Open Source: Niche Markets, Linux and Microsoft

“The vast majority of PC users do not need, or want, any of the
programs that are often claimed to be the problem holding back
adoption of Linux on the PC desktop in the mainstream. In my
experience with the few end-users I have switched from Microsoft to
Linux, some of them did have special needs that precluded using
Linux on their desktop PC at this time. The others have zero
problems using a Linux desktop PC.

“One of these Linux desktop users is also a Skype user and there
are “millions” of Skype users “out there”. Skype usage is less of a
niche market than it used to be. That is going to be problematic
once Microsoft kills Skype development for other platforms in favor
of its own software now that Microsoft owns Skype. The “embrace,
extend and extinguish” paradigm is still Microsoft’s bread and
butter. But if Microsoft does what I suspect, Skype will end up
being merged into some Microsoft based software. At that point our
smart FOSS developers will likely figure out a way to inter-operate
with the Microsoft software from FOSS programs. However, this
‘problem’ would be non-existent if end-users were aware of and used
FOSS communication projects like Ekiga.

“So, that said, how do we get from where we are to the
mainstream desktop?”

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