Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 09:25:58 +1200 From: Jonathan Chen <jonc@chen.org.nz> To: Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Advocacy help for CS professor Message-ID: <20020323092558.B15656@grimoire.chen.org.nz> In-Reply-To: <F118QCIRDE2e0ghLGRI00009136@hotmail.com>; from burnscharlesn@hotmail.com on Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 11:41:47PM -0700 References: <F118QCIRDE2e0ghLGRI00009136@hotmail.com>
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On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 11:41:47PM -0700, Charles Burns wrote:
[...]
All the arguments put forth appear to be business oriented, rather
than on any technical evidence. One amusing way to equate this would
be to use the Food Industry as an analogy. Hmm, let's pick one of the
most biggest, richest, food franchises out there - McDonalds.
> - Microsoft has money, therefore can buy the best programmers, therefore has
> the best products.
McDonalds has the money, therefore can buy the best cooks, therefore
has the best food. Obviously this is not true, as the most of the
money goes into marketing and management of the company. To be fair, I
suspect that Microsoft *does* have quite a few good programmers. The
problem with any commercial software company is that the programmers
do *not* drive the company. Management does. I always have the general
feeling that MS tends to drive its stuff out the door a bit too soon
due to marketing pressure. Commercial pressure goes a long way to
deciding what the programmers get to do with the code. For example, I
can't think of any *sound* technical reason, why one would put a
browser into the kernel code...
> - Microsoft is very successful, therefore has the best products (though he
> is not using the popularity alone as an argument as he does have extensive
> knowledge of logic)
McDonalds is very successful, therefore has the best products. I'd say
that sound management and targeted market made this true, rather than
any good products. MS is good at targeting the product at the right
group to provide it the best returns: The non-technical mass consumer.
> - OSS programmers could not possibly be as good as Microsoft programmers,
> because Microsoft sponsors such things as nat'l programming competitions and
> hires the winners/hires the best of class from top universities, etc. I need
> specific reasons and hopefully links (not to slashdot, to reputable neutral
> news sites and such). OSS has Greenman, DeRaadt, Torvalds, Hubbard, Lehey,
> and others which are certainly among the top 100 programmers on earth. How
> to prove, though? I have pointed out that academics and contest winners are
> different from people that naturally love to code, but he is in a commercial
> mindset. I have seen many great logical abstractions of this concept on
> various sites, but finding them would be impossible.
McDonalds supports all types of community projects, competitions, et
al, and even uses some of the ideas from these competitions. It's more
a marketing excercise to promote the brand than anything else. The
money is the main lure.
> - He is using examples of MS products being superior to other Windows
> products, examples in which he is right. Netscape 4.7* vs. IE4--No
> comparison. MS Office vs everything else--for it's intended audience, it
> really is the best. Media player, etc. He quoted Outlook Express, but being
> in the field he uses Eudora because of OE's jaw-dropping security record. I
> already made the Evolution comparison, but I really need more examples in
> which an OSS Unux product is superior.
Kids love McDonalds. For the targeted audience, it sure is. As an
adult, I can't say I *love* McDonalds.
Microsoft products *can* be good, but server-based products is where
UNIX shines. Anywhere where downtime can be a problem, there is a better
UNIX solution. Database-servers (eg: ORACLE) stay up longer under UNIX
than MS. Give your local ORACLE vendor a call. Webservers. Mailservers.
Groupware like Lotus Notes. Equivalent systems on both platforms would
be the best examples to use for comparisons.
> - He says Unix is fragmented, therefore cannot have a unified vision and
> focus, and that this automatically makes it inferior to Windows which is
> under one company with theoretically one vision and focus.(to own everything
> :-)
There are quite a few competitors for McDonalds out there, but this
doesn't make them inferior in any way.
The OSS environment doesn't *need* money to survive, it only needs
competition and ego. The fragmentation actually *improves* the quality
of the code, it's like evolution. If the other *BSD/Linux camp has
something nifty, we implement our own version of it, possibly with
added features to edge them out.
Cheers.
--
Jonathan Chen <jonc@chen.org.nz>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny"
- Kin Hubbard
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