Re: PC WEEK: The case against Linux?

Robert Harley (Robert.Harley@inria.fr)
Wed, 27 May 1998 10:05:56 +0200 (MET DST)


Joachim Feise wrote:

>Opinions, anyone?

Yep. For a start anything from zdnet is garbage.

John Taschek:
>Sorry, you're not going to find a case against Linux here -- there's
>simply not much of one to be made. It's a good operating system. [...]

Yay.

>But even so, market dynamics will cause it to falter.

Nay.

"Market dynamics" do not apply. Bandwidth to ftp.kernel.org applies!

>But Linux is a communist operating system in a capitalist society.

Sounds doubleplusungood. I s'pose Linus is going to lead a Finnish
takeover of the Kola peninula to revive the concentration camps there
and start chucking the bourgeoisie into them.

>Its popularity is going to lead toward its fragmentation. There are
>several for-sale versions of Linux available. For example, both Corel
>and Interbase said they'd support Red Hat Linux. Does this leave
>Caldera in the dust? [etc.]

Uhh... Linux is Linux is Linux. In what way is Red Hat vs. Caldera
supposed to matter?

Corel is developping on StrongARM chips. So what? They are releasing
their source code under GPL so anyone can compile for x86, PPC,
Sparc... Alpha may or may not need some 64-bitness patches.

>What about the other for-sale Linux distributors, each of which has
>access to the original source code, and each of which can modify it to
>their liking?"

What about 7 million Linux users who all have "access to" the original
source code? They'll modify it to their liking and put their patches
on ftp sites and pick and mix (8 million and counting) the best
variants so everyone benefits. 9 million.

Bye,
Rob.
PS: 10 million.