Hi :) Barry has. Check his recent attachments to this list. I'm not suggesting ranting. Richard Stallman seems to get away with it but i probably wouldn't. Barry's approach seemed to be very effective. Make them feel the market pull. The market is changing. These shops will only realise that if increasingly they find that customers ask for compatibility with Gnu&Linux.
As the "age of the desktop" ends we see people use a plethora of mobile devices, from laptops to hand-helds and even down to watches which almost all entirely run on unix-based platforms. Mostly that is Gnu&Linux (such as Android, Blackberry, soon Ubuntu) but Apple's iThings (iPad, iPhone etc) are also strong in the market. Often devices are used in a combinations that co-operate with each other. MS is infamous for taking over rather than co-operating. Gnu&Linux tends to co-operate. There needs to be many different layers of approach. Richard Stallman is good for those that are into "Direct Action" such as ranting or finding the specific day that FSF organises for massed returns of desktops to demand refunds on unused Microsoft licenses. Direct action entrenches people though and pushes them into fighting back so we need other approaches. Class actions and legal routes have been used against MS before and MS often loses in such cases. The RTF case. The web-browser wars. Generally fighting MS in court seems to suck all the energy and drive of an organisation. Opera won against Internet Explorer in court but they don't reap the benefit. At least, not yet. The companies involved in the RTF case similarly vanished. They won pyrrhic victories. Court action needs to continue but so do other approaches. The professional approach of Mark Shuttleworth and they way Barry used are more likely to result in dialogue that opens the way for businesses to realise they need to support the new range of devices that almost exclusively don't use Windows. If they only support Windows in the future then a lot of those businesses will go bust. They need to know that. We need to let them know. Humour and professionalism go a long way. As you point out businesses might suffer if they offer options at the moment because MS will withdraw support from them. However there will be a tipping point where businesses find that they can do without the support because so many people have been demanding non-MS support. It's not the case the 1 approach is good and another bad or that 1 way leads to victory and another doesn't. All different ways going on at the same time does seem to be getting there. So, if you are in the UK then check out Barry's recent attachments. Modify and apply for yourself. Regards from Tom :) -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to the bug report. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1 Title: Microsoft has a majority market share To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/clubdistro/+bug/1/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
