In the beginning was the command line…
Monday, March 14th, 2005
Neal Stephenson, of Cryptonomicon fame, once wrote an article called ‘In the beginning was the command line‘. It’s pretty old, and some of it is very much out of date. It’s still a good read though and he brings up many good points.
One of the best points on Apple and Microsoft he makes is this:
Their continued survival will then depend on these two things: adding more features to their OSes so that customers will not switch to the cheaper alternatives, and maintaining the image that, in some mysterious way, gives those customers the feeling that they are getting something for their money.
The latter is a truly strange and interesting cultural phenomenon.
I’ve always wondered what makes people buy this software. I can understand why home users buy it. Because they believe they don’t. It just comes free with the PC they buy, or at least they think. OEM must be the greatest invention ever. Without OEM, we wouldn’t have had MS-DOS, we wouldn’t have had Windows 95, we wouldn’t have had Microsoft.
But why would corporations buy Windows? Because, like Stephenson says, they believe they get something in return for their money. It’s not about the OS or the features though. It’s about the support. It’s about the pretence that Windows is supported by a billion dollar company that won’t forsake them. Unfortunatelly, they are wrong. But they don’t seem to care, which I find strange. To make use of Stephensons’ analogy between Operating Systems and cars: If I go out and buy a car, I expect to be able to have it fixed even after 20 years.
When I read this, I was really amazed:
I tried it again, and eventually got to a Pay Per Incident screen reading: “OUT OF INCIDENTS. There are no unused incidents left in your account. If you would like to purchase a support incident, click OK-you will then be able to prepay for an incident….” The cost per incident was $95.
I’m not familier with this Pay Per Incident scheme, but it sounds completely rediculous. I assume the idea behind it is that you can pay to have bugs and problems fixed with a higher priority. So, in essence, you’re paying them money because they did a crappy job. If a program I use FUBARs because it contains a huge bug, then the author(s) better damn well fix it Right Now or I’ll go to some competitor. If I buy a car, I expect it to work. If I buy an applience, I expect it to work. If it doesn’t, the manufacturer had better fix it.. fast.. and apologise. But at software companies, you get to pay them for their mistakes. And people accept that! This I truly do not understand.
Stephenson mentions a situation in which he was using Debian GNU/Linux and at some point some program errored. He sent out a bug report to Debian and within 24 hours had 5 responses that each solved the problem. He had problems with Windows NT and tried for months to get support but never got it. Still, people (and companies) insist on using large vendor products because of the fluffy secure feeling they get from it.
One of the reasons GNU/Linux has been more and more accepted as a viable alternative to Windows is because of this false sense of security. Now that corporations like Red Hat are offering that same pretense, companies suddenly feel they are getting something worth the money.
Lately there have been stir ups about ‘Linux on the desktop’ and Linux in the corporate world again. They pop up every now and then, usually in the form of some article that claims that this year will finally be the year that Linux ventures onto the home user’s desktop or why Linux won’t make it. They make a lot of claims and guesses about why Linux won’t get there or why it will. “It doesn’t have enough features!”, “It isn’t user-friendly enough!”, etc. I’ve had people visiting my home, using my GNU/Linux machines and not even notice it wasn’t windows. Ordinary home users don’t install any themselves. It’s just too much work.
You want to know the reason people don’t have GNU/Linux in their homes? Because they’ve already got Windows. Not that they believe Windows is better, faster or more secure! They couldn’t give a crap. Windows came with the machine so that’s what they’ll use. You want GNU/Linux on the desktop? Find a way to break OEM distribution of Windows with new PC’s and convice computer shops that people don’t care if they run GNU/Linux or Windows.