🚀 go-pugleaf

This is a section from "In the beginning was the command line" by Neal 
Stephenson.  Makes fo" excellent reading!
http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml

  "Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are 
situated. One of them (Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. 
It started 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 free.

Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety 
percent of them go straight to the biggest dealership and buy station 
wagons or off-road vehicles. They do not even look at the other dealerships.

Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, 
pausing only to turn up their noses at the philistines going to buy the 
station wagons and ORVs. If they even notice the people on the opposite 
side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles, 
these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.

The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who 
wants a second vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to 
accept, at least for now, that it's a fringe player.

The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is 
staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at the edge of the street with 
bullhorns, trying to draw customers' attention to this incredible 
situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It 
is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles 
an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is 
true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes 
wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, 
and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, 
listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send 
volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"