PC Magazine: Linux Tipping Point

“A book first printed in 2000, written during the dot-com mania,
redefined the concept of critical mass and created a new buzz term
called ‘the tipping point.’ The full title was The Tipping
Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. The book
tried to define the moment at which the balance of the market
changes and a product suddenly becomes incredibly popular. This is
actually a rehash of older concepts. My favorite term for sudden
success was used in the 1980s–‘product escape velocity.’ Tipping
point is a rather passive concept. Escape velocity seems more apt
for high tech. I say that because in high tech, things usually
either make it into orbit or they don’t. They don’t bounce all over
the place then suddenly go into orbit, which is the path the
tipping point describes.

“Applying these two concepts to the current state of Linux
yields some interesting ideas. If you apply the escape velocity
concept, Linux will never really arrive, because it should have
arrived by now. From the tipping point view, Linux may be just
biding its time until something causes the tip. I’d like to believe
the latter. For one thing, Microsoft is slowly mucking with its own
success by introducing all sorts of new modifications to the way it
develops and sells software, which means there is more of a
possibility of a horrible misstep than ever before. Microsoft could
create a tipping point for Linux…”

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