It is an extract from Neal Stephenson's essay,
_In_The_Beginning_Was_The_Command_line_
(he wrote _Cryptonomicon_ & _Snow_Crash_, among others).
The whole essay can be found here.

Extract:

Imagine a crossroads where four competing auto dealerships are situated. One of them
(Microsoft) is much, much bigger than the others. It started out years ago selling 
three-speed bicycles (MS-DOS); these were not perfect, but they worked, and when they 
broke you could easily fix them.

There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling 
motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards 
hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery.

The big dealership responded by rushing a moped upgrade kit (the original Windows) 
onto the market. This was a Rube Goldberg contraption that, when bolted onto a 
three-speed bicycle, enabled it to keep up, just barely, with Apple-cars. The users 
had to wear goggles and were always picking bugs out of their teeth while Apple owners 
sped along in hermetically sealed comfort, sneering out the windows. But the Micro-mopeds 
were cheap, and easy to fix compared with the Apple-cars, and their market share waxed.

Eventually the big dealership came out with a full-fledged car: a colossal station wagon 
(Windows 95). It had all the aesthetic appeal of a Soviet worker housing block, it leaked 
oil and blew gaskets, and it was an enormous success. A little later, they also came out 
with a hulking off-road vehicle intended for industrial users (Windows NT) which was no 
more beautiful than the station wagon, and only a little more reliable.

Since then there has been a lot of noise and shouting, but little has changed. The smaller 
dealership continues to sell sleek Euro-styled sedans and to spend a lot of money on 
advertising campaigns. They have had GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! signs taped up in their windows 
for so long that they have gotten all yellow and curly. The big one keeps making bigger 
and bigger station wagons and ORVs.

On the other side of the road are two competitors that have come along more recently.

One of them (Be, Inc.) is selling fully operational Batmobiles (the BeOS). They are more 
beautiful and stylish even than the Euro-sedans, better designed, more technologically 
advanced, and at least as reliable as anything else on the market--and yet cheaper than 
the others.

With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right next door, and which is not a business 
at all. It's a bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in a field and 
organized by consensus. The people who live there are making tanks. These are not 
old-fashioned, cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks of the U.S. Army, 
made of space-age materials and jammed with sophisticated technology from one end to the 
other. But they are better than Army tanks. They've been modified in such a way that they 
never, ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary streets, and 
use no more fuel than a subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, 
at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up along the edge of the road 
with keys in the ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it away 
for free.

Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and night. Ninety percent of them go 
straight to the biggest dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles. They do 
not even look at the other dealerships.

Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn 
up their noses at the philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If they even 
notice the people on the opposite side of the road, selling the cheaper, technically 
superior vehicles, these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.

The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the occasional car nut who wants a second 
vehicle to go with his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now, that it's 
a fringe player.

The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive because it is staffed by volunteers, 
who are lined up at the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw customers' 
attention to this incredible situation. A typical conversation goes something like this:

Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, 
and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles 
to the gallon!"

Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know 
how to maintain a tank!"

Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"

Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my 
station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while 
I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."

Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house 
to fix it for free while you sleep!"

Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"

Bullhorn: "But..."

Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"