Blogging Ottinger (tim)

He says:

There are a number of obvious reasons why Linux is not the dominate operating system in today’s computing environment…

And he says:

One of the less widely recognized reasons why Linux has not yet toppled Windows, despite it many advantages, is how divided the resources available to Linux are.

Arriving at the idea:

Time for Linux Consolidation?

Have we had monopoly so long that we’re convinced that it is not only the natural state of things but a good idea besides? Have we had so many articles on Windows v Linux that we now think we’re looking at a horse race? Are we so full of ill-will toward our one monopoly provider that we’d be just as happy to see another monopoly take its place? Isn’t that just “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”?

I think that the goal of Linux is to be useful and free. If having a useful and free alternative causes microsoft to topple, so be it. But if it doesn’t, fine. Microsoft will eventually wear out their remaining adherents through coercive and underhanded practices, and I’d really rather see that monolith fall to the will of the people than another major would-be monopoly.

Consolidation might have advantages. I suppose that if people are working on similar enough goals, then joining up is a fine thing, as long as others aren’t coerced into joining. Consolidation of that kind is called “cooperation”. I don’t know of any restriction that prevents gnome developers from helping KDE developers, or any compulsion for them to do it. But when groups decide to cooperate, it’s good. Even without consolidation.

But I think that there needs to be some place to escape *to*. If someone hates Debian, then it’s good for them to be able to escape to non-debian distributions. That’s how I got to Debian from RedHat-ish distros. It’s good. And it’s good that Linux users can “escape” into BSD or whatever. The goal should never be to eliminate competition and variation. There are other ways to cooperate.

One of those is the LSB effort. This is a fine thing. I would love to see dozens and dozens of LSB-certified distributions (cooperation without consolidation). I don’t think they need to form a single company. I don’t think buy-outs are necessary or corporate mergers.

Consider other kinds of art: should there be only one guitarist (I would nominate Larry Carlton)? That would unify the support of the music community and make that one musician more effective in marketing and selling his music. Only one keyboardist (Bob James maybe)? One bassist (no question, Stanley Clarke)? Only one band? Only one style of music? Or is it a kind of wealth that everybody and his brother forms up a band and plays rock, blues, jazz, country, sometimes fusing them together, sometimes only doing covers. Is it bad for music that there is so much of it? Or only hard for the music business? Is it bad that the casual listening audience has trouble telling John Scofield from Derek Trucks? Is that confusion damaging to the market?

There is much to enjoy. Sure, it’s hard to make a decision in a for-pay space (free: just try them all), but is it a problem? Really? I don’t think that diversity is a problem, but if the author is (and he may be much smarter than I), I still think it’s a better problem than consolidation. As an American, I’ve seen too much consolidation for my tastes already. After all, wealth and power are not the same as virtue.

In America, thorugh pressure of conformity, there is freedom of
choice, but nothing to choose from. — Peter Ustinov

p.s. More is good..