[NTLUG:Discuss] Open Source

[Steve Baker]

Chris Cox wrote:
> Personally, I'm not sure about the "someday" part. I mean if somedayis 
> 30 years from now, I'm not sure if even my choice of OS will be Linux, 
> there may be something more interesting out there by then.
I dunno.   It's certainly a much slower uphill climb than we ever 
thought ten years ago.   The sheer effort involved in giving people 
things for free is hard to believe.

But I think the enemy is weakening too.  Microsoft isn't the lone giant 
it once was.  Apple and Google are nibbling away at them at the consumer 
end - and IBM at the top.  Their forey into game consoles with the Xbox 
has been successful - but at a phenomenal cost to their bottom line - 
and even there Nintendo is catching up with the 
cheaper/leaner/more-innovative approach.  The effort to get into things 
like phones and PDA's isn't doing so great - and projects like Zune are 
heammoraging cash.  Vista is an unmitigated disaster - Xbox 360 has been 
losing huge quantities of money due to warranty problems.  DRM has 
largely been recognised for the pain in the ass it truly is - our old 
concerns that in one or two more CPU cycles, Linux would be locked out 
of the CPU...that's not gonna happen.  With Google's push into telephony 
with an OpenSourced OS model and a lot of phone manufacturers backing 
them - and Apple STILL ruling the world with high end music players - 
that's going to make Microsoft's world much harder.

If you look at the Microsoft bottom line:

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=MSFT&annual

Their assets are falling year by year and their liabilities are going up 
yet faster.  Total assets are dropping 10 billion dollars a year - they 
still have an ungodly amount of money in the bank - but if they keep 
paying to buy markets the way they are now, they can't keep up this 
business model for more than a few more years.   On the other hand, we 
can wait them out for another decade if we have to.

The US may be the last country to switch - but with all of those 
millions of OLPD's out there...there are going to be an awful lot of 3rd 
world Linux-savvy teenagers in about 10 years time - the influx of that 
energy to the process of building OpenSourced code should hit the ground 
at about the same time that Microsoft runs out of cash and is forced to 
actually start making money.  Those kids are also likely to be the 
business and political leaders of their countries - they'll remember 
those little green and white boxes when the time comes.

With the HUGE development cycle of Vista - followed by a magnificent 
flop when it hit the streets (they now have to pay manufacturers to put 
it on their computers!)  Microsoft would actually save money by dumping 
it's own OS and switching to an OpenSource base.

So I'm still optimistic that Linux's time will come...but not quickly.

     Steve