I found this article from Internet today, and it sounds not so optimistic to the future of Linux, it does have some points that we need to think about, so just check this out:
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If we look at the future, Linux seems to be doomed to a slow death in a dozen years: DRM, proprietary hardware, technologic innovations and political choices are behind this forecast.
I really appreciate Linux, and Open Source in general: a common base, open and free, foster freedom of individuals and better distribute richness. In the last few months I took interest in Linux and Open Source in a long-term perspective. What I see in the future is terrible: Linux's death. It's just a forecast, I know: it's up to you, after reading this document, to decide if it is reliable or not.
Proprietary Hardware and DRM
In the last few years there is a silent (for the mass) and struggling battle between big corporation on one side, and Open Source movements and activists on the other side. The battle is for a plunder of 237 billion dollars (global revenues for semiconductors manufacturers), led by the three leaders Intel, Samsung and Texas Instruments, to which you can add about a thousand billion dollars for cinema industry and few other dozens of billions of dollars for music and entertainment industry. The stake is obviously if those revenues are going to plummet or not.
Once consumers are used to enjoy multimedia contents, in order to not lose that privilege they are willing to pay... or to use illegal methods, like some peer-to-peer habits, or cracked decoders, or else.
Those huge revenues are then in danger: with their doblons, industries started some sort of a witch hunt, with the result that software piracy is comparable to rape (there was a famous aggressive cinema ad here in Italy few months ago). I don't agree with this judgement, but I don't want to go off-topic. To maintain those revenues, industries started lots of initiatives to cage users' hardware, and make their PC less and less independent.
In few years, thank to the extended world network, computers will become more like terminals, without an inner "conscience", pillored to play media content using proprietary hardware, various protections, apparently-open or distinclty closed software, but... How can I enjoy open software, if the underlying hardware constrict me in well-defined (by Corporations) boundaries?
They'll become much like actual mobile phones, where the user can't operate important modifications or personalizations. I hope Apple users will not blame me for this, but also Mac OS X is moving toward this direction (much faster than Windows, actually): a surely stable and functional system, much more strict for its users.
Now the question is: what will be of Linux? What sense will an open source software have, when the hardware will block almost all my actions? Linux, with a nanoscopic economic power compared to the other already mentioned, will be probably relegated to a tiny set of geek users, but a very big percentage of common users will surrender to those new contraints.
Technological innovations
Those same technological innovations will closet Linux in obscure and specific fields: within the next ten years a new programming language will appear on the planet, maybe based on a new programming paradigm, that probably will take the throne now held by C++. This forecast derives from a simple analysis of past innovations: think about 1996, when Java and Python were still in their early stage. Today they are becoming THE main tools for programming.
Linux itself will become obsolete, substituted by a new kernel written from scratch; in the transformation the main software companies will have a big advantage, able to afford hundreds of programmers and almost illimited funds for marketing.
If you take a look at Google, considered one of the most innovative companies in the world, you can see that their initiatives regard essentially the translation of most-used computer functions and programs to the web: word processing, online purchases, photo editing, content publishing, spreadsheets, and many others arriving. This fact, together with the already mentioned tendency to transform PCs into terminals, convinces me that in few years we'll have some beautiful PCs to work, and many small wristle computers with mobile phone, handheld and laptop functions (like the "giwiki" in a modest novel of mine: www.nonovvio.it).
It seems clear that in this game software will lose importance: only the ones who manage users and media will matter. In few words: Linux out. Users will need a system easy to use, with which communicate seamlessly and transparently in respect to the technology used.
Political choices
Soon the source code of almost everything will be released: don't you agree? Microsoft, Sun and others have no other choice: governments need open formats and softwares. Some things has been already opened and, once the transformation toward an invasive hardware will be complete, there will be no more reasons not to open the code.
One of the strongest critic moved against those companies from the digital freedom fans will fall, and their number will fall also.
What still surprise me, instead, is the fact that a nation allows the existence and commercialization of proprietary hardware, of which usually nobody knows the hidden functionalities. It is not a secret, for instance, that in the past phone lines were controlled by CIA and others: Skype itself could be the new echelon of the third millenium (it's a proprietary software, remember?).
If I were the leader of a nation, I would adopt computing devices of which I know every function; also, I would also like to buy (or manufact) processors with the functions that I like, and without the ones that I consider dangerous for people's freedom, or the nation's itself.
A simple comparison: it is like my army buys guns abroad, guns potentially supplied with a mechanism that block the gun if put under a certain wireless signal: in such a case, I would not be so bold in facing an enemy, being afraid of such mechanism.
I don't think, however, that our political representatives give importance to those facts: for the average Joe, much a user and less a connoisseur of technology, those seem to be marginal facts, subordinate to taxes or security. Consequently, the politician is less interested in such things.
Why 2018?
According to numerous sources, the passage to mobile terminals in substitution to personal PCs, mobile phones and handhelds could occur in ten years, due to the inertia of existing machines and to the availability of light and long-lasting batteries, that will invade the market around 2012. The years between 2016 and 2018 will be necessary to the definitive shift to new technology... granted that there will not occur events or choices able to modify the actual tendency.
Until now I depicted a rather pessimistic scenario: now I want to concentrate on positive turning points.
Political change (and therefore technological change)
Making people aware of things could bring to a general political awareness elected by them, causing politicians to be interested in the topic: this would push toward the usage (and production) of open source hardware, deprived of useless protections (DRM) or hidden favours to big corporations, hopefully paying also attention to environmental impacts of such production (see Motorola).
Linux alone can't free itself from physical confinement: I hope that its diffusion among developing countries will prompt them to adopt an "hardware emancipation" that will eventually spread worldwide. Like the Internet is free, so the technological basis for communications must be.
Licences and mentality change
Another positive turning point is represented by "light licences" content: I adore, for example, musical groups that let you freely listen their music, earning only with concerts and other related stuff.
It is a poor earning, I know, but those earnings could be integrated with music sales if there will be available a platform able to join music with commercial ads when that music is listened online. It could be good to have also a honest price policy: if a song would cost 30 cents, I would buy it rather than pirate it, and musicians would earn fair amounts of money.
The same could be applied to other media as well, including video: a movie producer should learn to spend less and better for his movies, considering that the Cinema experience will always be more entertaining than a domestic TV, and so there would always be a reason to produce a movie.
Everything could become less profitable, and content producers will be naturally selected. In this moment there is a feature film at the Movie Show in Venezia, Italy, produced with 500 euros. Yes, you've read it right: 500 euros.
It must also be considered that, with the recent advances in instruments and computers, making content is much less expensive than before: this money save must be deposited in the users' wallets.
I can understand musicians' and producers' point of view: they are enjoying a consolidated privilege, and changing it can lead to a war. Only users, and their economical choices, can trigger this revolution. We will see.
Why do I pose so much attention to the media? Because the real Hi-tech market is dominated by media: Linux, and Open Source, can survive only if they will guarantee to users the ability to use and play and listen and watch them. Not casually, in a recent home-made survey, on 50 new Linux Ubuntu users, 33 moan problems regarding multimedia content fruition (quicktime, flash, DVD, mp3, videos).
This suggests that Linux, and the freedom and openness principle on which it is based, could survive only if people will be able to understand the importance of open and standard protocols, devices and hardware, consequently influencing political and economic choices.
I can be wrong, I know: this is only my thought, written after reading so much stuff on the net, but not for this reason necessarily right. I invite you to share with me your thoughts on this topic.
Source: http://www.ArticleOnRamp.com
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