William Chops Westfield wrote:
> On Monday, Jan 26, 2004, at 09:19 US/Pacific, Peter L. Peres wrote:
>
>> What the proprietary software supporters are trying to do, is to make
>> all
>> roads toll roads, because theirs is a toll road, and because (so they
>> claim) all roads resemble theirs in design
>
>
> What proprietary SW supporter other than SCO is making claims along
> these lines?  Don't you DARE villify PS vendors because of SCO's
> actions!  i don't think even microsoft has been stupid enough to
> make such a claim against Open source software (although I wouldn't
> be surprised if they're clandestinly supporting SCO...)

The propretary vendors make these statements by their actions.
Microsoft, Apple, etc... all say "you have to pay to play" with their
OS.  And their Marketing departments (just doing their job) work hard to
give the impression there is "no other way" to get the solutions needed
from your computer hardware than to use their software.

I think that's all Peter is saying, but I could be wrong.

An example would be last year's announcement by Microsoft that what Unix
folks call "symlinks" were "created by Microsoft for Windows XP".  The
idea of a symbolic link on a file system that redirects you to another
file is not new, not by a long shot... but those that read and believe
the Marketing hype *do* believe it.  And when they believe, they follow
with their money and purchase the software.

Personally I have no problem with people paying for Microsoft products.
  It gives both my small consulting company (side business) and numerous
employers I have worked for a competitive advantage -- I don't pay for
operating systems, and I don't ever feel like I have to in order to do
business.

A number of small business owners have been very happy with the
possibility that they'll "never pay for software again" when I've helped
them through server rebuilds using Free Software.  Yes -- they'll
probably feel the need to pay me to return and look things over once in
a while, or fix specific problems they are having, but even then -- they
don't HAVE to... they can find anyone to do it.  If someone else will
charge them less money, they can hope that person will do as good a job
as I did -- or if they hated the job I did (boy I hope not!) they can
easily switch "vendors".  And I'm always careful to examine the risks of
using Free Software with them also -- the possibility (very real) that a
particular piece of software will go through a huge transformation and
become unusable for their business and the real-world examples of a
"fork" -- where they'll have to (with my help) have to make an educated
decision about which side of the tree to stay with.  Most of them like
the control it gives them over their own "fate", shall we say.

Nate Duehr, nate@natetech.com

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