Linked by Mystilleef on Mon 29th Sep 2003 06:30 UTC
Linux will become ubiquitous in the year 3000. Okay, that was a horrible joke. Linux is just a kernel, the engine that runs an operating system. By itself, it is essentially useless. Kernels shouldn't be discussed or noticed by normal users. And as such when providing these users with reviews, previews and "professional" opinions, computer consultants, computer reviewers and computer journalists should not spew headlines like "Linux is not ready for prime time", "Linux on the desktop by XXX", "Linux to takeover Windows", "Linux is not ready for desktop" and so on.
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Well, I'm sure MS does some insane UI analysis and that is what counts. I used to use Trillian as my IM, but I recently switched back to Messenger. Trillian was amazing. It supported all format, had skinning, had groups/sub groups, user naming...
Pardon my non-techniess, but MSN has easy to launch checkers and head-2-head mine sweeper. It also has the best feature, most UI feature. File transfers, games are not presented to the user using in your face message boxes, but with inline text in ur chat window.
Yeah, I was willing to dump all the great features of Trillian, including subgroups...as I rarely used any of it.
But as to the other aspect of the editorial about open source itself...Coding will never be what Joe Schmoe will be intersted in. If there is somthing he wants in a project, he's not going to take the time to go into the code.
Don't flame this part---anyone got any real stats for it.
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Most projects, whether Open Source or not, typically relegate themselves to a contained development team. I would imagine the actual # of active, capable developers working on the linux kernal is about the same or less than those working for MS.
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My only real issue with the Open Source is that's based on a world which no longer exists. Yes, you can make loads of money on service using Open Source. But that really only applies to corporations. Its that only philosophy or some company selling you a telephone relay: The software is just part of the phone relay...not an entity on its won. Similarily with IBM servers...
But the desktop market is not service based. I buy a game or whatever, I am buying the software for its software application. Unreal 2003 does nothing real...but does great things in software. Hence, for it to make money, it has to sell the software itself. Applications like that could never became open source and be profitable. Unfortunately, that is the desktop market.
Yamin