[Ham-Computers] Re Lenux

[Paul]

On Sat, 2004-01-17 at 06:51, Duane Fischer, W8DBF wrote:
> 	
> If Lenux were really good, then MS would buy it and bury it. IBM had a nice
> product, OS2, wasn't it? We all know what happened there, heh? If it poses a
> threat, buy and bury. But this is not unique to MS, all the heavy long ball
> hitters have done it for many decades. i remember patents bought by General
> Motors that were never seen for twenty years, or never. I knew the men who
> patented the items I am speaking of, which included a vastly improved governor
> for the diesel, anti-lock brakes and highly fuel efficient fuel delivery
> systems.	

Fundamental misunderstanding of the concept behind Linux. MS cannot buy
it because there's nobody to buy it from - it's not owned by anybody. It
was developed over the internet  by volunteers and returned to the
community for anybody to use.

Anybody can package it and sell that package, i.e. manuals, phone
support, proprietary software (such as installers) that run under Linux,
for whatever they can get, but can only make a 'reasonable charge' for
the software itself (e.g. cost of putting onto CDs). 

As it is, MS can't buy it, so they're using FUD to undermine it. If MS
weren't worried, why did Steve Ballmer interupt his holiday to fly to
Munich when he found out they were considering moving to Linux, and
offer USD 13M reductions on Windows? (they still went for Linux).

Paul M