Thursday - June 02, 2005

An Offer They Can’t Refuse

Linux geeks will rule the world one day. In fact, they (we) already may do so ....

This is power that Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and many governments could only dream of having. The power to control the press and the skills contained in this organization are likely capable of disrupting travel, power grids and other broad national infrastructure systems if their demands are not met.

In many companies there exists a huge difference in compensation between the management (particularly the CEOs) and the folks that actually make and service the products. There is also an increasing tendency for executives to treat employees (particularly IT employees) as disposable assets, and you have what appears to be an increasing lack of respect for the competence of management in the industry.

Kidding aside, Linux and open source has penetrated most technical schools, government IT shops, and technology companies. Its membership, while not officially listed, is easily in the millions of people who believe in or support their version of the concept of open source, which Linux, to them, represents. There may not be a great deal of agreement on the terms, but the group can act as a group and has the tools to coordinate that action.

Those tools are based on the richness of the Internet, newsletters and blogs with RSS feeds, and more traditional technical publications the Linux faithful can be directed to act with some degree of confidence. The battle with SCO was a case in point: At no time in history has a technology firm been as thoroughly attacked as SCO has been since their litigation with IBM (over Linux) started.

SCO has experienced massive Denial of Service attacks, the company’s customer base has been inundated, their funding sources have been strangled, their executive leadership has been threatened, and their ability to function has been almost completely eliminated. In what has been a massive and loosely coordinated effort, a multi-million dollar company backed by a strong legal team has been all but put out of business, and this couldn’t have happened without some form of organization. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), with all of its resources, seems powerless against the massive engine represented by Linux, and its supporters often appear as an endangered species during a government-approved hunting season.

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/02/2005 at 11:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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