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Software is still an Infant
This also puts both Linux and open source in a kind of perspective. One's a building material. The other is a building method. It's not a lot more complicated than that. Both offer practical alternatives. Not political, religious or moral causes. In the long run, the arguments will boil down to professional ones about practical choices. Do you get more done, and is the work done better, when you're building with X and the source is open or closed? Right on! That's the most sane view I have seen in a long while. Those professionals are taking over the industry. Subtly. Pervasively. Show me a company that
Maybe not so subtly? Developers and implementers have ruled since as long as I can remember; that's how Microsoft became as big as it is today, and one of the biggest challenges for Microsoft today. Construction is a mature industry. And it's huge, perhaps $trillions in size. Significantly, there is no Microsoft in the construction industry, although there are companies with larger revenues.
Here I must respectfully disagree with your comparison of the Software industry to the Construction industry. (Actually, I really like construction as a metaphor, just that I feel we're a long way from being mature yet). In my mind, we are not even at 0.01% of having accomplished what can be accomplished with software. I like to use a construction metaphor for the industry as a whole -- The silicon chips are like the bedrock, low-level OS like DOS/Unix are the foundation, Networked OS is the framing for the first floor walls, and so on. As much as some people may hate to believe it, the widespread use of GUI-based computing was not possible without a widely-installed base of DOS (PC-DOS, DR-DOS, whatever) machines. And if there had been no time for WFW and it's humble Wolverine TCP stack to spread, there would have been no foundation upon which to build the Internet revolution. Now we have alot of good options for Internet and app servers, so that becomes the foundation for the next stage in this tower. The next stage of the building is distributed services, autonomous agents, things like that. We may call it .NET and Sun may call it something different, but the fact is, as an industry, we are already building the next stage of the tower atop the infrastructure that we have all collectively fought so long and hard for. To me, even .NET is boring. Once .NET is in place, we will finally be able to realize the vision of GRID. Then, things become really interesting. The next stages of the tower beyond GRID are going to be dazzling and glorious, whatever they are. You are right that there is more than enough to go around, but I do not think this wave is "maturing". In fact, I think that the potential for new and amazing things is only going to increase. You mention that Linux is an "alternative" to windows (and I agree, although Unix has always been an alternative, and so is Mac). The real story, though, is how the tools and building materials are evolving. I think we are finally reaching the point where the platform is evolving beyond Linux and Windows. As the network becomes the platform, Unix vs. Windows could be as relevant as AMD vs. Intel. Computer vendors have always chased the next higher level of abstraction as the foundation below us settles. Defining Microsoft as "Windows" is like defining Microsoft as "DOS". "Windows" itself has had many definitions over the years. In reality, we are all chasing the same thing -- Microsoft, IBM, Sun, and everyone else -- building rights on the next stage of the tower, and access to the coign of vantage that provides. Regards,
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