Andy Green <andy(a)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>