[Sussex] Improvement vs watching Microsoft- was: Improving on UNIX

[Geoff Teale]

Dominic wrote:
--------------
> The title of this thread is 'Improving on Unix'.....
> I suggest that this was a very sensible and worthwile title.
> 
> It is this sort of thing that might actualy make a difference 
> in the end.

Actually.. the thing is it's about improving UNIX as a desktop OS.  If it
was just a question of building a better UNIX then we'd all of swapped over
to Plan9 years ago (damn.. slipped it in.. must try harder, must try
harder).

> However, the futhering of Unices is going to go nowhere with 
> insane burblings about how evil Mr Gates is.  Fact is he 
> _does_ have a successful product, which is _not_ perfect.
>
> Lets try and 'Improve on Unix' guys, lets make Unices a 
> better option for more people (at the very least for me :P )... 

Well.. firstly, well said, yes we (and I do mean "I" as well as "we") do
spend to much time and energy worrying about Microsoft - but the fact is we
do have to worry about it.  Most of us who work in IT would like to work in
a world where good software is used everywhere - it would make our lives
more pleasant.

As you said  - improvement is the best weapon we have.  Is Linux innovative?
I wonder.  I argued that adopting some of the innovation that BeOS had in
the early/mid 1990's would make LINUX the most advanced platform currently
available.  There is a terrible innetia in the IT industry - businesses
don't like change, when companies look to replace Windows desktops they want
something exactly the same.  If you handed them a free version of Nt4 with
endless support right now most businesses would happily adopt that rather
than go to XP - change is seen as expensive and fault prone - that's what
holds the market back and that's why you don't see a lot of innovation from
Microsoft - sure they'll add features, but they are only just thinking about
journalled filesystems now - if they had been the market leading,
innovateive company they claim to be they would have been doing that in the
late 80's.

What am I saying here?  Well, yes, we do need to innovate, to provide better
systems, but in terms of getting this thing on peoples desks it _is_ more
important to look at Microsoft and see how we can do the same thing without
all the compromises to out freedom, and we need to watch them and their
tactics and respond accordingly.

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk
tealeg at member.fsf.org

"make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove"
 - Ani DiFranco "Up Up Up Up Up Up"


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