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

[Geoff Teale]

Demonic ;) wrote:
-----------------
> Can I put Plan9 on my iPaq? :) 

Technically yes.  I suggest however that you actually don't want to do that.
Plan9 is the betamax of operating systems - for geek kudos it's the place to
be.. for reality, well, how many people do you know who use it?  This, like
BeOS, shows us that just being the best doesn't secure you market share.

Linux rose to it's current position on the basis of its license and it's
development model, not on the back on innovation.

> Yep,  Sounds interesting.  (Note to myself: Learn a bit about BeOS)

It's worth it.  You can't run it on your iPaq, but large parts of it will be
in the new PalmOS (if it ever arrives), Palm bought up the shattered remains
of Be Inc.

Ideally, if the BeOS/linux fusion works it could well be the a big kick up
the bum for the KDE and Gnome projects and a real third player on the UNIX
desktop.  It's funny - all the things Linux does well BeOS didn't, and all
the things BeOS did well, Linux didn't.  It's a long shot, and the Linux
community isn't taking much notice right now, but if it ever gets into
peoples hands the BeOS UI on a Linux base could well be hard to ignore.  
 
> Is this innovation?   Surely if you accept that Unices on the 
> desktop is not comming in the very near future, the Unices 
> develpoment community should be thinking of _inovation_ not 
> playing 'request and response' games with MS?

Ah yes, exactly, but as a community Linux users do _not_ accept that in
general.  We strive to speed the "innevitable" adoption of free software on
the desktop.  In an ideal world we could do both.  There are a lot of
paradoxes in the open-source world.  We value choice because it stops
stagnation - but equally it makes usability a bigger problem - so we strive
for standardisation which thus inhibits choice and innovation

-- 
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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