Chapter 11 in SCO book

Did you have any doubts this would happen to all Unix vendors?

Isn't it obvious that they can't make money on a heavily commoditized market?

Windows and Mac OSX can probably stand longer since they are continually improving their products, although on the Windows side it seems their are not innovating enough. New computers with Vista preinstalled are not selling fast, because the new user interface is not considered a great advance for users (actually it is a great advance, but it takes time to get used to it). That's the innovator dilemma: It takes time for people to understand your innovation, so innovations are not best sellers at first. Therefore the really good companies fail financially.

I guess the real problem for Windows is the language (C++) and the lack of a layered architecture. Also it has a baggage of underprime users who got used to inferior technology, and Microsoft is trying to educate the users like Unix tried in the past. It is very Quixotic and good for the economy, but the company will see no ROI. Linux will copy the new user interface as it has for the past several years.

Steve Ballmer thinks the pirates are stealing Windows (cracking it, in pirates jargon) and therefore people buy computers without an operating system and then install pirated Vista. Don't you think it would be better to install Ubuntu?

Microsoft is even reducing the price of Vista. The right price is zero, but it will take some time for Microsoft to forget about making money in a commoditized market and move on into better (READ: UNEXPLORED) markets.

Besides pirates help the company they are pirating. I mean, you can pirate at home, but you can't pirate at the office, and we all know in the office you use the most expensive products. And it takes months, if not years, to know some products really well, so if you pirate at home, you are helping the pirated company by learning to use their products in a free course you take at home in your own time. If you install say open office instead, you are helping yourself and at the same time hurting Microsoft. The sooner Microsoft understands that the office productivity market it created has been commoditized, the sooner it will be able to move on and invest on new products that people really care about and are willing to pay.

Chapter 11

Companies selling Unix are really companies selling pirated copies of Linux clones. Linux is now mainstream, and Unix is like the ugly experiment that was once meant to be Linux, but never got the chance to get there.

According to Richard Stallman, Linux should be called GNU/Linux instead. Of course he is right, Linux is just a kernel program that boots, but 99% of the code is GNU (which means GNU is Not Unix). Nevertheless, everybody says Linux, and it is easier to pronounce, thank you. I guess Stallman should study a little bit of marketing.

If there is a free Unix, no one can make any money on the market of Unix clones. SCO, owner of SCO Unix, which once was a Microsoft product, did not realize this and sued itself out of existance. Maybe you think it can recover, but no knowledgeable investor would invest in a company with no product, or at least not in a company with a commoditized product with a market price of zero.

Sun seemed to understand this by open sourcing Solaris. I personally think Solaris was a substandard product. Sun OS was much better in my not so humble opinion. But Solaris had some interesting ideas that can now be leveraged and included into Linux, so the investment will not totally be lost. Also the company will probably not invest in trying to market and sell Solaris, since marketing is usually several times more than development costs. This savings can be used to build other technologies on top of the commoditized ones.

Companies that build products on top of Linux will be the successful companies in the future.