On Sat, 2008-04-26 at 15:45 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: > Of course there is: provide a stable interface for drivers and cooperate > with instead of subverting the vendors that try to improve your product. This has already happened. Greg Kroah-Hartman is leading up work to ensure it, however they still will not cater to proprietary venders. > Industry can only rape users if there is no competition. Users choose > what they buy. The way to help them is to increase the available choices. There are plenty of choices out there, users don't investigate choices though, they go with whatever is cheaper, or whatever their friends and co-workers are using. > No, it means that you aren't addressing the real issue at all. The real > problem is that Microsoft has no competition, and by working to ensure > that Linux distributions cannot contain everything they need to be a > competitor, you are helping them maintain their monopoly status and > their ability to rape users. There are distros that agree with you, Ubuntu being a prime example. Most of the industry is coming around to what RedHat is preaching though, and until it does entirely, Linux will never be ready on the consumer desktop. Red Hat is a multi-billion dollar company today because it stood by its beliefs, Microsoft is running scared, and are in Asia right now begging the Chinese government to pay for Linux so that software doesn't become entirely valueless. It is this kind of thing that over time has convinced hardware venders that their companies value is entirely on a driver that makes something work how it should... is that right? No. Their value is in the hardware itself, and supporting that product. Software is just a means to that end. Microsoft knows that, and that is why it sees Linux as such a threat. If you argue this point, you should ask yourself who taught you that... there are plenty of software developers getting paid writing open source code... there are plenty of companies making billions from that code... but everyone benefits, not just one greedy monopoly. Why cater to the companies that don't get it yet just because users whine and run to a distro that does cater to them? They're still reporting bugs on FOSS software, they're still working on FOSS code, who cares. Let those with a vested interest in Linux do what they think is right, and let the Ubuntu's of the world that just package the result worry about trying to get Linux onto your Mom's desktop. When Linux is truly ready, when RedHat is comfortable that it can effectively go after that market, it will do that. Until then, they'll continue becoming more profitable in the spaces they currently feel comfortable going after. -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
