RE: MJR on Linux/OSS

["Paul Melson" <psmelson () comcast net>]

Personally, I've never bought into the monoculture vs. security debate a
whole lot since security doesn't drive business, rather risk mitigation (not
to be mistaken for security, especially information security) allows
business to continue.  (With certain exceptions, yada yada yada.)  In fact,
this isn't a security issue at all as far as I'm concerned, so I'll be
surprised if this thread gets very far.

<rant>
There are two factors that have delivered Windows it's dominant position in
the OS market.  The first is that people will go to where the apps are.
Historically, MS can thank IBM and other hardware vendors for reselling
their systems with MS-DOS (or facsimiles thereof), and they can also thank
Apple for making significant changes to the MacOS Extensions API's while
simultaneously switching from CISC to RISC in the early 90's.  These two
things drove most of the desktop apps into the arms of Windows for the
reasons Marcus states in his editorial.  It's not a mistake that there is
not and likely never will be an MS-Office suite for Linux, even though there
is one for Mac.  If and when Linux can deliver whatever it is that people
need on their desktop and in their server rooms, then it will have finally
come of age.

This is where I disagree with Marcus.  The second factor is that people -
both individual consumers and businesses - think with their wallets.  This
has been a strength for Microsoft over the years - cheap desktop (and
reasonably cheap server) OS that can run on open hardware standards.  This
meant that while performance and stability suffered, MS was free to watch
the hardware vendors beat each other up to deliver the same experience to
end-users at the lowest cost.  This is where free software gains it's
advantage over Microsoft, though.  It's even cheaper yet, and until MS
starts paying people to run Windows, at least some portion of it is going to
stay that way.  Consistency is nice, but people are malleable, adaptable
creatures on an individual level.  And if it will save me $100 at home, or
$100,000/yr at work and I can still accomplish those things that I need to,
then I will think long and hard about switching to the cheaper option when
the moment is upon me.  I can certainly point you to examples of businesses
that are investigating or have already begun the migration to open-source
desktops.  This doesn't mean that Linux, BSD, and whatever is next will
succeed where the Cray's and DEC's of the world failed, but it's enough of
an edge that the world at large has come sniffing around to see if there's
something in it for them.

So the moral of my rant is to never underestimate greed's ability to help
people accept change, good or bad.

I've had the opportunity to walk into a couple hundred IT departments over
the years, and seen a lot of variety.  The one thing I've never heard is,
"We run Windows because it's the best platform out there, period."  Not to
say that people don't love them some Windows, but it's, "This is what
[everybody] runs." or, "Windows is better than [previous platform, often
NetWare]." or, "You've got to run some Windows somewhere."  Given a cheap,
usable alternative, no less than half of them would walk away from Windows
if it saved them money and/or they thought 'everybody' was doing it.  
</rant>

PaulM


-----Original Message-----
Subject: [fw-wiz] MJR on Linux/OSS

http://www.ranum.com/editorials/divide-conquer/

Summary: Diversity in interfaces is bad. Microsoft's consistent interface is
good.

I thought we went through this during the discussion on the personal
firewall day (firewall-wizards, Sep 30 2003 by Paul D. Robertson)?

Which consistent interface would suit everyone? As opposed to users saying
"I know this interface, and I don't want to learn anything new", which
interface would be acceptable?

KDE? GNOME? WindowMaker? Windows? MacOS? The command line?

Oh yes, you can run any distro with no big real difference between them. The
major lines: Debian, Redhat, Gentoo. The rest are clones, or similar enough
to transition easily between.

The trouble with a single dominant monoculture is that it does increase the
damage caused by a single hole. See blaster, and the long thread which was
spawned by *that* on this list.

I guess this is one of those things on which I disagree with Marcus.
Hopefully, this leads to another good discussion on what would work best for
what requirements (as opposed to the /. threads).

Oh, and Marcus: DLL hell ;)

_______________________________________________
firewall-wizards mailing list
firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards