Unix [was: do...until wisdom needed...]

[Steven D. Majewski]

On Tue, 8 May 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:

> You also mention Unix as a ghetto, like LISP -- and
> Unix (particularly in variants such as Linux or free
> BSD ones) DID play a significant role in many of the
> startups (I heard, and this did purport to be a kind
> of systematic study, that Linux had the highest growth
> rate of any OS during the peak of the startups boom).
> The perception of competitive advantage WAS there in
> this case, apparently.
> 
> Unix is also an example of a technology that DID move
> from marginal to front-line status in good part thanks
> to being used in academia -- people who had grown used
> to Unix as students were generally keen to keep working
> on Unix rather than switching to purportedly "friendlier"
> OS's such as Microsoft's.  And I do understand that --
> having been mostly on MS boxes for the last five years
> or so, I look forward eagerly to the day when I can
> finally be working with a modern Unix-like OS again.

 Yes, but unix was beginning to look like a bad bet, even
in academia, until it was rescued by Linux (with a little
help from Microsoft!).
 I was seeing pretty massive migration to windows and NT
(well -- in the case of NT, at least a lot of *thinking* 
about migrating, if not actual movement) riding on the
back of cheap commodity x86 computers. 


 Linux provided a unix-like alternative (and one with a low
barrier to entry, as you could install it on some pretty low
end machines, or dual boot it just to give it a try).

 Folks who did move to NT found it was not quite as easy as 
they were sold. 

 Microsoft tried to differentiate a high priced server market
from a low priced client market -- even doing things like limiting
the number of IP connections permitted on a non-server licensed
machine -- which caused people to hang onto those ancient but
serviceable Sparcstations and other machines, as well as moving
to Linux and BSD on x86 machines. 

 But mainly, linux growth reversed the negative trends before 
unix  ever got firmly tagged as a lost cause (like the Mac,
for example) despite lots of "unix is dead" magazine articles
every year. 

 Linux has exposed a lot more people to the unix-meme -- most of
the linux growth I've seen has NOT been from people adopting it
because they were familiar with unix. Most of their exposure
has been mainly Microsoft. ( But cheerleading from the hardcore
linux/unix hackers who ARE familiar with unix has helped. ) 
 Linux growth has piggy-backed more on cheap x86 hardware, than 
on unix familiarity in academia -- and the resulting linux
familiarity has helped unix in general. 

 The fact is that most of these technology success (or failure)
stories are entirely too contingent on chance and circumstance
to draw any conclusions -- except maybe statistically, but then
you need more samples. Rewind the clock and run it over again
with a few random changes, and there's no reason to expect the
same result. 

 Evolution works by almost always getting rid of bad ideas, but 
it's doesn't always promote good ideas (and sometimes an asteroid
can wipe out a species that's had a very long and successful run!) 

-- Steve Majewski