I was talking to Kyle a couple of days ago. He was expressing how he liked the summer and then we got a bit geeky and started talking operation systems. He’s recently made the jump from Windows to the land of the Apple, while I have dumped my windows box for a shiney new ubuntu setup. Kyle not known to be one to mince words. He’s easily one of the most direct people I know online. What’s scarey is that he often says things with a decent amount of authority with proof and counter arguements to back this opinion up. He’s definitely not scared to go in the direct opposite channel to what people are talking about at that particular moment in time. So taking a page out of his book I’ll make an observation and a prediction.

In five years time the main operating system in the world will be a flavour of Linux. I’m not saying it’ll be Ubuntu (although it’s definitely on the right track), just that this is something that will happen. 5 years; that’s when the linux operating system will hit critical mass. By critical mass, I’m talking with this definition in mind:

An amount or level needed for a specific result or new action to occur.

I swear I can actually hear everyone turning off and pointing their browser elsewhere, but hear me out. Yes I am still new and excited about Ubuntu and everything is fresh and new to me right, so it stands to reason that I’m in my honeymoon period, after all I’ve been locked to the Windows operating system for the past 10 years or so. The truth of the matter is we’re on the cusp of something important. To illustrate my point, I present exhibit A. Everyone loves graphs, so here’s one that shows the difference in development cycles of proprietary software and open source software.

Yes it’s COMPLETELY made up, but I’m just trying to illustrate a point here. Proprietary software works in this way. You have a piece of software and you update it for the following reasons:

1. Make some noise so people who haven't invested in the software can do so now.
2. Make some noise so that people who have invested in the software can do so again because they thought the first version was so great.

So what should you do in order to make some noise? You add new features. You do things the competition are not doing, and you do it in a certain scheduled manner that doesn’t make people who paid for it 18 months ago feel a bit cheated that they’ve got to shell out the cash all over again so soon. Bring in discontent within the ranks which is not good for business. Sometimes what happens is that the software feels bloated, takes ages to load anything. It doesn’t really make all that much business sense spending a great deal of time on trying to clean up the code and cutting things down, because it’s not as big a marketing push as just saying you’ve got 115 new features or whatever.

Meanwhile, in the land of the open, you’ve got MILLIONS of people ALL over the world, some paid, some not, constantly chugging at the plethora of open source projects. Open source doesn’t benefit much from adding new features just for the sake of this. This is very clear with such powerful applications such as Blender (for 3D modelling) and Xara for vector illustrations. Lightweight programmes that do their functions well and quickly with the minimum amount of fuss.

What’s the downside of all of this? Well the only thing I can think of is the fact that open source isn’t really in any hurry to get anywhere. The model is based upon slow updates, on a constant basis. Open Source doesn’t really benefit from doing things quickly really. Also every once in a while you also get projects getting abandoned. However it’s good to understand that by their very nature these projects can be picked up anywhere down the line. All that’s happened is that the process and development has been slowed down (so some projects might not exihibit the above graph exactly but might have a plataeu or two. A great example is WordPress. It’s a fork of the abandoned B2 project. WordPress is now much more used than B2 ever was.

Open Source will eventually surpass proprietary software because there are more people devoted to the packages and their ranks are expanding. However the reason why companies will eventually jump ship to the land of the penguin is because of the bottom line. When you’ve got software that is completely free, operates better than the proprietary ones and can be modified to do your bidding without any consequence to that bottom line, it will begin making business sense.

Currently Linux isn’t there yet. In many respects it has definitely surpassed Windows on many, many levels. However there are other areas that could definitely use some SERIOUS polish. I believe that polish will take a good 5 years before Linux is at that stage of the fight where it can take on both Microsoft and Apple.

The common link between Microsoft and Apple is that both of these companies are slowly heading down a very restrictive road, a claustraphobic one; which is in direct opposition to Linux which has begun it’s accention up and open field. It’s early days but mark my words this will happen, it’s only a matter of time.