Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 01:52:40 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Johnson David <DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sorry. Message-ID: <3F697258.58B573C3@mindspring.com> References: <4BA256918ACE7449BD7896E65711C88B4A7F4C@1UPMC-MSX8.isdip.upmc.edu> <3F68B121.5020103@achean.com> <200309171237.12609.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com>
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Johnson David wrote: > On Wednesday 17 September 2003 12:08 pm, Jon Mercer wrote: > > 1. Desktop computing is hardly the area where massive efficiency is > > going to be all the rage in the future. Windows can hardly be > > described as the paragon of fast computing on the desktop. > > But unfortunately, the desktop is all anyone thinks about. Just look at > Linux. IBM, SGI and Sun are all gungho over Linux, the media is paying > attention, it's being scaled up to the really big iron and scaled down > to the smalled embedded devices. But all you ever hear from a lot of > *Linux* advocates is "Linux will fail without the desktop". They are correct. Without a viable alternative desktop, you are always in danger of a vendor wielding monopolistic power in the marketplace, and using that power to leverage a similar monopoly in the server space, squeezing you out via unfair trade practices. Yes, a monopolist would have to violate Sherman and probably RICO to do this, but it's been known to happen. > Maybe Linux will grab all the Fortune 500 companies. But I see no reason > why FreeBSD can't grab all of the small business market. I expect that it can't for the same reason IBM GSB was unable to grab that market: the market is not as homogenous as the people who refer to it as if it were one big lump would like to believe, and therefore you will never see a majority vendor for anything other than commodity products. I class Windows boxes as a commodity for the purposes of this discussion, and that's primarily because of their third party software base. -- Terry
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