After months of gaining credibility within the computer industry, the "open-source" movement and its poster child, Linux, are suddenly racing through the market at a speed that no industry analyst predicted.
After months of gaining credibility within the computer industry, the "open-source" movement and its poster child, Linux, are suddenly racing through the market at a speed that no industry analyst predicted.
The ascent of open-source and its proponents presages a major change in how software is developed and sold. It also heralds a fundamental change in the dynamics of the computer business.
Until recently, the traditional way to make money in the computer business has been by setting de facto standards, which usually meant proprietary standards. Microsoft has been the leader at doing just this--first with its programming languages, then with its Windows operating systems and finally with the Office software packages.
Microsoft tends to hide many of its technologies but releases just enough information to allow third-party development. Then the third parties may have to face competition from products put out by Microsoft -- products that often have superior features thanks to Microsoft exclusive access its internal information.
Microsoft makes huge profits this way, even in a market with otherwise shrinking bottom lines. But for all its might Microsoft doesn't dominate things on the Internet.
Don't think we're jumping on the "bash Microsoft" bandwagon. But the fact is that Microsoft misjudged the importance of the Internet and has been playing catch-up for quite a while. And the result is that, truthfully, Microsoft can't take credit for any of the current Internet boom.
The boom is happening this time because of open standards, not de facto ones, with the most important standards being the "Internet protocols" that set the formats for data transmission. Those are protocols such as HTML, the language used to author Web documents, and TCP/IP, the standard formats used to connect host computer systems via the Internet. Both are open standards which nobody owns, which follow published specifications and which require no license fees.
It was the open, level playing field created by the use of open standards like TCP/IP and HTML that made possible the Internet boom, Linux and a number of other open-source projects.
At this writing, several significant events have occurred on the open-source front that are harbingers of the open-source movement's increased leverage on the industry.
One event was Apple Computer's release of the Darwin source code to the open-source community. Darwin is the core operating system code for Apple's Macintosh OS X for Servers minus code for Apple's GUI and some other proprietary technologies. Along with the Darwin OS 0.3 source code and binaries, Apple released the Darwin Streaming Server 1.0.1 source code and OpenPlay 1.0 network gaming toolkit source code.
The release of the Darwin Streaming Server source code has already resulted in the server being ported to Linux as well as allowing several groups of folks working on improving and adding features to the product. But perhaps more important, the release of a free, open-source streaming media server has helped jump-start Apple's aggressive move into the streaming- media marketplace currently dominated by RealSystems' products. The difference is the Real's streaming media servers come with a price (what Apple refers to in its literature as a "server tax"), while Apple has provided the marketplace with a free, fully functional, unlimited streaming media server designed to stream QuickTime 4.0 media files across a wide variety of bandwidth environments.
How does Apple benefit, if not by charging a server tax? It gets a product with its name on it out in the marketplace being aggressively developed for and adopted, which in turn helps support Apple's efforts to make QuickTime one of those de facto Internet protocol standards. It is a strategy that, at the moment, appears to be well on its way to succeeding.
Then there is Sun Microsystems' purchase of Star Office, a productivity application suite that runs on a variety of platforms, but mainly is seen on Linux. Star Office has the advantage of being compatible with Microsoft Office document formats as well as being simpler to use than Microsoft Office. And of course, it's free. But even more important, Sun will be opening up the Star Office source code, which should result in timely, rapid and innovative upgrades to the suite.
But the bad news for Microsoft doesn't stop there. Sun plans a Web-based version of Star Office that will allow the simplest Java Web browser to run a sophisticated office application, even without local storage. Running spreadsheets and word processing on your TV set-top box (or other simple Internet appliances) is now a real, near-term possibility. (Not to be outdone, Microsoft announced just three days after Sun's announcement that it has plans to make Web- based office productivity services based on Microsoft Office available on the Internet. Perhaps this is the first in a series of Microsoft countermoves to the open-source community. Similar to its late-but- effective foray into the Internet, Microsoft may yet remake itself into a more open company, following Apple's lead.)
Another development that also shifts power farther away from Microsoft is the rise of Linux support services in the form of Linuxcare. Linuxcare adds high- quality tech support to the Linux equation, which is what big business was worried about when considering free operating systems. Lots of outfits are turning to Linuxcare. In fact, Sun has cut a deal with Linuxcare to support both Star Office users and developers. As we said, Linux has come a long way down the road to corporate acceptance in a very short time.
Another factor in the fundamental shift in power is the current move to cheaper PCs. Regardless of whether the free-PC business model survives, it is apparent that the cost of a PC is going to continue to head downward, possibly getting as cheap as a $100 a machine. If you don't think this is possible, consider a first-generation Web appliance like WebTV classic that continues to sell on the market today for an average price of $99. Whether a $100 PC looks more like a traditional PC or more like a set-top Internet appliance, the fact remains the industry is headed that way at a significant pace.
Making machines that cheap will drive their adoption into all levels of society, many for the first time. To appeal to the broadest range of users, the operating systems of these machines will have to be hidden behind simple, easy-to-use user interfaces. In fact, these user interfaces are yet to be designed, but will be on their way soon enough. With WindowsCE's dismal efforts being a prime example, it is clear that there is no way Microsoft can make and support a powerful operating system that runs on a $100 device. On the other hand, a free, open-source operating system can be economically deployed on a $100 platform today. A simple Web interface will probably hold sway.
That's an economic model that doesn't leave much (if any) room for Microsoft to play on the end-users' side of things. And that means Microsoft's influence on the industry will continue to diminish. And the main force behind this fall from dominance is open standards, open-source operating systems and open-source software. We believe now is the time to start looking to see if there is a good fit between your computing efforts and the open-source movement. Forewarned is forearmed, and if the changes that appear to be heading our way come to pass, we'll need plenty of knowledge to help us adapt and survive in an open-source future.
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