On 14/Nov/2006, at 7:57 PM, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
May I refer you to the excellent talk on 'Why Userspace Sucks',
from the
Ottawa Linux Symposium?[0, 1]
Of course, the problem with features is excarbated by the complexity
added by said features, which those users do not pay the price for.
That price is paid for by those who run computers securely, ISPs,
ESPs,
fraud victims, etc.
Users pay the price in buying newer hardware, in time spent while
software initialises, in buggier software, anti-virus software,
bandwidth used by spam and viruses, ...
Having not the bandwidth to download those files, I'll leave it to
you to summarise their contents.
However, I must note that you're conflating unrelated issues. More
features != less security. Security is the result of several factors,
primary among them being marketshare, and more features only cause a
tendency (and not an uncontrollable one) for more issues to pass
through to a production release.
Users paying for newer hardware regularly is a good thing, I say.
Some of the wonderful things computers do for us would not have been
possible with older hardware, and the new hardware would not have
been affordable if there was no mass adoption. Ergo, anything which
convinces large masses to upgrade periodically is good for those
masses as a whole, even if specific individuals will whine about what
it's costing them this time.
See, much as I like pointing out my non-dependence on Microsoft's
wares, I can't escape the fact that I owe the luxury of this smug
attitude, and the relative affordability of whatever superior
equipment I may use, to the success of the very thing I decry.
How could I claim superiority in Thinking Different if everyone else
claimed the same? Where would the space for Linux or GNU be if
Microsoft itself peddled open source from the beginning? (Or indeed
Microsoft against its predecessors.)
A self-declared superior cult can only exist by virtue of it not
being destined for the mainstream. The cult has its finer points,
sure, but its claims of generic superiority fall flat when faced with
the real test: of mass adoption. If Linux is making any inroads into
the desktop market today, it is by shunning the cultist attitude of
performance over features, as your own examples of OpenOffice and
GNOME illustrate.
--
Kiran Jonnalagadda
http://jace.seacrow.com/
