Re: tlug: Can you believe this?

[shimpei@example.com]

You(Scott M. Stone) wrote:
> > I doubt that MS will ever make a big Linux play, at least not as long
> > as the OS and the app divisions are a single company.  MS's whole
> > culture is antithetical to the Unix philosophy.  I doubt they could
> > make a good Unix product, even starting with an existing Linux distro
> > (say, buy SuSE).  Their play on Linux would be on the app side,
> > porting IE and Office to Linux.
> 
> But that would be Good Things (IE and Office for Linux).... wouldn't they?

No. Absolutely, positively, emphatically, no.

Have you tried Office lately? Every single component of it sucks. And
I think I'm qualified to comment on this; I use the damned thing every
day. (You might be able to get me to start a rant on this topic if you
provoke me enough at Nomikai, but I suspect people wouldn't want to
hear it.) As for IE, I might have considered saying it might be a good
thing *if* they could get it to be more stable than Netscape 4.x and
*if* they get it out of the door months before Mozilla does and *if*
it didn't turn out to be the kind of crackers' wet dream that the
Windows version is. None of these are bloody likely to happen, though.

Linux with Microsoftware piled thick on top is going to look, feel and
act like just another Microsoftware, except that Microsoft is going to
treat you as a second-class citizen for refusing to use their
kernel. Almost all the vaunted advantages of using a free operating
system is gone when you depend on such a large piece of proprietary
software--think about all the problems you have with Linux
Netscape 4.x that you can't fix even if you are the hottest programmer
on Earth because you can't get the source code; you really want that
situation to happen with all the software you depend on? What's the
point of that?

Lastly, on a tangentially relevant issue, there is the question of
cost: if Microsoft prices Office for Linux in line with other
platforms, it is going to charge Y50000 or more for the
package. (They're going to have to price Office for Linux the same as
Office for Windows if they don't want mass exodus of Win98 users to
Linux.) Compare that to the utility you get out of the free components
of your Linux machine. Does it sound like an absurd rip-off to you?
It should. 

-- 
Shimpei Yamashita   山下晋平      <http://www.submm.caltech.edu/%7Eshimpei/>
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