RE: The status quo and the future...

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002, Nicolay, Paul wrote:

> Free, free and free is the only reason that one even talks about Linux...

Free as in price or free as in free speech (gratis vs. libre)?  People
talk about linux and other projects for both reasons.  And both are worth
talking about;  people giving away time and work for free;  a political
movement in technology.  Though this is not the list to talk about them.

> and definitely not the quality of the OS (then they would better talk about

What ways is linux low quality?  Stability?  It is as stable as OS/400.
Useability?  More people use it than OS/400.  Flexibility?  It is used in
more diverse environments than any other software I know of.  Scalability?
Perhaps in the upward direction it is less scalable, but it is far more
scaleable downward.  What defines quality?

> OS/400), not the fact that it is open source (another hype... just guess how
> many people are really capable of reading, or writing kernel code), not the

Well I would look through the kernel source to find out how many are
developing the kernel.  Their names are there.  Quite a few.  Likely more
than develop the kernels of most other OSes.

> number of business applications (if we should be happy with OpenOffice ?),
> not the quality of the GUI (each application has a different key combination
> to quit from it, not to mention the different incompatible desktop
> managers), not...

The point of linux (for me anyway) is not to make you happy, it is to
allow you to make yourself happy.  Change what you dislike, improve what
you do.  Make it work anyway you want.  It is not anyone's job to make
sure you know how, just to make sure that you have the opportunity.

Now come on folks, neither OS/400 nor linux is the One True Solution for
all problems.  Thinking that OS/400 is the greatest thing of all time is a
stupid and ostrich-in-the-sand as me thinking that linux is.  Every
environment has strengths and weaknesses.  Putting RPG and related
abilities on linux would add another strength to an environment with many
diverse strengths.

James Rich
james@eaerich.com