On Thu, 28 Feb 2002 08:23:37 Navin Dhanuka wrote: > >It is M$ Win, becuase of which the personal computing >has spread to millions of houses. [and u curse them for mkaing money, and >call ruthless ... ..] >It M$ Win was not there, then I guess computing, Internet etc. >must have been a distant dreams for all of us. >Can't remember which **ix company made any efforts in sprading computing >
Personal computing didn't spread as much because of Windows as because of the cheaply available PCs and the easy availablity of compatible hardware components. And that's because PC became an open standard in Hardware. If you still think otherwise, Mac came up with a GUI and mouse much earlier than MS. Mac users still swear by the ease of use that Mac OS offers. Why then aren't we all using Macs? AFA the business model of GPL is considered, well, just concentrate on what Trevor is saying - promotion of Open Software in Schools/Colleges. What are you taught in Schools/Colleges? Basic fundamentals like Algorithms, PLs etc. Do we really need VC++ to teach somebody to program in C++? Of course not. People learn DBMS starting with Oracle / MS SQL. At UG level, they hardly go beyond SQL 92 Statements. That they can as easily do in PostgreSQL too. And please don't base your arguments on the de facto standard that MS Office has become in Office Apps. Office Apps aren't the end of the world. The user ignorance has reached to such levels that people don't even look at Notepad. They'll use MS Word even for 1-pagers they never intend to print. Isn't HTML good enough for on-screen formatting? When it comes to businesses, just tell me how much money does a company make out of selling mass-market apps? As compared to the custom solutions, this percentage is not too much. And no body stops you from building proprietary solutions on top of Free Software. I can deliver my customer a web application built using PostgreSQL/PHP/Apache and retain all Property rights without violating GPL. That's because my application *uses* free software. It's not *comprised* of it. This is a difference many people fail to understand or choose to ignore while arguing against GPLed software. Schools being the foundation builders that they are should definitely use Free Software so that they can provide better Computer Labs and powerful software without blowing through the school budget or tying the students down to some proprietary software they'd be reluctant to move out of. --- Tahir Hashmi (VSE, NCST) http://tahirhashmi.scriptmania.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________ We, the rest of humanity, wish GNU luck and Godspeed 2,000,000,000 Web Pages--you only need 1. Save time with My Lycos. http://my.lycos.com _______________________________________________ http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
