[H-GEN] LINUX GAZETTE ARTICLE

Martin Pool mbp at wistful.humbug.org.au
Thu Aug 6 07:49:34 EDT 1998


On Thu, Aug 06, 1998 at 05:43:53PM +1000, Frank Brand wrote:

> [chop chop]

It is an interesting letter.

> So is win95 better than Linux? Nope. But neither is it inferior. 

That's very true.  So: let a thousand flowers bloom.  I have no
problem whatsoever with W32 competing as an OS: the problem, for me,
is Microsoft trying to exclude everybody else from the game.  That's
the real problem.

I think the letter makes some rather broad assumptions here about what
Linux people want: lots of them were perfectly happy when Linux was
less popular than it is now, and may be happy in the future with a
system that just works for them, even if nobody else uses it.  World
Domination has a few good externalities --- better hardware support,
more people contributing to free software, being able to use it at
work --- but it's not necessarily an end in itself.  At least, not for
everybody.

With all due respect to it, the Linux kernel really isn't the point.
Sure, it's lovely, it's tight, but it's just a bit of software.
There's nothing there that MS couldn't reproduce in a few months or
years of overtime.

Free Software (or Open Source) is the point: a development model that
MS can't duplicate, that allows all kinds of pieces of software to
efficiently and quickly produce excellent results for their users.
The point is to keep a free software model and add ease of use.  (Hmm,
sounds a lot like the GNOME rationale.)  

We have to take the Open Source idea from being the gleam in the eye
of a few long-haired freaks to something business and home users can
understand and buy into.

Or, alternatively, we don't.  Compulsion doesn't work very well over a
PPP line: the author has his opinions, but nobody can tell "the Linux
community" what to do.  If developers want to make it user friendly --
whether to sell copies of RedHat, or because they enjoy it, or because
they want to make their mother's computer FAT free --- they will; if
not, they won't.

> If we do this, then like IBM's iron fisted dominance of the PC
> market that faded, so too will Microsoft be "The Giant That Was."

And that's a nice model: imagine explaining the whole catastrophe to
your kids in twenty years time when MS is, say, an office suite
vendor, how important the Battle seemed at the time.

-- 
Martin Pool

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,
then you win."  
			-- M. Gandhi




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