Re: Why Microsoft is a Threat to Freedom

From: Leevi Marttila (lm+mail@sip.fi)
Date: Wed Nov 05 1997 - 21:52:55 MST


"Lee Daniel Crocker" <lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net (none)> writes:

> Actually, I suspect that backward compatibility will be one of the
> major things that cripples MS, and one of the reasons Linux has failed
> so miserably to be the contender. When consumers start realizing that
> small smart $20 products can accomplish their needs without the great
> edifice of MS-DOS 7.1 (aka Windows 98) or the outrageuously bloated
> X/Motif, or the process overhead of Unix, the limited application base
> of new systems will matter less and less.

Why you say Linux has failed?
It grows quite fast.
>From http://www.redhat.com/redhat/linuxmarket.html
>end of 1993 100,000
>1994 500,000
>1995 1,500,000
>1996 3,000,000 to 5,000,000

There is project underway that is going to allow alternatives to X:
http://synergy.foo.net/~ggi/

>From http://synergy.foo.net/~ggi/docs/faq.html
>Just about any sort of API or GUI can be written to use the GGI. A
>GGI-using X server, for example, would have its own set of dynamic
>userspace libraries specifically optimized for X. All X programs
>continue to run without any changes, but at the same time they
>(through the GGI-optimized X server) enjoy the advantages of GGI.

I would like to call free software market really free and
unrestrained. Different projects can use each others ideas and even
use code freely even if they are competing (ideas:Linux/FreeBSD, ideas
and code:Gnome/KDE).

-- 
LM lm+signature@sip.fi


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