Re: [aclug-L] Microsoft's plans to kill Linux

[Leon Do <leondo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Let me add something here too.   If Linux doesn't make it easy to use and
learn, it eventually will lost to windows in the future just as other
major Unix systems.  Yes, Linux may have all powerfull softwares, but if
the users don't know how to use it, they won't use them anyway.  On the
other hand, Microsoft has money, in the long run, they will port all the
good softwares in Linux to their system and make them available to the
users.  To compete with Microsoft, we need to expanse Linux to the hand of
any computer level users, software quality is not a main point to win
Microsoft because their products are sucked anyway.  RedHat is already
making some process on this, but its GUI desktop has a lot of bugs compare
to windows.

Leon Do



On Fri, 13 Nov 1998 jeffrey.hansen@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> 
> I'd like to throw my worthless two cents in here too.  It would be
> interesting to see what would happen to the Linux community if 'ole Bill
> decided to do an "Internet Explorer" on open source software.  With his
> programming resources he'd have a deliverable ready in a couple of years
> and if he gave it away and it had a GUI installation interface he'd
> probably take over, EXCEPT FOR ONE THING: computer "users" don't care what
> the engine is as long as it moves the car.  Linux is for UNIX lovers (and,
> it appears, Bill Gates haters).  It's not likely that most Win95/98 users
> have ever even seen the DOS prompt, except by accident.  Linux is simply
> not what they want (at least specifically) since the powerful hardware is
> available so Windoze will run reasonably fast, and there are hundreds of
> flavors of nearly every application imaginable that will run on it.  Linux
> is a focused system for power users and will probably never appeal to pure
> users.  What's surprizing, and hard for me to believe, is that Gates is
> even interested in Linux.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> fritz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on 11/13/98 02:46:16 PM
> 
> Please respond to aclug-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> To:   aclug-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> cc:    (bcc: Jeffrey Hansen/BFTC/Bombardier)
> Subject:  Re: [aclug-L] Microsoft's plans to kill Linux
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, John Goerzen wrote:
> > Well, as one person that's been a member of the free-software community
> for
> > some time, perhaps I can shed a bit of light on the matter.
> John, you are a powerful evangelist.  I'm glad I wrote my little piece, if
> only for the opportunity to hear you rebut it.
> I like your distinction between ease of use and ease of learning.  I still
> must say, though, that for some users Microsoft products are both easy to
> learn and easy to use.  If I buy a computer for exactly two uses, I
> want a screen with two big buttons on it, one for each use.  If there
> happen to be ten buttons on the screen, I want to be able to guess which
> two are the ones I want.
> If you think, for example, that emacs is easy to use once you have learned
> it, I think you are nuts.  Clicking on buttons is flat out easier than
> control-X control-V f z w ecaspe-76.  Sure, you can give me a hundred
> things which are easier do to in emacs than in MS Word, but none of those
> are clicking the print button.
> I ponder my attitude towards cars.  I'm a guy who would be hard pressed to
> check the oil, much less change it.  I look around for car expertise among
> my friends, and I find almost zero.  What happened from thirty years ago
> when every third teenage guy could take apart his car to the last bolt and
> put it back together again?  Cars have gotten too complex, and expertise
> has become narrowed to specialists.
> Will the same thing happen with operating systems?  Maybe not, since code
> is fundamentally different from machines.  Maybe the number of people
> capable of contributing to open source will continue to rise indefinitely.
> Maybe the percentage of users who only want two buttons on their computers
> will stop rising, and perhaps even fall.  Or maybe the number of schmoes
> is irrelevant, as long as the hacker community is large enough.
> > > I have never met a hacker who was at all sympathetic with ordinary
> > > users.
> >
> > Now you have. :-)
> I think I have too, and I am grateful for it.  But maybe a clarification
> is worthwhile here.  You are symapthetic with people who know little
> about computers and want to learn more.  You are not sympathetic with
> people who know little about computers and _don't_ want to learn any more,
> but want to use computers anyway.
> > Seriously though, here's how the hacker culture feels about this.  We
> > *like* new people to join.  Every hacker was a newbie once, too, and
> > each new person that uses an open source operating system is somebody
> > that could be a developer for that OS sometime down the road.
> Again I say, you are a powerful evangelist.  Sign me up for the crusade!
> > Microsoft has dominated the desktop since before the first line of
> > Linux code was written.  This didn't hurt Linux then and it's not
> > going to hurt Linux now.  I don't think Microsoft is going to go away
> > overnight.  But eventually, something Open Source -- probably Linux,
> > but not necessarily -- is going to overtake them.  It will happen, and
> > there's nothing they can do to prevent it.  Except going open-source
> > themselves.
> I feel Linux vs. Microsoft sort of like I do about the K-State vs.
> Nebraska football game, in that I don't know enough to predict who will
> win, but I am very interested to watch them play.
> But the football analogy is weak.  I appreciate your points about the
> differences between corporate Microsoft and open source Linux.  Talking
> about winners and losers conceals that they aren't even playing the same
> game.
> You say that Linux has never been affected by Microsoft.  I wonder if this
> will continue to be true now that Microsoft is specifically targeting
> Linux.  No, I'm not sure what they can do to Linux, but I imagine it is
> more than zero.  On the other hand, maybe Microsoft's public relations are
> so tenuous right now that they can't do anything overtly evil, lest they
> be classed with tobacco companies and child pornographers.
> It's great to hear you say that someday all software will be open source.
> I hope you are right.
> I can't resist a parting shot, though.  Why aren't all books free
> already?  For example, surely the academic community at large could band
> together and create an "open-source" biology textbook, but students still
> pay fifty or a hundred bucks a pop for the lastest edition from Mr.
> Science.  If the open source concept is in and of itself invincible, why
> do academics of all people copyright everything they write?
> In this light, the altruism of the open source community is even more
> astonishing, and even more admirable.
> I wonder what broader effects it might have if open source software took
> over the computer world.  Maybe software is just the beginning...
> -Fritz
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