On Sat, May 25, 2002 at 12:06:24AM -0700, Howard Coles Jr. wrote:
work exatly right, together? Come on people. The real issue is that there are 4 programs all half baked that do the same thing, and NO INSTALL routine. Why can't we look at how OpenOffice does its install, separate it out to its own smaller project and use it for all the wonderful apps out there?
Why don't we get all the disseparate projects together and combine them into no more than 2? Why does Linux need 15 different browsers? Why not 2 or 3 that really knock you over?
I don't think you understand Linux and open source with statements like that. Linux and all the surrounding software is not made by one company, or even a small group of companies. It is global movement powered mostly by individuals, all with different ideas, approaches, philsophies, etc. No person or organization has the power to force all developers to stop what they are doing and work on a common web browser, word processor, whatever. This can be a weakness (with the duplicate effort), but I think it is also a huge asset. I like to think of the multiple application efforts as parallel development, each solving the problem a different way. The chances are better that the optimal solution will be found this way much faster. Look at the evolution of linux apps over the last 3 years compared to windows apps over the same time? Which set is improving the fastest? It seems to me that linux apps will soon exceed the abilities of windows apps and in some cases, they already have (Konqueror vs. Explorer in file browsing, Mozilla vs. IE). The open source world is wild, messy, and untidy, like nature itself. That makes it exhilarating and interesting. The disto vendors bring some amount of order to the chaos, so the power can be harnessed for normal business or home computing, which is a wonderful service I am happy to pay for. Would you really be happier in a one vendor, one OS, one browser, one word processor, one spreadsheet, etc. world? Best Regards, Keith -- LPIC-2, MCSE, N+ Got spam? Get spastic http://spastic.sourceforge.net