On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Shlomi Loubaton wrote: > > For sure, part of the remarks are true, but DebianInstaller is > > becoming really more friendlier....so newbies are a target.... > > > > Remember also that several institutions have chosen Debian as a basis > > for custom distribution, for instance in educative environments (see > > the SkoleLinux project, some french projects and the spanish region of > > Estramadure general project of deploying Linux stations nearly > > everywhere). > > Well, in Israel, right now, the government and educational system are only > using linux and openoffice to get better dealsfrom M$ and that gets me very > pissed off > =\ >
Why should it? If Microsoft lowers its price, it would be good for the customers, who can get the software at a sane price. And it would be good for us and here's why: Microsoft now faces competition from the open source world in which a large number of contributors (either such that are getting paid or such that do that in their own time) produce a large amount of free (as in beer and speech) programs of an excellent quality that is only getting better in time. Now Microsoft's business model is built on selling such bit buckets for an insane price, in the hope of making a profit. Now, if you say: "You want me to buy WinXP Profesionnal + MS Office for $700 per seat? No, that's too much (costs more than the hardware). I'll use Linux and OpenOffice instead." and Microsoft says: "No, no, $500? $300? $100? Twenty?" they'll have to lower their prices - perhaps even globally (like what happened in Thailand). Now Bit Buckets are not made of gold. Reproducing them costs an absolute zero. So, let's drive these bit buckets into their proper price-frame, and make sure we can get them for a reasonable price. I'm not a free software bigot. I think the first and foremost quality a software should have is that it would "just work": be bug-free, stable, behave like the user expects it to behave, be a joy to work with, etc. Microsoft Excel is an example of such a program. So are KDE, bash, Mozilla, and many other open source packages. Now, if we can get a software that just works and is superior than the alternatives (whether OSS or not) for a cheaper price, why should it not be good? Of course, I would prefer if the Government would try to convert as many people to OpenOffice or Linux, so they'll be motivated to fill in the gaps. If I were the government, I would have demanded Microsoft to either reduce their prices globally in Israel, or suffer the consequences. Note that I never support closed formats. They are a major form of headaches, and even Microsoft got a bad reputation for lack of proper backwards compatibility between its (at least Hebrew) office versions. A vendor should always document his formats or else I'll never choose to buy his products. (albeit it's perfectly legitimate for others to burn themselves at that - it's a free world.). And as Microsoft sells software for cheaper, so will its profits decrease, and it will need to find a better business model, port its software to UNIXes, or simply adopt open standards and technologies (without embrace and extend) instead of inventing more and more proprietary layers, which they eventually have to maintain at the precious time of more and more developers it is required to hire: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hackers-il/message/3556 Regards, Shlomi Fish ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/ Writing a BitKeeper replacement is probably easier at this point than getting its license changed. Matt Mackall on OFTC.net #offtopic. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
