[conspire] (forw) [GoLugTech] GoLUG leadership: was Linux users protested at Microsoft?

Tue Feb 19 20:21:07 PST 2019

At the risk of looking like an idiot, what are "golug" and "elug" ?

My first encounters with Linux were in early 1997 and at the time, it
seemed rather immature.
I wasnt expecting it to get much further than the home use level.

Boy was *I* WRONG !!!

After a while, many places had a few setcret Linux machines hidden in the
server room that management was unaware of.
You could be fired for running an unsupported OS in production.
Suddenly Linux was OK once RedHat appeared shringwrapped at Frys.

I remember Joshua from Red Hat handing me a stack of RedHat CDs and
management at work saying
"What do you mean we can make copies of these?"
I put PTouch labels on them with Joshuas name and the fact that he he
worked at RedHat and said it was OK to make as many copies as we wanted.

After years of the MS "Linux must die!", I note that they are a lot more
nice to Linux.
I remember how they freaked out when they found out that after buying
HotMail, they couldnt just move it to Windows and have it work.
Its rumoured that most of the Azure Cloud runs on Linux.

With the number of Linux people that MS is hiring, I strongly suspect that
deep under the covers, Windows is becoming Linuxified.
Only time will tell.

MS really only has one killer app left, Outlook (Lookout!)
Many have tried to duplicate it, and nobody has come up with a 100% drop in
for it.
Every try has only come in at 95%

Last time I had to do Windows upgrades, I was shocked at the license fees.
If I had the install DVD, the licenses for the machines I was installing
were like $15 per machine.

I dare say the evil of MSFT has peaked and not likely to get worse.

With the future of the cloud, a lot of the licensing becomes obsolete.
They just bundle it into the hourly run time (usually around $0.0004 per hr)

I think they now realize that OS sales is a financial dead end.

On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 2:07 PM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Very articulat, so I thought I'd pass it along.  ('This event' refers to
> the largest Windows Refund Day event, the one I and others ran in Foster
> City on Presidents' Day, 1998.)
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Steve Litt via Tech <tech at golug.org> -----
>
> Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2019 16:06:19 -0500
> From: Steve Litt via Tech <tech at golug.org>
> To: tech at golug.org
> Subject: [GoLugTech] GoLUG leadership: was Linux users protested at
>         Microsoft?
> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.17.3 (GTK+ 2.24.32; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)
> Reply-To: Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com>, tech at golug.org
>
> On Mon, 4 Feb 2019 14:45:00 -0500
> Robert Lefebvre via Tech <tech at golug.org> wrote:
>
> > I wasn't aware of this event?
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j9j-Ywjmbk
>
> Robert, thanks for the perfect lead-in as to why I'll soon be giving up
> the leadership reins at GoLUG...
>
> I did my first Linux installation and immediately joined ELUG about 4
> months before the referenced event, Windows Refund Day. If you look at
> the video you see the enthusiasm exhibited by Linux people in that era.
> Linux wasn't just an OS. It wasn't just another work skill or tool we
> used at work. Nor was it just the OS we chose for our personal desktop.
>
> Linux got us out from under the thumb of Microsoft, which was a pretty
> cool company in 1989, but steadily degraded until it was a despicable
> piece of unmitigated weasel dung by 1999. Many of the people you see in
> that video were forced, by the marketplace, to use Windows. When an
> alternative came along, we busted free, and when we saw how well an OS
> could really work, we were royally perturbed at Microsoft for how
> Windows made us do more work to get less productivity.
>
> And don't forget, by the mid 1990's Microsoft was suing its own
> customers for "copyright infringement" when some employee in the mail
> room unauthorizedly copied Windows to another computer without
> obtaining a license. Linux gave such companies a way to break all ties
> with Microsoft. See
> https://www.cnet.com/news/rockin-on-without-microsoft/ for the iconic
> example.
>
> And the Justice Department's Microsoft Antitrust trial kept moving
> forward, giving us all more reason to bring Linux to the forefront. By
> 2000 the average old man owning stocks knew about Linux because of Red
> Hat's and VA Linux's stock IPOs. On June 7, 2000, Judge Jackson ruled
> that Microsoft must be broken up into an OS unit and an "other
> software" unit, which would have essentially nullified Microsoft's
> (monopolous) advantages in the marketplace.
>
> Meanwhile, the 1997-2000 economy was red-hot, especially for anyone in
> computer programming or administration. Y2K consumed all the
> programmers, and thousands of dialup ISPs competed for business, every
> one of them using Linux or BSD. In this period of time, if you wanted a
> Linux job, you could get it, no sweat. If you worked Windows, it was
> because you didn't mind working that putrid piece of monopolism, not
> because you had no choice.
>
> ===================================================================
>                        WHAT ABOUT BSD?
>
> Of course, before the 1993 invention of Linux, BSD had been loadable on
> AT-Compatible computers for years, so it could be said that Linux
> brought nothing new to the table. But the fact is, BSD never achieved
> the mindset to spread use of their technology. Linux users tended to be
> evangelical: BSD users were quite the opposite.
>
> ===================================================================
>
> You should have seen the 20th century ELUG meetings. Meetings, not
> Installfests. Half the attendees "brought their box", meaning a desktop
> computer with separate keyboard, monitor, and often speakers, all
> running Linux. My first ELUG meeting, a guy named Mach Stormrunner
> hefted a 3'x2.5'x1' monstrosity with components hanging out on wires,
> whipped out a Linux install disk,  and had the thing installed and
> running before the 2 hour meeting ended. Another time Mach's buddy
> moved a ceiling tile, pulled a phone wire into the room, connected it
> to a hub, and gave us all Internet access for the night.
>
> We had skin in the game. It took time to prepare to bring an entire
> desktop to a meeting. It was a rare meeting when attendance dipped
> below 25, and we were all crammed in a tiny classroom.
>
> IMHO things only got better when ELUG kinda-sorta became LEAP, because
> now we had five-hour monthly Installfests and a much bigger meeting
> room. It was common to have 40 people at the meetings. Not bad for the
> technological desert Orlando was in the early oughts.
>
> In late 2000, one Supreme Court justice decided who would be president,
> and that president was from a party with a lot more tolerance for
> monopolies. Within months, the new administration's justice department
> offered Microsoft a way out with slap on the wrist, and Microsoft never
> got busted up.
>
> 2002
>
> 2002 was a pivotal year for many reasons. Enron bankrupted 12/3/2001.
> Worldcom filed Chapter 11 on 7/21/2002. The dot-com boom had long since
> departed. The September 11. 2001 terrorism chilled the US economy. 2002
> and 2003 comprised a horrible recession, especially for those making
> their money with computers. Former highly paid programmers were flipping
> burgers.
>
> By the time the economy started easing in 2004, most IT people were
> suitably chastened and would take any decent paying IT job that came
> their way. People who needed to be in the workforce viewed Linux as a
> tool, not a revolution or a way of life. Also, laptops got cheaper so
> very few brought desktops to LUG meetings. And then it got to the point
> where desktops weren't even very welcome at a Linux meeting. Hacking
> slowed.
>
> After only 4 years of economic good times, things went bad again in
> 2008. I think everybody remembers the Great Recession.
>
> 2013 brought back good times to IT people, **if** they'd kept up with
> technology, and if they weren't subject to age discrimination. The
> leading edge of the Boomers retired or changed careers rather than
> keeping up the fight. GenXers, the people who brought the Web to the
> masses, struggled. Millennials had a field day: The tech they just
> learned at college or boot camp or hacking was exactly what companies
> were paying the big bucks for.
>
> Here's the thing. Millennials were somewhere between preschool and high
> school during the Linux revolution showcased by Robert's video. Their
> alliance is to Node.js, React, Vue.js, and Wordpress, not to Linux. OS
> is an afterthought to them.
>
> GenX was right in the thick of the Linux Revolution, but today they're
> between 40 and 54, which probably puts them right in that life stage
> where they need to prioritize money for kids' college, recouping
> savings from kids' college, elder parent care, medical expenses, saving
> for retirement, and just generally catching up. They can no longer
> afford to prioritize OS, and probably their long career through two
> brutal recessions long ago took them away from Linux.
>
> This leaves the Boomers, from late 50's to early 70's, many of whom are
> starting to work less hours and be more choosy about what work they
> take. Like GenX, they were deeply involved in the Linux generation, and
> unlike GenX or Millennials, the concept of "protest" runs deep in their
> veins. Boomers are pretty much who inhabits GoLUG meetings today.
>
> ABOUT ME:
> When it comes to Linux, I'm still a True Believer. I still look at
> Linux as a democraciser, enabling anyone with a cast-off computer to
> program, draw, film, write, or make music. I see Linux as a lab with
> which to learn any IT skill worth learning. I see Linux as upward
> social mobility. When I come to a LUG meeting I'm still proud to be in
> with the in crowd. I know Linux is the best, and when I have a problem
> that needs solving, my knowledge of Linux enables me to solve it, even
> if my solution might be looked on as a "kludge" by others.
>
> ABOUT OTHERS:
> To most people in 2019, Linux is an operating system. A very good
> operating system, but just an operating system. A tool that can, but in
> many cases doesn't have to be, used to complete their projects. They
> don't want to become better at Linux so much as they want to know how
> to use the tool called Linux to accomplish their goals.
>
> I can't lead such people, because their beliefs significantly diverge
> from mine. I understand the reason I think the way I do, I understand
> the reason they think the way they do, and its doubtful I'll convert
> them or they'll convert me. They need a leader who thinks the way they
> do.
>
>
> SteveT
> --
> Steve Litt
> January 2019 featured book: Troubleshooting: Just the Facts
> http://www.troubleshooters.com/tjust
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://lists.golug.org/listinfo/tech
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
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-- 

R "Texx" Woodworth
Sysadmin, E-Postmaster, IT Molewhacker
"Face down, 9 edge 1st, roadkill on the information superdata highway..."
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