On 28 abr, 09:39, Christian Edward Gruber <[email protected]> wrote: > I should point out that opinali seems to have missed my comment. I > actually think linux is a platform with merit. And yet, it's got crap > for desktop adoption rates. THAT was the point. That adoption rates > are not caused by merit of the platform. It was an ironic/sarcastic > re-statement of the form used to critique Objective-C by correlating > its adoption with its value... two things that, regardless of your > specific opinion on the language, have no demonstrably causal > connection. Likewise with Linux, NeXTSTEP, BeOS Amiga, OpenBSD, or > any other platform that has some merit in one or more ways, and yet, > failed to be adopted against its various competitors in its perceived > competitive category at a given time.
I have understood the irony, got that you consider Linux to be "a platform with merit". The confusion was in the big "platform" term, which I tried to fix by separating the core OS and its userland/ desktop stack. Anyway, it's absurd to claim that there is _zero_ causal connection from merit to adoption. Of course there are other factors (marketing, etc.) and sometimes these "non-intrinsic" facors may prevail; I didn't claim that merit=>success was a hard rule with 100% efficiency. But if you look at the adoption of Objective-C, you won't find any major external forces that you can blame for Obj-C's embarrassing failure to gain ANY significant market share, in ANY period, in platforms where it was not mandated. That's the fact, the rest is hypothesis but I'd expect some common sense to prevail - one must be a real Obj-C zealot to not see any evidence that this language's poor adoption is caused by its lack of merits. if Apple Computer had gone bankrupt a few years ago (it almost did before the iMac ressurrection), Objective-C would be a long forgotten language today. And while we're at it: there are strong reasons for the failure of your other examples. For Amiga, see Arstechnica's excellent series a few years ago (http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/07/a-history- of-the-amiga-part-1.ars). BeOS was created with a bold business plan of "Apple will be forced to buy us for any exorbitant price" but Jobs was the better poker player. BSD is a great but narrow system, it just doesn't appeal to many people. Linux _is_ widely adopted where it is competitive - look the gazillions of LAMP servers out there. By the way, Microsoft has invested a decade attempting to destroy Linux (not to mention clowns like SCO) and it didn't work, Linux has survived and thrived, greatly because of its merits (technology + community). > Linux's mobile success has, again, little to do with its being > "Awesome" in any particular way, but it being free, open, yadda yadda, > and therefore aligned with the profit motive of the vendor (most), or > the ideology of the vendor (Google). Its difference from Symbian and > WinMob is that it's free to use. And SymbianOS for years outstripped > it, so it's a long-game that it's winning on an economic argument. > Clearly it's a great platform for this, but that's not how it won, I > don't believe. Notice that the "plain" Linux, by itself, was never a big successful mobile OS, even with some early adoption stories mostly in Asia. It is becoming a good mobile OS now, with extensive tweaking and investment from players like Google, Nokia and Intel. Android is not "just Linux"; MeeGo is not "just Linux". Even their kernels are very customized (a huge fork). But Linux was still chosen as a cornerstone, due to its merits (both technical and community etc.). A+ Osvaldo > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group > athttp://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
