From: rlm@helen.helen.surfcty.com (Robert L. McMillin) Subject: Re: The best way to "support Linux"! Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1993 01:34:19 GMT
In article <1993Mar22.073330.29968@cronkite.ocis.temple.edu> jwiegand@moe.eng.temple.edu (James Wiegand) writes:
> In article <93080.234610K11111I@ALIJKU11.BITNET> K11111I@ALIJKU11.BITNET writes:
> >
> >Apple started as an electonic toy of two boys. As we can see goals may change.
> >But there should be room for everybody.
> >
> >My opinion is that products from Microsoft suffer mainly on the internal
> >structure and strong possition of Microsoft, not that they are commercial
> >products.
>
> Sorry to do this publicly, folks,
No you're not...
> but I must point out ED has an egregious
> deficit of perspicacity.
... snore ... you done yet?
> Not only does he demonstrate publicly his lack
> of foresight, but he also attempts to demean those who do. The phenomena
> of linux, which I call cooperative development, is the wave of the future.
> Its participants form a quality circle of truly international
> circumference. Those on the outside only serve to make themselves more
> noticeable in their exclusion.
Blah, blah, blah. Fifty dollar words won't make up for the fact that
Linux is no more than a very good hobbyist Unix. Neither SCO nor
Univel are particularly worried by Linux. They haven't any reason to
be. If you have the time and knowledge to hack Linux to make it go,
fine. If not, you're hosed -- or you get to pay somebody else to do
it for you, and big bucks, too, since Linux is an odd system with
spotty, contradictory, and often wrong documentation.
In simple terms, nobody's really accountable. If, for instance, GNU
emacs' sendmail function is broken in the SLS distribution (which it
is), *I* the end user have to figure this out and fix it. Who fixes
this if I can't? The answer I get from the net is "Don't complain,
somebody is doing this to be nice." Well, that's not good enough if
I'm supposed to make my livelihood with Linux. It's one thing to have
low levels of accountability in an essentially voluntary organization,
and quite another when money's at stake.
And as for foresight: even Mr. Stallman has discovered that the long
green goes a long way in getting people to do work. Cooperative
development my eye -- I want a paycheck!