Re: For those in need of some amusement.....

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

> ---- Bruce wrote: 
>> I love this sentence:  (copy & paste)
>> 
>> *  A report from Forrester Research highlighted the fact that today 
>> *  93 percent of enterprise ISVs develop applications for Windows NT, 
>> *  while only 13 percent develop for Linux.
>> 
>> My math may be a little rusty, but >>> 106 <<< percent of ISV's ???
>> Did they use NT to calculate those results?  :{)
>
>My guess is that some ISV's develop for both platforms.
Of course it must mean that; these things don't have to sum to 100%.
The problem is that even this "fact" is misleading, becasue Forrester makes
no attempt to really survey all ISV's. They miss a LOT of small consulting
firms, and their polls tend to be biased toward the top end of the market.
This makes some of the "ring of truth" in the above statement a bit hollow.

There's something the above statment leaves out, and that's the fact that in
the previous year, Linux development was too small to be mentioned. Going
from that to 13% in one year, in the teeth of everything Microsoft can do
to discourage it ain't too terrible.

One of the biggest problem I had with this article (and I've not written a 
thing about this yet; there are also enough INTELLIGENT rebuttals on the net 
to allow me to forego that task) is that it is FULL of that sort of thing. 
True statements in isolation, but in context they end up revealing something 
else, as well as making me more suspicious of the use of these "facts".

>I see a lot of smug responses to this article, but there's a lot of truth 
>in it.  
I agree, which is why I aspired to write a good rebuttal at first. There were
so many half-baked and self-satisfied remarks about this article in forums
like /. that I was concerned no one would really look at this, seperate the
truth from the propaganda.

Read without care, one notices a lot of things that are simply not true, either
out of ignorance or willful distortion. Read critically, one can derive a
fairly clear list of things that can be improved in the Linux world, and a 
little open, critical discussion is what this is all about, right? If Micro-
soft wants to help, even in a back-handed way, that's fine with me. One of 
the best (and shortest!) remarks about this article was a prediction that in 
under a year, all of the real technical problems cited would be gone.

>Sorry.  Flame me if you must, but for me, I'm find that Microsoft 
>products are much nicer to deal with than Linux.
No need; you're entitled to your point of view, which is probably based on 
your experience with these things. I'd like to know exactly what you do 
mean by this, since "nicer to deal with" is kinda vague.

I've found that a lot of this boils down to GUI behavior, and I feel that it's
a matter of taste in any case, some of which is acquired. There are a lot of 
GUI's I don't like, and one of them happens to be Win32. The point is that
in the UNIX environment, I have a good deal of choice, and can pick the GUI
that suits me, and invest a little time in getting it to behave in a way that
enhances my productivity. To a very great extent, that can't be done with the 
Win32 OS'es, not without paying some fairly stiff penalties.

As for other aspects of "nicer", I'll assume you have not had a Win32 system
crash on you, or had a system at home on which you relied for your livlihood?
How long do you keep your Microsoft OS running at a time? You may not experi-
ence the sort of stability problems others have if you are up for only a few 
hours at a time. Or you may be luckier than most. My personal experience with 
Windows NT has not been great, and frankly I think it's a pity that it's only
typical.

>I haven't had my Linux box on for over two weeks.  And, you know what?  I 
>don't miss it.
Depends on what you want to do. Served up any web pages lately? Had a machine 
on for weeks? Wanted to fix up your Linux box so it worked? Maybe Linux is 
not for you, I can't say. I also don't know what your goals are, or what you
want to do, so I can't pass on any of that (no one else can either, another
reason flaming is so inappropriate).

However, some of us do have goals that would be much more difficult, expensive,
or downright impossible if the "Free UNIX" systems didn't exist. I don't like 
to see those systems smeared with a bunch of half-truths, and since I believe
in a free market, I'd like to see something like choice restored.

                                                              Regards,
                                                               ---> RGB <---