Just my two cents for the discussion... While I dislike Microsoft's business practices, its mentality of "we are the sole innovator", and most specifically, its very poor operating system design, it is here to stay. We use Windows when it is the best tool for a particular job, and there is no shame in that. The sad part of the entire mess is that a lot of people, and indeed the general public, have the perception that FOSS and Microsoft are bitter enemies. We aren't enemies at all, as there is plenty of FOSS software for the Windows OS. We simply disagree as to philosophy of licensing and standardization. A number of very charasmatic people, like Richard Stallman and Bruce Perens, have elevated this disagreement to the stature of a jihad - with Microsoft as the primary target. Let's be honest, at the very least. Microsoft erased 50 different standards for supremely incompatible operating systems in the 80's. Microsoft was one of the original signatories to POSIX. If Microsoft had never existed, we would live in a very different world today, and not necessarily a better one. I think that while a confrontational style of debate is valuable, I do not believe that it will bring about the change that is so desperately desired. I personally believe that if open source is to succeed in changing the world of software, it must continue on its current path of solid technical and operational achievement. In other words, "talk is cheap". Wasting precious energy chewing old bones is the sport of the reporters and the news media. We have better things to do. The best stance for FOSS to take in my opinion, is similar to Ghandi's philosophy of passive civil disobedience - change through action but not through confrontation. We make software, we do it well, and we have the best licenses based on responsibility to the public. As for the old BSD versus Linux debate, this is as nonsensical as what flavor ice cream is best. BSD comes from a more formal and disciplined community than Linux. They have a different way of doing things. BSD comes from a more strict engineering background. Linux is far less formal, and more accepting of individual contributions. BSD has the attitude of "this is more elegant" and the community is less open to new people. Linux invites everyone to play in the pool, so to speak. I read a BSD user describe Linux once. He said that both approaches have merit. He said since Linux is more chaotic than BSD, so Linux distributions sometimes have problems, but because Linux drives in new directions faster than BSD, Linux goes to places (programmically speaking) that BSD hasn't or won't. This opens new doors for everyone. I prefer to think of BSD as Linux's ever serious older brother. BSD offers advice, but Linux goes its own way. In the end, both systems actually share quite a bit of the same code. For myself, I prefer Linux. I like living on the bleeding edge of code, and finding new ways of doing things. If you are more conservative, then perhaps BSD is for you. I find that either FreeBSD or Linux are very solid OS's and perfect for servers. The only major difference is that FreeBSD likes to compile things in on the fly installs, while Linux typically uses the binary package. It should be noted though, that those are default behaviors - either system can do the other. -- T.J. ==================================================== "I believe C++ instills fear in programmers, fear that the interaction of some details causes unpredictable results. Its unmanageable complexity has spawned more fear-preventing tools than any other language, but the solution _should_ have been to create and use a language that does not overload the whole goddamn human brain with irrelevant details." -- Erik Naggum -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: tj.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 117 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20070130/98ef53bb/attachment.vcf