When will you guys understand, that Linux becoming OS #1 is our worst nightmare?
Being #1 means that the system needs to be adapted to grandma, not us. If it has to sell to the masses, it has to be adopted to the masses.
It's enough to see how the main Linux distros have changed over the last years, along with its growing popularity, to understand, that if Linux will beat Windows one day, it will in fact be the same thing.
And suppose that Red Hat would totally rewrite some small central part of the kernel, making it deliberately incompatible, and not release the source? And then market it agressively with bells and whistles? Who would care that the kernel is not free to copy anymore, because of one little module, which is truly copyrighted?
Run that by me again, if you may, my good man.
How, pray, can RedHat close source the kernel? Let's assume (and this is a truely difficult assumption to make) that they manage automagically move all of the developers to any tiny change they make in the kernel. Let's further assume that they make an incompatible kernel. How can they restrict it? How can they not release the source?
It's so easy to turn Linux into a closed-source system.
I'll wait for your reply to make up my mind about that statement. I don't see how, right now.
Remeber - the point behind free software is and was never that it will be good for "us quircky geeks". The point was that it was not controlled exclusively by anyone. Eli's jump from making the system user friendly to making it proprietary is not clear to me.
So let's be careful about our ambitions, shall we?
Eli
-- Shachar Shemesh Open Source integration consultant Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/
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