Microsoft's Next Trials

Is this hubris, or what?

Linux guys love this stuff. The ad can be found wherever they gather. You can see it up on the wall at the Holland, Mich., headquarters of Slashdot, the popular Web site that, among other things, extols the virtues of Linux. You can also find it posted at the Palo Alto, Calif., offices of Eazel, where some of the people who helped kick-start the personal-computer revolution by making Apple's Macintosh computer so easy to use are now focusing their attentions on making a Linux--and, just maybe, a computer industry--for ordinary folk.

The operating system that U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson once dismissed in the Microsoft antitrust case as occupying the fringe is making a play for the big time. Although Linux has a long way to go, millions of computers are running on it and millions more will be soon. The world's biggest computer firms--Dell, IBM and Compaq--are now offering Linux pre-installed on new machines, just as they do Windows. High-tech leaders such as Intel and Oracle support the operating system, and a growing number of Linux-ready versions of popular applications, including Corel's WordPerfect Office 2000, are now available. Linux is definitely beyond the fringe.

Linux's strong growth doesn't necessarily mean it's taking business away from Microsoft, as ads like the one above imply. In a recent interview with Washington Post reporters and editors, Dell chief executive Michael Dell suggested that, so far, Linux is making the deepest inroads against Sun Microsystems and its variant of the Unix operating system.

Companies that use the Linux code as a base for their software have been Wall Street darlings, despite the fact that they are selling versions of a product that anyone can download for free. The companies and their investors, however, are betting that ease of installation, ease of use and service that the store-bought versions provide will attract customers and sales. A recent report by analysts at W.R. Hambrecht & Co. estimated that Linux products and services could generate $11 billion in sales by 2003.

The research firm Netcraft found that Linux's share of its strongest piece of the market, Web servers, hit 34 percent by the end of March--a jump from 29 percent at the end of the previous quarter. The market share for other major operating systems, such as Windows NT and Unix, declined. And with Jackson ruling last week that Microsoft should be split into two companies--one for its Windows operating systems and another for the company's many application software programs--the opportunities for Linux to grow could be even greater.

But not even the most ardent Linux lovers really believe their operating system will crush Microsoft--at least not for now, and certainly not as a mainstream consumer product. They don't confuse making a play for the big time with being ready for prime time: There are still significant obstacles to widespread acceptance for Linux. Although it is easier to install than before [see accompanying story], it can still be bewilderingly complex to use.

"You're not talking about the ordinary user who uses his desktop as a glorified typewriter," said Robert W. Williams, an associate professor of bio-informatics at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda who runs Linux on more than a dozen machines in his lab. "You have to know what you're doing."

Linux people understand this. Linux people have a sense of humor. When Linux creator Linus Torvalds tells his adoring audiences at Linux conferences and conventions that his goal is "total world domination," their cheers are mingled with laughter.

A computer's operating system is the program that runs the basic functions of the machine--such things as getting information off of disks and sending data to be displayed on the screen. It's the foundation upon which sit the application programs such as word processors, Internet browsers and other software. Linux is based on the venerable operating system Unix, which has been around in various forms since it was developed in 1969 at Bell Labs.

Torvalds is a "hacker" in the traditional and true sense of the word, which originally meant a programmer with imagination and elegance. He wrote the core of the program, or "kernel," in 1991, during his college days. Then he did something amazing: Instead of trying to get rich off of his brainchild, he gave it away. Torvalds published the Linux "source code" on the Internet, where it has taken root and has since been lovingly added to, improved and polished by hundreds of volunteer programmers around the globe under his guidance.

This "open source" process has yielded two big benefits: first, a virtual community of programmers who continue to fix the bugs that do appear, and who help one another master the software's intricacies. Second, and more important, is a software environment that runs so buglessly that it is generally hailed by programmers and users as bulletproof. That's especially valuable for people who run Web sites, which need to be available 24 hours a day. Linux is not just stable, however: It incorporates high standards of system security and a price--free--that can't be beat. Versions of Linux for Apple's Macintosh computers are also available. In other words, you don't have to dislike Big Bad Bill and his products to want to run Linux anymore.

But it helps. "Windows NT servers just haven't been very reliable--in my hands, anyway, and it costs money to set up," said Williams, who has helped his university develop a Linux-based interactive program to manage student education records. "For virtually nothing, we've set up Linux servers."

For others, the choice is even more simple. "I'm not like one of those hate-Microsoft people--I just think Linux is better," said Rob Malda, the creator of the Slashdot Web site. (But of course, his site does mark stories about Microsoft with an image of Gates drawn as one of the "Borg" creatures from "Star Trek"--the ones who say, "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.")

Linux evangelists see what they do as more than making software, or even profits. They see Linux, and the broader open source movement, as a revolution.

"We treat our customers as partners in the technology we're asking them to invest in, and not as victims of it," said Robert Young, chief executive at the leading commercial Linux company, Red Hat. Opening up the source code, he says, helps users regain a measure of control of a software industry that has become "feudal."

For the proudly geekish, Linux returns computing to the days when the user could control and manipulate every aspect of the machine--a far cry from today's shrink-wrapped world, where companies such as Microsoft veil the source code that actually runs the program so that the software can't be fiddled with or easily pirated.

Young compares it to learning about cars. You can learn a lot about cars by working on them yourself and getting the grease under your fingernails. But if you don't want to work on your car yourself, any shop can fix what ails it, not just the original dealer. Under the proprietary, closed-source world, he says, "the hood is welded shut."

Andy Hertzfeld, who is working to design the user-friendly Linux interface at Eazel, agrees. Under today's market conditions, he says, users can do little but use the mainstream offerings and buy upgrades that they hope will fix the problems the buggy software inevitably causes. "Users have been on an upgrade treadmill and don't have choices," he said. By making it possible for users to work with the code themselves, or hire people to, "it creates an ecology where the user is at the center rather than the vendors," said Hertzfeld, who helped develop the Macintosh interface that inspired Microsoft's Windows.

Reminiscing about those Macintosh days, Hertzfeld says there are important parallels to his new project. "We know if you work hard enough, you can make a difference in the world," he said. Eazel will give away the easy interface it is developing, and it hopes to profit from software goods and services it will deliver over the Web.

If that plan sounds familiar, it could be that another software company--Microsoft--has also announced that it is headed in the direction of delivering software and services over the Web.

No one expects Microsoft to sit idly by. Chief executive Steve Ballmer said in an April interview that his company faces "intense" competition from Linux in the server market, but he added that he did not see much of a threat from Linux in the market for desktop machines. "So far, Linux doesn't have a lot of traction on the client [Microsoft-ese for desktop computers], except in some university environments," he said. When asked if the company would consider producing a version of its powerhouse Office software suite that would run on Linux machines, Ballmer said it was unlikely Microsoft would go there. Antitrust lawyers have suggested that such a move could make Linux a more formidable competitor to Windows.

Ballmer was characteristically blunt. "Our job is to serve customers and to make money," he said. "There are no customers today for Linux on the client; therefore there is no opportunity to make money. There is nothing in there that looks like a good opportunity for us."

Linux partisans worry about what Microsoft may do to retain its market advantages. Already, the Linux forces claim, Microsoft has tried to tweak an open-source network security program called Kerberos so that it works best with machines running Microsoft's network software. (Microsoft claims that it is making the program compatible with all other versions.) Similar efforts to encourage development of Web pages that work best under Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) worry Eazel chief executive Mike Boich. "If suddenly you have to be running IE to get a satisfactory Web experience, then the Internet, I think, has taken a step backwards," Boich said.

Internet pioneer David J. Farber, the chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission, said other threats to Linux could emerge that anyone with a little knowledge of history should understand. The precursor of the operating system, Unix, was used widely in minicomputers and mainframes from the 1970s on. But computer makers found that having such a popular standard for operating systems "made it very difficult for companies to distinguish themselves" on qualities other than performance and price. Price wars cut heavily into profits. Desperate to differentiate their wares, the companies began to develop new wrinkles in Unix--and the once-mighty standard fragmented. "The drive toward commonality breaks down," Farber said, and "it's apt to happen again."

Ultimately, people such as Red Hat's Young don't fret too much about desktop PCs. They see an even bigger market coming, bigger than PC and network computers combined. Young predicts that Linux will ultimately power many of the hand-held devices, Internet "appliances," smart toasters and other goods that have computer chips embedded within them. "When we set out, our goal wasn't to convert the 400 million PC users from Windows to Red Hat Linux," Young said. "There are 6 billion people on the planet. Our goal is to build technology for the other 5.6 billion."

In other words, total world domination.

But in a good way.