[Gllug] just preaching to the converted !

[Peter Grandi]

>>> On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 16:36:28 +0100, paul
>>> <paul at thinksolution.net> said:

paul> [ ... ] time REALLY has come for Linux to take serious
paul> chunks out of the microsoft market.

It is doing so indeed. Now is that a blessing or a curse? It is
not so obvious. A technology is the result of both technical and
social pressures and opportunities, and the sort of social and
technical pressures that come from the sort of users that have
so far adopted MS Windows may or may not be what GNU/Linux
supporters would love.

I think that so far GNU/Linux has been taking serious chunks out
of the traditional open-standards-but-proprietary-implementation
UNIX supplier market, and that has so far exposed it to different
social pressures, and let's say more ''traditional'' ones, because
after GNU/Linux is a UNIXy system too.

paul> [ ... ] I used have the opinion that learning a new
paul> operating system took took too much time but its nothing
paul> in comparison to the efforts you have to make in order to
paul> keep win 2k afloat.

But look at it in a ''the sh*t floats to the top'' :-) sort of
cynical/bleak view: that means that the MS Windows ecosystem is
well rooted in a vast number of people and businesses who have a
vested interest (like their jobs and billings) in keeping it
around at the companies they work for. Buggy, hard to maintain
software usually achieves better customer lock-in, if it can get
the foot in the door.

paul> By my own observations I am beginning to conclude that
paul> windows has been the victim of its own success but if
paul> Linux became as big as microsoft OS's have been -

It has already started... As I pointed out recently the success
of GNU/Linux has meant that the top 90% of kernel developers
have been head-hunted by rich corporations as a way to
indirectly influence its direction.

Which is excellent news for those people who have given much to
the community, and for users who want Linux polished and tuned
for middle/high end enterprise server systems that are the
typical target market those rich corporations care about.
It also has some significant downsides for other people.

paul> would it too suffer as bad?

As Linus has said, with great wisdom:

  http://WWW.UWSG.IU.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/9902.2/0288.html

   «> Linux has a lot of cruft in it maybe while doing
    > journalling we should throw the OS away and rewrite
    > that too ? - I hope Im misunderstanding your argument.

    Sure, go right ahead.

    No, you're not misunderstanding the argument. Eventually
    some hungry programmer will decide that Linux has too much
    cruft, and he'll want to take over the world, and he'll come
    up with a system called Davix or something. That's how these
    things go, and that's how things _should_ work.

    The only thing I can aim at is to minimize the amount of
    cruft, and pushing out the inevitable as far into the future
    as humanly possible.  That's what "maintenance" means, Alan.»

And therefore:

  http://WWW.kernelSlacker.org/davix/announce.txt

:-)

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