Change happens. It’s inevitable. Ubuntu is not immune. Individuals are not wheels that turn forever in a machine. They grow and move on. It is time to fill the spot left by Jane Silber. Matt Asay has been chosen. Is he the right person for the job? Time will tell, but he has decent creds: Novell and Alfresco. He is well known from his blog, The Open Road. A big plus may be that he is known and knows the USA. This is important because the USA is different. While known as a technological innovator, the USA has hangups about M$. They like the home boy who does good and creates an empire out of nothing. They like that so much they tend to overlook matters of anti-competitive acts and insecure IT which M$ causes. They see M$ as a generator of wealth, not as an infinite sink of costs. The rest of the world sees things much differently and are far ahead of the USA in FLOSS adoption even though many of the core components of FLOSS began in the USA: GNU, GPL, and several important distros. The USA accepts widely held myths about FLOSS such as 1% market share for GNU/Linux, freeloading, boxes with GNU/Linux being converted to that other OS, immunity from malware is due to insufficient share, etc. Further, the USA largely ignores the explosive developments of IT in other parts of the world, eg. China. USA adoption of GNU/Linux in business has largely been RedHat/Suse. Can Matt Asay make a difference to perception of GNU/Linux in the USA and can he make a difference in Ubuntu in some way to improve acceptance in the USA?
I have some doubts. The USA is locked up very tightly as the stronghold of empire. M$ gets everything its own way from lobbying, astroturfing, ignoring anti-competitive acts for ten years or more, and billions of promotional dollars supplied by monopolistic prices. There is a long uphill road for any FLOSS business to crack the USA market.RedHat has been working hard at it for ten years and is only just a tiny niche still. RedHat ignored the desktop for many years because it was irrelevant in that market. Only this year did they get enough customers interested in FLOSS on the desktop to make it worthwhile to get back in. Dell, and HP, while having some investment in GNU/Linux actively promote that other OS. Against this, Ubuntu needs huge leverage to make a dent. Matt Asay may find his energy more useful in other markets which have much more flexibility and growth opportunities.
In his blog, Matt Asay has taken some strange views for an advocate of FLOSS:
Of course, I am paraphrasing his articles, but he looks at the same set of facts and comes to different conclusions. For example, the sales of “7″ show a record and I point out that much of that record came from deferred sales with upgrades from Vista in previous quarters while Matt Asay points out that M$ is taking the lion’s share of profit from the mouths of its partners and they may see GNU/Linux as a way to assert independence. His error is that M$ keeps their slaves hungry and liking it by pointing out the obvious fact that if they switched to GNU/Linux they wold lose huge market share and die. No OEM dares declare itself free of that other OS because the market for FLOSS is too small to sustain any one of them. They also cannot gradually shift to GNU/Linux for the same reason and more, for the $50 or so they give M$, they get $50 or more from the buyers of the PCs. If they sold the PCs with GNU/Linux or nothing they would make $50 less per PC. The OEMs are in a welfare trap. If all OEMs decided tomorrow to sell PCs with OS optional/separate things would change but no matter what Ubuntu does, that will not change until OEMs that do not promote that other OS step forward and embrace FLOSS. These are likely to be the smaller OEMs and startups, not the big guys who are stuck in M$’s pocket. It’s too bad we have to wait until GNU/Linux reaches a larger share of the market but that will happen even if the OEMs do not lead the way. When the market for GNU/Linux eats into their shares, they will promote GNU/Linux. Not before.
The GPL is what makes FLOSS work. Period. There is nothing wrong with the licence that folks trying to sidestep it would fix. Live with it Matt.
The world needs cheap IT and they can get it using mass production/Moore’s Law/FLOSS. A side effect of Free Software licences is that you cannot charge a high price for it because others can distribute the same stuff for less. This is a good thing, Matt. It means more affordable IT in emerging markets and greater innovation because the barriers to entry in any field of IT is less. Sell services, not FLOSS.
Change is good. We await signs that Matt Asay is good for Canonical/Ubuntu and whether Ubuntu is good for Matt Asay. New ways of doing business and new approaches to selling should be welcome. I only hope selling out is not in the cards. M$ has the cash and frequently buys out, embraces and extringuishes competition. It worries me that a new pragmatism may be creeping into Ubuntu. The FLOSS community accomplishes little by compromising on the principles of Free Software.
