[plug] Are we at 'war' with Microsoft?

[James Devenish]

In message <1068189205.686.29.camel at syngery>
on Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 03:13:26PM +0800, Chris Caston wrote:
> But if open source developers are now trying to compete with Microsoft
> competing with us and trying to beat or reach Microsoft's deadlines then
> isn't is possible that the quality of open source software could suffer?

I'm going to do this:
    Linux == kernel == a single product
    OSS == free software == lots of products

I wouldn't imagine that open source project leaders would suddenly
abandon their principles because Microsoft was releasing its products
quicker. Most open source projects are available in 'stable',
'milestone' or 'snapshot' varieties. If it is perceived that there is
additional pressure on Linux operating environments to "deliver", people
will either create bleeding-edge forks or just create milestones sooner.
I wouldn't imagine the underlying project would be adversely affected
from a developers' perspective. It's not as though OSS is a single,
tangible entity that can be 'put under pressure'.

> Worse, could we lose out innovation and just be trying to quickly
> implement in open source every new thing that Microsoft brings along
> examples:
>  .net, exchange 2003, WinFS, palladium

OSS developers already try and implement every new thing, because OSS
developers have a genuine desire to Just Make Things Work. And OSS
software mostly "loses out" in the innovation stakes already, so that's
nothing new. I suspect that an increase in rhetoric would be the biggest
consequence of Microsoft's moves.

> Msh (Microsoft Shell) more likely it will be a new way for virus writers
> to target them with malicious scripts.

Well, you've let the cat out the bag now!! ;-)

> So if MS is bankrolling SCO (and SCOs lawyer's get paid based on the
> outcome) to try to sue Linux and the GPL out of existence they probably
> forgot their own customers requirements in the process. 

(Although I haven't followed the whole problem with SCO and the GPL.)
Despite the GPL as a whole being a hideous waste of life, it contains
many portions that are plain old authors' copyright privileges and those
should be inalienable. Notwithstanding patents, I'm not intuitively sure
why abrogation of the GPL could cause software to disappear. Surely
there is a limited amount of damage that SCO can do??

> So if there is a war between the Open Source community and MS (albeit
> some kinda coldwar) is this what we really want?

What do you mean by "open source community"? Free software developers?
GPL software developers? Free software users? I think a lot of open
source developers do what they do because they want decent, free,
software. War is just a distraction. Not so sure about users, I guess
they are the ones who are really at the battlefront.

> I'd like to see homogeneous environments of Windows, *BSD, Unix, Linux,
> Apple, Java based OS's and BeoS as well as every other OS that I missed
> out.

Yeah, that is satisfying. Eventually I will run out space in my brain,
though ;-)

> Perhaps we all need to sit down and create standards to allow everyone
> to exist and to integrate. To allow the peaceful existance of both open
> source and closed source.   

I think you mean to say "http://www.apple.com/" :-)


_______________________________________________
plug mailing list
plug at plug.linux.org.au
http://mail.plug.linux.org.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plug