On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 09:50:54PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote:
> In the case of Google, their releasing source simply doesn't let me
> improve Google--period.
This is entirely misleading.
Microsoft releasing the source code to Windows doesn't let you improve
Windows--period, in this sense either. You have no control at all over
what Microsoft release and get pre-installed on systems, and even with
all their source code, you as an individual almost certainly don't have
the resources to compete with them in any more than a token manner.
The benefits you can get from the Windows source code are _exactly_
the same in nature as those you obtain from the Google source code.
> There's nothing that can be done about this.
> This applies to most "web apps", since the fundamental reason most web
> apps are web apps is either a) the server takes a lot of resources to
> run (Google), or b) the server connects a bunch of people together (eg.
> an IRC server). (case 1)
In particular, Windows likewise takes a lot of resources to maintain and
support; and people often only want to connect a few people together
-- which is why web servers and IRC servers are useful in Intranets,
as well as for {www,irc}.debian.org.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
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