[Sussex] Yet Another Windows Bug

[Mark Harrison]

Geoff,

I'm not disagreeing with you. Nor am I saying that we shouldn't be making
Windows users aware of problems. I think we all know that this bug, now
discovered, will be fixed in the next Service Pack, possibly before...

However, one of the biggest problems that OpenSource is up against NOW is a
feeling among senior IT managers that the Linux community is peopled by
"religious zealots", who are only prepared to have conversations framed around
the morality of OpenSource and how Microsoft is behaving badly.

Whether Microsoft behaves badly or well in a moral sense is of virtually no
interest to my clients. What they are interested in is whether it produces good
products at an acceptable cost compared to the alternatives.

Anyone who at this point is responding "But they SHOULD care" is, well,
demonstrating the mismatch of attitudes. Senior IT Managers are paid to care
about the value they deliver to their organisations stakeholders. If the
Directors of, say, B&Q, want to get on a moral crusade, then I'd far rather than
concentrate on abolishing child labour in their Far Eastern suppliers than in
ditching Microsoft. (Which is, to be fair, exactly the focus they have.)

Regards,

Mark


----- Original Message -----
From: "Geoff Teale" <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
To: <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 10:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Sussex] Yet Another Windows Bug


> On Monday 05 May 2003 8:56 pm, Mark Harrison wrote:
> <snipped>
>
> Generally I'd agree with you here.  It is petty to jump on bugs like this.  No
> matter what we Linux/UNIX zealots like to believe there is no such thing as a
> complicated application without bugs.
>
> The reason UNIX is often more stable than some other OS's is that it is the
> result of an ingenious yet simple design, a number of small components built
> on top of it and 30+ years of debugging and improvement.
>
> However in this case I do have a feeling of "they had it coming".  The bug
> occurs because of functionality added by Microsoft that perverts the HTML
> standard.  No matter how great some of the additional functionality they
> added may be there is no justifiable case for deliberately encouraging users
> to break an open standard in order to allow one player in a market to seaze
> control.
>
> It is fair to say that nothing damaged the internet (as a social phenomena)
> more in the 1990's than first Netscape and then Microsoft adding proprietary
> functionality inside the structure of HTML.  We are slowly getting over those
> problems now.
>
> --
> GJT
> Free Software Foundation
> tealeg at member.fsf.org
>
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