Brett is not all wrong - (Was RE: ``Nothing like a monopoly ....

["P.A. Petricone" <pap@tiac.net>]

On Tuesday, November 10, 1998 10:20 AM, Matthew Benjamin wrote:

> Congratulations, Brett.
>
> You have become this list's foremost advocate that:
>
> 	1. abundance is scarcity
> 	2. freedom is tyranny
> 	3. night is day
>
> You have no way to explain why it is that, contrary to your assertion, 
GPL'd
> software has spurred the greatest outburst in creativity the software
> industry has seen since the early 1980s--if not earlier.
>

Easy. One thing I notice with Brett's views now and then is the 
undercurrent of assumption that we deal in an ideal world, a place that 
many thoughts around this campfire have come from. I find that I do it way 
too often.

I think BSD is outstanding and could use more exposure but it may be better 
off. See how other OS *targets* do on the front lines. Brett's logic has 
some merit, but I would argue that for the BSD concept to move ahead and 
build free code libraries, it takes on the likeness of a pyramid scheme in 
the ideal sense. This is the sort of place where free software should be 
subsidized.

Just a side bar on the Linux / BSD license, as I really wanted to comment 
on something current; most of what is going on in Linux that is going to 
make a difference to the desktop is going to happen in X, My understanding 
is that XFree86 uses a license scheme very much like BSD and commercial 
code X apps in a more vertical sense could do quite well in X under Linux. 
For example, take Xi Graphics, who build outstanding high performance X 
graphics card drivers. If you are working with Linux for a desktop person 
and you want to dazzle them with science, the $90 (about the cost of '95) 
is well worth it in most cases and that is just drivers! I understand some 
of the issues about other GPLed libs, etc. Got to live with it for now.

What really prompted this message was what I read on the recent Intel 
episode of the trial. This, for me, put the magnitude of the situation back 
into perspective while contemplating the ideal.

Clipped from Computerworld:

	McGeady added that Gates "felt that what we did in software
	directly competed with Microsoft ... and Bill made it very
	clear that Microsoft would not support our next processor if
	we did not get alignment on other issues."

http://www.computerworld.com/home/news.nsf/all/9811101intel

I think that would just about do it, even for Andy Grove. Kinda wish he had 
called their hand.

-pap