On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 07:47:27 -0800, perdurabo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On a related topic, I'm tired of the FUD from both sides. While I > think Microsoft can afford to engage in FUD, I believe its a lethal > waste of resources for the OSS community to do so, of which it's been > doing a lot lately.
Yes. > I have serious concerns about this new OSS trend of engaging in FUD. I > think that's just what Microsoft wants to happen. They want to > distract the enemy... and they are. Microsoft has always struck me as a conspiracy of effect rather than one of intent. IOW they don't have a five minute hate of Linus and RMS every morning after the tai-chi; it's just that everyone who works there and participates in the culture knows that they have to be competitive, and acts to make that happen within their horizon. > Most OSS enthusiasts and developers I talk to have NO clue about the > current state of Microsoft's products. They crack jokes about Windows > and flaws and bugs that were long fixed, or that refer to the > now-ancient DOS-based Windows 9x operating systems. They have no clue > about http.sys or how IIS 6 is designed (hint: they paid a lot of > attention to Apache) or how Windows 2003 is designed, or how > rock-solid it is, or whats coming in SP1, or the SCW (Microsoft's > beginning of an answer to SELinux). Have they started to solve the mobile code problem in any significant way? > Disclaimer: I'm platform-agnostic and use everything. I just want the > FUD to stop and I want real, healthy, unbridled competition, because > this is where each party truly excels. I'm not platform agnostic, I have a strong and clear bias for systems that allow process visibility and error discovery, of the last few times I've used windows in a work setting (XP SP2 ) it's gotten better, but it's still not suited for direct exposure to the public internet. The main technical criticism of Microsoft that has resonance for me is their disdain of open file formats and their attempts to undermine (embrace+extend) publicly arrived at standards. (I still think that MS' treatment of w3c standards is a scandal that has set back innovation on the user visible portions of the internet) When the standard windows tools still screw up something as basic as editing a plain text file, there is something deeply wrong. _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
