Re: LINUX is the "one" ? .... Comments??? -- MIDRANGE-L

On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 11:52:43PM -0500, Steve Richter wrote:
> Was Visual Basic innovative?

No. IDEs predate the PC.

> What about the Win32 api,

An API that very few people understand fully, and changes incompatibly with
every revision, is a feature?

> unicode built into the OS

Big fat hairy deal.

> COM as a way for applications to expose their interfaces,

This was done before M$ did it, by OS/2 and some Unix frameworks.

> the ability to automate excel and word using COM.

Again, OS/2 beat them to the punch.

> Network neighborhood

Unix systems with NFS had this in the early 1990s, even before Windows for
Warehouses...er...Workgroups.

> long file names

Unix had this in 1985.

> MSDN

Nothing innovative here. Vendors had knowledgebases (though not under that
fancy name), code repositories, and access to beta code in the 1960s.

> FrontPage as a way for end users to build web pages.

This is not a feature either. FP is nothing more than a way to lock users
into IIS, which, in turn, is nothing more than a gaping collection of
security holes masquerading as a web server. Further, WYSIWYG HTML editors
predate FrontPage.

> And now there is .NET and XML as a native data source/sink.

M$ XML is not anyone else's XML; there are numerous incompatibilities
designed, once again, to lock people into using M$ products.

> Microsoft succeeds because it reinvests its profits and continually improves
> its products.

For very small values of "improves"; they mainly succeed because of
licensing terms that mandate people keep paying, and paying, and paying.
Does your company subscribe to Licensing 6? Any improvements are more than
offset by the new sets of bugs introduced with each new version.

Bill Gates has said that new versions of M$ software are not intended to fix
bugs. No other software developer would even *think* of making such a
statement, let alone get away with it.

> JT has made a good point here.  What innovation has come out of the open
> source movement?

The foundation software of the Internet is all Open Source. I'm not speaking
of the OS, but rather the various service programs that provide things like
email, DNS service and resolution, and Web service. (Nobody in their right
mind runs IIS on a server exposed to the public. Doing so is asking to be
cracked.)

> the browser was created by a for profit company

Others have debunked this one.

> ( and tightly integrated with the PC OS, as it should be, by MS ).

As a monopolistic tactic, designed to destroy what M$ saw as competition.
This is not opinion; it's documented fact, proven in court (and affirmed by
the appeals court).

*NO* user program should be integrated into the OS. This is a fundamental
design principle. User programs that are integrated into the OS are security
and reliability exposures. One need look no farther than M$ crapware to see
that.

I'm no "free software" zealot, but I've sent M$ my last dollar. The last two
computers I purchased were Macs.