Lionscribe wrote:
Well it's a question between Capitalism & Socialism.
Yes, this is precisely the mindset I was talking about ;-) This FUD was
quite popular 10 years ago. The GPL is a cancer was a good one too :-)
Usualy Capitalism is more successful.
This may work well in material world (where marginal production costs
are not zero) but it is not as good recipe in virtual world (the world
of 'intellectual property').
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all
Though OpenSource projects are great for the savvy, they usualy are not
successful with end consumer.
For example, Linux may be great for servers which are maintained by techs, but
it will never be a real option for the average Joe. The reason, is there is not
much money to be made.
So for a PDA OS, stop OpenSource talking,
Uh, maybe you did not notice but Linux made quite good inroad in
embedded space and PDA OSes in recent years. Guess what's behing new
system from Palm. Guess what's behind Android. Guess what behing random
piece of consumer electronics (home routers, dvd players, ..) Almost
everybody is using linux now despite the fact that other systems are
leaner and technically better. Why? Also guess why Nokia made Symbian
open source and pushes Maemo. Guess why we have sources to QNX.
There are very few companies that can write their own OS and their own
web browser and do OS customization to current hardware in real time.
Open source is a way to keep up with technological pace. Not the only
one but quite good one and maybe currently the best one.
In no way could Palm make OMAP3 based smartphone with their in-house
operating system and be ready by now. Same with web browser which
supports recent standards needed for the javascript based world they
planned for us :-)
and start finding investors.
Good luck with that :-)
We may disagree here but IMO the classic Palm OS is on quick way to
extinction just as OS/2, Amiga OS, BeOS were few years ago. It is quite
hard to build business around such operating system.
IMO the only way to prevent such extinction is make it open source and
hope someone will join to keep it alive. And good luck with that too,
there are plenty of other operating systems to hack on. I feel the "Are
you feeling special?" subject is still quite on spot here ;-)
Frantisek
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