Passing Oceania

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Matt Osborne
I am writing this blog into a Firefox extension. For those of you unfamiliar with Firefox, it’s an open-source web browser that lets me add functionalities at will through extensions and add-ons — little bits of software I download from the Mozilla Firefox website. The company doesn’t even have to pay people to invent these little bits of software because the developers do it themselves and share them.

Which brings me to this article in the NYT today:

The makers of open-source software also continue to benefit from the growing appeal of their often cheap, if not free, products. Sun Microsystems distributes 65,000 downloads a day of its MySQL database, which has turned into the favored business software of new companies. The job search engine Indeed.com shows a thriving job market for MySQL and Linux developers.

Linux has proved popular as well on a new crop of smarter devices — be they phones, TVs or set-top boxes — that have captured software developers’ imaginations. The new products they build will undoubtedly challenge the status quo.

“Companies like Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments that make chips for these devices are hiring Linux talent as quick as they can,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. “They know the future is netbooks and mobile Internet devices.”

Get that? Linux talent is getting hired, while Microsoft talent is being fired. The disaster known as Windows Vista, combined with the impressive flop known as Zune, are too much dead weight for the XBox to balance. Gone are the days when a few early shares of Microsoft made accidental millionaires; the world’s most powerful software company isn’t even a good investment anymore.

If that doesn’t complete the woeful picture for you, consider the way Apache (an open-source software) dominates the server world:

Now, I’m not just trying to bash Microsoft or Bill Gates. Rather, this episode points to the way in which the internet has begun to reverse traditional economic paradigms. This is happening to more than just software: we live in the age of open-source intelligence, open-source products, and now, open-source governance.

I’m no wild-eyed futurist. Ownership and proprietary issues won’t evaporate just because of the internet. But the president has asked every American to become a government watchdog, and that is a future George Orwell could not have guessed; for Big Brother may watch us, but we are watching him too.






About Matt Osborne

Veteran blogging the culture wars from Alabama. Video journalist, mash-up artist, aspiring novelist, and metalhead. Expect bunnies, geekery, dark humor, and snarky empirical analysis to annoy idealists of all stripes. You can follow me on Twitter, but be ready 'cause it might get loud.
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  • (O)CT(O)PUS

    Bill Gates is a successful marketer and propagandist but he was never an honorable player. Early in the history of MS, he plagiarized code from more innovative developers (who won lawsuits for copyright infringement) and drove superior products (such as WordPerfect) from the marketplace. MS propaganda convinced a naive public that MS has been a great innovator; in truth, MS has been a predator and monopolist from the beginning. Driving small developers from the marketplace drives out innovation.

    The open-source and Linux communities grew in part as a reaction to the underhanded business tactics of Gates. Open-source products offer more stability, offer more features and more standardization across platforms. Its not that “big” is suddenly out of fashion. The geeks never wanted to capitulate to Gates, and now they have heir sweet revenge.