Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 09:31:13 -0800 From: "Jeremiah Gowdy" <jeremiah@sherline.com> To: "Brian Raynes" <brian_raynes@dnr.state.ak.us>, "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: <freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Prevalence of FreeBSD and UNIX among servers Message-ID: <007801c17ce9$78df5150$03e2cbd8@server> References: <00ef01c17cda$6b419760$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <3C0D0426.BEC515D7@dnr.state.ak.us>
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> the next few years. Notice that quality wasn't mentioned - they are > good enough for most people to resist changing. I hate to throw a pitch for the other team, but I evaluate all of my software equally no matter who produces it. Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Visual Studio/Visual C++ 6.0 are more than good enough. They are excellent products. I've not seen one product comparable to either one. Star Office is primative compared to Microsoft Office XP, and the only development environments which even begin to compete with Visual Studio are also for the Win32 platform. I've seen Borland/Inprise/whoever's offering. It's about as impressive as Borland Builder, which is to say, not very. Some people don't seem to understand that it's a good thing that Microsoft doesn't embrace the open-source platforms, because even with all the (sometimes senseless) Microsoft hating, if they offered Internet Explorer, Office XP, and Visual Studio for FreeBSD and Linux, almost EVERYONE would use them. Most of the people who hated Microsoft would be lying through their teeth saying they weren't. My point is simply that people can sit an knock on a Microsoft product for having bugs and vulnerabilities, and that's fine. But Microsoft has better products in many of the important catagories. I would kill to be able to develop, compile, and execute my FreeBSD programs under Visual Studio. I already do when I'm making it portable. I'm all for the free software jihad. Consider me a card carrying member. But I try to look at these things realisticly. Saying Linux or FreeBSD is going to crush Windows any time soon, would be like the people who two or three years ago claimed that cable modems were going to put AOL out of business. The average user doesn't care about execution speed, the cost of upgrading their computer, Microsoft business tactics, free software, open source, security vulnerabilities, or anything along those lines. What they care about is ease of use, corporate support, compatibility, and productivity. Until the open source movement capture the hearts of the masses by meeting the needs _they_ think are important, significant inroads will not be made into Microsoft's market share. And the key is that with Microsoft computers dominating the desktop, most ignorant companies will avoid a heterogeneous setup. I know, I make my living setting FreeBSD Server/Windows 2000 Desktop networks. It takes a long time to break the ice. ___________________________________________ Jeremiah Gowdy IT Manager - Senior Network Administrator Sherline Products Inc 3235 Executive Ridge Vista CA 92083-8527 IT Dept: 760-727-9492 Sales: 1-800-541-0735 International: (760) 727-5857 Fax: (760) 727-7857 ___________________________________________ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Raynes" <brian_raynes@dnr.state.ak.us> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> Cc: <freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org> Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 9:13 AM Subject: Re: Prevalence of FreeBSD and UNIX among servers > Anthony Atkielski wrote: > > > > According to an article in BusinessWeek: > > > > http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_50/b3761094.htm > > > > Non-Linux versions of UNIX are expected to slip from 14% of the server market to 10% next year, and Linux is expected to grow from > > 27% to 32%. Is this really true? This would imply that organizations are actively junking UNIX systems such as FreeBSD to go to > > Linux, which I find extremely hard to believe (I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to junk any xxxBSD to install > > Linux, which seems like a step backwards). Anyone know where these figures are coming from, or how realistic they are? > > From other articles on these numbers, I believe that the trend is to > dump Solaris on Sun Microsystems machines for Linux on cheaper Intel > machines. I believe this is a cost issue - virtually free, with little > administrative cost difference is tough to compete with. Some people > also tend to lump the xBSD systems under the Linux numbers, because both > are free vs. the proprietary Unixes. There also seems to be a trend for > the owners of some of the proprietary Unixes to switch their emphasis to > Linux - maybe to reduce development and maintenance costs? That might > explain some of these numbers, too. > > I think that the increase in Windows is due to people tired of betting > against MS. I am recently converted to the xBSD and even Linux camp, > due to cost reasons and a little by quality and geek appeal. I was > hearing my fellow Comp. Science students predicting Unix would crush > Microsoft back in 1988, when Windows 3.0 was in beta testing. Nearly 14 > years of harsh reality can eventually persuade people that things don't > always turn out in the way we think they should. Back then, I had > difficulty making my peers understand why people would stick to DOS over > Unix, just to have Wordperfect and Lotus 123. Unix was also incredibly > more expensive than DOS or Windows. Now that everyone seems to get > that, Unix finally has quality office productivity apps, but MS has > meanwhile attained a certain air of invulnerability. Now, I'm > predicting their aggressive anti-customer license control policies, > along with outrageous pricing for applications with functionality that > can mostly be duplicated for free will serve to bite them very hard in > > Brian Raynes > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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