I was thinking about this a lot since I first read about the survey. Is
it possible for them to "beat us"? Beyond an attempt to get global
legislation passed that bans the use and development of FOSS, I fail to
see how they can "beat us".
What I find interesting is the fact that many new technologies that
Microsoft is planning on releasing (tabbed browsing, plain text
configuration files, beefed up CLI, threaded email views) are things
that I have been using on my FOSS desktop for a very long time.
I believe Microsoft believes that by equaling or bettering FOSS in
features, that it will ultimately defeat the movement. Fortunately they
are very wrong. It is not just about features. It is about the entire
philosophy of FOSS that makes it work. Empowering each and every user to
dive as deep into the system as necessary. Not creating artificial
barriers of entry/exit (ie proprietary file formats, unpublished
protocols, etc..). Not hiding behind binaries and making each
contributor responsible for their contribution (as an end user, if I
wanted, I can review source and tout why it totally sucks or is genius..
closed source doesn't provide me that opportunity).
Beyond the pure technological aspects of FOSS, there are very
interesting global and sociological aspects to FOSS as well. It doesn't
matter where you live, it doesn't matter what your age, it doesn't
matter your gender, race, religious beliefs, disabilities or economic
status. FOSS is available to you. If you contribute, all that matters is
your contribution. period. Age discrimination, gender, race, religious
discriminations do not exist. In fact, given the global nature of many
OSS projects, I believe for many users it has brought a sense of "global
citizenship" which further breaks down barriers and I believe leads to
greater global awareness among all of us.
How can Microsoft, a single US corporation possibly beat this?
Joe
Thomas Cameron wrote: > Don't help them out, folks. They want you to tell them how to beat us.
(text/plain)