[Note: If you didn’t read my previous post, then you might not get this one. That said, this one still stands on its own. It’s just that it’s part of a set, and I hate to think of them as being broken up. So, if you haven’t already, please go read my last post before reading this one. Thanks.]
I wanted to add a little more to the previous post, but felt that this stuff didn’t really fit. It just goes into a little more depth on a couple subjects.
Item One – Why I get worked up about Linux and innovation and What Could Have Been
Some of you are probably wondering why the lack of innovation in Linux freaks me out. It’s pretty simple, really – I’m a tech enthusiast, and I selfishly want a wide and varied landscape in which to play.
You can think of the kernel of an OS as an engine. It’s like the four-cylinder job in my little car. It’s the meat.
In the early days of Linux and Microsoft, each group/company had something of a kernel.
Each company had their kernel, and needed something built around it to make it useful. An engine without something it can drive is neat but useless.
Both went a similar route. The chassis were basically the same for the two engines. The Linux engine had a *nix shell environment, and the Microsoft engine had the DOS command environment. They were both very bare bones systems. No paint – only naked hollow tubes of aluminum welded together around the engine with just enough of an interface that you could drive the things from Point A to Point B. Your ass hurt from all the bumps by the time you got there, but you did get there.
Time progressed as it seems to do, and both parties added features to their cars. Microsoft eventually added a full-blown set of creature comforts to its vehicles. Rich in color, upholstery, and all the other niceties, these things were like the Lexus of operating systems. Microsoft did it for its customers. Its customers were paying good dough for these cars, and they expected something good in return. They got it.
Linux continued to putter along. That was OK. The interest of the Linux enthusiast wasn’t creature comforts – it was being close to the metal of the machine. Putting it up on blocks on the weekend and tinkering with it to see what they could get it to do. It was a labor of love. These Linux people didn’t really have any customers. They just did it for themselves and their passion.
But then a bunch of yuppies spotted the Linux vehicle and said, “Hey – there’s something that would give us a little bit of street cred. We could drive it around the city, and our friends will think we go off-roading on the weekends, even though all we do is sit on the couch, eat potato chips, and watch Transformers re-runs.”
More time passed, and the yuppies, although in love with the street cred of the Linux vehicle, didn’t like the bruises it gave their asses. They wanted something different. That Microsoft Windows car seemed to move along smoothly without injuring the driver. The only problem is that it was a respectable car. It was a Lexus. The yuppies didn’t want to seem respectable. That’s for pansies. So, they took some of their dough and started putting it into custom body shops that could make improvements to the Linux car so that it would drive a little more like the Windows sedan while still imparting that fabulous street cred.
They eventually created a few new models of Linux. They were more reliable, dependable, and inoffensive to the buttock. They were kind of like the Scion – not exactly a luxury vehicle, but nice enough, and adored by those who felt a real kinship with the vehicle. The weekend tinkermobile had since disappeared. It had gone back to the hills where the backwater hicks could continue to play with it, but the Big City boys had since moved to this new, upscale model.
At this point, the differences between the two models are few. One is the crappy, lacking in features version of the other. The Windows car continues to be a luxury sedan, while the Linux car just barely keeps up with what was hot in the Windows world a decade ago.
Which brings us to the point of concern: Is this good? Is this innovative?
Hell, no.
The reason I get so freaked out about the lack of innovation in Linux is that I’ve lost a plaything over the past few years. I liked that Linux was weird, quirky, and didn’t really work. It was like a fun toy that I only brought out on the weekends.
And the teams involved had so many choices, but they chose the ones which were just unimpressive shadows of what had already come in previous operating systems.
When it was time to build a new chassis for that Linux engine, the sky was the limit. Microsoft went the way it did because it has a responsibility to its customers. People depend on us to provide an easy to use operating system with a large application stack that’s very hardware-friendly.
To whom was the Linux camp answering? The answer, at first, was: itself. There’s no real excuse for how and why it turned into a clone of other popular operating systems. With nobody to answer to, creativity should have been the driving factor.
When Microsoft was fastening that polished Lexus exterior onto the Windows chassis, Linux could have gone in any number of other directions. It didn’t have to play the “me too” game.
The Linux engine could have, instead, been placed in the belly of a fifty foot tall mechanized pink flamingo with flames shooting out of its eyes. It would have stalked the land looking for pretty gardens in which to perch, adding color and diversity to the landscape.
It could have been anything.
It could have been a Picasso, but instead was a paint-by-numbers clipper ship.
That’s why Linux needed innovation. What it’s become is a 3rd class citizen whose best line is, “I might suck in some respects, but at least I appear to be free.”
This is because, without innovation, the artwork that Linux was has turned into business. The Linux world is now about:
1) Money
2) Fame
3) Hax0r reputation
4) Money
5) Money
And if you work on Linux/OSS and happen to believe otherwise, then it’s because you can’t hear IBM laughing all the way to the bank.
Item Two – Why we shouldn’t misuse the word “innovation”
A sane and understandable response to my last post and this one would be something like, “Dude – ‘innovate’ is just a word. Get over it.”
Sure, sure. It’s just a word.
But people are constantly open to suggestion. Tell your best friend his hair looks stupid “like that,” and he’ll probably do a little something different with it tomorrow (or even this afternoon). Our brains our wide open to incoming ideas, and we’re much more malleable than we’d like to believe.
So, what happens if we continue to use a word like “innovation” to describe things which absolutely aren’t innovative?
I’m not sure, and I’m no historian, but I’m guessing that there were some soldiers in the Fuhrer's army who weren’t so hot on the crazy mustachioed man’s ideas, but who, after constant immersion in them, eventually came to think that they weren’t so bad. Perhaps they even thought they were good.
Why? Because someone was constantly saying so, and because their brains were waiting to be shaped.
In short, if you do something that isn’t all that new or interesting, or even something which could possibly have a negative impact on the status quo, and call it “innovative,” and then come to believe that your mediocre/lame/bad/harmful thing actually is innovative, then you’re no better than a weak-minded monkey man who lets himself be convinced that being a Nazi is OK.
If we let weak and harmful ideas walk this Earth under the guise of innovation, then we’re screwed, y’all. Things aren’t going to get better.
With that, I’m going to bed.
In flame-proof jammies.