NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/comp/unix/pcclone/32bit/901

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-26 | 5.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!ai-lab!life.ai.mit.edu!burley
From: [e-mail] (Craig Burley)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
Subject: Re: Employment generated by GNU versus Bill Gates
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 25 Dec 92 21:34:53 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Free Software Foundation 545 Tech Square Cambridge, MA 02139
Lines: 90
NNTP-Posting-Host: apple-gunkies.gnu.ai.mit.edu
In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 21 Dec 92 17:40:48 GMT

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Bill Bogstad) writes:

   In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ronald F. Guilmette) writes:
   >Some time back, in the midst of a discussion regarding the evil Bill Gates,
   >the GNU project, and what each had done in the way of providing jobs,
   >Sean Eric Fagan wrote:
   >>
   >> All told, I would not be surprised if more than a thousand people make a
   >> living, provide for their families, and support the economy thanks to free
   >> software ...

   >Let me tell you in all seriousness that there is just no f***ing way that
   >there are anywhere near 1000 people making a living from free software.

   I think if you add up
   all those percentages up; you would easily end up with more then 1000
   full-time equivalents.

Whatever the figure, it's a pointless discussion anyway, and as I recall,
was started by someone trying to point out, somehow, that because Gates
(Microsoft) provides so many wonderful jobs, Gates is Good (God? :-).

The reason that's pointless is that without Gates and many other people
who've made pioneering discoveries in computer hardware, software, and
other technical fields, there'd be _far more_ jobs than the entire
computer industry provides today.  People who can add, subtract, multiply,
and divide; who can fill out accounting ledger sheets; who can draw circles,
squares, and letterforms well; who can run switchboards; who can walk, run,
ride bicycles, or ponies to transport documents; all such people would
be greatly in demand without computers, less so (but still more than
today) without Microsoft.  Microsoft didn't _create_ jobs -- it replaced
a large pool of more menial jobs with a smaller pool of (somewhat :-) less
menial ones, just as computer technology in general has been doing for
50 years or so.  (Actually, all technology does that to some degree,
I think.)

In all this ranting and raving about Microsoft one way or the other, it
seems that nobody's pointed out the obvious: that IBM's entry into the PC
market represented a multi-billion-$$ event regardless of how technically
superior/inferior its product was, and anyone who managed to position
themselves in the "funnel" via which IBM delivered its product would, unless
very stupid, earn $billions independent of that person's ingenuity (since
it requires no ingenuity to take advantage of millions of people with
money who feel that "you never get fired for buying IBM").  And, yes,
"very stupid" might include "refuse to accommodate IBM's desire to use
a certain CPU chip design" among other things.  Bill Gates is _not_ very
stupid.

I've read that even IBM was unaware of the splash the PC would make,
and had intended MS-DOS and such as a short-term way to "measure" the
market's response to this new and strange little product, the idea being,
I think, that they'd later come out with something "real" if the market
test proved successful.  Apparently it proved successful far beyond their
imagining, so much so that later coming out with something much cheaper
but that didn't meet with people's expectations of IBM keyboard quality and
that didn't seem fully compatible with the "standard" PC (I'm referring to
the PCjr), it failed.

I don't know much about Gates, but he seems to have been bright enough to
do some technically challenging things (at least at the time) _and_ to
have positioned himself in that "funnel".  Nevertheless, I have less
admiration for someone who _finds_ such a position and occupies it than
I do for someone who _creates_ such a demand (as done by the Mac, for
example, though I won't say it was Jobs who was entirely responsible for
this, since he wasn't; or by the minicomputer, specifically, the PDP-8,
by DEC, in the early '60s) and _then_ fills it.

I.e. it is one thing to realize that building a better mousetrap will
result in the world beating a path to your door (and doing it); it is
entirely another thing to convince the world that it _likes_ mice, and
succeed at selling them.  :-)

And, despite the cynical attitude you might read in my take on the IBM
PC phenomenon, I'm very grateful for it.  Without the IBM PC and the '80s,
there'd _still_ be huge legions of people (again, with money) who'd
think "buy IBM, buy IBM, you can't be fired for that".  Instead we have
a much more savvy market in which new ideas, not just new marketing gambits,
can fluorish to a greater degree.  (Not that there isn't a huge amount of
room for improvement.)  There isn't any $multi-billion pent-up demand
I can see that can be filled by a "vertical" (i.e. proprietary-oriented)
set of vendors, but that's only because more people are prepared to ask
questions before the buy than were willing in the early '80s (and
especially prior to that).

I guess the moral of the story is that if people insist on buying a label,
the best way to break them of their habit is to sell them one!
--

James Craig Burley, Software Craftsperson    [e-mail]
Member of the League for Programming Freedom (LPF) [e-mail]