Mood:
party time!Topic: Integroty
I wonder if Mister Graham is the kind of journalist that's as good as a lawyer. You know. The kind of guy who knows the answer to the question before he asks it... because that's what he gets paid to do?
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/13561
Paul Graham: “Microsoft is Dead”
By Paul McNamara on Sat, 04/07/2007 - 6:35amHe doesn't mean what the headline says (but they do have a job waiting for him at the sensationalistic Boston Herald should this technology thing prove to be a fad.)
What Graham actually tries to convey is his latest essay is that Microsoft no longer instills the fear that it once did, particularly among entrepreneurs, some of whom were still in diapers when the software giant was smiting a Netscape or two every week.
Developer, author, renowned anti-spammer and venture capitalist, here's how Graham gets rolling:
A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?
Microsoft? He didn't say anything, but I could tell he didn't quite believe anyone would be frightened of them.
Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world starting for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly-for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when the shadow disappeared.
And here's the big finish to an essay, which while I don't buy its general conclusions, raises the bar in the "Microsoft is Dead" genre:
I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is old news.
Granted, I'm locked in a Texas Death Match of my own this year with The Big Five-Oh, so you can probably guess which of those two groups can claim my membership.
Microsoft is dead in much the same way that the power of the United States government and military are dead: Yes, we've abused and squandered that power in ways both arrogant and unconscionable ... but dead? Not on your life.
Graham is getting plenty of the reaction that he anticipated, as well as a variety of other viewpoints. A sampling from the discussion over at Reddit:
A larger share of people are inspired by and agree with many of your earlier articles, those that inspired us to build startups, take risks, and those that imparted us wisdom and an outlook on life that we wouldn't normally have.
However you should have been expecting flame and phlegm as a response to this; you can't claim a company as dead if it is no longer massively visible or dominant in your (or our) corner of the techs pace. Microsoft is very much alive, and it's doing what it can create new niches of its own.
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As the scores and numbers of us F/OSS-heads swells, so too, are the numbers of .NET-ites. There are very many who aren't "enlightened" enough, (or care enough), to investigate Microsoft alternatives. Hordes of them grew up with XP. They will go to Vista. And some time soon, they may come to discover VB. Which will lead them to .NET. Or perhaps they will become enthralled by the Windows Presentation stuff (people like shiny things). Either way, Microsoft will still be very much alive. Just not in the spaces where people like us care for.
And as many as we are, there are still far too many for whom the term "computer" means "box with Windows on it". And that won't change any time soon.
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I still can't understand why startup founders would be limited by using MS.
It's not that an individual, with a particular project in mind, would be limited using MS per se. If said individual wanted to write a killer web-app, he could. He'd have to download and install or compile all the software he wanted to work with, though.
Compare that to someone running a *nix variant. A lot of the tools he might want would come pre-installed in most cases. A lot of his friends and other interesting people working on other interesting projects are running a *nix. There's a synergy that develops. There are a zillion cool widgets and gadgets and doohickeys you can install on OS X and Linux and their ilk. A lot of the effort driving all these zillions of projects is made a lot more efficient by the synergy of working on a *nix platform in the first place.
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Windows is not where the synergy is. That's why "all the computer people use Macs now." Ever been to OSCON? 50-75% of the attendees use Macs.
Sure, 90% of the world, the rubes and the plebes(1), use Windows, but they're consumers - consumers don't make anything, they barely choose anything, they just use what's given to them. No synergy. No excitement.
(1) not meant to disparage anyone actually using Windows. I occasionally use Windows. I'm just sayin'.
That last one - "not meant to disparage" - is both priceless and the tone evident throughout Graham's essay. True or not, it's not an attractive tone.
