He gives the story of Watson vs Sherlock. But what if sherlock was someone's open source/free project. What is the difference from the viewpoint of the "sharecropper" between having the rug pulled out from under you by a new piece of software that gets added to windows and a free version that someone develops. To the end user, they both look free (as in beer of course.)
If Sherlock was someones open source/free software, then it would not be distributed and "integrated" into the OS. Thus both apps would have to compete on fair grounds. On OS should be a totaly open and application agnostic foundations. An OS needs to have all of its internals available for anyone to build upon and not as a means for a monopoly to take over another part of the playing field. Look at how much MS is controlling and how much more they are taking. They "integrated" a browser to suck up that market and broke away from being standards compliant to lock 90% of the desktop market into using thier browser. They are now "integrating" media player to steal the market way from WinAmp and RealPlayer. They have now purchased an anti-virus app to "integrate" into the os to kill off McAfee and Norton. The sad thing is that Norton and McAfee have put all thier eggs into the MS platform and then MS does a move like this and will render Norton's and McAfee's offerings almost worthless. This is the major problem with a monopoly and this is why I don not support them. I am amazed at how many people continue to be blind to this fact. If people started moving to an OS that was open and agnostic to what applications a user wants to run, then the hardware and software vendors would follow and have thier products on those platforms in no time. They will go where the demand is. For the most part they have stayed with the MS platform because of the monopoly. Every new consumer PC that has been sold for years has only been allowed to have an MS OS on it. MS will not stop until they own every major IT market or we stop them. The government will not stop them because all MS has to do us up thier
bribes [opensecrets.org]
like they did during thier anti-trust case and they will be fine. Start to learn Linux and/or *BSD now. Get your friends and family members to do the same. Email hardware and software makers demanding support for Linux/*BSD. This is the only way to bring choice back.
We're all potentially... (Score:5, Insightful)
He gives the story of Watson vs Sherlock. But what if sherlock was someone's open source/free project. What is the difference from the viewpoint of the "sharecropper" between having the rug pulled out from under you by a new piece of software that gets added to windows and a free version that someone develops. To the end user, they both look free (as in beer of course.)
Re:We're all potentially... (Score:4, Interesting)