Hi! Trying to kill the keyboard, jonathan@aracnet.net produced:

On 29-May-98 Wolfgang Weisselberg wrote:

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bundle? *Then* they can boast about integration. They can add on to the open source kernel, keep their addons proprietary (as long as that will last) and people will love Linux because, "Hey, it's Microsoft"

Ah perhaps I was unclear/partially wrong. I meant _keep_ the open source kernel as-is and build tools and apps around it.

They have to keep the open source kernel, yes, but tools and apps I'd hardly call 'addons'. Proprietary tools and apps are possible, even wanted. If MS wanted to compete, by all means, they should go ahead. But there would be a stiff wind blowing in their faces --- they could not pull tricks like using undocumented API calls to make their code seem better compared to concurence and there are already lots and lots of good stuff around --- open sourced.

Yet exc{HANG}e is selling. Better, faster, more stable doesn't necessarily sell.

Sexchange is selling, but only due to management ... and even they can get fed up some day with it. I mean, there were the days of 'You can't get fired buying IBM', now the days of '... buying MS' seem to wane slowly but surely.

I look at something like Netscape, they sold it (for a while) and it was completely proprietary. And [at least on the WingDings platform] it wasn't half as stable as M$IE.

Well, Netscape is not what I'd call stable. I've seen lots of crashes (ok, with lots of users), and on WinXX platforms IE had the plus of undocumented API tricks. I do know why I prefer lynx.

I think Microsoft is going to do all of this without being a distributor anyways. NetShow is just the start...

Let them, they'll either produce quality software or else. They can't take over Linux, and thinks like XFree86tm and lesstif show what often happens. -Wolfgang -- PGP 2 welcome: Mail me, subject "send PGP-key". If you've nothing at all to hide, you must be boring. Unsolicited Bulk E-Mails: *You* pay for ads you never wanted. Is our economy _so_ weak we have to tolerate SPAMMERS? I guess not. -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e