At LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco this summer I was lucky enough to host a panel discussion among Dirk Hohndel, Eric Raymond, Jon "maddog" Hall, and Chris DiBona. We talked about the first 15 years of Linux, and what the next 5 years would bring. The session was recorded and is now online.
Eric Raymond stole the show by calling for more cooperation between Open Source developers and proprietary software vendors. Specifically, Eric believes that the desktop operating system for the next 30 years will be determined in the next 5 years, and if Linux has not achieved critical mass on the desktop by 2011, we will have 30 more years of Windows. (Sort of like a 30-year plague...) But what stirred up controversy was Eric's call for more open support of proprietary media software (specifically CODECs) on Linux. Eric argued that support for the iPod and similar proprietary media devices was the critical factor in attracting a new generation of Linux desktop users.
I don't agree with Eric.
During the panel we all agreed that one of the key tipping points in Linux history was the decision by Oracle to port to Linux. That decision gave Linux the legitimacy it needed to be a viable choice among server operating systems. I believe that we need a similar tipping point for the desktop. We need a major desktop software vendor to announce Linux support. I believe that such an announcement could be the tipping point that encourages other vendors to port and users to switch.
Of the major desktop software vendors, there are really only two that are likely to port and would carry significant weight: Adobe and Intuit. When Novell ran their survey of most requested Windows applications, 11 of the top 25 most requested applications were from Adobe or Intuit. So rather than pursue proprietary CODECs on Linux, I believe we should be working to encourage Adobe and Intuit to port. Either Adobe or Intuit would lend credibility to Linux on the desktop and trigger an avalanche of users converting to Linux.
1998 was a golden opportunity for Linux as a server OS. Unix was still expensive and Windows NT wasn't stable yet. The proprietary server OS vendors left the same kind of gap open for Linux that the existing search engines left open for Google a few years later.
In 1998 you could save huge money switching to Linux from Unix. The Most Expensive Linux Hardware Vendor's list prices were about the same as the academic discount price that one Unix vendor was offering one famous university, for example. Is there up-front savings in moving from MSFT to a supported Linux for an Adobe Photoshop system today? And is there anyone who would run Photoshop on Linux who isn't already running Photoshop on Windows?
"Commoditize the complement" is good strategy, but if the price difference doesn't make an impact, what's in it for Adobe?
Posted by: Don Marti | August 30, 2006 at 10:34 AM
What about another option: a three pronged approach:
1) Encourage more apps to be developed in Java, thereby eliminating the entire application compatibility issue entirely.
2) Encourage cutting edge games to be developed for linux, attracting the young male geek audience that will be leading computer usage in the future.
3) With #1 making OS choice less important wrt to app choice, and #2 allowing gamers to pick Linux, spend the majority of development time on a solid OS interface. Today, Gnome and KDE are still fairly far behind OS X and Windows.
Posted by: Patrick Lightbody | August 30, 2006 at 07:39 PM
"And is there anyone who would run Photoshop on Linux who isn't already running Photoshop on Windows?"
I certainly would.* Although I suspect the most interesting times are ahead of us, as GIMP and Inkscape get more visibility and actually improve substantially. I have been an admin (Gallery Director) on Deviantart.com (the Sourceforge of online art communities) and the interest in GIMP has been incremenetally rising for quite some time; the important part being that it is drawing users who otherwise do not want to pay or can't or do not need all the pre-press functionality of Photoshop to GIMP on win32.
If you start providing suitable application substitutions from a functional and economic slant, you can obviate the need for the proprietary OS quite easily. That will probably draw Adobe out into the open.
* The only reason I do not is that I do not want the resource overhead of using something like CrossOver. I want a native application to prevent any real bottlenecks that can occur, particularly with large files using a lot of layer data.
Posted by: Joseph Arruda | September 06, 2006 at 05:21 PM
The other route for Linux to the desktop is from hardware vendors. If you think about it, Dell preinstalling Ubuntu on consumer machines is a very serious proposition, and one that should lend a fair degree of legitimacy to Linux, much more than Turbotax or Quickbooks for Linux. In relation to the desktop, people _buy_ computers and not necessarily an OS or software. Having hardware vendors offer Linux as an alternative clearly states, "Yes, Linux is good, Linux works, and we support it". That'll be the tipping point...
Posted by: charles snider | May 23, 2007 at 07:32 AM
Honestly, open source has great codec support! Has ESR seen mplayer, ffmpeg or specifically libavcodec? It's amazing how much they've been able to reverse engineering. Can't remember the last time I had a problem with something not playing, frankly.
I think more apps is always good, and especially more vendors shipping with usuable OS's like ubuntu. But the biggest thing is an easy way to transition someone from windows. Say, an ubuntuguide.org equiv for 'windows to linux'? or at least, windows to gnome, windows to kde, etc.
Posted by: Keith Herrington | August 14, 2007 at 10:28 PM