On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 09:14:23AM -0600, ABrady wrote:
> I can see the new, improved slogan:
>
> "It's so simple, any simpleton can use it!"
>
> It would likely lead some windolts away from windoze and let them
> pretend they're _real_ power users now. In about 20 minutes the linux
> world will be flooded with new worms and causing major overloads on
> servers passing the new Linux Homepage Virus to everybody in each user's
> Evolution addressbook.
>
> No thanks!
Well, I've lived through the predictions of doom'n'gloom due to the
incipient presence of the hoi polloi since the early '80s; that's not
got me so worried, per se.
First, by allowing anyone on USENET--not just academia and
business/research-- it was going to be degraded below usability.
In some respects, it was; in others, it just picked up and kept moving,
eventually leading to the rise of the Internet. USENET still lives,
but is pretty much a backwater compared to its position of preeminence
in the early days.
Then, it was allowing commercial use of USENET. THAT was going to ruin
it. In some ways, it got worse, but there were enough bytes to go around.
THEN, it was anyone and everyone setting up web sites; the pollution
was going to ruin everything. THEN, in very short order, it was
advertisements on the Web.
What's fundamentally different with this is that a major resource
will be taken over and used as a tool in AOL's war with Microsoft.
This means it is NOT going to evolve in the same general direction as a
"free-range" Linux system, but rather, the focus will be to provide tools
and a facade that supports AOL Time-Warner's specific goals.
This will probably remove it from contention as a general-purpose server
platform, AND as a high-end professional desktop, since even if they
_intend_ to try to tell us they're going to continue to provide such
lines, the inevitable fragmentation of focus, dilution of development
efforts, and complexity of trying ot maintain several variant product
lines is an exceedingly difficult task. And it's made even moreso by the
fact that Linux itself is still rapidly evolving, meaning they'd have to
absorb new features in all lines concurrently. I just don't think they're
at that level of organization in this field. Or corporate commitment.
$0.02, YMMV, Pre-coffee.
--
Dave Ihnat
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