“First, thanks to everyone who posted or emailed a response. The
vast majority of comments were friendly and thoughtful. I
especially liked the reader who wanted to paste the article in
every programmer’s cubicle. 🙂 More substantially, here are some
specific responses to major points raised by slashdot
readers…”
“The Linux community is not a business, so no one can demand
anything from it. This is an interesting point. You are correct in
a sense. There is no “Linux phone number” for a user to call
when they find a bug — even if the user is rich and important. On
the other hand, there are plenty of companies that sell and service
Linux distributions or systems (Compaq, IBM, Red Hat…). These
companies employ Linux programmers, and have customers who want
bugs fixed and new features added….”
“We don’t want Linux used by the masses. In some ways, this is
unanswerable. If someone does not want Linux to be adopted by
nontechnical users (or even busy technical users), then I can’t
really argue with this. I suspect that many people in the Linux
camp *do* want wider use of Linux however….”