

The Cathedral and the Pirate - emontero1
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=262565

======
idlewords
This is Steve Gillmor-class word salad. Microsoft is alternatively described
as a ship, a water buffalo, a cathedral construction crew, something that
guards a basket, a monarchy, and a net hanging in the jungle. The various
metaphors try to fight it out, but they don't have a chance amidst all the
cliche and jargon.

This level of inattention to language makes me think that not many neurons
were fired during the writing of the article, and prejudices me against what
might be a perfectly valid point, if I could find it.

~~~
gthank
Not only is it incomprehensible, it's factually inaccurate. According to
Eckel, IE came along _after_ Google, which is funny considering Microsoft got
sued for _bundling_ IE before Google was even incorporated.

~~~
CWuestefeld
He also asserts that IE started the browser wars. As I recall, there was
competition from the very beginning, with Netscape Navigator battling with
NCSA mosaic. And even upon the advent of IE, you've got to turn your sites
toward AOL as well.

------
hvs
It's amazing how much commentary there has been about a piece of vaporware
that is over a year from release (at least). Oh, I'm sure Google will release
it, but there is so little known about the final architecture that it is
almost impossible to speculate intelligently about it.

And does anyone see the parallel with the Java Network Appliances that were
going to be "the next big thing" at the end of the 90's? Certainly, we live in
a much more connected world today, but to pretend that nothing of value is
done on PCs except opening up a browser is a bit of a blindered view, IMO. Oh
well, it's all just speculation until there's a product..

~~~
dan_the_welder
Right and if I read one more article about how no one can do anything on a
netbook with their paltry 1.7 gig Atoms I am gonna spew.

I am running a stable of happy 900 mhz machines for my bread and butter work.

~~~
MaysonL
When I look back on the years [most of the 70's] I spent programming 16K x
18-bit single-digit megaherz machines, with single-digit megabyte hard disks
(although they _were_ head-per-track, which makes them _much_ faster - similar
to lousy SSD's), and what I was able to get done on them, I laugh....

------
dmnd
I am running Windows 7 on a SSD right now. While most of the author's points
aren't based on the assertion that this is impossible, such a poorly
researched argument makes it hard to take the rest of the article seriously.

~~~
whughes
What is the size of the SSD? If it's a desktop-sized (60GB+) SSD, then I don't
think it applies; the author's argument is that it won't fit on the tiny
netbook SSDs. Obviously, within a little while that will be wrong as well.

------
thwarted
I think the section "MGBs, TANKS, AND BATMOBILES" from Stephenson's In the
Beginning was the Command Line was a much better analogy, despite it being a
slightly different, but related, topic. That whole intro analogy bit could
have been skipped without losing anything.

------
gaius
_Microsoft could have taken .NET and created a thin layer of glue onto the
hardware, and come up with a really good, robust, and revolutionary OS_

... That ran only on one exact hardware configuration.

~~~
rbanffy
Not necessarily: consider Windows and then take out everything that doesn't
belong to the lowest level kernel and essential driver services. Now, build
the .NET API on top of that core and not on top of the Win32 API.

There you have it. A non-Windows OS built with Microsoft technology.

Microsoft will never do that as it would sacrifice sales of its Windows line
and their VPs just can't sacrifice their bonuses.

~~~
daemin
More likely they won't do it because it would mean that everything made for
Win32 would not run on the new platform. This includes all programs made with
various other libraries (MFC, WTL, QT, Fox, etc) that "plug into" Win32. Hence
they'd have vastly fewer application that would run on this new OS, and people
trying it out would complain that "this version of windows breaks my
applications".

On the other hand it would be interesting (Singularity comes to mind), but
they'd have to call it something other than Windows.

~~~
rbanffy
They can avoid program breakage by emulation, much like Apple did with early
releases of OSX.

------
jsz0
Microsoft will, of course, offer a similar product based on IE + Bing + Live.
The only real loser here are the PC OEMs. In 2 years they'll be reminiscing
about the good ole' days of high margin netbooks.

~~~
dexen
Similar? Only on paper. Sure it will be designed to meet a bullet-point list
of formal features compiled by an Analyst, but those won't matter much in the
end.

It will not have the appeal nor the ability to interconnect with standard-
abiding software from ISVs from all over the world the Google offering does
right now. Carpet-bombing style marketing won't help much.

------
jasonkolb
"Windows is an enormous collection of design mistakes that work well enough to
get by."

Don't forget, Windows was ripped of of the Mac, so....

------
GeneralMaximus
Really, this is one of the very few article on GCOS that actually make sense
(or at least tries to). So far, most of the coverage has been "ZOMG!!1!
SHINYCOOL NEW!!1!".

Although I still don't think GCOS will take over the world. It's going to be
an OS for the clueless. I'm pretty sure most geeks would rather use a regular
Linux distro than a stripped-down web-centric OS that has Google's branding
everywhere.

