From kragen@dnaco.net Sat Sep 26 16:06:56 1998 Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 16:06:55 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: dave@xig.com Subject: Re: XBF, XIG and Linux Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: Well, I think your line works better in a press release than on Slashdot. Various posters have used your post as an opportunity to share their experiences with crashing and buggy AccelX servers, and have posted benchmarks refuting your case that AccelX is twice as fast, or five times as fast. More to the point, XBF and XSuSE aren't free software, so it doesn't make sense to lambast free software with them as examples. But to answer your question: why the adulation given to free software that's not as good as proprietary competitors? Well, free software gets better. Proprietary software doesn't, or at least, doesn't very fast. If I have a problem with a piece of free software, I can fix it myself, or ask someone to fix it for me -- much like if I have a problem with my car. If I need to write a piece of free software to solve some problem, then if some of the subproblems have been solved before, I can use other people's free-software solutions to those subproblems -- much like mathematics. In short, free software provides me value that proprietary software just doesn't. That's why Linux exists! I wish you and the rest of your company and the rest of the proprietary-software industry luck in withstanding the competition of free software. If I get a laptop, you can be sure I'll consider Xi's product -- but I'm less likely to buy it now than I was before I read your article. Kragen -- Kragen Sitaker The sages do not believe that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself. -- Wang Yang-Ming