Why Linux Did Not Prevail..
A friend of mine has a hard time with Linux fans. Of course when you do development and have his experiences...but that's a blog for a different day. So he sends me this link to a column by Don Soegaard. The article is called "Why Linux will prevail." On the whole it's not a bad article except for ...well a lot of it.
"Linux is almost ready for the desktop." How long have we been hearing that from the Linux community. It isn't, and it won't be for a while. The way it will conquer the universe is not because of Open Source, but in spite of it. It will be ready because commercial companies have taken up the flag and run with it. It could prevail if corporate America decides to shove it down their employees throats, just like they did with Windows. It will have a chance when the Anti-Trust case has run it's course. Otherwise it will end up as nothing more than an important footnote.
I want more competition, but not delusional competition. We need things to thrive simply because that's what drives the engine of innovation. So far Linux has not one single innovation under its belt. Just an amazing circle of programmers plugging away for nothing to accomplish something. Linux could win if IBM, Sun and others make it win...
When I got into the article there were some great points about what Linux needs to do to succeed. At one point I stopped and had a good chuckle...
"Let's completely modularize each tool function (such as layout, fonts, kerning, textures, linking, math and tables) and make each a separate interactive GUI tool. Like an erector set, applications could be constructed for specific needs. And like hammers, saws, wrenches and screwdrivers in the physical realm, such tools are easier to utilize than large factories (or contemporary application programs)."
...wow sounds like he wants to bring back 'OpenDoc'...what a thought. That was the whole point of OpenDoc. That is, in many ways, the whole point of Web Services. It's a return to the idea that software should be able to cross boundaries and hook together to form more complex patterns, or to be able to do complex things in simple ways. If you don't want complexity, you should be able to strip it all down to it's most basic components. Apple may have used 'Carbon' because it is the most basic element to life. I would use it, in the sense that it is the most intriguing of elements, simply because of the amazing things it can do, from the simple to the complex...maybe the Linux community can do what Apple failed to do with OpenDoc...of course that would require support...
Dave Winer was not a fan of the OpenDoc effort...for some very good reasons, most a moot point, since Apple killed it for some of the very reasons Dave attacked it on. Read the Leonard Rosenthol comments on this DaveNet piece titled Two Views of OpenDoc. Then read The Subjectives of OpenDoc. Then ask yourself...is Web Services the next coming of an old idea...
Hey Dave, did Jerry Michalski ever pay you off?...mj
2:52:24 PM 
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