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20041221 Tuesday December 21, 2004

The Canyons and The Plains

Dare's analysis of Scoble's open letter to Gates about Windows Media makes for interesting reading, especially the comment:

One reaction which is obvious in hindsight is the assumption in this post that Microsoft shouldn't abide the fact that Apple is dominating a market it isn't directly engaged in. This is such a natural way of thinking of for Microsoft people ("we should be number 1 in every software/hardware/technology related market") that it is often surprising for non-Microserfs when they first encounter the mentality.

I sometimes speak of "canyon-dwellers" and "plains-dwellers" as a model for understanding the radically different worlds Sun and Microsoft inhabit. Canyon-dwellers have limited space to live in - there's only so much room in the canyon, and they assume it's all theirs so try to assimilate, eat or annihilate anything or anyone moving in. In a "canyon market", you can only survive by dominance and control. Canyon-dwellers "win".

Plains-dwellers see the endless level horizons and learn to keep a (possibly uneasy) peace with the others on the plains - typically more herds grazing doesn't harm anyone and can help. Plains-dwellers only fear the raiding parties of canyon-dwellers (and the occasional sociopath). In a "plains market" you survive by synergy and mutual respect. Plains-dwellers "grow".

The worlds are so different that it puts the relationship between Sun and Microsoft into perspective for me. It's not a meeting of minds so much as a decision to (tensely) respect differences. Even this limited truce will have huge benefits for customers, through interoperability and through Sun's ability to influence the web services standards process for good (respecting openness and avoiding patents, for example). But ultimately the fears of 'sell-out' expressed in the radical wing of the open source movement are misplaced; canyon-dwellers and plains-dwellers are ultimately too different to blend.

Posted by webmink ( Dec 21 2004, 12:24:24 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]
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Comments:

Though you'd agree that RedHat is a mutual competitor to you both? Necessity makes strange bedfellows, and when it comes to RH it always struck me that the Sun/Microsoft tie up at the very least had something to do with encircling and destroying RedHat's Enterprise ambitions. I'm not saying that as some kind of smelly open source socialist zealot, but as both a Solaris & RHEL customer. Lets not make out that each company doesn't have a lot riding on squeezing RH from the top down or the bottom up, and don't allow Microsoft to do to Sun what DEC allowed Microsoft to do to it. (As well as all the stuff DEC did to itself of course.)

Posted by Mark on December 23, 2004 at 04:33 PM PST #

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