“… Ethernet pioneer Bob Metcalfe sees Windows 2000 taking
the bloom off the Linux bud, if not burying it completely. The
reasons? The Open Source movement’s ideology, in part. In
Bob’s perspective, this ideology is just so much utopian nonsense
“balderdash”, as he terms it, and none too gently.
“In last week’s column, I addressed Bob’s contention that
today’s big, complex programs can be created only by big,
profit-oriented corporations. That’s true, but only if you accept
that computer programs must be huge, bloated, bug-ridden
monstrosities.
“There’s another way to build software: the layer-by-layer
method, in which you create relatively small programs that each
perform a limited set of functions, and do so with a high degree of
reliability. An excellent example: the GIMP…”