*BSD News Article 65837


Return to BSD News archive

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