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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.bhp.com.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!paladin.american.edu!news.jhu.edu!aplcenmp!netnews.jhuapl.edu!uunet!in2.uu.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!csn!news-1.csn.net!ub!ns1.potsdam.edu!news From: nelson@ns.crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX) Date: 17 Apr 1996 13:58:53 GMT Organization: Crynwr Software Lines: 41 Message-ID: <NELSON.96Apr17095853@ns.crynwr.com> References: <NELSON.96Apr15010553@ns.crynwr.com> <NELSON.96Apr15173839@ns.crynwr.com> <yfg68b0fpqo.fsf@time.cdrom.com> <NELSON.96Apr16100200@ns.crynwr.com> <4l0r9o$4th@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ns.crynwr.com In-reply-to: somsky@dirac.phys.washington.edu's message of 16 Apr 1996 19:09:44 GMT Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:21301 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:572 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3166 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:2978 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:17251 comp.os.linux.advocacy:45292 In article <4l0r9o$4th@nntp5.u.washington.edu> somsky@dirac.phys.washington.edu (William R. Somsky) writes: > In article <NELSON.96Apr16100200@ns.crynwr.com>, > Russell Nelson <nelson@ns.crynwr.com> wrote: > > > > We must win the desktop. You disagree. Oh well. > > > > WHY?!? Why must we "win the desktop"? There is _absolutely_ no reason > to believe that Free Unices can only succeed by "winning the desktop", > unless you narrowly define success as "winning the desktop". Do you think free software is a good thing? Do you believe that it brings benefits that simply are not available through any other business model? Then you should want the most number of people using free software. They use the computers on their desktop; hence my conclusion that we must win the desktop. The other reason is that the more people there are using Linux, the more hardware vendors will be interested in Linux. And the more interest they take, the more interest the magazines will take, and the more users, etc. You can see that it snowballs. And the more support there is for Linux, the more application software there will be. There is NO intrinsic reason why Windows is easier to develop for than Linux. X is no more (or less) complicated than Windows. I might note that there is a Linux version of Quake, but no Windows version. Unix is *written* for developers. We love it! We need to make Unix usable for mere users. Now, I'm not antagonistic to *BSD*, I just note that they got a late start because of their various infighting, and because of the BSD<-->USL lawsuit. The why doesn't matter. The fact is that Linux has a larger market and mind share, and the free OS most likely to win the desktop is Linux. -- -russ <nelson@crynwr.com> http://www.crynwr.com/~nelson Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | PGP ok 11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | If you would seek peace, Potsdam, NY 13676 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | first seek freedom