[plug] Fwd: Open source

[Leon Brooks]

On Friday, 29 March 2002 10:08, Phil Gaudet wrote:
> A bit touchy are we.

No.

I can put you on to people who are touchy about Microsoft, people who've 
had to reinstall several dozen machines from scratch under the withering, 
accusatory stares of the machines' users, when a virus trashed them all 
before a protective patch was available (for an inherently vulnerable 
application that has since been trashed many times by other viruses).

I'm not touchy about Microsoft, but I do know a poisoned waterhole when I see 
one. (-:

> Look[,] I despise Microsoft's monopoly on these issues
> as much as most of us with any kind of knowledge of computers. I for one
> HOPE that LINUX does become a powerhouse and knock M/S over.

That's good to hear. Just take care to not turn sour on Linux if it achieves 
this goal in ways other than how you think it should. (-:

Linux in the end won't so much knock Microsoft over as still be standing 
(sling in hand? :-) when Goliath's face smacks into the ground. And it won't 
be standing alone.

> However I don't accept that there are nearly as many app's that work on
> LINUX as there are on Windows.

Or on Mac, for that matter, yet people still use Macs with great and obvious 
delight. My 12yo daughter is a Mac user.

> Also when I spoke of uniformity, I was
> referring to how M/S has so many products that interact with the O/S and
> are designed by M/S to be that way.

That's not uniformity, that's cheating your OEMs and application producers of 
access to APIs.

> This "clever" marketing ploy is what made M/S so big.

It's only one of the things, and I disagree about it being at all `clever'.

Probably the single biggest key to their corporate success was stealing ideas 
outright, closely followed by buying companies which had implemented good 
ideas (Fox comes to mind), using those ideas to help bolster your own product 
(the JET engine in this case), meanwhile bloating the original product 
(FoxPro) to near uselessness.

Close on the heels of these reasons comes predatory OEM licencing deals, tax 
fraud, cheating your own employees, and back-room deals with key government 
and corporate personnel. Ordinary software piracy is in there, but probably 
didn't count for much on the bottom line.

> LINUX will need to fight fire with fire if it wishes to
> have even the slightest hope of defeating M/S.

No, if Linux ever indulges in a head-butting competition with Microsoft, 
Linux will lose. Fortunately, Linux is not a corporation, so has no way of 
doing this even if the majority of Linux users wanted to.

> A stable O/S just isn't enough.

True. But neither is an unstable OS.

> The sooner LINUX stops these silly attacks on M/S and gets down to some
> professional marketing is the only way it will succeed.

This is barking up the wrong tree. Linux's entire raison d'etree is 
completely divorced from marketing and corporatism. This has kept Linux from 
being killed. Adding marketing and corporatism to Linux has been tried, and 
the corpses litter the business landscape.

Linux will survive not by becoming another Microsoft, but by remaining Linux. 
OpenBSD (to pick a random example) will also survive, in slightly different 
areas, for exactly the same reason.

Remember: professionals built the Titanic, amateurs built the Ark. (-:

Linux advocates _should_ point out weaknesses and dishonesty amongst their 
opponents, because you can be absolutely sure their opponents haven't missed 
any obvious opportunity to return the favour, with interest. Whether you 
count that as an attack or not is up to you. Linux literally has nothing to 
hide.

>>> On Thursday 28 March 2002 08:56, skribe wrote:
>>> This was posted to me.  Would someone care to write back to Phil and
>>> explain why this is not a problem with OSS?

>> Sure. OSS respects standards, Microsoft beats them into the ground. Any
>> more questions?

>> OSS project fragmentation happens very rarely, is occasionally done
>> deliberately to allow some developers more room to focus on special
>> issues or subprojects, and often coalesces again. Occasionally,
>> disparate projects will coalesce as well.

>>>> I guess what I am saying is, Microsoft's success was gained not from
>>>> any great O/S (we all know that) but rather the uniformity and
>>>> compatibility of it.

>> Guffaw, guffaw, guffaw... pick any link:

Did you follow any of these? They're quite informative, and weren't posted 
just to score points.

>> http://www.google.com/search?q=word95+word97+incompatible
>> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22windows+98%22+%22windows+me%22+
>>   incompatible
>>   [quote from 4th link, entitled `I Installed Windows: Me!: It was as
>>     easy as A, B, C!': `Norton's 2000 utilities are incompatible with
>>     Windows Me.']
>> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22windows+98%22+%22windows+2000%22+
>>   incompatible
>>   [second link is Microsoft instructions for removing Linux, 3rd is
>>   `Why Windows 2000 Is Already a Failure' from ZDNet, quote
>>   `too clunky, too complex and too incompatible with older apps to
>>    play in this space.']
>> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22access+2000%22+%22sql+server+2000%22+
>>   incompatible
>>   [from `Office 10 is being pitched as the first sample of the .NET
>>    vision' I quote `new file format that's incompatible with previous
>>    versions.']

>> ...and so on, ad infinitum. Works for any two Microsoft products.

I does. Try some of your own.

>> Microsoft's success was gained almost entirely from utterly ruthless
>> business practices. And I quote, (from
>> http://128.253.200.17/eric/ms.qt.html) `If someone thinks we're not
>> after Lotus and after WordPerfect and after Borland, they're confused.
>> . . . My job is to get a fair share of the software applications
>> market, and to me that's 100 percent.' -- Mike Maples, then World
>> Marketing director for Microsoft.

>>> ---
>>> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.

>> I think this speaks for itself.

> ---
> Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.

Agree: it originated from a Linux box. (-:

Cheers; Leon