By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews
If there were a psychiatrist seated across the room from us, and we were to present to her our feelings about information technology as a force in our lives, her diagnosis would be simple and immediate: We have an obsession. Maybe having nothing to do with technology itself at all, we're obsessed with the notion of a nemesis with an unfair advantage influencing the decisions we make.
In every major arena of information technology over the past five years, the principal topic of discussion has been the need to level the playing field, to restore something called "fair competition," to ensure that the smaller player still has a chance. For the topic of PC operating systems, to this day, there's a frenzied Pavlovian response to the notion that Microsoft Windows stole its ideas from Apple Mac OS -- I moderated public, online discussions about that same topic 25 years ago. For Web applications, we're beta testing the idea of shifting the Darth Vader mask from Microsoft over to Google, the dominant player in nine out of ten of the world's queries; and we're reveling in the irony of AT&T proclaiming Google an evil empire. For smartphones, we're evaluating whether Apple fits the role of dominant player, whether that Halloween costume we used to fit on Bill Gates and that we're testing on Eric Schmidt can be swapped out with Steve Jobs.
For applications software, the discussion continues to be over whether "Darth" Microsoft devised the now-standardized XML-based format ISO 29500 as an evil scheme, camouflaged as a fairness initiative, to wrest control of the format for all the world's documents from...itself. But that discussion has died down somewhat in recent months. There's still a discussion over whether the agreement between Microsoft and Novell, now almost three years old, is an evil scheme to infuse Linux with elements of Microsoft, like a bad Star Trek: Voyager episode (Trekkers will recall exactly which one I'm referring to). But that discussion has died down somewhat in recent months.
For Web browsers, the notion that the littlest player in the field, Opera Software, is slowing down, is a topic that arouses suspicion among users -- is there some type of sabotage going on? But the notion that the biggest player in the field, Microsoft, is slowing down, aroused the largest, most concerted, most pointed, loudest, highest concentrated, most vehement, and occasionally the most personally directed, chorus of orchestrated chants of "We Don't Care!" that I've received in a quarter-century of covering IT. It's as if no one wants Darth Vader to die before the climactic battle.
(Dozens of you, like a movement, almost radical, in harmony over your apathy. Noted.)
The public identity of the open source movement is founded on the ideal of the underdog fighting against the odds. Nowhere has the need for Linux to be heard as the lone voice of fairness in the wilderness been more pronounced than on Groklaw, the blog of my friend and colleague, Pamela Jones. Its substantive user base and high level of legal and intellectual discussion were founded around the SCO v. IBM battle, which has smoldered down now to a pathetic remnant prosecuted now by a carcass of a once-zombie company that bore a resemblance to something whose former identity used to be linked to a once-great company. And yet somehow it remains the symbol of everything Linux users believe they try to stand for; this while Linux publications that concentrate on the Linux OS and its software struggle to maintain an audience and eke out any revenue whatsoever.
But that discussion has died down...and perhaps you're noticing a pattern.
In the current state of the global economy, recovering or not, major market players -- especially the larger ones -- are realizing they do not have the disposable income necessary to wage a full-scale assault against competitors in the courtroom. In another of the centrally defining, polarizing battles that define many folks' personal involvement in the IT field, yesterday, Intel admitted as much outright. The company's executives said that it could not afford to prosecute a course of legal action against AMD that one Betanews reader correctly described as "mutually assured destruction."
The gloves are coming off, but for a different reason. The information technology industry can no longer afford to maintain the polarizing influences that used to define each and every facet of it. In a steady, measured, intentional transition, IT is becoming a fair and open market.
What the hell happens now?
Are we truly ready for an IT landscape where relative leadership is ascertained using something resembling one of Betanews' CRPI charts? How will Linux be able to cope with victory, with forces that are at this moment sweeping the unwanted Windows Mobile off of smartphones and replacing it with a Linux distro championed by a dominant market player with a high-salaried CEO, rather than two guys in tie-dyed T-shirts? And now that AMD is guaranteed by its own rival the market stature to competitively bid for prominence, how will Europe's politicians be able to realign their re-election strategies around less popular, more boring topics like global unemployment, fair trade, and the wars in the Middle East?
Victory -- the actual start of a movement toward a level playing field, fair competition, dominance determined by the customer -- is not the outcome that everyone was counting upon. If a psychiatrist were analyzing this situation rather than an IT market expert, she would say that we're relying too much upon our dependence on victimization as a tool to establish our identity. In the absence of an active assault -- of any substantial reason for us to claim that anyone is Darth Vader and anyone else is Cosmic Muffin -- how will we learn to get along? When we can no longer yelp like dachshunds wishing our tails had been run over by vehicles that passed us by, will we be able to realign our interests, our ideals, our itineraries, our lives...around interoperability? Equality? Alliances? Fair chances? Little, everyday defeats through failure with no one to blame but yourself? Second chances to come back and win again?
Whether we like it or not, our world too is getting flat.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
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