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From: David Gerard <fun@thingy.apana.org.au>
Subject: Worse is better (was Sun revokes FreeBSD license for Java)
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Ted Mittelstaedt (tedm@toybox.placo.com) [050106 18:26]:

> Name of the game with commercialized technology which is filled with example
> after
> of example of second and 3rd rater products that win the market from 1st
> rater
> products merely because their marketing is better.  Let's see, in automotive
> we have lap&shoulder belts vs 5 point harnesses, or for that matter airbags
> vs seatbelts,
> in television we have Betamax vs VHS, in computing we have Windows vs Mac,
> NT vs OS/2,
> Linux vs FreeBSD ... ;-)


Unix vs. the more correct systems that came before it. See 'Worse is
better' and 'The UNIX-HATERS Handbook':

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX-HATERS_Handbook

A lot of it is 'the whole widget' - the technology is worse, but other
reasons give a decisive advantage. VHS tapes ran longer sooner than Beta.
Unix was cheap and portable. X was open source, NeWS wasn't. Etc.


- d.