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Linux & Market Share: Just Let It Be

Every so often, I will come across a post at ubuntuforums.org usually by a well meaning Ubuntu user, proclaiming that Linux or Ubuntu need to dominate more market share, invest heavily in advertising and marketing or compete head on with Microsoft by becoming proprietary. There have also been ambitious, in my opinion falsely so, projects aimed at high-profile marketing through donations.

Due to the amount of these threads most of them have in fact been merged into one mega-thread called the Linux Desktop Readiness Thread.

Perhaps I am wrong, but despite not being managed by a massive corporation, despite not spending billions on advertising and marketing and despite not being proprietary the Linux user base has been growing constantly from day one. So I say just let it be. Linux does not need to waste precious resources trying to compete with massive corporations that have billions at their disposal.

First of all Linux is not in the position to compete head on with a corporation such as Microsoft. Microsoft is a centralised entity, whereas the world of Linux is decentralised. Microsoft sells proprietary products. In the world of Linux you have a plethora of business and project models, some proprietary while many others aren't. Microsoft has investors to keep happy which is why it has to eat away at 'market shares'. In the world of Linux, while you do have some companies who might have investors, the scene is dominated by projects comprised of many freelance developers, so 'market share' is not a need nor a priority.

We in the world of Linux should continue to focus our efforts on development, improvement, innovation, bug fixing and testing. The user base will continue to grow as it has been doing all along, there is no need to worry about market shares, advertising or marketing. There is no need to fix what isn't broken.

Update

Today a new thread appeared, called National Switch to Linux (or Ubuntu) Day. The idea behind it is to have events where people 'switch' to Linux or Ubuntu.

Again I think this is terrible. Having people switch just for the sake of switching is the wrong approach to any operating system. People should choose the OS that suits their wishes and needs. Organising events where people switch 'for fun' or due to some kind of hype will only backfire as many of these new users realise that they might need to invest some time and effort learning how to use the new OS.

Incidentally while reading through some other blogs I came across a post on a similar topic at UbuntuCat called Another tired phrase: Year of the Linux Desktop. I believe such sensationalist statements suffer from the marketing syndrome I was talking about earlier. Some people expect, or want Linux to suddenly take over the world. It is simply not going to happen.