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Firefox and the next tech revolution |
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Written by Walt Robertson
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Monday, 08 November 2004 17:53 |
 I had thought that last Tuesday was going to be the most important day of November, 2004. Not so. Today, Tuesday November 9, 2004 may well be thought of as the most important day of the month, the year, and the decade. Today is the day that the way we use computers began to change. What's so important about today?
Today, the Mozilla foundation will begin distribution of the release version of FireFox 1.0. Today, thousands of televisions, radios, and newspapers will discover something called "The Open Source Movement" and it is the beginning of a technology revolution that will change the software market forever.
This isn't just about a browser to compete with Microsoft Internet Explorer. This product, I predict, will be so widely reported in the coming weeks, and the environment in which it was created so studied and reported, that the entire Open Source movement will gain. As Firefox gains quick acceptance by a large following, you will shortly see, I believe, many users spreading out into other open source projects, such as Open Office, which I predict to be the first "coat tail" application for FireFox. Another huge benefactor will no doubt be sourceforge.net, the #1 source of information and software from the Open Source Movement. Many other such sites will spring up to meet the demand.
Microsoft is going to radically change the way they do business, but they will always be a for profit corporation; a tiger can't change its stripes. In about three to five years, open source will be so wide spread and so widely accepted that there will be a backlash as users who too quickly adopted poorly designed or poorly implemented projects meet critical mass and the tide ebbs away from Open Source again. Then, as the market stabalizes and the buyer becomes more aware, the mix of Open Source and Profit Driven software take us into the next level of maturity for the client-side computer market.
Don't be fooled: this is not "the end" for Microsoft. Microsoft has not been so blind as to not see this coming. They are prepared for just the right time to launch a counter-strike which will either coincide with the upswing, or the backlash; whichever they feel is most advantageous to their image. Some will say, "Microsoft was blindsided" and contend that the counter-strike is "reactionary." Hogwash! The chess pieces are on the table and the stategies are in place. It's just a matter of working the pieces for leverage at the proper time. The best way to play this game, however, is not to try to conquer the opponent, but only keep him in check, without putting him in check-mate.
Microsoft is not the evil empire that they are painted as being, but they are profit driven. That's OK; we're capitalists and we believe in profit as a good thing. However, we also have to recognize that profit forces can cause corporations to do what is best for the corporation rather than what is best for the consumer. This has been the case with Microsoft in the last 6-8 years. That's OK because the completely free market works. The US economy is based largely on the book The Wealth of Nations by the Scotsman, Adam Smith, published, coincidentially enough, in 1776 which documents the free market forces and why it works; each man does what is best for himself and it serves every man. We have a stable client side - and server side - environment because of it.
The Open Source movement is here to stay, because it implements the missing principle of Nash's Equilibrium (yes, the Nash of "A Beautiful Mind"), which - as anyone who has seen the movie can tell you - is based on Adam Smith, but enhances it by adding community. If each man does what is best for himself, and each other, it best serves every man. One might call the difference a mere "nuance." But, it is enough to make the difference between the pure capitolism which lead, ultimately, to the great depression of the 20th Century and the robust economy of the post "New Deal" era. That is why the Post "New Deal" economy of the USA is so much stronger than the pure capitalism of the 19th Century (and why I am not a Libertarian). For those same reasons, the future mix of Open Source and Profit Driven software environment will make technology better, faster, more robust, and more stable. Therefore, I predict that the real maturity of IT will come in about 2008 to 2010 when this coming revolution has worked the kinks out of the "IT New Deal." If you are a Coveyite, you might say, "the software market needs to learn to think win-win." |
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Last Updated on Thursday, 25 September 2008 17:27 |
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