[oclug] Linux Leads or Follows?

[Robert Brockway]

On Sat, 7 Apr 2007, miden wrote:

> Distant past.

Not really - the Internet is still with us.  The commerical networks of 
the 1980s are as dust.  They all either went out of business or abandoned 
their protocols in favour of TCP/IP.  OSS innovation continues unabated 
in Internet technologies.

> Wanting to answer some criticism here. As in "Why should I bother
> switching to something that is always behind the times? What can you do
> with it that you can't do with the big boys? Sooner? And don't give me
> any of that tree-hugging freedom stuff."

My response to the freedom statement is: "Freedom should always be 
important.  Ever wondered what it's like to live in a dictatorship?  Data 
stored on computers is now an essential part of the way government runs.
Handing control of that data to a small group with a vested interest is 
simply dangeorus."

No doubt some people think I'm being over the top.  I hope they never find 
out why I advocate open standards and open source so strongly.

> This is someone not interested in digging into the guts of it to get it
> working and doesn't mind paying for something new that works now. He
> also believes that 'the big boys' will always be ahead of Linux and
> Linux will always be playing catch-up.

I've felt for a while that some projects were simply playing catch up (KDE 
is a prime example IMHO) but this is not true of OSS in general.  Look at 
the wide array of window managers and desktop environments avilable under 
X and tell me that it's all emulating what someone else has done before. 
Seen the ion window manager - it doesn't use the root window - that may 
not sound like much but it is truly innovative.  Network Transparency in X 
is am amazing capability.

There is lots of innovation in OSS.  To see this you need only compare OSS 
tools and OSes to their commercial counterparts.

Rob


-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.        Phone:          +1-905-821-2327
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