----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 3:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Win4Lin-users] Re: Upgrade policy
> Hi
>
> Having been Lurking on the List for a bit but not yet having got round to
> rebooting the machine where I intend to install w4l, I am somewhat amused
> by some of the comments about upgrade policy.
>
> Question: Would you rather have a system designed by gearheads and geeks
> or suits? Since most Linux users are at least in spirit gearhead/geeks, I
> imagine the answer is obvious so please don't bother voting, unless you
> are a Florida resident of course and have already been denied the
> possibility if voting once this year.
I meant gearheads in the nicest possible way, but gearheads usually lack
business management skills, especially marketing skills. That's where the
suits are useful and besides, that work keeps them, out of the labs. 8) My
comments were meant to illustrate that Win4Lin was long on technical skill,
not as long on management and marketing; hopefully the recent merger helped
with that.
> Given that the cost is of the order 10% of VMware and offers the same-ish
> facilities to W9x users but much faster, I think a little patience is not
> out of place.
>
My cousin is a lawyer and gives me a courtesy discount of 40%, but I still
expect him to do his work on time. I have a plumber who does most of my work
when he has spare time and I get a break on his fee, but I still get
professional plumbing work. I am not unappreciative of a deal and a good
deal is good for both parties, but a low price does not make shoddy work
acceptable, so I don't quite believe your reasoning applies.
But patience is appropriate in most every case in business as it is the
polite thing to do until the other party's behavior becomes inappropriate,
which it has not here. Their only error was in poor communication, not in
their intent, and they have moved quickly to do the right thing once they
became aware of it. What more can one ask? If only other companies were as
responsive.
> As an aside, will it ever be the case that the patches to the kernel will
> become incorporated as permanent features in all future kernels? It would
> make the product so much easier to install and therefore to market.
> After all, VMware modifications to X to incorporate VMtools are now, I
> believe, included in the later versions of X.
>
My impression is that politics has reared it's ugly head as two different
groups handle X and the kernel. I think that NeTreverse has tried, but has
probably run into "you're not open source" diatribe.
Mandrake would be a logical choice to include the patches by default, but
they have a competing product in the works -- plex86 -- and are probably
not inclined to support NeTraverse. Too bad since everybody loses.
Perhaps a way to deal with it is to get volunteers to patch, test and
produce kernel packages for a specific distro. They could be "rewarded" with
gratis copies of Win4Lin Desktop and Server complete with license at each
update.
Hoyt
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