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AndrewWatt2000@aol.com writes:
> "At the risk of over-generalising the fundamental business model of
> open source software is Microsoft-paranoia and Microsoft-phobia by
> competitor companies. Of course there are enthusiasts who donate
> time but isn't at least part of the motivation for some of those
> developers the same Microsoft-phobia and Microsoft-paranoia? Try to
> imagine how limited open source software today might be without the
> kick start donations and ongoing funding from the corporate
> interests intent on spoiling Microsoft. If hatred and fear of
> Microsoft were not so widespread there might be virtually no open
> source software!"
While the term "Open Source" is recent, the community around it has
been in existence for a long time -- it spun off when AT&T closed off
the Unix sources. If hatred and fear were a driving force, then it
was hatred and fear of AT&T, IBM, and Sun that drove most
free-software projects.
Back before the early 1990s, I don't remember much anti-Microsoft
hostility at all -- hard-core techies thought DOS was pretty pathetic,
but no one considered Microsoft a threat, and a lot of people actually
admired them for being a little company (originally) that got the
better of Big Blue. We initially adopted Linux as a free alternative
to Minix, which was a cheap alternative to Xenix for desktop
computers. Few people at the beginning of the 1990s were seriously
suggesting that Linux should compete with Windows, OS2, or MacOS --
those were GUI junk for people who didn't know how to use a shell.
While there are now a few higher-profile OSS projects going
head-to-head with Microsoft -- Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice,
Abiword, and Gnumeric come immediately to mind -- the vast majority of
projects are still traditional, Unix-flavoured non-GUI utilities
(command-line or server-side). Sometimes, as in the case of HTTP
servers, Microsoft is the Johnny-come-lately playing catch-up, not the
OSS community.
All the best,
David
--
David Megginson, david@megginson.com, http://www.megginson.com/
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