From: Emmanuel Charpentier (manu@cybercable.fr)
Date: Tue Oct 27 1998 - 16:06:59 MST
Randall Randall wrote:
>
> >
> > with the microsoft case we extropians are on the horns of a
> > nasty dilemma. would we prefer bill gates to gain an iron fisted
> > control over practically everything that has a keyboard, or
> > would we prefer big brother (in the form of the federal
> > trade commission) to step in? the comments of those outside
> > the u.s. are most welcome, for you too are effected. spike
Microsoft as a monopoly is bad for the general technology, although
better for the diffusion of technology, as they tend to heavily
concentrate on interfaces and usability.
An exemple of bad effects? Java, corba, html, ansi C, DR DOS,
stacker... and how many others?
Having a very usable OS like windows on all desktop, in synergy with
office is the trump microsoft has been using for a long time. And their
integration with low cost intel.
But as a programmer, I'm biased against them. And yet they do make
some great products, their people are very good in what they are doing,
only their general model of doing business (pay for bugs, improve
because of bugs, bully the resellers, add faked warnings, vaporware...)
is bad.
> Well, as someone who uses a PC with no microsoft software at
> all, I don't think that he'd have much control. :) With no
> intervention at all, I think that Windows will go the way of
> MacOS (which has fewer users now than Linux, IIRC). The only
> reason he got *that* much market share is A) marketing, and
> B) usability. When Linux can match those, it will quickly
> overwhelm Windows, since it already has reliability, stable
> software (mostly), and a fanatical user base.
I'm all for it. Open Source Software is a great chance for a new
model of development, and generally speaking as an economic model.
What do you think, you all great thinkers, about a model of economy
of abundance where the goal is not money but reputation??? (or did you
talk about it before?)
Manu.
(as a side note, linux is still quite tough to use and configure, count
1-2 more years for it to really get into the general market)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:42 MST