Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 04:32:00 -0600
From: SuitWatch 
To: suitwatch@ssc.com
Subject: SuitWatch - April 11







                        SuitWatch -- April 11, 2007

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  Thinking Past Platforms: the Next Challenge for Linux

   I've been watching suits here since September 5, 2002
   (http://lists.ssc.com/pipermail/suitwatch/2002-September/000024.html).
   In that inaugural issue, I wrote this: "A funny thing happened to Linux on
   the way to World Domination: it succeeded.  That's the good news; the bad
   news is its success has hit a few hitches, and it's unclear how long those
   hitches will last."

   The biggest hitch -- dominating PCs the way Linux has dominated servers and
   embedded devices -- is still around, almost five years later.  And it will
   be with us as long as hardware OEMs continue to follow Microsoft rather than
   lead the marketplace.

   That's the gauntlet I want to throw down on this, my last SuitWatch.  I want
   to challenge the big hardware OEMs -- Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony and the rest of
   them -- to break free of the only form factors Microsoft will let them make,
   and start leading the marketplace.  Make cool, interesting, fun and useful
   stuff that isn't limited by the Microsoft catalog of possibilities.  Stop
   making generic stuff.  Grow greener grass beyond the Windows fences.

   A few weeks ago I was talking with folks who worked inside one of the large
   hardware OEMs.  Somewhere in there they told me about their "Linux
   strategy".  I told them they needed a "Linux strategy" about as much as a
   construction company needs a "lumber strategy".

   If you're going to have a Linux strategy, make the strategy about getting
   past an OS-bound view of the world.  Because the big difference between
   Linux and Windows is that you can build anything you want with Linux.  With
   Windows you can only build what Microsoft lets you build.

   Think about it....  Does Microsoft tell HP how to make printers? Does it
   tell Sony how to make camcorders or flat displays? Hell no.  Then why do
   those companies let Microsoft tell them how to make desktops and laptops?
   Another way of putting it: Why should the choice of personal computing
   hardware form factors be limited by the things Windows can do? Why wait for
   Microsoft to provide the base designs for desktops, laptops, notebooks and
   hand-helds? Why not let your engineers' imaginations run wild? Why not
   listen to customers who want personal computers that do stuff Windows can't?
   (Or Apple's OS X, for that matter.)

   The short answer is politics.  "All technical problems are political as well
   as technical", Craig Burton once told me.  "And the technical problems can
   always be solved".  The politics of OS-choosing is the politics of
   marriage.  The big hardware OEMs have been acting for decades like they're
   married to Microsoft, which is why they act as if putting Linux on boxes
   with Microsoft logos tattooed on their butts is like cheating on their
   spouse.

   But looking at Microsoft and Linux as an either-or choice is an old game
   with a false premise.  That's because Linux isn't a "platform" like
   Windows.  It's not a foundation for a silo.  It's just building material --
   the computing equivalent of 2 x 4s and 2 x 6s in the development equivalent
   of frame construction.  As with frame construction, you can build anything
   you want with it.

   With Linux there's no one company telling you what you can make.  With
   Linux, it makes no more sense for any company to tell you how to build a
   computing device than it does for Weyerhauser to tell you how to build a
   house.

   Sitting in the next room from me is a new HP 3-in-1 printer.  It's an
   amazing device.  When we put it in, we retired a fax machine, a copier, a
   scanner and two color ink jet printers.  Any computing device in our house
   can use it, including our Linux laptops.  But here's the coolest thing about
   this device: no one company told HP how to make one.  It is an HP
   invention.  No other company is telling HP how few varieties of printers (or
   anything, other than PCs) it can make.

   There's a great series of fake ads that Novell has put together recently,
   each a parody of the Apple ads where two guys represent a PC and a Mac.  In
   these ads, Linux shows up in the form of a smart and attractive young
   woman.  It's a brilliant twist away the usual penguin representation.  But
   it still makes the mistake of portraying Linux just as an alternative to
   other operating systems.  It still lets Microsoft and Apple set the
   conceptual limits to what you can do with a PC.

   For the last few weeks I've been asking folks about what they'd like in
   computing devices other than the usual desktops, laptops, notebooks and
   hand-helds.  Here are a few of the things we've come up with:

     * A note-taking tablet that has no keyboard, finds the Net wearilessly and
       is always on
     * A Linux-liberated "backplane for the dashboard" for cars, so customers
       can plug whatever they want into their rides -- including multiple
       pieces that each have a function and all work together, regardless of
       manufacturer
     * Combination audio record-playback devices with sever software that can
       jack into anything, anywhere
     * Truly open mobile phones, not locked into any one carrier
     * Home cordless phones that are as full-featured as cell phones -- and can
       pass back and forth their address books with phones and computers
     * HD digital camcorders with wireless connections for off-device storage
       that can record in a variety of codecs
     * Whole-house audio systems that lack all forms of lock-in and welcome
       connections with anything
     * A NAS (network attached storage) device with a CD slot that's built not
       just to serve music in a house, but to make it easy for ordinary folks
       to copy their CD collections onto it
     * A Lego-like approach to building portable hardware that lets users
       combine any number of capabilities -- mobile phone, GPS, wireless
       computer bridge, game console, AM/FM radio, FM transmitter, whatever

   Never mind that many of these things already exist in various forms, can be
   built by hackers using available parts, or can be built inside the Microsoft
   development silo.  What matters is that there is no limit to what can be
   built once the computer industry arrives at the place where the construction
   industry arrived long ago: where everything is essentially modular, and no
   one source of building materials or designs can set limits on what everybody
   else can make or do.

   By the way, I'm not saying any of this to knock Microsoft.  The problem
   we're solving is lock-in, and it goes far beyond Microsoft alone.  Apple
   does it with iTunes and the iPod.  Sony does it with proprietary codecs and
   HD camcorders.  What Linux should now do is lead the way toward the
   widespread realization that you'll get more happy customers by making better
   stuff than you'll get or keep by locking them in.

   People don't like iPods because they're locked into Apple's silo.  They like
   iPods because they're the best digital audio players with the most useful
   and appealing designs.  If Apple opened their silo tomorrow, and let anybody
   make an iTunes equivalent to work with the iPod, they wouldn't sell one iPod
   less.  In fact, they'd probably sell even more.  (Hard to imagine, but I'm
   sure they would.)

   Thanks to the politicized marriages between hardware OEMs and Microsoft,
   there is a huge pent-up demand for Linux-based hardware, even inside the
   market for existing form factors.  Look at Dell's IdeaStorm
   (http://www.ideastorm.com/), where the company opened itself up to the
   marketplace and was immediately -- and continuously -- barraged by demand
   for Linux-based products.  Right now the top requests
   (http://www.ideastorm.com/popular/) are:

    1. Pre-Installed Linux | Ubuntu | Fedora | OpenSUSE | Multi-Boot (121356
       votes)
    2. Pre-Installed OpenOffice | alternative to MS Works & MS Office (85350
       votes)
    3. Have Firefox pre-installed as default browser (61103 votes)
    4. NO EXTRA SOFTWARE OPTION (58208 votes)
    5. No OS Preloaded (56540 votes)
    6. Stripped down, fast Linux Box (59120 votes)
    7. Provide Linux Drivers for all your Hardware (44817 votes)
    8. Linux 2.6.16 ready sticker (34821 votes)
    9. LinuxBIOS instead of proprietary BIOS (23436 votes)
   10. More RAM! (23249 votes)
   11. Become the open source OEM (20038)
   12. Silent / Quiet Computers: Sound levels in decibels (19107 votes)
   13. Laptop Web Cam (16352 votes)
   14. Design & Form Factor (16575 votes)

   That's the list from the first page of results.  Out of 3788 contributed
   ideas.

   One word sums all these up: freedom.  That's what both the supply and demand
   sides of the market want.  And they want to exercise that freedom together.
   This should be obvious, but isn't.  Yet.  All that stands in the way is
   politics.  (Attention HP, Lenovo, Sony and the rest of you: Take these clues
   before Dell does.  Let's have some competition here.)

   Start with the easy pickings.  Look at the huge hole in the middle and low
   ends of the desktop and laptop markets, opened by a combination of Apple's
   success at the high end and Microsoft's failures at the middle and low end.
   Go fill it with new stuff that's open, innovative and unfettered by any OS
   vendor's agenda.

   Okay.  So that's the challenge to hardware OEMs.  Now I want to issue a
   parting SuitWatch challenge to the Linux community.

   Friends, it's time to move on from Linux advocacy as a cause in itself.
   We're pretty much done with that.  The cause that matters now is Make what
   you want, any way you want to make it.

   Look at Google search trends (http://www.google.com/trends?q=linux) for
   Linux over the past few years.  Since the end of 2003 (when Google's chart
   begins) Linux searches have fallen by nearly 50%.  (Another reveleation:
   none of the top ten sources of searches is from a location where English is
   the first language.) As I said when we started SuitWatch in 2002, Linux has
   won.  Its victory is old news.  What matters now isn't the old news but the
   long news.

   In the fall of 2005, on the last Linux Lunacy Geek Cruise, somebody (maybe
   it was me) asked Andrew Morton if he thought we'd still be stomping out
   Linux kernel bugs 200 years from now.  Without hesitating he said "Yes".
   That's the perspective we should all adopt now.

   Linux is the frame construction of computing.  Nobody's going to offer a
   more popular or useful alternative.  Yes, there will be other choices, and
   that's fine.  But the basic approach to building OS-based computing hardware
   has been worked out.  That work-out started with Unix, and it finished with
   Linux.  Today the LAMP stack is a couple hundred thousand letters long.
   Other Unixes are shortening.  OS X can't compete.  And now Windows can't
   either.  It was already post-peak with XP, and Vista can't pick up where XP
   left off.  Microsoft would now be well-advised to start making software for
   Linux as well.  They will eventually in any case.

   Our new mantra: You can make anything with Linux.  Anything.  Hack on.

   A few final words.

   This is my last SuitWatch, but far from my last contribution to Linux
   Journal.  In fact, I'm looking forward to skipping the SuitWatch step on
   alternate Wednesdays when I also want to write something new and fresh for
   the Linux Journal website.  Lots of stuff I've put on the LJ site over the
   last few years went through a SuitWatch stage first.  While writing these
   pieces has been fun, SuitWatch itself never had a community.  It was just a
   channel -- one that, because it went out by email, was (by my preference for
   plain text) -- relatively linkless.  I'm a linky writer.  I like to cite
   sources.  I like to send readers off to other places where they can learn
   more.  So it will be much better to put these essays up directly on the LJ
   website.

   In fact, I'm betting you'll see a lot more of these essays in Linux Journal
   there than you've seen of in your email box.

   See ya there.

   - Doc

     -- Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal, a Visiting Scholar with
     the Center for Information Technology and Society at UC Santa Barbara, and
     a Fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
     University.
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