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Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:03:26 -0500
Reply-To: zimmerer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sender: The Other Economic Summit USA 1997 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: zimmerer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Microsoft, COMDEX & LINUX
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
While lawyers play word games in the Microsoft Monopoly Trial, activity
in the Software Commons has produced a computer operating system called
LINUX, a public alternative to privately owned UNIX and Microsoft Windows
NT
in which the source code is freely available to everyone and its use
and development is ongoing and supported by programmers worldwide.
With a literally free computer operating system entrepreneurs are
encouraged to design and develop applications for existing markets and
to create new markets. While this new creative rush is taking place in
industrial applications, my visit to COMDEX 98 reassures me that
consumer applications will follow soon bringing fresh ideas to the PC
market.
COMDEX 98 report
On Monday 16 November I joined the 120,000 or so people swarming into
COMDEX, Las Vegas on opening day. My principle interest was LINUX, the
fast growing alternative industrial computer operating system to UNIX
and recently recognized by Microsoft as a possible threat to its
"unregulated" monopoly. Last year I found only one LINUX distributor,
this year COMDEX sported a LINUX "pavilion" (Mall) with five LINUX
distributors and several software vendors. A leaked memo from
Microsoft, the "Halloween Memo," and its rebuttal by MS was a topic of
humor. The distributors were quite busy demonstrating LINUX capability.
I talked at length with a German engineer demonstrating the S.u.S.E.
LINUX package, very popular in Germany. While management remains
skeptical of Open Source Software like LINUX because it can't sue a
vendor over problems, it is widely accepted by the computer engineers
who keep management's systems functioning.
The enthusiasm of these young engineers and software gurus for LINUX
and the informal support structure they have across the world is
wonderful to behold. It reminds me of the early days - before
Microsoft - when the microprocessor attracted talented people to pool
their creativity to invent word processors and spread sheets and modem
protocols, freely exchanging ideas and code as they explored this new
technology and founded companies.
I expect next year at COMDEX there will be consumer LINUX packages
available to put on PCs available from independent young programers.
Eric Raymond (The Cathedral and the Bazaar author) is surprised how
much LINUX acceptance has grown in just six months.
In other areas technology races onward with hardware getting faster,
smaller, and cheaper. Vance Packard (The Waste Makers author) would
smile at the sales pressure to buy the newest technology and discard
the perfectly useful and adequate last year's model. Our economic
system must be dysfunctional to require such unnecessary consumption of
resources.
Robert W. Zimmerer Sun City, AZ
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