Dear Friends,
A nights sleep, and responses from the 2 Dave's helped restore calm in my
temper. I had no real plans for anything really destructive ( although I did
have
fleeting visions of piracy and burning their logo on their lawn ). But I also
have
yet to see if they have in their license a statement of the following flavor:
....absolutely no warrantees of any kind.... This statement, while
protecting
them from stupid or frivolous lawsuits, COULD be used to say in effect "Hey,
I
didn't promise you anything. Not even that it will install properly." I am
not saying
that they will behave this way. BUT, so far, the response has been that way
at
the "droid" level. By the way, the company in question is SCO. It is their
OS and
their compiler.
BTW, virtually everyone in the SCO community knows about this kind of
behavior! Most of us have thrown up our hands, in a "who has the time to
take
on city hall?" kind of response.
THIS is exactly the kind of thing which will open some doors of
opportunity for
some other OS to step in. It seems as though Windows NT, having mindshare
in much of Corporate America, will be the likely successor. WE, OF COURSE,
WANT LINUX to dominate the desktops. For a long time I have tried to
figure
out how to begin to make it happen. I think the solution is in the
following:
1. Lobbying. Talk to your supervisors and co-workers about all of the
positive
ways it could be used in your office. Let them know that major
products
like Wordperfect, and Sybase are available for Linux.
2. Lobby the major software vendors. Tell them that you want to see
their
product on Linux. For example: We should lobby Corel to produce
" Quattro " for Unix/Linux. They already have Wordperfect Version
8.
BTW, WP on Linux is SOOOOOOO cool!!! We should lobby Adobe
for Illustrator for Unix/Linux. Or PhotoShop. I have seen
repeated postings
for Quicken. This is not a promise to buy - you'll buy it if you
need it - they
need to get a certain volume of calls to begin to look at whether 5
million
desktops is a worthwhile target.
3. Maybe we should set up a fund/contest which would recognise the best
products in each of 5 categories:
1. Finance - ( Quicken Clones - not just a checkbook
application )
2. CAD/Design - A real, user friendly and useable drawing
package.
3. Word Processing. Obvious. Compatibility with 2 major
formats.
4. Spreadsheet. Also obvious. Compatibility with 2
formats.
5. Database -Simple: You know, you could be dead and
understand it.
6. Database Complex. Formats aside, Usability, reasonable
speed, and
of course - RELIABILITY is
paramount.
Winner is selected by e-mailed in votes or by hitting a web-page
with a
counter? If 3 million users put in 50 cents, we could offer
250,000 dollar
awards ! Or we could buy the R&D for products we want. Like
maybe
we ask how many people would pitch in 50 cents to see ACT for
Linux ?
What do you guys think ? Maybe it would bring more name
recognition
into our realm.
OK, I'm done dreaming. Back to work.
Greg ( [EMAIL PROTECTED] )
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