Well, in the interest of a healthy debate :)
You may not have considered Apple to be a serious contender, but there were hordes of 'fateful' who, until the late '90s, sounded very much like today's Linux proponents. In the 90's, the Mac was the #2 workstation in the IT community, ahead of UNIX. There were many companies that made big bets on Macs as the 'Windows Killer'. In my experience at Clarify, we started out in the early nineties as 70% Windows, 20% Mac, 10% UNIX, and a popular view in the market was that Macs were on the way to replacing Windows. By the end of the 90's, when we closed down our Mac platform, we had hung onto our Mac port long past its viable lifecycle, as did a number of our customers (Cisco being the most prominent).
There is a significantly sized minority of techogeeks who have a near inbred hatred of Microsoft, and will kling to any shred of a Messiah Microsoft-killer. First it was Apple, then Java, now Linux. The common thread is the same: a loosely knit confederation of academics, techno-religious zealots, and second place companies who weave a dream that is never near the reality.
Why has Microsoft been successful with software that is never quite ready? In part, because they are a single source vendor; you go to one company for the code, and that same company when it breaks. From a software development and support point of view, it is much better to deal with one vendor who has a spotty quality record than many vendors with good quality records. Why? The testing and support matrix is much less complex, and you don't fall into the 'call the other vendor' support pit. Quite simply put, a great number of software problems have to do with the interfaces between vendor products and technologies.
Open source preassumes a number of vendors all dealing with different pieces of the puzzle. Great in theory, never practical in life.
Unfortunately, there are a number of investors who have been lured by this 'anti-Microsoft' propaganda by the same dogmatic talking heads who have changed their mantra from "Mac" to "Java" to "Linux". Usually these commissars sound extremely credible, and outline a heavenly world where all corporations cooperate beautifully in the "war on the Evil Microsoft Empire". When woven by the artful, the story can bring tears to your eyes.
The reality is that the most successful software companies are that way because they offer complete solutions that do not rely on a harmonious merging of cooperative efforts aka a Frankenstein package.
As I have stated, I am not a fan of Microsoft. But like any force of nature, I respect its power, and do not delude myself into fairy tale endings that are inspiring but never wholy achievable.
For Linux or anyone to challenge Microsoft, they have to 'out-Microsoft Microsoft'. Currently, only IBM is in the position to do so. If you were to somehow get an honest answer out of IBM on the subject, do you think that they would like Linux to be the next Unix (with IBM in the SUNW role), or the next Windows (with IBM as Microsoft)? |
