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Emmett Dulaney
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The Mind of Innovation |
| If Linux really wants to grow, it needs to move beyond imitation. |
| by Emmett Dulaney |
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1/17/2007 -- When I first started working in technology, I was struck by the fact that all the major companies we were doing business with were American. It didn't matter whether it was hardware or software; it seemed as if the only viable players in the market were domestic companies. Puzzled by the fact that importing was the rage in so many other fields, I asked a number of people what they thought about this and they all pretty much had the same answer: Other countries are good at imitation, while Americans are good at innovation. As long as the technology continued to change rapidly -- processors doubling every 18 months and applications adding features exponentially -- America would always have a lead in the market.
Contrary to what you might think from the previous paragraph, this article is not about importing and exporting. It is not about buying American, or anything of that sort.
Actually, this topic came to my mind while I was reading one more article on Mono. For those still immune from the buzz, Mono is basically the open source implementation of the .NET framework. Microsoft came up with .NET as a programming architecture to replace and supersede many of the languages it was already marketing (C# being a big one). The company, Ximian, was formed to essentially re-engineer .NET as an open source solution (bypassing royalties for Microsoft), and it was purchased by Novell. I'm simplifying it a bit, but principally, what Mono allows you to do is program for Linux and other operating systems the same way you would program for Microsoft operating systems. That's hot news in the Linux world right now.
Previous news has included such things as:
- WINE, which allows Windows programs (think binaries and games) to run on Linux.
- OpenOffice.org, which allows you to work with MS Office documents and files on Linux.
- Refinement of the X-based desktops (GNOME, KDE, etc.) to look more and more like Windows.
These all constitute ways in which Linux can do the exact same things as Windows, causing many in the community to look at these and wonder why more people aren't adopting Linux. The reason, simply put, is because they constitute imitation and not innovation. In the minds of most, just doing the same thing as someone else isn't a significant reason to switch.
In expanding upon Michael Porter's groundbreaking work on competitive strategy from 1980, many -- like Messrs. Schmitt and Szyperski -- have pointed out that the first to market tends to have an advantage over the competition, and simply matching that is not enough. Just because Linux does everything that Microsoft does is not a sufficient reason to switch to Linux.
If the Linux operating system is to truly gain a foothold in the market, it needs to do something that Microsoft's operating systems can't do -- either at all, or as well. With the only possible exception being Web hosting (and I won't even grant that fully), I can think of nothing else that makes Linux a better operating system than Microsoft's.
Yes, it's open source, but what does that mean to Joe User who just wants to put together a slide presentation this afternoon without missing his kid's recital this evening? Yes, it is available from more than one company, but what does that mean to the manager trying to hire support staff who have experience with the Linux OS? (What, you know Red Hat but have never worked with SuSE?) Yes, it is cheaper to acquire than Windows, but what does that mean when every large Linux company now wants to sell you a maintenance contract?
Apple had a niche with graphics and layout -- an area that Microsoft could not excel at. Over time, that niche was whittled away a bit, but Apple continued to innovate and focus on it. Macintosh became the standard in graphics and printing shops.
What does Linux have? Will all of the open source developers spend 2007 trying to give it the same features that Microsoft has just added to Vista, or will they come up with something new? For the sake of the community, I hope it's the latter, since we already have a Vista.
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Emmett Dulaney is the author of several books on Linux, Unix and certification. He can be reached at .
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More articles by Emmett Dulaney:
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There are 41  user Comments for “The Mind of Innovation”
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Page 1 of 5
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| 1/18/07: Ray Reynolds from NYC says: |
What an idiotic article! Poorly written, poorly researched, poorly reasoned. First, Ximian was not 'formed to essentially re-engineer .NET'. Mono is but one of many technologies Ximian contributed to the FOSS community before its Suse acquisition - remember Ximian Desktop, Evolution, Red Carpet, Ximian Exchange? Secondly, WINE, Mono, & OpenOffice are not imitations of anything. They represent line-by-line original code applications with the intent of offering the capabilities of & compatibility with the market leader's (Microsoft's) de facto standards. OpenOffice does not imitate MS Office anymore than Safari imitates Internet Explorer. Moreover, OpenOffice's Base represents a tremendous achievement for a ground-up original database application. And finally: No, Linux is in no way imitating Vista. In fact, with technologies like Beagle, Xen, & XGL/Compiz, Linux is arguable ahead of Vista on the feature curve. And by the way, which report claims Linux isn't growing? This articles is about as ill-written as Dulaney's last book. Pathetic. |
| 1/18/07: Srini Murty from Culpeper, VA says: |
I do not agree with Mr. Dulaney. Perhaps my blog post at http://opensource.arrowhand.com/2007/ 01/18/linux-is-just-immitation.aspx will provider a more detailed explanation. |
| 1/22/07: Josiah from Ohio says: |
As a holder of a RHCE and MCSE (2000 & 2003) certifications I feel qualified to comment. The author is missing the point on this OS comparison. There is no organization more successful at imitation than Microsoft. Microsoft’s only innovation is the pressure it puts on it’s developers to making its products obsolete by the time the new release is out for purchase. Open Source developers innovate on needs of the users, not the shareholders. When “Joe User” becomes frustrated with paying for commercial software that has been engineered to be obsolete in 3 years is when he will discover Linux and open source software programs are amazing because they work well and are free. |
| 1/23/07: Emmett Dulaney says: |
These are great comments, and greatly appreciated. I fear, however, that the key issue is being overlooked. I agree - wholeheartedly - that Microsoft is well known for mistaking imitation for innovation. They have borrowed from Apple and Xerox and everyone else for years. They also obsolete products and do everything else to make administration a challenge. What is it, though, that Microsoft is borrowing from Linux right now? My point isn't that others aren't guilty of the same and worse. My point is that Linux MUST innovate and do what others are not if there is to be a real demand for it created. It is not enough to come up with the same features others have - whether those features come from programmers on the payroll, open source, or just about anywhere else. There are a lot of things that users and administrators wish could be done today that cannot be done yet - that demand creates opportunity. When it takes Microsoft 5 years to come out with an operating system, there is a real potential here for Linux to fill a void - but it is never going to do that by coming up with more ways to do the same and arguing the worn-out cost argument. It is going to have to that by having a community that gets creative and surprises us all. |
| 1/24/07: Majid from Bangalore , India says: |
Winners dont do diffrent things they do things differently |
| 1/25/07: Anonymous says: |
I don't have an RHCE so I won't comment. |
| 1/30/07: Jimmy from oakland, ca says: |
I have been listening to all the 'vista' fanfare and heard one commentator talk about the 'thumbnails' feature of docs, spreadsheets etc looking like the real files. Wow this has been a feature in linux for several years ... wow. Then I saw some pictures of vista and I was wow it looks just like my linux workstation (kubuntu) and wow .... Did we miss the point? No you are article is stupid. Dude are you like a crack smoker? na .. probably just some old dude working for someone that is to cheap to hire someone with real writing skills ... ha ha ha you are so old school ..... |
| 2/1/07: Carlo Vasquez from Seattle, WA says: |
Emmett, I applaud you for actually responding - especially after reading Ray Reynolds' scathing critique. But I think you missed his point though. The problem wasn't that he disagreed about there being a need for innovation. His issue was with the fact that almost every example you used to make your claim was unwittingly chosen and mis-reasoned. The simple laws of logic dictate that any argument - even if ostensibly true - predicated on false evidence is, by extension, false. Perhaps you should take the time to look across the broad spectrum of past and present FOSS projects before making the sweeping - and mistaken - assessment that forms your thesis. |
| 2/12/07: Charlie from MIT says: |
I build high performance computing systems for a living. We use Linux not because of it's cost, but because of it's ability to do what Windows can not, and it's flexibility over some others in the Unix family. It is evident from your article that you do not have enough experience with Linux to speak to the subject. I have been a part of the Linux community since 1995 and I have consistently seen tools, and features from my Linux machines eventually turn up in Windows releases. Linux was never developed to take over for Windows. However, Linux has been ahead of Windows in functionality for many years now. Over the past few years, people have been utilizing Linux in more consumer visible applications (office desktops and etc). I see many comments from people pointing out a desktop feature saying how it looks like Windows. I often point them to the release date proving how the Windows version came after the fact. After nearly 12 years of using Linux as my primary OS, I feel claustrophobic when using a Windows computer. I feel as though I have lost functionality. All I need is one Linux distro CD/DVD, and I have all the tools I need to develop a base HPC software infrastructure. For your next article, perhaps you should research the following: 1. When did Windows enter into the 64b scene? 2. When did Windows start interacting well in a heterogeneous network? 3. When did Windows become the base OS for HPC storage systems? 4. When did Windows become the OS of choice on HPC clusters/systems? |
| 4/24/07: Anonymous says: |
and i thought this article was about the kernel. i wish next time the writer will have enought tact to change the title of the column "inside the kernel" if he wants to stray away from the scope. |
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