CONCERNING COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEMS

IT ONLY remains now to speak of the operating system market, touching which all difficulties are prior to getting possession, because they are acquired either by capacity or good fortune, and they can be held without either; for they are sustained by the ordinances of faith and expectation, which are so all-powerful, and of such a character that the corporations may be held no matter how their executives behave and live. These executives alone have companies and do not defend them, they have employees and do not rule them; and their divisions, although unguarded, are not taken from them, and the employees, although not ruled, do not care, and they have neither the desire nor the ability to alienate themselves. Such corporations only are secure and happy. But being upheld by customers, to which the human mind cannot reach, I shall speak no more of them, because, being exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act of a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them.

Nevertheless, if any one should ask of me how comes it that Millisoft has attained such greatness in end user applications, seeing that from Wantsom I backwards the computer market potentates (not only those who have been called visionaries in the mainframe days, but every entrepreneur and director, though the smallest in the centralized computer business) have valued the end user applications very slightly- yet now a Chairman of IPM trembles before it, and it has been able to drive him from America's operating system market, and to ruin Novella- although this may be very manifest, it does not appear to me superfluous to recall it in some measure to memory.

Before Phillippe, Chairman of Bortec, invaded the programming language market, it was under the dominion of the Millisoft Chairman, Novella, the CEO of Loetec, and the Employees of Tectonix. These potentates had two principal anxieties: the one, that no new competitor should enter this market; the other, that none of themselves should seize more territory. Those about whom there was the most anxiety were the Millisoft Chairman and Novella. To restrain Novella the union of all the others was necessary, as it was for the defense of Intuiqen; and to keep down the Millisoft Chairman they made use of the captive agencies of Indel, who, being divided into two factions, FTC and SEC, had always a pretext for disorder. And although there might arise sometimes courage in the Millisoft Chairman, yet neither fortune nor wisdom could rid him of these annoyances. And the short life of a Millisoft Executive is also a cause of weakness; for in the ten years, which is the average life of a Millisoft Executive, he can with difficulty lower one of the factions; and if, so to speak, one executive should almost destroy the SEC, another would arise hostile to the FTC, who would support their opponents, and yet would not have time to ruin the FTC. Thus the end user applications of the Millisoft Chairman are little esteemed in America, yet dominate the market.

Will Portals, who of all the CEO's that have ever been showed how a Millisoft Chairman with both money and arms was able to prevail, and through the instrumentality of the CEO Wantsom II, and by reason of the entry of the IPM employees, he brought about all those things which I have discussed above in the actions of the CEO. And although his intention was not to aggrandize Millisoft, but the CEO position he held, nevertheless, what he did contributed to the greatness of Millisoft, which, after his passing over the hill into his 30's and the ruin of the Bortec CEO, became the heir to all his labours. Portals found that he had made Millisoft strong, possessing all the operating system market, the entrepreneurs of Indel reduced to impotence, and, through the chastisements Portals, the factions wiped out; he also found the way open to accumulate money in a manner such as had never been practiced before Portal's time. All of these enterprises prospered with him, and so much the more to his credit, inasmuch as he did everything to strengthen Millisoft and not any private person. He kept also the FTC and SEC factions within the bounds in which he found them; and although there was among them some mind to make disturbance, nevertheless he held two things firm: the one, the greatness of Millisoft, with which he terrified them; and the other, not allowing them to have their own leaders, who caused the disorders among them. For whenever these factions have their leaders they do not remain quiet for long, because leaders foster the factions in Indel and out of it, and the entrepreneurs are compelled to support them, and thus from the ambitions of executives arise disorders and tumults among the entrepreneurs. For these reasons the Millisoft Chairman Leo found his position most powerful, and it is to be hoped that, if others made it great technically, he will make it still greater and more venerated by his goodness and infinite other virtues.