Re:It's not a question of "friend" or "foe"... (Score 1)

you make some good points here but your argument seems to suffer from over simplification. "In the end, no it doesn't. Linux will stand or fall on it's own, no matter WHAT Sun or Microsoft do" as one of the bigger players in the market place sun does not operate in a vacum. sun's actions in any direction impact other companys. changes in strategies can come about in one organization from anothers actions. i concede that does not neccessarily mean the demise of one corp. or a drastic change in operations in another corp. but adjustments are made. always. take Linux for example. since its inrto in the market, corps. are taking a different look at things. lets take sun; it could be argued that if it weren't for Linux the SCSL would have never happened. sure they had opened up java well before Linux came around. but open java served a neccessary purpose. Flip side of the coin...what if Sun comes out tomorrow and starts open distribution of Solaris. " It will be THEY who are affected by Sun's stance, not GNU, not Linux, not the OSI, not even the moons of Saturn." I know free Solaris is unlikely, but i think it would be a poor assessment to say that it won't impact Linux, m$, IBM, HP, or anyone else if it were to happen. the impact could be positive or negative on any of these and many other companies. however, i agree with you that Sun's understanding of open source is irrelevant. a company's responsibilty is to increase stockholder equity. and i think sun is just trying to do their job. there is much to be said about "If Sun go the OSS route, they have long-term survival. If they don't, they won't". customers want stability, uniformity, backwards compatibility. the statement is too drastic to say that by not following OSS, clients will just dump Sun. I agree that a "complete dump" is a posibility , a remote one, but a possibility. however it could take years, may be a decade or two. And even then the Linux community or others would have to come up with products and services that not only meet but excede Sun's. "the major decisions of top-ranking companies don't move mountains" only explosions move mountains, and only in relatively small pieces. but corp. decisions can impact elections, economies, and more importantly, you and i. if diamler chrysler lays off thirty thuosand people (a major corporate decision) it is unlikely that america or the rest of the world would wake up w/o expos facto changes, in the stock market, car prices, and the direct impact on famiiles. i have been without a job for an extended period of time before. and when i did get a job it seemed as though a mountain had been lifted off my shoulders.