Subject: Re: MSN (was Prodigy Pricing) From: docdon@pinn.net (Don Taylor) Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 23:37:16 -0500

Status: RO
X-Status: 

Your arguments do have a lot of merit, you have an enviable background, and
I will agree but I still can't agree with your projection.

What are the merits of changing operating systems? This is a tremendous
nightmare in the leading market - business. Many haven't even made the
switch to Windows yet. I have alway felt that Bill Gates succeeded with
Windows because corporate/business management became tired of the cost of
"artistic license" taken by programmers (and I are one). In the old
mini-world I used to work in what mattered most to the customer was "user
interface" - it has many things like documentation and training tied to it.
The Windows GUI answered that need on the platform of choice. Windows has
provided a simpler interface that eventually proved so popular it is, IMHO,
the main reason why WWW is the fastest growing segment of the Net. 

Unix has always been touted as a potential blockbuster because just like HP
calculators it is heavily used by many college students who ultimately
become decision makers in the corporate world. To date that has had little
impact and every day it becomes harder. 

Where are the applications? One of the biggest drawbacks to any Unix
popularity has always been the lack of applications, and not just 17 flavors
of word processing. (This works in reverse as well to keep people wedded to
Unix for their mission-critical application.) There are, I believe, about
50,000-100,000 applications for DOS/Windows, which at the moment are
inseparable. It is true that Win 95 will open up this potential chasm by
leaving behind DOS and moving into a 32-bit, multi-tasking world.

As a programmer with somewhat of a management perspective, I have always
felt that one of the reasons for PC success was the low cost of getting a
software product to market (cost of hardware, development tools and
fundamental knowledge) and the tremendous potential market. (This
temporarily ignores the future cost of significantly growing the firm.)
People took to developing all sorts of applications for, in my mind, not
always good reasons. But for some inexplicable reason, I know of no
comparable cottage industry or similar "group of amateurs" in the Unix world.

I found two comments in separate articles in InformationWeek (Apr 17)
related to our conversation:

    o   Mitch Irsfeld reports that although MS gains an advantage by using a
two-way lever with 
        its OS/applications, they get away with it because users want it
that way.

    o   One of Ray Noorda's (former Novell CEO) new ventures is the Caldera
operating system,
        which has a reported half million users and 50,000 sales per month
(versus your 200,000)
        in addition to net.free distribution. (Caldera will reportedly run
under Windows, Novell 
        NetWare and various Unix applications.) Ray's other new venture is
developing products to           let Windows applications run on Caldera.

Even though as a programmer I always felt programming for Unix *could* allow
greater portability and practically a whole new software marketing paradigm,
as a business person it had no particular merit. Without a concentrated
marketing effort, which no form of Unix has ever succeeded at very well,
neither Linux nor anything else will overtake MS. Just being there and
having the benefits you point out would never do it. With Ray and this
approach, including using the reported animosity between him and Bill for
marketing purposes, we might see some interesting developments in the
marketplace. But you're talking 18 months versus your beginning comment of
15 years, in which OS/2 hasn't suceeded yet.

Products don't always sell just because they are lower priced. The "Windows
industry" is a tremendous base of known, knowledgeable and heavily marketed.
Overcoming that is going to take a great deal of unified effort, time and
money. Until developers see the reason to become part of it, it won't have
much effect.

    Don

At 07:00 PM 4/17/95 -0400, R Ballard wrote:
>
>Which of the 20 Linux vendors will publish the commercially popular 
>"ultimate victor" of the Linux market?  I don't know.  It could be a 
>19 year old kid with hair down to his waistline (The 90's version of a 
>computer nerd).  Do you remember how old Bill Gates was when he put out 
>Microsoft Basic?

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