Bold Prediction: “Bug 1 will be closed in the next 24 months”
At SELF, Bethlynn Eicher made a bold prediction: Bug 1: Microsoft has a majority market share will be closed in the next 24 months. The date she named on her blog is 30 June 2011. She keeps pointing out in her blog that we’re at GhandiCon 3. "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."
I’m listening to Season 1 Episode 20 of the Ubuntu UK Podcast, and they had Matt Zimmerman on there. Someone asked Matt if he thought Bug 1 would be closed in the next 4 years, and he said that sounded a little ambitious.
I’m just amused by the wildly differing expectations. I am reminded of Martin Owens’s blog post Ignition Advertising in Ubuntu where he points out that people like to use things that are popular. If we don’t say that “like nobody uses it” they’ll be more likely to try it. In computers, this makes total sense. If you need help with a little question, do you call the help desk, or do you ask the person at the next desk over “hey, how do I add a printer?” Likely the latter. Historically, Linux has kind of lost on this front. It’s why we have LUGs and LoCo Teams. I think that as we get more users, the momentum to gain more users will grow because being kind of popular makes it easier to become more popular. There’s a point we need to hit where it’ll become really easy to get new folks interested. How quickly we reach that point determines whether Bethlynn or Matt will be right.
Two polls below. Is Bethlynn right? What’s your prediction?
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