On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 16:54, Robert Donovan wrote: > RBW1 wrote: > > >Heh, interesting take... > > > >The good news... > >History is NOT over! > >http://tinyurl.com/3kkma > > > >RBW > > > > > > > After reading this article, the word that keeps coming to my mind is > balderdash. Even if one accepts, as the reason for Linux's lack of > widespread acceptance, the author's premise that it was the Linus > Torvalds as single-handed open-source god myth, which I was never aware > of, even during the height of the .com bubble when such rhetoric got > positively ethereal, I have yet to have any of my customers to whom I > have managed to get to try open source solutions base the decision to > try it on political correctness or the history of Linus Torvalds. They > choose to try it, or not, based on how well it demonstrates an ability > to meet their needs at reasonable cost(one of those needs, at least > initially, being interoperability with Windows). It is the fact that > open source products(Linux or otherwise) can deliver on those fronts > that is fueling wider acceptance of Linux. The author does finally get > around to this in the article, but the idea that Linux needs to be > politically correct, or that some myth about how Torvalds created it > needs to be abandoned, in order to succeed strikes me as ludicrous. In > my experience, if there is any perception that has changed about Linux, > it's that linus is so hard to use that you have to be a dyed-in-the-wool > computer nerd, programmer, or IT expert to be able to use it. I think > the big "social tipping point" is that people are finally realizing that > Unix/Linux is not hard. It's just not Windows. That coupled with the > seeping awareness of what it is possible to do for little or no cost in > the way of desktop publishing(Scribus), groupware(Novell edirectory, > group-office, egroupware), Databases(MySQL), video > conferencing/streaming(H323 server/gnomeeting, Open LDAP, ffmpeg, VLC), > photo editing/graphics(Gimp, Blender, POV-Ray) and the more mundane > office stuff like word processing, spreadsheets, and > presentations(OpenOffice.org, StarOffice) is tipping the balance. That's > just my opinion, and I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. > > Robert Donovan
I think you are correct too, but could he just (in a round about way) be saying the "tipping point" will have some element of "sizzle" to go with the steak you mentioned? It is my experience so far that the masses will use what they are used to long after it is demonstrably not their best choice... And up until something sexy says, "That's hot" (to which I respond, "please shoot me ;^). RBW -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
