[mdlug] Freedom on the OS level

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: Wolfger

> Well... here's the question. How often do you need to worry about freedom
> at the OS level? I don't find it to be much of an issue.

 Don't worry. With Vista, you will, as has been cited before:

 http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

 MS has been heading in that direction for a long time, and I don't see
them changing course anytime soon. Consider: IBM lost out because they
wanted to control the whole computing infrastructure, and produced the
PC, but it was clonable.

 And then the PCs grew to the point where they could be used in lieu of
their mainframes and other big iron. Microsoft managed to dominate the PC
arena, but now...

 ...well, I think they are making a similar mistake as IBM. They came out
with the Zune, which is like all the other PDA/mp3 player units out there,
except it's rigidly controlled... and isn't terribly attractive. Mainframes
and workstations lost to lower-cost, lower-tech PCs that gradually grew up
to take over their functions. I wonder if those little phone/handhelds might
not do the same thing to PCs...

> If I'm using (mostly) F/OSS apps, I'm still experiencing freedom at the
> app level, which is more important to my way of thinking.

 The good news is that, the more people who use OSS apps on Windows, the
easier it is to move to Linux. That's what I did with my parents, after all.
Moved them from IE/Outlook to Firefox/Thunderbird, and then when it was time
to upgrade, I put them on Linux. Their main comment was that Linux had better
screensavers. :->

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                              (313) 227-2317

 "One man's 'magic' is another man's 'engineering'. 'Supernatural' is a
                    null word." - Robert Heinlein 
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