Surjo Das wrote: > >> It is just a matter of time. Time changes everything. > > How much time are we talking of here. Microsoft released Windows 95 in > 1995. They predicted that all PC's will be manufactured with pre-loaded > Windows. Now we are in 2007. Red Hat came out with their 6.2 version in > 1999 if I am not mistaken. Everyone dubbed it as the best and stable > release then. Improvements kept happening on that over a period of time. > We are now in 2007. How much will it take to change things.
Question is, what do you want to change? Or, how would you say that "we" have succeeded? IMHO, - Our aim is not to fight Microsoft. - Even if you think we are fighting Microsoft, we are not fighting it just because it is a marketing leader and we are jealous of that. Its simply in our way. :) - We are not specifically after world domination (no matter what Linus joked about :) ). Though it might be a side-effect ;) - We do not want to *force* people to use FOSS. We want to convince them of the non-technical benefits too, apart from technical advantages. This is far more difficult than lying through your teeth and telling people that "You should upgrade, because the new OS *looks* so much better!" We are simply trying to move towards a direction where software is free - in all senses of the word. It takes time and effort to do that and comparison with the closed source world is not just unfair but out of place, because by its very nature, this is a movement mostly backed by volunteers. The FOSS area has changed a lot since the days of RHL 6.2, and yes, it was one of the best FOSS distros at that time. But there have been a lot of good distros in the market since then. And in terms of coverage of the needs of an average computer users, the present FOSS options cover a much bigger swathe of what not just an average computer user would need, but also that of specialized user needs - Edubuntu, Knoppmyth, Ubuntu Studio, etc. Therefore for a lot many people, all their computing needs are adequately satisfied, and this comes with advantages of using FOSS. They can keep their dignity unlike the users of Windows whose status are worse than slaves(XP activation? Vista protected data path? The bad side of OEM licenses?) So stop focusing on market shares etc. for a change, and think deeper of how users are actually benefiting from "improvements" in Windows, and what FOSS is giving them in turn. - Sandip _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [email protected] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
