On Tue, 2004-04-06 at 06:00, Andrew Jorgensen wrote: > On Mon, 2004-04-05 at 17:28, Bryan Murdock wrote: > > This is pretty much the point I've been trying to make. You can bet > > that if Dell and HP committed to selling PC's with Linux pre-loaded > > that they would lean their considerable weight on any hardware vendors > > to get Linux support, and they would get it. And if you doubt they've > > got some weight to throw around, just the fact that they sell any > > desktop with Linux pre-installed shows they can lean on Microsoft, let > > alone some pitiful little webcam company. > > I dunno, it seems like they would only throw their weight at the vendors > they use, so intel, ati, creative, lexmark, and a handful of others. The > rest would follow eventually, of course, but the problem is that Dell > will have no issues with proprietary drivers, so Open Source is in the > same boat it was always in.
Yes, I think you are right here. The push for "all software should be free" and the push for "Linux must dominate the desktop market" are two different aims. Of course if all software became free then it is likely that Linux would dominate the desktop market (or an open source version of MS-Windows once they see the light?), but Linux could dominate without all open source drivers or apps. Richard Stallman would tell the community that we shouldn't sell our souls in order to take over the desktop market, but if free software is ever going to compete with proprietary on the desktop, without commercial vendors' tainted help, then we better have the snazziest, fastest, most reliable, easiest to use system out there, by far. I don't see open source software on the path to success in that area without some major, hard, not-fun, work being done, which will be hard for volunteers working for free to do. Bryan ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
