Geeks vs Business
So I just got done reading an article about 5 things about Linux that you’re not “allowed” to discuss… I’m not sure what that means… perhaps he’s afraid of ze Germans
? Anyway, here it is:
:: Rob Enderle :: » The Five Things You Aren’t Allowed to Discuss About Linux
Now, I’m not going to go straight to the personal attacks I have to level against Mr. Enderle. I’m going to save those for later. And I’m not going to bother debunking his 5 points; there are more than enough people commenting very effectively on that subject on his blog.
No, instead, I’m going to look at who is taking which view in this debate. The article has proven to be very insightful not because of any of the content that the author put in, but rather because of the large number of comments that have been posted about it. And the thing that really struck me as interesting in the whole discussion was the constant battle betweek geeks and business.
The business world, and the money behind it, is controlled by business people. These are the people who aren’t geeks. I’ll save the personal attacks against them for the same section as my personal attacks against Rob Enderle. But the important thing is that business people and geeks come from two completely different worlds. There are geeks who live in the business world, and there are business people who live in the geek world, but that doesn’t change who and what they are underneath.
Business people are concerned, appropriately enough, with business. They want to know what will get the job done so that customers get billed, products get sold, and employees get paid. They are the world’s pragmatists. They don’t have time for ideals or movements. They are, in fact, the force that keeps the world moving from day to day to day to day to day to… zzzzzzz… oh, sorry…
See, while they do provide an important service, much like the worker who cleans up the stadium after a football game, or the groundskeeper that tends to a baseball field, what they provide, in the end, is the grease that keeps the world moving. They are the world’s intellectual fishermen. They catch the fish, and through a series of trades and sales, most of us get to eat… a little. And a very few of them
get to eat quite a bit.
Geeks, on the other hand, serve a different purpose. Some of us teach people to fish. Some of us just sit around discussing the merits of fish. And some of us… well, we devise new ways to grow soybeans. In effect, we work to redesign the engine that gets the world moving. And the whole time we’re doing it, the business people laugh and make snide remarks because they are the ones feeding the world while we just sit around and play with these silly beans…
That is, until 50 years later when all of the business people are busy growing and selling soybeans to feed the world and the geeks of the world are busy getting laughed at for investigating kelp farming. Just as RMS has been getting laughed at for three decades.
So my dear Mr. Enderle, I will leave you now so that you may see to your matters of consequence. I’m sure they are, in fact, quite important. I, for one, have a flower to tend to.
