The software users have outfoxed the industry again. It happens every 15 years or so. The developers lost their grounding, the users rebelled, and a whole new breed of software was created.
What is this new incarnation? The Internet, of course, with its unchartered potential and daily evolution. There's a rebellious spirit on the Internet: Net users are fighting the greedy venture capitalists who funded the software industry with the hopes of inventing scams and earning Mitch Kapor-style money. (The scams didn't work.) And they're revolting against Bill Gates, who has already earned Mitch Kapor-style money, many times over, and possesses something much more offensive: the power of FUD - fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
In the software business, instilling FUD in consumers - telling them a competitor's product won't work - gives a company the power to set the agenda, to make users wait for its product. But while industry vendors were obsessed with Bill Gates, the users decided to stop waiting to be told when they could get Internet access. They just signed up.
Now the tail is wagging the dog - users are in control. And the old software industry is struggling (even flailing) to not become a group of random idiots. The next versions of Windows, Macintosh, and OS/2 support all the standard Internet services - Gopher, WAIS, FTP, Telnet, Mosaic, newsgroups. Yet none of the platform vendors was involved in defining these standards. They aren't based on OpenDoc, OLE 2.0, Kaleida, Taligent, AppWare, or any of the various database standards that ex-Borland president Philippe Kahn and Bill Gates were arguing about a few years ago.
Bill was caught flat-footed here. At the Agenda 95 conference in September, I was surprised to hear him say that Microsoft's upcoming online service, The Microsoft Network, is a bet-the-company venture for his empire. He's right. Bill is scrambling to regain control. He can bring Apple to its knees. He may have Novell pinned down. But The Microsoft Network can't compete with the Internet. Once the users take control, they never give it back. A new industry forms, the old one withers and fades, even dies. It happened in the transition from mainframes to minis, and from minis to PCs. And it's happening again. The Internet community is setting its own agenda outside the reach of Microsoft's FUD.
