Saturday, January 22, 2005
MS vs OSS
Can Microsoft (MS) survive against the Open Source Software (OSS) movement? Or as a subtext: is Microsoft bashing immature? First, let me put the debate into context. Microsoft, as you are probably aware, holds the lion's share of the market for operating systems, internet browsers, and office productivity software. The fact that I am using the OSS Firefox browser to write this is irrelevant. In a similar fashion, America holds the greatest market share in matters of global corporate, cultural and militaristic affairs. America also is ripe for immature bashing, much as is Micorosft. Well, my friends, let me tell you this: might is right. Or if I may paraphrase this aphorism, majority is right. In a democratic society such as America, the majority of the voting population has voted for GWB. Therefore, almost by definition, he is the best person to lead America in the pursuit of further global market share. Did the VHS video format win out over Beta because of any superiority? No, because VHS is the dominant video format, it is the better format. Can anyone say "DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-ROM"?
Exactly the same arguments apply to the domination of William H. Gates and his cohorts (click here1 for an alarming insight into the leader of the free world). An analogy is always helpful. If the corporate world is like a box of Lego, Microsoft is like one of those 8x2 long pieces. There's never enough of them to make something really useful.
How does the OSS movement fit into all of this? OSS, for those who may be unaware, is essentially free software holding no secret or proprietary techniques. Anyone can "read"and modify the internals of the software, where "anyone" is defined as someone who cares enough to do so, has a computer and an internet connection, and owns an Integrated Development Environment which they actually know how to use. So in other words "Open" Source Software is "open" to approximately 0.000039636664%2 of the world poulation. What are these people trying to achieve by subverting the capitalist paradigm that our society is built upon? Are they all cigar-smoking communists? To what extent are these people immature Microsoft bashers, and following on from that, to what extent is Microsoft reaping what it has sowed? Let me return to the parallels with America. Would there be America bashing (or in other words, terrorism) without America's global market share? Is America also reaping what it has sowed? Does GWB = WHG?
The quintessential problem with OSS is that it leads to a proliferation of freely available software which may or may not be fit for purpose and which puts the potential "consumer" into a free-falling death spiral of analysis paralysis. Too much choice = no choice. The Microsoft monopoly equates to "1 choice = no choice". It's like the malignant spread of ideas. Too many ideas and the re-expression of existing ideas with unoriginal twists is exactly what the OSS movement (and capitalism) are trying to push onto us (the innocent consumer). Don't be fooled into thinking that I have communist tendencies - I, Wally Masterson, am just thinking for a better world.
1I must avoid the tendency to introduce meaningless hyperlinks.
2 As at 2001, according to http://www.popconnect.org/Communications/WPAW 2004/PDF folder/worldof100.pdf. (1/1000 of internet users having an IDE is my own estimate).
Exactly the same arguments apply to the domination of William H. Gates and his cohorts (click here1 for an alarming insight into the leader of the free world). An analogy is always helpful. If the corporate world is like a box of Lego, Microsoft is like one of those 8x2 long pieces. There's never enough of them to make something really useful.
How does the OSS movement fit into all of this? OSS, for those who may be unaware, is essentially free software holding no secret or proprietary techniques. Anyone can "read"and modify the internals of the software, where "anyone" is defined as someone who cares enough to do so, has a computer and an internet connection, and owns an Integrated Development Environment which they actually know how to use. So in other words "Open" Source Software is "open" to approximately 0.000039636664%2 of the world poulation. What are these people trying to achieve by subverting the capitalist paradigm that our society is built upon? Are they all cigar-smoking communists? To what extent are these people immature Microsoft bashers, and following on from that, to what extent is Microsoft reaping what it has sowed? Let me return to the parallels with America. Would there be America bashing (or in other words, terrorism) without America's global market share? Is America also reaping what it has sowed? Does GWB = WHG?
The quintessential problem with OSS is that it leads to a proliferation of freely available software which may or may not be fit for purpose and which puts the potential "consumer" into a free-falling death spiral of analysis paralysis. Too much choice = no choice. The Microsoft monopoly equates to "1 choice = no choice". It's like the malignant spread of ideas. Too many ideas and the re-expression of existing ideas with unoriginal twists is exactly what the OSS movement (and capitalism) are trying to push onto us (the innocent consumer). Don't be fooled into thinking that I have communist tendencies - I, Wally Masterson, am just thinking for a better world.
1I must avoid the tendency to introduce meaningless hyperlinks.
2 As at 2001, according to http://www.popconnect.org/Communications/WPAW 2004/PDF folder/worldof100.pdf. (1/1000 of internet users having an IDE is my own estimate).
Labels: microsoft
# posted by Wally Masterson @ 3:34 PM 
