"In the Beginning was the Command Line" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

out years ago selling three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not
perfect, but they worked, and when they broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day
began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars
with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was
something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original
Windows) onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when
bolted onto a three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with
Apple-cars. The users had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out
of their teeth while Apple owners sped along in hermetically sealed
comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds were cheap, and
easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal
station wagon (Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet
worker housing block, it leaked oil and blew gaskets, and it was an
enormous success. A little later, they also came out with a hulking
off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no
more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has
changed. The smaller dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans
and to spend a lot of money on advertising campaigns. They have had GOING
OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows for so long that they have
gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger and bigger
station wagons and ORVs.

On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more
recently.

One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS).
They are more beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better
designed, more technologically advanced, and at least as reliable as
anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than the others.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is
not a business at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic
domes set up in a field and organized by consensus. The people who live
there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet
tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, made of space-age
materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the
other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a
way that they never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to
use on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These
tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast
number of them are lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the
ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away for