I agree that we will see the end of Microsoft's monopoly . But the thing to remember is that OSS is a evolutionary process and people will adopt it when they feel that it is useful and productive to them. The real challenge today is the desktop and I believe this be rectified soon. Firefox is making significant progress.
But we should not underestimate the challenge that Microsoft poses despite their avaristic tendencies. Microsoft has tens of billions in cash and their ability to execute marketing plans is second to none in the IT industry. It's hard to take on a company that generates $170 million initial sales from a new game. Unlimited Potential (http://www.microsoft.com/emerging/default.mspx ) is Microsoft's challenge to the one laptop per child initiative. The title says "1 billion people 1 student at a time" or 1 billion people extended and embraced (ie assimilated). The upside is that larger companies see through all their marketing hype and realize that OSS can reduce costs and greater interoperability. I think I do reasonably well for myself. As do a lot of my obstinate and troublemaking KPLUG colleagues. > Yep, and Microsoft just rolls out Vista. My point is that > while occasionaly an exceptional individual may carve out > some choice for themselves providing that choice for others > is a whole lot harder. Sure, and we keep not using it. Standard Oil's day came. Carnegie Steel's day came. AT&T's day came. Microsoft's day will come too. Things are changing. And the Linux folk are helping the change along. Just because the light at the end of the tunnel is a long way off doesn't mean we should stop hiking towards it. >> Freedom isn't free either. > > And many people don't want it and won't pay for it. Those people are welcome to rot in a prison of their own making. -- Tracy R Reed Read my blog at http://ultraviolet.org Key fingerprint = D4A8 4860 535C ABF8 BA97 25A6 F4F2 1829 9615 02AD Non-GPG signed mail gets read only if I can find it among the spam. -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
