the way the company does business - often to meet government regulations. Compare this to adjusting you business practices to conform to the "Microsoft Solution". At the very least, being an outspoken Linux advoocate can give your company some valuable bargaining leverage when dealing with Microsoft. Being able to provide products for both platforms can also increase the leverage. As Microsoft "diversifies" into publishing, banking, automobiles, real-estate, insurance, travel, and almost anything else, more and more CEOs are getting nervous. CIOs often see deals with Microsoft as a way to advance to the "Big Seat". Often, the deals backfire and Microsoft doesn't respond as expected. Dow Jones and McGraw-Hill "bet the farm" on Microsoft, only to have Microsoft go after their largest sources of revenue. > Might Linux go away in a couple of years? Almost certainly not. Linux is > an overnight success that's been seven years (arguably longer than that) > in the making. The Linux kernel was the final piece of a puzzle that had been coming together since Richard Stallman created the General Public License back in 1982. Stallman is an extremist of unimaginable integrity. The one thing you know is that when you put your software into the trust of Stallman (under GPL and the FSF archives) your software won't end up as a Microsoft Windows "Extension" like what happened to Mosaic (Which became Internet Explorer). Linux and the software of the Linux distribution isn't really "free". You get the software for a rediculously low fee. Then you like it so much that you naturally want to "give a little back". I figure I've personally contributed about $250,000 worth of services, possibly more like $250 million in terms of the overall value of Linux. When you consider that Linux is the "best of harvest" of the labor of 25 years worth of UNIX programmers, Linux programmers, and developers of third party software. When you add in the designers, documentation people, the user support people, and the promoters, Linux is already a multibillion dollar industry. We just don't pay as many taxes. > If such a competitor were to exist, it'd be where Linux > was, say, four years ago. I think I'd know about it (I'd been using Linux > for over two years four years ago). Linux has a few competitiors. The FreeBSD and NetBSD contingint is beginning to build. It's still only about 100,000 full-time users. The commercial UNIX venders are also becoming "Linux Compatible" in an attempt to create an upgrade path. > But let's look on the other side of the fence. Bill Gates has stated flat > out that Windows-95/98's days are numbered. So if you're worried about > what OS you'll be using in four years, 95/98 is not a good bet. And > Merced throws a monkey wrench into the whole works. Microsoft knows that it must deliver a "Better UNIX than UNIX" before the year 2000 or Linux will emerge as the Operating system of the 21st Century. This "Better" has to be quantifiable in terms of overall costs, productivity, benefits, and responsiveness to business requirements. Microsoft is doing everything it can to cut it's own path, independent of UNIX compatible standards such as CORBA, DNS, IRC-II, streams, pipes, processes and scripts. Unfortunately, Microsoft cannot win this game. As Microsoft continues to alienate more UNIX gurus and continues to fall below the unrealistic expectations set for it, it faces Linux. Linux has gained favor with many UNIX gurus, has exceeded expectations, and has created a whole new generation of Linux/UNIX gurus. Young would-be computer professionals in high-school must often resort to piracy to obtain NT Server. This often results in a problem with ethics as they move into commercial positions. For Linux users, there is no conflict of ethics. The Linux user can use the source code of Linux to expand his understandig of systems, and can use this knowledge as a springboard to create whole new technologies. > >Your best intuitions and perceptions are just that. So to a > >business-person it's a shaky proposition to invest so much in > >retooling for Linux in an uncertain future. > > Stay away from Windows, then... Very good point. Consider the history of both systems. In 1994, the "State of the Art" for Microsoft was Windows 3.11 (WFW). How many of these applications could run under an NT 4.0 server? Even the TCP/IP stacks have changed radically. In 1992, the industry was torn between OS/2 and Windows 3.1. Both systems left much to be desired. In 1990, the "hot product" was Windows 3.0 which ran on an 8086, 80286, or 80386. Before that, there was MS-DOS, with it's TSRs, Ramdisks, and monotasking operating system. Most of the applications written for BSD 4.2 in 1982 will still run under Linux. In fact, many are included with the Linux distribution CD-ROM. The latest versions of Red Hat can be updated to include software that is as new as 10 days old. New tools such as Wharf, Afterstep, and CDE/KDE are giving Red Hat 5.1 new options not even offered in 5.0. The Linux community has previously been content to provide the servers which form the core of the internet. Today, they are goingg for a direct attack on the Desktop, offering the best feature of the MacIntosh, the NeXT machines, Motif, and even Windows. In fact, Linux is already offering features that have been promised for NT 5.0 and Windows 2000. As the user base grows, so dues the support base. We may see the big consulting firms like Deloit and Touche, Anderson, SHL Systemhouse, Computer Sciences, Computer Associates, and even Source - all offering top of the line "Linux" consulting. Several of the BeoWulf sites have been taken off-line because Linux and K6-300 processors can easily pass the 7 gigflop limit restricted by the US export laws. One "supercomputer" only required 64 pentium processors in a Beowulf cluster. When one adds the capabilities of CORBA and Java RMI to the mix, the scalability of Linux, and it's ability to scale to 200 Alpha machines give it the potential to exceed 30 Gigaflops. All this power has to be harnessed into useful work. Proper coupling provides the capability to provide real-time analysis of production and shipping to coordinate orders across multiple corporations. It gives the ability for banks to be able to respond to business changes within a few minutes, possibly even a few seconds. There are capabilities that are possible with Linux which are almost impossible to imagine unless you actually have a Linux or UNIX system. > Brian Rex Ballard - http://www.access.digex.net/~rballard -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum