Hardware versus Software (Score 1)

Dear Slashdot.org/com (again), Am continuing to read the 100s of /. posts reacting to my InfoWorld column on Transmeta. Thank you... If I were a big fan of the open source movement, I would worry about the kind of people who seem to be on its side, or at least the majority of those making slashdot posts. Whew. Ugly mob... Hate to be a nit picker, but my name is spelled Metcalfe (with an e on the end) and my columns are at infoworld.com/metcalfe... It is true that I benefit when a lot of people read my columns. It is false that I am a big fan of Microsoft. It is true that I favor engineers and entrepreneurs. It is true that I oppose luddites and marxists (by whatever name). And it's really cruel the way some of you people refer to me as a "has been." Please do not waste even the energy it takes to ignore me... Now, about pigs. In my Transmeta column, I made a perfectly reasonable literary reference to Orwell's Animal Farm, in which certain lead characters happen to be pigs. I am sorry to those in the open source movement who think I called them pigs. Fact is, I live on a farm, and we love our pigs. Dogs look up to people, cats look down on people, but pigs is equal, we say. It was in the same neutral way that I have likened Microsoft to a skunk... Also, there seems to be confusion about the difference between hardware and software, which these days isn't much. Transmeta itself says that Crusoe is mostly software... So why shouldn't Crusoe mask sources be open? Many people have written that people can change Linux but not Crusoe, so Linux can be open but not Crusoe. But most people using Linux (99%+) don't look at the sources, and would never think of changing them. Similarly Crusoe. But were Crusoe to be open, other chip makers could access Crusoe sources, they could help debug them, help evolve them, be free to customize them, competitively manufacture them -- you know, all that good open source stuff. So, why not? Seems to me that all arguments against Crusoe being open apply to Linux as well... /Bob Metcalfe