Once upon a time, when typewriters and mimeograph machines ruled the earth and you couldn't even buy a cell phone, there was a company. This company ruled over the placid world of technology with a kind of mellow indifference. This company was named IBM and it had many advantages.

The imperial rulers of the office machine had vast wealth at their disposal, more than any upstart could possibly come close to having. They made good solid products, dependable. Their products were certainly the most expensive, but then (of course) they were a monopoly.

And most of all, the Lords of IBM knew in the depths of their souls and in the marrow of their bones, that their way was the One True Path. Their company had fought the long fight, and won its place as the unchallenged Power in the office equipment market. They believed that all of the enemies which might have threatened them were long dead. There was no reason for them to worry about anything. No one could possibly touch them.

Now it must be told that the massive mainframe computers of that long ago time were powerful, and huge, and complicated beyond belief. Only a few of the Chosen Ones were ever allowed near them, for the mere touch of hands that had not been sanctified by IBM certification might defile them and cause that most dreaded of catastrophes - system crash. The neophytes of the computer priesthood labored at the fringes of the Holy Temples, fixing dumb terminals and fetching tape reels and punching holes in the Cards of Perforated Knowledge, hoping and dreaming of the day that they might be allowed into the inner sanctum and perhaps...just perhaps....might even be allowed to write a program or two.

For many long years this state of affairs continued. Every now and then some upstart might come up with a new idea, but this was no problem. If the Lords of IBM thought the idea had merit, they might deign to bless the inventor by engulfing his work into themselves, and reward the frisky youngster by giving them a small portion of the profits from their improvement. Not too large a piece of profit mind you, for it was not good to encourage the youngsters into thinking that they were actually important. They might get too big for their britches. On the other hand, any heretical idea that the Lords of IBM saw no practical use for was summarily crushed into oblivion.

And then, in the fullness of time, a strange thing came to pass. Someone made a box. It was a funny little box, and it did funny little things. And the Lords of IBM saw the funny little box and laughed, in their kindly way. They said, "Lo, what is this toy you show us? For how can any computer possibly fit into such a small container?". For it must be remembered that in those days, all computers were bigger than the average Winnebago.

And the Lords of IBM scratched their heads, and grinned in mild embarrassment for the upstarts who had presented this funny little box, and they did not quite know how to respond. And the Lords of IBM said, "This toy seems useless indeed, yet there are those who might enjoy playing with it. Let us allow this funny little box to be made and sold. Perhaps the little children will have fun with it."

And so the PC was granted a right to survive. And indeed, the little children had fun playing with it. And some of the bigger kids had fun playing with it also. And strange things began to happen, when these youngsters played with their little boxes. And the Lords of IBM saw that there might be a use for the little boxes after all. And the Lords of IBM came together and spoke among themselves, saying, "We must tighten our control over the little boxes, lest foolish upstarts might distract the people from their typewriters and their mimeograph machines." And so the Lords of IBM issued a decree, and said that they, and only they, made the little boxes of True Goodness.

And the Lords of IBM also said, "If these little boxes are computers in truth, they will need instructions. Let us contract with some bright youngster who likes to play with them, and get him to write us an operating system."

And so DOS was born. In the beginning there was only one DOS, and it was bad. It was very bad indeed. In truth, it stunk to high heaven. But it worked. It got the job done and it was good enough to use. And the youngsters banded together, and worked together and called themselves "Micro-soft" to show how small they were. For the youngsters knew better than to show insolence to the Lords of IBM, lest they be obliterated. And to further show how harmless they were, they took for their heraldic emblem of the sign of the delicate little butterfly.

Meanwhile, another renegade pack of even more foolish upstarts had banded together to play with the little boxes. And these cheerful youngsters liked to be playful. So instead of using a command line, as DOS used and as Unix used and as all others since the dawn of electronics had used, these playful ones decided to make it so that you could instruct your little box by pointing at funky little pictures. And the world laughed. And the playful youngsters laughed with them. And to show that they did not take themselves too seriously, the playful ones decided to name themselves after a piece of fruit. And so Apple was born.

And there were those who lurked at the fringes of techno-society in those days. And they licked their lips at the wealth and power of IBM, and wished mightily that they could someday be rich and powerful and crush their enemies. And these Lurkers said to themselves, "We can make these little boxes too. Let us make ourselves little boxes and sell them." But the Lords of IBM refused permission to the Lurkers, and the Lords of IBM said, "NONE but our own chosen distributors shall have the secret knowledge of how to make the little boxes behave exactly the way our little boxes behave." And the Lurkers were frustrated, until one day they had an idea.

The Lurkers went to Microsoft and said unto them, "You know how to make the DOS that causes the little boxes to do the things which IBM boxes do. We can make boxes too, but IBM will not allow us to make ones just like them. But with your help, we can make boxes that are compatible with IBM, and since you make the DOS, you can make it so that our boxes will still run the things that the IBM boxes run." And so, the IBM Compatible PC came to pass.

And at last the Lords of IBM awoke to their danger, but it was too late. For the Lurkers were many, and they had the MS-DOS that gave them power to be like unto the IBM boxes. And the Lords of IBM said, "Let us crush this upstart traitor Microsoft. Let us smash the butterfly of Redmond. Let us make our own DOS, and wrest back control of the world. And so PC-DOS came to be, and it was bad. In fact, it was even worse than MS-DOS, if such a thing be possible. And the Lords of IBM did not lower their prices to match the prices of the Lurkers who made the IBM Compatible boxes. For the Lords of IBM were sure in their secret hearts that everyone loved them, and no one would buy a box from someone else just because it was cheaper and did the same thing.

And in bitterness did the Lords of IBM come to know that they had been wrong. For people did not love them, and people were glad to buy the cheaper boxes that did the same thing as IBM boxes. And the Lords of IBM could not crush the Lurkers, for they were too many. As soon as one was crushed, two more would rise up in its place. And the Lords of IBM could not crush the butterfly from Redmond, for Microsoft was small in those days, and young and agile, and Microsoft was fighting for its life and knew it. Whereas the Lords of IBM had grown fat and stiff, from their long years on the throne.

And the years passed by, and the world changed greatly. Soon, almost everyone had one of the little boxes, and no one used typewriters or mimeograph machines anymore. And the butterfly from Redmond spread its wings and grew larger and richer. For the butterfly of Microsoft had decided to imitate the playful youngsters who had named their company after fruit. And Microsoft made pretty pictures and pasted them on top of MS-DOS, to hide the ugliness of the command line. And it was bad too, but not quite as bad as DOS.

And people bought the little boxes everywhere in the world, and played with them. And nearly all of them used MS-DOS, with the pretty pictures pasted over the command line. And the butterfly grew larger, and began to get fat and hairy. And finally the pretty little butterfly from Redmond became a huge hairy butterfly, with saber-tooth fangs. And none dared challenge the butterfly, for it had grown fearsome indeed. And the butterfly took unto itself the throne from which it had cast down the ancient Lords of IBM. And the butterfly ruled over all the little boxes, for none were allowed to know the secrets of MS-DOS with the pretty pictures pasted over it, that the butterfly decided to call Windows. .

And the butterfly of Microsoft kept careful watch, lest some upstart try to seize its power. For the butterfly remembered how it had taken IBM unaware, and had undercut the base of IBM's power before IBM knew what was happening. And the butterfly was determined not to repeat the same mistakes that the Lords of IBM had made. And so the butterfly watched carefully. If a new idea came along that the butterfly could use, it was engulfed, while the upstarts who had invented the new ideas were usually chewed up and spit back out again. Any new ideas that the butterfly did not need, or that it could not buy, were crushed into oblivion.

And the butterfly had a monopoly, and it was sure that all of the enemies who might hurt it were long dead. It had nothing to worry about. Netscape had gone down before the wrath of the butterfly. WordPerfect had been swept away by the mighty wind from the beating wings of the butterfly. All who had dared to challenge it were gone.

And as time passed, Microsoft's code grew powerful, and huge, and complicated beyond belief. Only a few of the Chosen Ones were ever allowed to know the innermost secrets of the MS-DOS, which had come to be called Windows. And because of this, all who used the little boxes had to look to the butterfly for instructions on how to use the little boxes. For the mere touch of hands that had not been sanctified by Microsoft certification might defile the the little boxes and cause that most dreaded of catastrophes.....system crash.

And the butterfly said, "NONE but our own Chosen Ones shall have the secret knowledge of how to make the little boxes behave exactly the way our little boxes behave."

And most of all, the butterfly knew in the depth of its soul and in the marrow of its chitin, that its way was the One True Path. Had it not proven itself by breaking the power of the monarchs of IBM? Was it not the cause of the new freedoms that people were enjoying, to use the little boxes as they chose? At least, as long as they chose to use them in the way that the butterfly approved of. The butterfly had fought the long fight, and won its place as the unchallenged Power in the office equipment market. There was no reason for the butterfly to worry about anything. No one could possibly touch it.

And then there came a young man who was named Linus, who also liked to play with the little boxes, but he did not like the butterfly. And this young man said to himself, "I like to play with the little boxes, but the butterfly's code has become huge, and powerful, and complicated beyond belief. How can I make the little boxes do what I want them to do without using the bloated code of the butterfly?"

And this young man lived in the frozen wastelands of the chilly north, and he had a lot of time to sit and think while he shivered through those long winters, and finally this young man decided to take the ancient, almost forgotten glyphs of the Unix language and make a new OS. And it was bad. It was very bad indeed. In fact, it stunk to high heaven. But it worked well enough and it got the job done. And the young man decided to name this OS after himself and called it Linux. And he took for himself the heraldic emblem of the penguin, because he liked penguins.

In the beginning, the butterfly ignored the new OS. And this was as the young man had intended. For he knew that anyone who dared to challenge the might of the butterfly was doomed. So the clever young man decided to make sure the butterfly would not see his new OS as a threat. He gave it away.

Linus knew that the butterfly lived for profit, and that all of the butterfly's previous enemies had tried to attack it one at a time. So the wise young man thought to himself, "If I do not try to make a profit, the butterfly will ignore me. And if I make sure that many people in many places have my OS, then the butterfly will not be able to crush them all." For the young man Linus remembered how the Lurkers had survived the wrath of IBM, by being many and small and hard to hit.

And the butterfly ignored the penguin, for it was being given away. And the butterfly was sure that people loved it, and that no one would use another OS just because it was free and did the same thing that Windows did.

And the penguin waddled its way around the world, for many people did not love the butterfly because of its power, and its wealth, and the fact that its code had become huge, and powerful, and complicated beyond belief. And Linux became slicker, and easier to use. Finally the day came when the butterfly awoke to its danger.

But the butterfly did not know what to do. For in the past, all of its enemies had been findable, and it had been able to find somewhere to strike. When WordPerfect had challenged it, the butterfly had simply made its word processor better and cheaper until no one bought WordPerfect anymore. When Netscape challenged it, the butterfly had simply made its web browser better and given it away until no one bought Netscape anymore. But how could it undercut the price of the penguin when it was free?

And people came to understand that the penguin could do anything that the butterfly could do, and it was free besides. And many came to the penguin who had long chafed under the yoke of the butterfly, and said unto the penguin, "Show us how you do this, so that we may do it also." And the penguin gave freely unto all that came, and the fame of the penguin spread all over the world.

And at last the fallen Lords of IBM, who remembered their bitter defeat under the saber-toothed jaws of the butterfly, came to notice the penguin. And the Lords of IBM were still rich and mighty, though not nearly so rich and mighty as they had been. And the Lords of IBM said, "Let us put this penguin to work on our own big boxes, that we call mainframes, so that we can hurt the butterfly and save money at the same time." And many companies bought the big boxes with the penguin inside, and cursed because it was a truly bad system. Yet it was not as bad as Unix, and it was really no worse than the Windows system that the butterfly made, and it was cheap too.

And Sun, who had made Netscape, saw the penguin growing strong and it said, "Let us put this penguin to work on our own programs, so that we can hurt the butterfly and save money at the same time." And Corel, who had bought WordPerfect after the butterfly had finished savaging the corpse, decided to take the penguin and smooth its feathers and paint it to look like WordPerfect.

And when the butterfly saw its ancient enemies embrace the penguin, and when the butterfly remembered how it had been small and agile and still had taken down the Lords of IBM, the butterfly knew cold fear. The butterfly tried to smash the penguin, but there was no center to hit. The penguins were everywhere, but there was no single enemy company that it could crush. And in panic the butterfly cried out to the people not to touch the penguin. The butterfly cried out that the penguin was a poison, and a plague, and that the touch of the penguin would corrupt their little boxes and bring ruin upon them.

But the people did not listen, and continued to put the penguin into their little boxes, and the butterfly came to fear that its doom was nigh. And it decided to offer the olive branch of peace to the penguin, hoping to fool the penguin long enough to find a weak point and crush it, or at least to buy time so that it could engulf the penguin for itself.

And the people of the penguin became wroth with the butterfly. And the people of the penguin rose up and called, "Come, all ye that follow the Way of the Penguin! Come and help us eat the butterfly!"

And at this, the butterfly took wing and flew. And now we see the hairy, saber-toothed butterfly flapping desperately for its life across the frozen northlands, with a horde of angry penguins in hot pursuit.

So always remember. It is written that whatsoever you sow, you will also reap. And most of all remember this: the mill wheels of the Creator may grind slowly, but they grind finely enough to crush anyone eventually. No matter how rich and powerful you are.