[H-GEN] Good news for us unix-heads

[Raymond Smith]

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On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Anthony Towns wrote:
> It'll also be interesting to see if they can get away with claiming to
> be `delivering on Trustworthy Computing', while retaining statements
> like `MICROSOFT HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS WITH
> REGARD TO THE SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES AND
> CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE'. If
> you're not even confident enough to say "We think this product is
> actually reasonably fit for its ordinary purpose", why should *anyone*
> trust your product?

Can our community really claim to be different? Even the GPL includes
clauses like this. I think people could come to 'trust' Microsoft software
for the same reasons that they 'trust' the Apache Software Foundation:
because they produce a good product with demonstrable reliability.

Certainly there are other factors. For us, we can trust Apache more than
IIS because we have the source and can see how it works. But when it comes
down to Joe Average Businessman all it takes is for the product to work
first time, every time and he will be happy. Especially when there is
already an established culture of software manufactures being
unaccountable for the crud they produce.

Cheers,

Raymond
---
raymond at humbug.org.au   Linux.conf.au 2002 -- register now for
                        the biggest Linux event in Australia
                        http://linux.conf.au



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