Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 16:55:24 -0400 (EDT) From: "Joseph A. Mallett" <jmallett@xMach.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: The desktop apathy Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.33.0105311646400.21013-100000@Aphex.NewGold.NET> In-Reply-To: <20010531131243.C18115@lpt.ens.fr>
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> > >Would you rather pay $5000 per seat or whatever it was for crap like
> > >CDE? That's where we'd be if the GPL'd alternatives didn't exist.
> >
> > Bull. This is no more true than a claim that we'd all have to buy
> > Solaris were it not for Linux. Thanks to the BSDs, there is a truly
> > free alternative.
>
> Not for the desktop. Consider: in 1997 (when linux was roughly where
> BSD is now, in terms of mindshare) the desktop scene in linux was
> pathetic: Red Hat was actually selling a commercial port of CDE to
> linux. (This was before they "saw the light" about selling only free
> software.) Consider, also, that even *today* CDE is about the only
> option you have on a commercial unix -- unless you install something
> else by yourself. Unix used to dominate the workstation market in the
> early 1990s ("workstation" meant Unix, more or less), and look at that
> market today. Now Sun and HP are actually considering GNOME for their
> own desktops. The commercial guys didn't rescue the commercial Unix
> desktop, so I fail to see where your touching faith in their ability
> to rescue BSD (or Linux) comes from.
Actually, I like Indigo Magick on my SGI. If someone DOES let HP and Sun
use GNOME, I am sure that they'll go under about as fast as SGI is with
their Linux stuff.
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