[Gllug] Microsoft Get The Facts Seminar

[John Hearns]

On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 09:26, Huw Lynes wrote:

> 
> All computer systems cost money in terms of time spent on support and
> implementation. Even my system at home costs me time to support. That's not
> the point that Microsoft were making. They were trying their hardest to scare
> people away from trying free distributions. To claim that linux isn't free is
> disingenuous. It is free and you have the option of paying someone to support
> it. If you buy Windows you are paying up-front for support you may or may not
> use.

Another point someone made to me is that the commercial Unices cost the
manufacturers money.
Think of SGI Irix, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, HPUX.
What these companies want to do is sell computer systems. They had to
develop and support an OS to run on them, eg. SGI Irix, which costs a
lot of money to develop, test professionally, and support.
That's why companies like SGI switched to Linux. They put their
engineers to work on Linux, and now run Linux on the Altix.
Companies like SGI and Cray are now carving out a market where they
enhance Linux to run better on their kit, eg. scaling up to many
processor systems on an Altix.


I can't say anything about Sun - which is the last major exception here.
However having a monoculture is a bad thing - so the BSDs and Solaris
should live on IMHO.

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug