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PBS: Dont discount Linux:
- To: blinux@xxxxxxxxxxx, emacspeak@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Subject: PBS: Dont discount Linux:
- From: "T. V. Raman" <raman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 08:27:12 -0700 (PDT)
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- Resent-Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 11:24:11 -0400
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http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19980910.html
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A Fight to the Finnish
the pulpit Why Linux Quite Appropriately Scares the Bejesus
Out of Microsoft
By Robert X. Cringely
I spent an afternoon last week with Linus Torvalds, creator
of the Linux operating system. Fortunately for me, I didn't
have to visit Helsinki, Finland, where both Linus and Linux
were born. For the last year and a half, Linus has been
living in Santa Clara, California.
The whole phenomenon of Linux is a story too amazing to be
true. A 21 year-old college student in Finland decided to
create and give away his own clone of the Unix operating
system to run on PCs. Seven years later, Linux has between
seven and eight million users, runs on every major and minor
microprocessor family, has thousands of programmers devoted
to improving and extending it, is giving Microsoft major
fits, and still costs nothing.
Luck of course plays a large role in this story, but not as
large a role as I had originally assumed. Linus turns out to
be a remarkable fellow with exactly the right character to
make something like this work. He may be only 28, but Linus
is a very solid guy. He's totally devoted to both the concept
of creating solid, powerful software and to giving it
away. He exudes an integrity that goes far beyond the smug
cleverness one feels at Microsoft. Maybe that's why he's so
misunderstood in Redmond.
The key to the success of Linux goes far beyond the
price. Free is good, of course, but the true strength of
Linux is the international movement to improve and extend
it. Linus estimates that there are only a dozen or so people
like him who devote most of their time to Linux. Nearly all
the other Linux programmers are doing it a few hours here and
there. Yet, here's this world class operating system,
continually appearing in new versions and with new
features. How can that be?
Linus attributes the high quality of Linux (its very stable
compared to many other operating systems including Microsoft
Windows) to the grass roots development effort. This would
seem to contradict the idea many people have that it takes a
high buck development operation to create great
software. Just the opposite, says Linus, who claims that free
software is nearly always better.
Huh?
"It's very simple," said Linus. "Because the software is
free, there is no pressure to release it before it is really
ready just to achieve some sales target. Every version of
Linux is declared to be finished only when it is actually
finished, which explains why it is so solid. The other reason
why free software is better is because the personal
reputation of the developer is attached to every release. If
you are making something to give away to the world, something
that represents to millions of users your philosophy of
computing, you will always make it the very best product you
can make. That's the reason why Linux is a success."
How can Microsoft compete with that argument? It's hard, and
the internal struggle to come up with a good response is
evident. In the same week that Microsoft president Steve
Ballmer told the Seybold audience in San Francisco that
Microsoft is targeting Linux and Apache (the free Web server
that is the most popular in the world) the company couldn't
tell me HOW they are going to respond to Linux. They
certainly won't respond on price, since there is no way to
undercut free. We're much more likely to see a campaign of
fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Microsoft used to dismiss Linux as 1980s technology, which
pretty much describes both Linux and Windows it seems to
me. Now they'll start talking about "total cost of ownership"
and find some way to make it look like using free software is
more expensive in the long run than using software from
Microsoft. Linux is certainly not free, but if you saw the
story that flew around the 'Net recently comparing Microsoft
tech support with the Psychic Friends Network, you'll realize
that just because Microsoft has a big support operation
doesn't mean you'll actually get a solution to your problem.
Linux scares Microsoft on several levels. There's this
business of giving the software away for free, which is
totally confusing to Bill Gates -- confusing and scary, since
it undermines the entire basis of his fortune. But it's the
breadth of Linux and its potential on other platforms that
also scares Microsoft. At a time when Microsoft is trying to
be sure its software runs on all the network computers,
set-top boxes, and other new machine types that just might
replace in our hearts the PC, the Linux Router Project offers
the guts of just such an operating system for free on a
single 1.44 meg floppy disk. But what scares Microsoft most
of all about Linux is the defection of developers, which are
beginning to make Linux a very popular platform for server
applications.
Take Sergey Brin and Larry Page, for example. They are a
couple of doctoral students in computer science at Stanford
University who are building their Internet startup company
around Linux. Brin and Page are throwing themselves into what
would appear to be the already overcrowded market for
Internet search engines. Their engine and their company are
both called Google and quite purposefully sit atop Linux
rather than some other variant of Unix or atop Microsoft's
Windows NT.
Google has more going for it than just a great name. It also
has some great technology to help searchers actually find
what they are looking for. To do this, Google tries to take
into account in each search the underlying wisdom of the
Internet, itself. This is based on the idea that the market
has intelligence, though in this case the market is one for
information, not stocks and bonds. So Google looks not just
at the Web pages that contain the keywords used in your
query, but it also looks at how many other pages are linked
to the pages it finds.
The idea here is that your query about Studebaker automobiles
may return a thousand or more pages, but among those pages,
some have been linked to by other pages. Creating a link from
one page to another says that the page being linked to has
real value to the linker and might have real value to the
rest of us. So Google presents first the sites that have the
most links and are therefore the most popular. This presumes,
of course, that popularity is for a reason, which it didn't
seem to be at my high school. How about at yours?
So Google is hot. These fresh-faced kids from Stanford have a
good idea that's implemented well. And it is implemented on
Linux, not NT, which worries the heck out of
Microsoft. Ironically, Google is based in Stanford's William
Gates building.
"The only time I saw Bill Gates was at the building
dedication," said Google founder Sergey Brin. "Gates was
coming down the hall with the department chairman and he
asked 'What operating system do you have running on all these
PCs?' Well of course they were all running Linux, but the
chairman kind of coughed and said the department used many
different operating systems."
Linus Torvalds has never met Bill Gates, but I have, and both
men are to be reckoned with. It's easy to dismiss Linus'
tract house with the Pontiac Grand Am parked in the driveway,
but don't do it. Look for the considerable substance inside
that has made Linux the success it is. Linus is an ethnic
Swede born in Finland. He's part of the five percent of the
Finnish population that speaks Swedish, so he is used to
being part of a minority and maintaining his culture in an
environment that is overwhelmingly dominated by others. Next
to this, Microsoft is not such a big deal. And don't discount
Mrs. Torvalds, either. This mother of two is the six-time
Finnish national karate champion. Melinda Gates wouldn't have
a hope.
--
Best Regards,
--raman
Adobe Systems Tel: 1 408 536 3945 (W14-128)
Advanced Technology Group Fax: 1 408 537 4042
W14-128 345 Park Avenue Email: raman@xxxxxxxxxxx
San Jose , CA 95110 -2704 Email: raman@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://labrador.corp.adobe.com/~raman/ (Adobe Intranet)
http://cs.cornell.edu/home/raman/raman.html (Cornell)
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are my own and in no way should be taken
as representative of my employer, Adobe Systems Inc.
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