Linux off the Desktop

Linux, and open source projects in general, grow in very interesting ways. Because the growth of open source projects cannot be planned. During the Google IO conference, one of my favorite talks was Chris DiBona's Open Source is Magic talk. One of the things explained in that talk was how Open Source software is not planned by a group of executives wearing suits; in fact, it is not planed at all. Most open source software originates with one developer saying "Oh, this would be really cool!", and then implementing the skeleton of that project. Then, Linus's Law kicks in. "Many eyeballs make all bugs shallow." Some developers may be added, and hopefully it is released under one of the licenses that 99.9% of all open source projects use. Although its unpredictability is one of its greatest strengths, it is hard for "industry analysts" to sit down and say that 'Linux is going to go here in five years." Five years ago, analysts had no idea of an eeePC. Of course, this leads to Steve Ballmer saying things like "Linux is a Cancer" on Intellectual Property.

Due to the unpredictability outside of Linux's kernel (which is mostly controlled by Linus and a small group of elite developers) and the current state of the computer market, Linux has grown in interesting ways. Because of its price, it has become an attractive alternative to Windows on low end PCs, because of two reasons: One, these PCs cannot handle Vista's 16GB monstrous installation, let alone its memory requirements, and two, Windows is expensive; even for OEMs it costs about twenty dollars. And in these low-price PCs, every little bit counts.

One of the main attractions of Linux's, and all free licensing, is that there is no implied support. As Chris DiBona said, if you charge any amount of money for your software, you are implying that you are going to fully support it, and you will get emails for help and feature requests. Commercial support for Linux is available, but the community support is just as good, if not better. The community built Linux from the ground up (nearly, see Minix), therefore it is logical that they are the ones that know how to use it the best.

Regardless of the support issues of Linux, it is interesting to see how both Linux and Mac OS X are cornering Windows in the software market; Linux is working its way up from the low end of the scale, with the help of Asus and the likes of the eeePC, and Mac OS X is swiping the "cream of the crop" high end of the market. With the high end users who are likely to pay a lot gone to the Mac, and the plentiful low-cost users switching to a free OS instead of an expensive and draconian rights managed one, Microsoft has no where left to run than be caught in the middle of Apple and Linux. Although Linux is by nature unpredictable, the unpredictability culminating recently may change the scope of the computer industry in the next five years. We just need to wait and see how.