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Linux: too much, too late

WorLord <[email protected]> écrivait/wrote:

>For "too much talk, too little done," it appears that a whole bunch of
>neat stuff sure exists.  IMO.

Indeed! A whole lot has been done. Can you imagine all this being
scraped because of a mere lack of organisation? Can you imagine the
desperation of the people who contributed and of everybody in general
towards really "free" enterprise if all this should come to an end?

I've seen this countless times in non-profit organisation.
Whenever money doesn't constitute the minimum gauge of efficacity,
sooner or later, things go berserk. (Is it really a universal law?)
While the same work is being redone time and again, important work
doesn't get done.

Take the browser scene for instance. Microsoft, though, as it often
has been said, it has only a very limited number of (full-time)
programmers, managed to produce one (1) browser. Since version 4, it
works perfectly well. Though they "forgot" to include a print preview,
a window large enough to see the url the mouse is pointing to, the
"return to sender only" cookie option, etc., it was just enough to
justify a furthur upgrades, which, had other bugs. Until Microsoft has
competition, it will always forget.

Now, here is what Linux programmers do with their time:

Arena
Amaya
Chimera
Galeon
Grail
HotJava
Konqueror
Mozilla
Nautilus
Netscape
Plume 
Qweb
Debris
Links
Lynx 
Nets
Opera
SkipStone

plus probably a half dozen more. Netscape 6 is apparently still
dreadful and here are the problems with Opera, one of hottest browser
for Linux:

Here's what Opera """for Linux""" (as the development has been done
primarily for Windows) doesn't do yet:

Plug-ins 
Java 
Printing !!!
Some preferences don't work 

Some known bugs:

Inline frames (iframe) don't always look good 
Zooming with frames doesn't work well 
Fixed elements / background scrolling is somewhat slow and ugly 
File transfer problems!!!

(Copy paste from Opera's site)..

Meanwhile, Microsoft is doing deals with banks, ecommerce stores, tv,
etc. Uncle Bill is in geostationary satellites, uncle Paul in optical
fiber. Both are buying image databases. Allen is buying football
leagues (content, content!), Etc. Their thing is not software anymore
as, pretty soon, people will use their computer as a TV, bank and
general eservice terminal, videophone, image and sound editor, for
home management (domotic), playing games, watching movies, reading
papers, etc. Everything will go through it! In other words, it's not
the quality of the software that will be important anymore, it's what
it will give access to.

Aa for Microsoft's problems with servers, they are soon to be solved
with the 2000 series. 

It seems that Linux is mainly eating up the Unixes share of the market
whereas Microsoft gobbles up pretty much all newcomers. 

Says Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass: 

Microsoft recently warned that profits wouldn't meet expectations for
the year-end quarter because of an economic slowdown. But market data
due to be released later this month will show a slight increase in the
company's 87 percent market share in operating systems, reported in
2000, as well as an increase over its 38 percent of the server market.

From "Microsoft market growth data could bolster government's case"
Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld.

For now, since OS2 is dead, Linux is only a great convenience for
Microsoft as it is facing justice. (Mainly with stupid evangelist Eric
Raymond predicting 750 millions Linux users by 2004. 
Cf.: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/apr1999/nf90427c.htm
)

All Linux software should have been ready by now. Now is the time for
making deals and Linux is not in that game. So, my fear is that,
indeed, a whole lot will get done with Linux, but too much, too late
because of a lack of organisation.

GP
--
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