Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:27:34 -0600 (CST) | From | "James G. Stallings II" <> | Subject | Re: If Linux is to succeed |
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Yes, You've missed it, and yes, this thread belongs there.
This list (linux-kernel) was established so that the kernel developers would have communications amongst themselves and those doing a lot of kernel testing. Be a good guy and remove your 'linux-lite' discussions to a more apropos list.
No, I'm not a moderator, but I value highly the work that gets done on this list.
-z-
"An American is a man with two arms and four wheels." -A chinese child
On 24 Jan 1997, Zygo Blaxell wrote:
> In article <9701231427.ZM8441@platypus>, > Jason Benderly <jbenderl@PaineWebber.COM> wrote: > >Sorry for the waste of bandwidth but the subject is > >the most important one facing Linux, and it has been > >mentioned on the list. > > I second the motion to have a separate list for Linux advocacy > ("linux-future"); I'll probably be subscribed the same day it's created, > unless I've missed it already. All this *technical* discussion about > the Linux kernel gets in the way of the interesting topics. I assume > that everyone who doesn't care has killfiled the subject by now. ;-) > > >The Linux community should also shed the notion that everything > >should be free. Prices should not be what they are for Sun or HP > >products (multi thousand dollars for a GUI painter) but should > >be similar to PC market prices. I know I am willing to spend some > >cash. > > Adobe, Sun, and HP get most of their business from large customers; > they don't really have the infrastructure for dealing with millions of > individual users. > > Quote from my boss: "What the hell is taking [the WINE project] so long? > Can they solve their problems if we just gave them money? We have to pay > for dozens of Win95 licenses *anyway* so it's not like it makes a > difference to us to give the money to someone else." > > It will be interesting to see if non-MS implementations of MS API can > compete at all. I wonder how much real financial loss MS incurred when > people gave up on MS and switched to something else because the new > Win95 apps wouldn't run under WABI or OS/2? Until Microsoft has market > pressure of this kind, they aren't going anywhere. > > The big problem for Windows clone vendors is that there's very little > profit margin in it and a lot of risk. The cheapest working Windoze > implementation is still a PC running Microsoft you-know-what (remember > that the reason Microsoft did so well is that the clone vendors took over > the lionshare of PC sales from IBM by selling much cheaper machines). > OS/2's Windows implementation is sometimes better than rebooting the > machine into Win95 and costs less than keeping extra partitions around if > you *must* run or develop OS/2 apps. Sun's WABI is cheaper than buying > thousands of Windows boxes for your company, if you already have Sparcs > with X terminals lying around. Administration also scales better; > WABI can maintain the low sysadmin-to-user ratios customers are used > to with Unix. WINE is free software and the same cheap hardware, but > it was incomplete the last time I checked. > > >Microsoft operating systems are second rate. Everyone knows that. > >Microsoft applications and applications architectures are the very best. > > Half of the Microsoft applications are horrible, and the other half only > exist to solve problems created by the first half. Several application > features in Windows don't exist in other places because the problems they > solve just aren't there. > > >Everyone knows that too, and that is why they hold 90% of the market. > > There isn't much space in business plans for explaining why, despite > holding 80-90% of the software market, Microsoft is not better. > > -- > Zygo Blaxell. Unix/soft/hardware/firewall/security guru. 10th place, ACM Intl > Prog Contest, 1995. Admin Linux+Solaris for food, Tshirts, anime. Pager: 1613 > 7608572. "I gave up $1000 to avoid working on windoze... *sigh*"-Amy Fong. "smb > is a microsoft toy, like a "child" protocol that never matured"-S Boisjoli. >
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