'Commercial Partners'
Eric S. Raymond
esr at thyrsus.com
Sun Apr 2 05:48:28 UTC 2006
Andy Green <andy at warmcat.com>:
> >wants the desktop and what it's prepared to do to get it. It ties
> >into a larger issue about what the Linux community needs to do to
> >thrive under competitive pressure, which *is* a question for Fedora.
>
> What does "competitive pressure" mean in the context of a Free OS?
Competitive pressure for market share from Windows and MacOS, of course.
> >This doesn't make me infallible, of course, but it does mean betting
> >that I'm wrong this time is not something to do casually.
>
> Well good for you, but it doesn't get you a free ride on your dramatic
> characterizations of "Death of Linux Unless Y'all Do As I Say". If you
> spoke of anything to explain the reasoning behind the proposition of
> Linux dying unless it gets on a large number of desktops quickly on this
> thread, I missed it.
I think I explained this in some datail earlier. We need market power
in order to stave off a future where we get DRMed and EULAed to death
because hardware manufacturers figure all they have to do is serve the
Windows & Intel Mac markets. Down that road lie video cards we can't
use and on-the-mobo TPM to lock us out.
> - Why shouldn't a dramatic growth of Linux on the Desktop have the
> opposite effect of triggering an apocalypse of attacks from MSFT on
> their various desktop-related patents?
That will happen once we do *anything* to piss off Microsoft enough,
whether it's the fast-growth scenario I want to see or the boil-the-frog-
slowly scenario you think is good enough. So it's kind of a wash.
> - Why is the current frog-boiling method while Linux and the Free apps
> improve and establish themselves deeper and deeper not good enough?
Because it's not getting us any desktop penetration to speak of.
> - In your theory, is Linux in the embedded space going to die too
> because MSFT continue to have ~90% of desktops?
No, but lots of Linux in the embedded space doesn't solve our problem either.
Puts no pressure on the video-card makers, for one thing.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
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