Linked by Andrew Davis on Mon 22nd Nov 2004 20:12 UTC
I admit that I'm a geek. I use Linux. I use Solaris. I use FreeBSD. At times, I use Windows. And without a doubt, I download and try almost every Linux distribution when they come out. Over the last few years, I've tried all of the RedHat/Fedora releases, 2 different Lindows/Linspire releases, Mandrake, Gentoo, Xandros, Suse, Ubuntu, and the list goes on.
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An interesting thought. I might be persauded to pay 5 bucks for 30 day's access to a repository of software for my current distribution, but only if it as software not available elsewhere and if it had actually been tested on that distribution.
I want to take exception with the statement that Microsoft's "anti-competitive, monopolistic practices" are responsible for the fact that you can buy Windows software with an expectation that it will work on Windows. You can also buy Macintosh software, too, with the same expectation, but Apple certainly doesn't dominate the PC software market like Microsoft. It's the developers who write and market the software that are responsible for that. Why? Because it is in their interests to sell software that actually works. These are commercial environments and people and corporations make their money marketing software. That's not the case in a large, perhaps predominant, portion of the Linux arena. Part of the ethos of Linux and open source is that developers write the code that they, as individuals, want to write. If it works for them, but no one else, tough, that's the end of it. The developer has no incentive to repair or improve his work. This doesn't apply, certainly, to commericial distributions like SUSE and RedHat, or to Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu and other distributions supported and maintained by large numbers of responsible people, some of whom are actually drawing salaries.