[Am-info] Howzacome

[Gene Gaines]

At bottom is an interesting follow-up comment to
the Business Week article on Torvalds.

Gene
gene.gaines@gainesgroup.com

On Wednesday, August 18, 2004, 9:25:03 PM, John wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 12:19:37 -0400, Gene Gaines wrote:

> Hi there Gene.

>>am-info@lists.essential.org,
>>
>>Howzacome,
>>
>>Everything I read by Torvalds, I am comfortable
>>with, accepting and agreeing with him.
>>
>>Everything I read by the leaders at Microsoft,
>>I disbelieve and in fact begin my thinking by
>>assuming their statements are lies, or based
>>somehow on lies.  (actually, using "leaders" and
>>"Microsoft" in the same sentence aggravates me.
>>
>>Where did I go wrong?
>>
>>Or, perhaps, what did they do to deserve this?
>>
>>???
>>
>>Heck, this is all rhetorical, just my observation
>>after reading the Business Week article.

> Yes, I know it's rhetorical, and I liked a lot of what he said there, but the
> worry I have with Linus is that he still trusts MS too much for my liking.

> He doesn't believe they will use the lawyers to pursue patent cases against
> Linux because they (Bill and Steve) hate lawyers, because they have been on
> the receiving end of what the hated (second-oldest) profession dished out to
> MS. 

> He seems to be quite astute, having a grip on a wide range of intellectual
> issues, BUT he appears still a little too naive re MS (lack of) ethics.

> Maybe he's been too busy to notice the ugly vendetta against
> Lindows/Lindash/Linspire. Likewise he comments on SCO vs IBM, but doesn't
> seem to have noticed the way MS herded large sums of cash towards SCO, thus
> making it look like their stalking horse... 


> Best regards
> John Angelico
> OS/2 SIG
> os2@melbpc.org.au or 
> talldad@kepl.com.au
> ___________________


From: Ed Gerck <egerck@nma.com>
Date: August 18, 2004 2:00:36 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Cc: Ip <ip@v2.listbox.com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Linus Torvalds interview

[Dave: for IP, if you wish]

This interview shows that, regarding MSFT, Linus is still in the first
stage of problem-solving: denial. For example, when Linus tries to
second-guess MSFT's legal position and downplay the importance of
their highly-skilled, and battle-proven, legal team in assuring a
dominating vendor position.

Even though this may sound sacrilegious today, when Linus moves to
the second-stage of problem solving and decides to do something about
it, it will be imperative for Linux to have alliances with commercial
software vendors and patent holders in order to guarantee some level
of kernel stability and usability. Linux application developers
have done just that for quite some time now.

Cheers
Ed Gerck

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