| Frank Silvermann 2006-06-13, 1:23 pm |
| Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> "Andrew" <hawk007@flight.us> wrote in message
> news:1150216766.239909.127740@p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
>
> I agree with all your other comments, but I'd like to add a bit here...
>
> OSS (and the base Unix OS) tends towards lots of little tools that the
> user can combine to solve any problem, provided he can figure out how to
> use each of them individually (or even which tools to use).
>
> Commercial software tends towards one huge tool that can be used to
> accomplish pre-planned tasks with virtually no training, but which is
> difficult to use for (if not completely incapable of) solving new tasks.
>
> Of course, there's plenty of exceptions, but those are definite trends.
I agree with your assessment and have linux on my mind today as I
endeavor to create a linux partition. If I have a criticism of the
linux, it's the something_for_nothing philosophy, an attitude, which I
believe only redistributes costs. I paid $25 for a disk that I believe
will provide me with a c99 compiler. I'm all about open source, but I
claim that, e.g. Cbfalconer gets a better world when you get his
ggets(). It is not the people who give that bother me, though. That
something 'should' be free is philosophically incomprehensible. frank
|