Re: Micro$oft decommoditizing things -- a solution?
Kevin Grant wrote:
> the Debian development
> community is much better suited to develop an extended standard for HTML
> that includes the desired new special effects, but is still backwards
> compatible with the old stuff.
Let's remember that the Debian development community is busily tending
to a GNU/Linux distribution. I don't believe it is anything close to
extending open standard markup languages, etc. Let open standards
bodies do that.
> Possibly even short circuiting M$'s attempts at developing a
> propriatary standard of their own. Particularly if the Debian people
> supply executables (with source) that work with Debian, and Red Hat, and
> Windows XX.
I doubt seriously that Debian developers will be turning out Win32 apps
any time soon. Again I don't think application development is
necessarily Debian domain. It seems to me that the core Debian effort
is bringing the Linux OS and GNU software together in an orderly system
based on free software. That is a fairly monumental task considering
all the packages the Debian offers. Debian developers didn't
necessarily write them. It is a GNU/Linux DISTRIBUTION.
>
> Moreover, I think this is the perfect chance for the Debian people to
> use some M$ type marketing tricks against M$, without sacrificing any
> of their principles.
Part of the Halloween documents mention how Microsoft can emulate the
Open Source development (more bazaar/less cathedral). Open Source and
Free Software is doing just fine. I don't see any room for adopting 'M$
type marketing tricks'. One of the many things that strike me so
positively about the GNU/Linux development is the separation of
marketing and developing (Linus talk about this an article somewhere).
This leaves developers to make decisions on 'purely technical merit'.
> but a few of
> the really neat ones are resource intensive enough that will run like
> molasses on a Windows based system.
With so many desktop environments doing sooo much wizz-bang stuff,
molasses is just a few package installs away. The difference in
efficiency between Linux/GNU and Win??** isn't wide enough to push
Microsoft off the desktop. The standard answer to this is to buy a
faster machine. Keeping the bazaar humming along can push Microsoft off
the desktop, eventually.
IBM was dethroned by the implementation of open standards that competed
with IBM's MicroChannel architecture. (Was it EISA that perpetuated in
the clone market?) Microsoft will go that way too. One of the many
reasons Microsoft's OSes are so prevalent on the desktop is that it had
just about the only OS that would run on the Intel hardware. DOS 3.3
ran fine on my 12MHz XT with 640K memory. It was easy for MS to package
a windowing system as apart of the deal. I don't think they charged for
Windows at first.
With so many sheep in the pen, Bill Gates gets to come out and say,
"Thirsty? Pay me." With their customer base becoming more and more
aware of viable alternatives, Microsoft will have to change their game
plan. If it is 'embrace and extend', let them. Their direction will be
based more on marketing than 'purely technical merit'. There code base
will further weaken and require more and more resources to extend. SP4
contains over 6,000 fixes. Damn.
The GNU/Linux future is assured.
jon
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