[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“I am not an open source zealot. Nor am I a Microsoft basher. I
am just an observer. My company was the first large software
company to endorse Windows NT back in the mid 90s when we shifted
off our proprietary Unix platform (known as Clix). In fact, we were
the world’s largest NT development house for a couple of years
before NT went mainstream. However, prior to that, we joined the
OSF and embraced Motif (X-windows, you know) along with our Unix
brethren at HP, Sun, IBM, etc. If you know your history, then you
know where that went. We got exactly one product line (out of over
500) out the door before OSF was pushing up daisies. That cost us
some credibility, as we had to revive our previous non-X GUI, not
to mention the wasted money. Anybody who thinks that Sun, Dell,
IBM, and HP can peacefully coexist in the Linux world is smoking
something they shouldn’t be. And anybody that thinks Linux as it
was two years ago will be basically the same two years from now is
smoking the same stuff.“This brings me to my second point. Open source as an
anti-establishment uprising against commercial software and OSes is
an interesting avocation, but I think the industry has seen zero
profit coming out of it. The Linux OS trail already has left some
casualties behind – VA Linux for one. Red Hat is doing the only
logical thing to stay viable and start making money. UnitedLinux
appears to be a poorly formulated strategy to stay alive by keeping
one foot in open source Shangri-la while putting the other foot in
the market…”