Re: About standards and politics

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

On Fri, 6 Aug 1999, Brian and Kathy Wiens wrote:

> > > I think that the point is that the consumer doesn't know that "the best
> > > standard" = "the best buy in the long run".
> > 
> > Actually, I think they usually do.
> 
> And I still don't think that they do, otherwise they would have been
> using some of the proprietary PC-based *nixes, rather than jumping on
> the W9x bandwagon. 

SCO didn't implement standards that counted for the end user. POSIX
compliance is nice, but what about things like COM/OLE , and real real
drag and drop ? proprietry UNIX did not attempt to contest Windows on
things that are considered essential desktop technologies. 

> compliant, while M$ represents a very poor OS which is only the defacto
> standard, due to pricing, marketing, et al.

No, it's a very poor core OS with a very good desktop sitting on top of
it. Windows has now what the linux desktop won't really have for another
year or so ( ie COM/OLE )

> I don't think that Jean's response disagreed with mine.  Licensing (ie
> keeping it proprietary) killed Beta.  Only high end users in TV news,
> etc, use Beta now - they are the only one's that care about the "best"
> standard.  

Or perhaps the market decided that a proprietry standard was a bad thing.
This is also what helped kill the Mac ( indirectly - the fact that it was
proprietry hardware kept the prices high ) 

> care that they are buying second best. 

Maybe it's not "second best" for them, at least right now. Users don't
buy products based on what might be better in five years, they tend to be
more pragmatic.

> > I doubt that linux is good for *her* in the long run.
> 
> Then Linux is no good for the vast majority of the world's computer
> users.  

Right now, that's probably true.

> Are we rolling over and playing dead already???  

No, we're not. We're trying to make linux into something that these people

> I thought that
> "my mother" (or yours, or any one else's) was the market that we were
> aiming for, in the long run.  

Sure, but right now, they're not in our cross hairs. There's no reason why
someone should use our products now because they *might* be better in a
few years.

> I just think that "edit" is a little bit dangerous for the newbie, when
> all they really want to do (or at least all that I often want to do) is
> look at what the file says.  I'm not too worried about it though, just
> thought I'd throw something different in the mix.

Another way would be to alias "view" in the user startup files.

-- 
Donovan