[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]
“But mostly I am intrigued by your formula for success in
the May 29, 1990 PC Magazine. “So, all we need is a platform that
the core influencers all agree on and we’re off to the races. How
important is initial massive software support? It’s
not….“
“And in the other corner we have Linux leading the reinvigorated
Unix, which now seems to be melding into Linux, and Linux is
completely open, so that it actually fits Zachmann’s description
(“IBM At War With The World”, PC Magazine, January 31, pg 81) of
why the IBM PC took over the personal computer market and wiped the
floor clean of competing architectures: “Its freely available
specifications made it easy for other vendors to develop software,
add-in boards, and peripherals for it – and it also made it easy
for others to build entire systems that would be compatible with
it.”
“What is even more interesting is that Linux has captured the
imagination of so many users and independent developers. Or at
least the KDE team, for an example, is as independent as ever
before. Ditto the Open Source Digital Library System, Gnumeric,
PostgreSQL, just to take a random sample from the open source
movement. And the commercial sector has been showing some signs
that Linux fascinates them – embedded and real-time systems are
adopting Linux for some very good reasons, database vendors have
adopted Linux as a valid platform, and as Linux builds momentum in
the supercomputer realm, and as it becomes possible to turn an idle
Network Of Workstations (NOW) into a supercomputer with minimum
changes to the Linux kernel, I predict that anyone who wants
serious numbercrunching at minimum cost, is going to be fervently
pro-Linux.”