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This train of thought is a little convoluted but I think it has meaning. I admit I get thinking like this on Fridays in the spring and summer when my mind wanders on Friday mornings and my three wood wanders Friday afternoons.

The thought process began as I was reading last Thursday’s “one laptop per child” PR blitz and Microsoft’s quarter 3 FY 2007 financial results.
• The crank-it-for-power, “chicklet-keyboard-for-kids” laptop runs Linux (Fedora I am guessing given Red Hat’s involvement) and some games and is intended for use all over the “third world.” Why my grand kids can’t have it I am not sure.
• Meanwhile, as I opined during February and March, Microsoft Office 2007 (and Vista) sales are exceeding financial-analyst expectations (and the cost of the Technology Guarantee program may be lower than expected). As a result, Microsoft feels it will meet its revenue and profit goals through June 2008.

(Note: I have not researched any of this myself. Since it is the virtual weekend, I am depending on the related press releases and the resultant published mass-media reports.)

Somehow the Linux open source software (OSS) angle in the one-world laptop PR segued me to thinking about my own posts during the week of April 23 concerning the now complete metamorphosis of VA Software (away from being a Red Hat competitor to its e-media niche) and Red Hat’s changing of the JBoss Group strategy (after less than a year of trying to make the inherited JBoss’ business model work). Similarly, reading about the Microsoft results led me back to thinking of how well Microsoft would do next year if it could get the EU off its back.

This caused me to ask (myself):
• I know about the millions of pirated copies of Office and Windows awash in the third world. Why isn’t there a lot of research into OpenOffice and Ubuntu piracy?
• I know the size of the OSS maintenance and support market. Why isn’t there more research into the size of the maintenance and support business that has built up around Office and Windows?

My answers:
• What piracy? All those laptop cranking kids can download OpenOffice and Ubuntu for free (Canonical will also mail you Ubuntu for free if you want to wait 6 weeks).
• As for Open Office and Ubuntu support and maintenance, the little waifs can just go to Sun or Canonical and buy a maintenance contract.

But these are third world waifs we are talking about. They can’t afford an Internet connection to get their free software? Or pay a Sun/Canonical subscription fee? In that case, they can (and I predict will) get a pirated copy of a Microsoft product like millions of others before them (the one-child laptop also runs Windows). Bill Gates is even talking about competing with the pirates in China; selling a Genuine COA’d Windows for three bucks worth of yuan.

As my thinking wandered further, it dawned on me that I have had Microsoft software for 20 years and have never needed to ask any one for any service or support. (Although I didn’t need any Microsoft support, for my day-job’s research purposes I have used the free email support that comes with my free Office Live account and it has always been prompt and actually useful almost all of the time.) Admittedly I religiously back up my work and have continued to do so even though I haven’t seen a blue screen in a decade. But that caution dates to a long retired and wise boss in my mainframe days, and I just carried it over to the PC era. And admittedly sometimes I can’t figure out how some Microsoft thing works (or why it works the way it does), but there is always another way to do what I am trying to do and I get on with my life. I believe information technology that requires no documentation will rule the world. I can’t say the same for the CompuServe, Comcast, Compaq, HP, IBM, and Verizon products and services I’ve purchase over the same time period. And as noted below, you can't say the same for the operating system recommended by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for use instead of Windows.

So my next thought was: Why are the free softies always going on about the inherent quality of their stuff and the inferiority of Microsoft software?
• The FSF world
o would not exist if it were not for thousands of people buying expensive services and support for the free software.
o This might mean that free software breaks a lot

• The Microsoft world, on the other hand, ‘runs’ on
o millions of people buying some thing
o finding that it does a good job
o buying the next version 3-6 years later, without ever having to make an 800 call.
o This might mean, if you believe in markets, that Microsoft software does not break very often.

Of course, many of the free softies—e.g., Professor Neelie Kroes of the EU Competition Commission—do not believe in markets. If my thoughts all fit, the bigots at Wine (see the bigoted reference to the Irish concerning the potato blight that hit Europe in the 1840s) better ramp up their website as billions of kids download the Windows emulator to run their pirated copies of Word and PowerPoint (or the cranking kids will get a pirated copy of Windows too).

I haven’t seen the whole one-laptop-per child plan but I guess the billions of little kids will be doing their downloading via their free UN-sponsored WiFi connection. This will be provided in a program to be run by the EU’s Neelie, who will quit the Competition Commission in a few months frustrated by the European Court’s upcoming finding in favor of Microsoft. As part of that finding, Microsoft will have to give away free MSN vouchers to billions of little one-laptop kids.

This will be familiar territory for Microsoft; a few years ago it was “forced” to give millions of U.S. kids free Microsoft software as part of U.S. state and Department of Justice settlements. What a coup then and now. A generation of third-world kids, like a generation of U.S. kids, will grow up with Microsoft while those poor EU kids will be trying to figure out what these directions mean on the gNewSense site (the FSF recommended operating system):
“gNewSense is derived from Ubuntu, and thus has most of the same functionality… There are a number of differences though… Note our goal is to produce a fully free distribution, not to have as many features as possible… To create gNewSense we needed to produce a set of scripts. We called this building method Builder and these scripts allow anyone to build their own distribution. Try it here: create a GNU/Linux Distribution. This is not how you get gNewSense, for that follow the download link above, but you can do this if you want to see how we did it.”

If anyone else thinks there is some meaning in my train of thought, post a comment or send me an email.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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Posted by: Kris Tuttle at May 1, 2007 01:25 PM | Permalink