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Re: Open source competition heating up, admits Ballmer

  • Subject: Re: Open source competition heating up, admits Ballmer
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 16:03:15 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: schestowitz.com / MCC / Manchester University
  • References: <1147801991.951030.25020@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <eSpag.70287$wl.6480@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk> <slrne6mdoa.e6a.sorceror@localhost.localdomain>
  • Reply-to: newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • User-agent: KNode/0.7.2
__/ [ Ray Ingles ] on Wednesday 17 May 2006 15:39 \__

> On 2006-05-16, 7 <website_has_email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> "Customers do not opt for open source applications because of
>>> 'quasi-religious beliefs' that their openness is better than
>>> proprietary alternatives, he argued, but because of their features.
> [...]
>> Users are drawn to open source because openness is a feature of
>> open source software.
> 
>  Right. People weren't drawn to ASCII because it was a particularly
> better standard (though it did have a few nice features) but because it
> was an *open* standard.
 
I quite like that statement. I looked at the ASCII table this morning (due
to some WordPress regex bug) and then thought to myself how screwed up the
world  would  have  been had a whole large set of so-called  ASCII's,  and
QWERTY's, and WWW's existed.

Think  Periodic Table. It's simply a common terminology and classification
that  has become a convention. It helps us better communicate and make our
products (or whatever fruits of work) mutually compliant. Imagine yourself
a  scientific  journals  that  contains 20  different  languages  or  uses
different words, which oppose one of these IEEE terminological standards.

* A Journal with only English articles is a feature which _sells_

* A Web which works on all platforms is a very powerful feature

*  An  encyclopedia which can be _corrected_ can become dominant within  a
few years (think Wikipedia)


Best wishes,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz
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