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How about the ongoing, msft financed, scox-scam?

Honestly, I haven't been paying any attention whatsoever to anything to do with SCO. You'll have to fill me in on the details of this. Please include contrete, verifiable proof.

The msft/bestbuy rackteering scam has been in the news lately.

Well, still waiting to see if MS was even involved in it. The news I've seen seems to indicate all of this was done by Best Buy independant of MS. Wouldn't surprise me considering the kind of crap BB is constantly getting into trouble over.

astroturfing, i.e. famous letters-from-dead-people campaign

I specifically excluded conspiracy theories from the criteria.

fake tco studies - http://os.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=05/06/23/2027229

Your link leads nowhere. When fixing it, please ensure it's not another conspiracy theory.

fake benchmark studies: the apache scam.

No link to that one? Gonna need to provide me with one as I'm not familiar with it. Again, no conspiracy theories.

Thank you for proving my point.

You're welcome.

How about the ongoing, msft financed, scox-scam?

The msft/bestbuy rackteering scam has been in the news lately.

astroturfing, i.e. famous letters-from-dead-people campaign
- http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/24514/

fake tco studies
- http://os.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=05/06/23/2027229

fake benchmark studies: the apache scam.

You're welcome.

Word's designers never seem to have [...] heard that leader dots between an entry's text and page number is[sic] a sign of faulty design.

The LinuxJournal article is opening for me at the moment: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8012/print The article appears to be about how to create ToCs, Indexes and Bibliographies in OpenOffice's Writer. (author is a fellow named Bruce Byfield). A tutorial.

After trimming back the original URL I was able to finally get the NewsForge article at http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/08/16/2038242.shtml to come back up and now that I read the byline more closely... ha! it's by the same fellow. Maybe what we have here is just one guy stating his opinion as if it were some known fact or something?

Actually, I remember an article about the lack of compatibility between Windows and WINE.

Of the four viruses thrown at it, WINE couldn't run one properly.

(yes, there's Linux, there's MacOS, but what company would switch?)

Ernie Ball
Wotif.com
Burlington Coat Factory
Peugeot

Just to name a few.

And of course IBM and Novell, but they don't count, as they are strong GNU/Linux players.

Of course, Siemens was a bit off in their prediction of 20% market share by 2008. But I'd say there's the chance we might make 20% some day.

What makes you think that this isn't true for any OS or application?

The Moz Foundation has substantial financial resources. It does not have unlimited resources. Development and maintenance of OpenOffice remains dependent on staffing and funding by Sun:

Almost all features which were planned for 2.0 were implemented by Sun engineers. Having a whole bunch of full-time developers was helpful to get most of the features done in time. Interview with OpenOffice.org staff

My source is this: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/08/29/1 633205&mode=thread&tid=17

Which supposedly contains a link to the part that says you can use it for free with freely distributable software. The link is to a MP3liscensing page, which, at the time of this writing, appears to be down. It also has a quote from Thompson on the matter. As far as everything else goes, it's my understanding that this is standard practice. Or that a different method of free decoder, charged for encoder, is used. I haven't looked into it too much for other patented formats though.

There's also this: http://web.archive.org/web/20000818191854/www.mp3l icensing.com/royalty/swdec.html which represents the old policy page. This has been changed to remove the free-for-free-programs clause apparently, though it is also said that this change does not represent a change in policy. So I dunno hat exactly that's supposed to mean.

Their original claim to fame was that you would be able to seamlessly run Windows apps on what was then called Lindows.

Somewhere between that promise and the actual release of Lindows 1.0, they had a falling out with Codeweavers, and Codeweavers terminated their business relationship with Lindows:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/04/05/0 335256

Neither Codeweavers nor Lindows had much to say in public that I am aware of, but there have been rumors that the main issue was that Lindows wasn't too keen on the idea of releasing their Wine modifications, and that while Codeweavers persuaded them to release a lot of code, the relationship kind of soured from there. Again, this is conjecture and rumor that I remember hearing at the time, not (AFAIK) documented fact, but based on how secretive Lindows was during their first beta cycle (beta testers paid $99 bucks and got the title Lindows Insider and access to betas), not releasing source code and saying "The source will be there when we release 1.0" (IIRC the source was released at the time), I find the conjecture plausible.

Open office training videos.

Now, I just got that from a Google search, so I'm not sure about the quality of the videos, but it should be enough to get most "typical" users over the superficial differences between Microsoft Office and Open Office.

Btw: There are mice w/o batteries, powered in a RFID-esque way: http://hardware.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/05 /17/1431200&tid=125

We are talking about a company that outright lied the USA-DOJ, and the EU, A company which has been caught red-handed in numerous scams, and outright theft. A company with a very well documented history of numerous mis-information campaigns.

Msft is funding the scox-scam, stold stacker technology, hires bloggers to post msft propaganda, hires shill journalists like Enderle, files dozens - if not hundreds - of bogus patents, and creates fake think-tanks. Msft is currently running a enormous fud campain against ODF - and ruined the career of Peter Quinn along the way. Msft has been caught secretly sponsoring fake TCO studies, and fake benchmarking studies.

Not to mention tax scams and racketeering.

Msft astroturfing:
http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/24514/

Fake TCO:
http://os.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=05/06/23/2027 229

Microsoft Tax Scam
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm1297.08.ht ml

Bestbuy rackteering
http://consumerist.com/consumer/lawsuits/best-buy- attorney-admits-to-falsifying-emails-in-racketeeri ng-case-266395.php

That seems distinctly unfair. Don't the BSD and LGPL people always say that they don't care if people "take their code proprietary" as it were, and that "the code is still there even if someone else improves it and doesn't share back?" Why, just yesterday there were hundreds of comments to that effect on the GPL2 vs GPL3 story!

It's funny though, because it seems that for all their rhetoric about how using BSD and similarly "non-viral" free software licenses is somehow "more free", BSD/LGPL people generally aren't happy at all when people relicense their code. BSD people hate it when their code gets relicensed, ironically especially when that license is the GPL (for some reason, having their code co-opted by Microsoft or Sun bothers them less -- how does that work?) The LGPL is just like BSD, except that it is exclusively GPL-compatible by design. If it bothers you that someone is releasing mods to your LGPL-licensed program under the GPL, why on earth are you even using the LGPL?

Host and parasite -- god, I love it. Talk about double-speak! It reminds me of this great exchange between an interviewer and Theo de Raadt (whom I have the utmost respect for, as it happens, but this attitude is typical of BSD types):

NF: Lots of hardware vendors use OpenSSH. Have you got anything back from them?

TdR: If I add up everything we have ever gotten in exchange for our efforts with OpenSSH, it might amount to $1,000. This all came from individuals. For our work on OpenSSH, companies using OpenSSH have never given us a cent. What about companies that incorporate OpenSSH directly into their products, saving themselves millions of dollars? Companies such as Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, a raft of medium-sized firewall companies -- we have not received a cent. Or from Linux vendors? Not a cent.

Of course we did not set out to create OpenSSH for the money -- we purposely made it completely free so that the "telnet infrastructure" of the 1980s would die. But it sure is sad that none of these companies return even a fraction of value in kind.

If you want to judge any entity particularly harshly, judge Sun. Yearly they hold interoperability events, for NFS and other protocols, and they include SSH implementation tests as well. Twice we asked them to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a developer to come to their event, and they refused. Considering that their SunSSH is directly based on our code, that is just flat out insulting. Shame on you Sun, shame, shame, shame.

I will say it here -- if an OpenSSH hole is found that applies to SunSSH, Sun will not be informed. Or maybe that has happened already.

That's from this interview with Theo at NewsForge if you want to read the whole thing. But basically, there's this tremendously hypocritical attitude among the most ardent supporters of licenses that are presumably "freer than the GPL". I see nothing wrong with the classic BSD/PD stance: "We don't care what you do with it, no matter what we still have the original copy". I think that's a noble way to look at things. It just seems that in practice, that's almost never how it is. Someone turns around and creates something useful from your code and relicenses it in a way that prevents you from benefiting, and suddenly they're evil, even though that's supposedly a right that you expressly wanted to guarantee to them in the first place!

Just out of interest, why are you considering moving to new software? What's wrong with whatever you've been using until now? Office 2007 will be expensive, and may represent at least some loss of productivity for a while as people adjust to the new UI. OOo is full of silly bugs and limitations, and is simply not good enough (IME) for use in a professional environment with more than trivial requirements. To be sure, both have their good points too, but what does either package offer over whatever you're currently using that you actually need?

Incidentally, it sounds as though you're not very familiar with these newer products yet and still doing your research. If that's the case, I advise caution in trusting reviews you find on the net. OpenOffice reviews hosted on OSS-friendly sites, such as the Bruce Byfield comparison of Word and OpenOffice Writer mentioned in the blog entry you cited, can be horribly biased: that particular one is simply wrong on many counts, and reads more like a commercial for OpenOffice than a balanced report written by someone genuinely familiar with both products under comparison. Similarly, the mainstream PC magazines tend to rave about new versions of MS Office regardless of how good, bad or indifferent they are, and have done for years. caveat lector.

They don't. They don't think they should. That's their whole point.

Except they do, at least some of them some of the time. Here's for example a blurb from an interview with Theo:
"NF: Lots of hardware vendors use OpenSSH. Have you got anything back from them?
TdR: If I add up everything we have ever gotten in exchange for our efforts with OpenSSH, it might amount to $1,000. This all came from individuals. For our work on OpenSSH, companies using OpenSSH have never given us a cent. What about companies that incorporate OpenSSH directly into their products, saving themselves millions of dollars? Companies such as Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, a raft of medium-sized firewall companies -- we have not received a cent. Or from Linux vendors? Not a cent. Of course we did not set out to create OpenSSH for the money -- we purposely made it completely free so that the "telnet infrastructure" of the 1980s would die. But it sure is sad that none of these companies return even a fraction of value in kind. If you want to judge any entity particularly harshly, judge Sun. Yearly they hold interoperability events, for NFS and other protocols, and they include SSH implementation tests as well. Twice we asked them to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a developer to come to their event, and they refused. Considering that their SunSSH is directly based on our code, that is just flat out insulting. Shame on you Sun, shame, shame, shame. I will say it here -- if an OpenSSH hole is found that applies to SunSSH, Sun will not be informed. Or maybe that has happened already."

Ok, this was hardly the worst rant I've heard from Theo - but he certainly seems a little bitter that he hasn't seen a cent of those millions. I think quite a few open source people dream of a "fair" distribution - that you'll somehow get a kickback based on how much they used your code. Well, there you have the reality of it. Some say open source is like a gift, with no strings attached. Well, I prefer to give gifts to those who appriciate them...

Hard to believe the summariser is not aware of the thoughts of Chairman Gates:

Gates shed some light on his own hard-nosed business philosophy. "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

(article).

This has been accurately compared to "drug dealer tactics" by an astute Brazilian (another market at great risk of Microslop exploitation).

Ya know what? Fuck you Gates and the demon you rode in on.

I keep hearing about Word's outline view - what does it offer that OpenOffice.org's Navigator does not offer? I can move sections around, demote and promote sections, quickly jump to a section/table/picture in the document from the Navigator. Please enlighten me!

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

If someone comes up with a way to fill the role of the word processor or spreadsheet in a way stunningly better than Microsoft has, then substantial numbers of people will start chafing at vendor lock-in. As long as most competitors are just making "me too, and you can run me on more OS's" products, they'll have a niche, but not a big push for change.

Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novell in 1996, for $400 thousand, long after the alleged damage to the product had been done. The company settled with Microsoft over the DR-DOS lawsuit for an 'undisclosed sum' in January 2000, which Microsoft valued at $155 mn, but others speculated was actually 'much higher'.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/600488.stm

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/ArticleID/804 5/8045.html?Ad=1

In August 2000, Caldera agreed to acquire the Santa Cruz Operation's Unix products, including UnixWare and the SCO name. Caldera later changed its name to The SCO Group, but Caldera management remained in charge, i.e. the company was actually Caldera, not the old Santa Cruz Operation, which became Tarantella, and in 2005 was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/08/02/ 000802hncaldera.html

http://www.sun.com/software/tarantella/index.xml

Caldera's financial statements (see www.sec.gov) show it lost more money in 1999 and 2000 than its total revenue for each year, and had negative cash flows from operations. How was such a company able to issue equity that investors actually bought, pay for its ongoing losses and come up with enough money to acquire and sustain UnixWare, another loss-making business, along with the SCO name, in a deal valued at $91 mn? The answer is that the entire operation was funded by the DR-DOS lawsuit.

http://practical-tech.com/operating-system/linux/c aldera-buys-sco-unix-professional-services/

http://www.newsforge.com/os/04/03/30/0047220.shtml

Precisely. Sun has been shipping OpenSSH in Solaris since around 2002. As Theo de Raadt points out, Sun has never given OpenBSD a dime, despite the fact that they saved millions in licensing costs by choosing OpenSSH over SSH.COM.

So what's Sun's game here? Have they suddenly started giving to projects they've profited off of, or are they up to something else? My guess is that Sun's claim to be the "number one contributor to open source worldwide" is a little bit of slight-of-hand based on the fact that they've opened up Java and Solaris. Have they really given more money to OSS than, say, Red Hat or Google?

I thought it was Summer of Code.

You aren't saying that OpenOffice is better than MS Office, are you? It's cheaper, it runs on more platforms (which is why I use it on my Linux box for the very few cases where I need Office-type software), but other than that, it's most certainly NOT better.

• Open document format - much better for long term archiving of documents
• Fewer vulnerabilities
• Built in PDF export
• On licensing problems, risks or admin costs - a business advantage.
• More familiar UI than the new version of MS Office

I haven't used msword in ages, so I can't answer your feature comparison the way you want. You may want to look at http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/06 /14/2137222&tid=152 if you need a feature comparison.

That however, wasn't my point. MS has isolated itself and its products. It does dominate its own ecosystem, but other beasties have overrun their own ecosystem by virtue of openness and interoperability (cooperation) and are invading MS's ecosystem. At present they have the advantage of being entrenched, but if they don't adapt to the new conditions, they will lose relevance.

MSWord may even be the best word processor on MSWindows, but who cares? One only has to look as far as VHS vs. BetaMAX to discover how relevant that is.

Arguably the most important question I asked Scott McNealy was, "What proprietary code had to be taken out of Solaris in preparation for open sourcing it?" McNealy responded by saying that the process of open sourcing Solaris actually started five years ago. "There were hundreds of encumbrances to open sourcing Solaris. Some of them we had to buy out, others we had to eliminate. We had to pay SCO more money so we could open the code -- I couldn't say anything about that at the time, but now I can tell you that we paid them that license fee to expand our rights to the code," he said, referring to the February 2003 multi-million-dollar purchase of expanded Unix SVR4 license rights from the SCO Group. That was at the beginning of SCO's war on Linux, and the timing of Sun's license purchase was suspicious. At the time it was widely theorized in the online press that Sun had purchased the expanded Unix licenses to help fund SCO's lawsuit against Sun's lifelong nemesis IBM and public attacks on Sun's part-time rival, GNU/Linux; if what McNealy says is true, a lot of pundits owe him an apology.

I hate to break it to you, troll, but "M$" is getting nailed by the very system you claim they enjoy. Ever heard of Eolas? I'd really appreciate it if you showed us a single instance of Microsoft (oh, "M$") using a patent offensively. That does not include FAT32, which is about as common a licensing scheme as it comes in the hardware world.

Microsoft plays the game the same way IBM and everyone else does to protect themselves from the patent trolls. The system is broken. Constantly harping on why "M$ is teh bad" like Stallman is not going to help much.

I was under the impression that China was moving away from Windows...

:-/

According to proponents of a burgeoning new genre of independent film - "open source" cinema - New Line's U-turn [in adopting changes demanded by the prospective film audience] foreshadows the future of filmmaking, one where audiences control what kind of movies get made.

http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/06/23/15 21209.shtml

Informed

• BBC news
• Slashdot
• Distrowatch
• Linux.com
• Newsforge
• El Tiempo

Entertained

• SA
• Digg
• Degenerate Cesspool
• CTRL+ALT+DEL
• questionablecontent.net
• halturnershow.com

Contrary to current trends, the only site out of all of those in which I participate regularly is Slashdot. I don't even have accounts on any of the other forums. Some I only really visit because it's an old habit, notably the two webcomics and eltiempo.com. And yes, Digg is firmly in the 'entertainment' column, for its AWESOME PICTURES! and INCREDIBLY ADDICTIVE NEW FLASH GAMES OH EM GEE!

The MP3 decoding software is free software, it's just that there are patents that make distribution illegal in the US - same with libdvdcss, ffmpeg, etc. Anyway, even if they weren't free software - the point I'm making is that while the point of Ubuntu is to be free software, the point of Dell isn't to be free software. So what I was suggesting is that Dell include MP3, etc by default, and not Ubuntu. But you do appear to be correct - I read up more about the Fluendo plugin for Gstreamer that I referred to, and there does appear to be something in the GPL that complicated the issue - to fix it, every GPL program that links to Gstreamer would basically have to include an exception clause. This is the article I was reading: http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/01 /12/2156206&tid=132&tid=147&tid=113

'This whole Dell preinstalled Linux thing strikes me as a sham to get something out of Microsoft, like lower Windows license prices'

Like how, if they sell less Windows per line they get penalised. The push is coming from the end users who want a pre-installed Linux box. And if it is a sham then why did MS push to derail the last two Dell Linux efforts.

'Linux preinstalled is not all that important. The emphasis on preinstalled is the old, Windows/Mac way of thinking'

Linux preinstalled and in the shops is the best thing that could ever happen. Once the average user can buy Linux preinstalled then the userbase will take off. I mean how many people actually install Windows from scratch.

I call BS (Score:5, Insightful)

That does not help much.

From the article you linked: "...go to Java options and disable them."

That is all it says on the matter. Where are these "Java options"? Do I have to apply them to each OO app seperately? Is there an OO settings utility? What's the deal?

This link is more helpful:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/motd-archive.php/20/how-t o-speed-up-open-office-org/

And this older article is most illuminating:
http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/03 /22/204244

It seems a lot of features die if java is disabled.

What a crock, java bites the big one.

In the Shared Source Initiative there are licenses which are Just windows related. I am not sure they have stated which SSI license they will be using. Refer this link for all the different SSI licenses.
There is a good article about whether SSI is open source or not at this link. I am not sure if any of the license underneath SSI is classified as open source or not.

Here is a possible answer, in an article from 2003, the time of the announcement of the buyout:

Investors seem to think Novell (NOVL) was wise to buy SuSE. Novell stock spiked to $8.80 soon after the purchase announcement hit the wires, and closed the day at $7.33, up 21.16% from the previous day's $6.05 close.

Not that different than when AOL and Time Warner merged. Company makes a risky move, investors like, shares go up, someone sells and profits, company sinks, board changes, company makes a risky move ...

Chevy vs Ford

This was already done a few years ago, there was a company that did a complete desktop environment based on Mozilla. I was sold as a kind of appliance PC for the living room.

Here's an article on it (from 2002).

If I remember correctly that was where the original calendar code came from.

This is not disrespect, but rather well-established case law. If you want to copyright an array or algorithm... keep it out of header files.

Here is a good explanation: http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2001-Fe bruary/000181.html

"Copyright law does not protect idea, just the expression of them. Several court
decisions have been rendered which suggest that the 'purely functional' elements
of a computer program are not copyrightable. There are several cases that
explicitly deal with the issue of copyright and header files. The most relevant
one for Wine development is probably the 1992 decision in Sega v. Accolade, where
Accolade reverse engineered the headers for Sega's ROM libraries in order to
develop games compatible with Sega's hardware without paying Sega's royalties.
http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/sega_v_accolade _977f2d1510_decision.html

    The court in that case said:

        Computer programs pose unique problems for the application of the
        "idea/expression distinction" that determines the extent of copyright
        protection. To the extent that there are many possible ways of
        accomplishing a given task or fulfilling a particular market demand,
        the programmer's choice of program structure and design may be highly
        creative and idiosyncratic. However, computer programs are, in essence,
        utilitarian articles -- articles that accomplish tasks. As such, they
        contain many logical, structural, and visual display elements that are
        dictated by external factors such as compatibility requirements
        and industry demands... In some circumstances, even the exact set of
        commands used by the programmer is deemed functional rather than
        creative for the purposes of copyright. When specific instructions,
        even though previously copyrighted, are the only and essential means
        of accomplishing a given task, their later use by another will not
        amount to infringement."

Here is another, specifically on the files SCO are claiming:

http://business.newsforge.com/comments.pl?sid=3518 8&cid=83130

> It doesn't matter if it is only 1 function that IBM has copied in there.

RTFA. They are talking about function prototypes, not functions. Big difference. Without actually seeing what the beef is, SCO's claims could be as ridiculous as "int foo (void);"

> Just the fact that SCO has not been lying is vindication enough for me.

Where does it say SCO has not been lying? RBC, Microsoft, SCO and Baystar capital* have been in on this pump-n-dump since day one. As far as I'm concerned, they are all crooks and should be brought to court and tried as such. It's no different than Enron and the other MegaCorp swindlers.

[*] http://news.com.com/Fact+and+fiction+in+the+Micros oft-SCO+relationship+-+page+2/2100-7344_3-5450515- 2.html
http://www.newsforge.com/comments.pl?cid=87796&sid =36545

Didn't Walmart do exactly that a couple of years back, with Lindows preinstalled?

You might be referring to a few low end deals like:

• $500 laptop from 2004.
• $400 Desktop from 2002.

The prices were lower, but never much less than Windoze system prices at the same time. The savings were not passed along to the customer to help overcome the perceived risk. Moreover, the systems were never really promoted and I never saw one in a store. Crummy hardware, same price, no advertising, that's not exactly a recipe for success. At the same time, I don't know if they systems actually lost money. As far as Wallmart goes, relation ship with M$ is muddy, and you should do as they do not as they sell.

A company like Dell is in an entirely different position. They have the size to get low hardware costs and can make a dramatic price difference and still make good money. Obviously, the demand is there and the perceived risk is much smaller.

ordinary Joe is disadvantaged by using Open Office in a world where even rudimentary computer office skills are highly prized.

'At its worst, OOo Writer is an adequate alternative for Microsoft Word. Most of the time, it is a superior one', June 2005

Aaah but you'll need to give us some example industries to make your question legitimate. Before saying "Software industry", read this article about the gift economy which explains that most "followers of RMS" believe in one way or another in a viable worldwide software gift economy. Base further criticism on this.

I would tend to agree with the points he brings up, but then I keep getting reminded about the City of Largo in Florida.

Six years ago I read about their linux terminal service project, in which the entire city was run using Linux apps like OpenOffice, Evolution, etc, and was blown away, thinking it was the future of Linux in the business world.

Time passed, and when this didn't happen I gradually forgot about it, until the city came up in a comment this week pointing to the lead admins blog on the new system they're putting in. Not only has Linux satisfying their business needs since 2001, but they're also adding cutting edge features like 3D desktops and all sorts of crazy features.

So how is it that this guy can claim that Linux has kept failing over and over again, when Largo has a dream Linux business system running right now?

Am I missing something here?

I remember reading about the City of Largo's thin client setup six years ago and that's great it's still going strong and the admin keeps a blog detailing it.

I didn't even know it was possible to run 3D desktops over a network like that, and the menu system he's devising with launching different apps off of multiple app servers is brilliant.

Now excuse me while I trudge off to manually update adobe on 60+ computers...

I think they are thinking more of thin clients with some sort of remote desktop thing.

I myself would like to strive for Linux Termimal Server type of installtion at our work, check out this Story from Newsforge and the one year follow up which chroniclaes the city of Largo Florida government deploying Linux Terminal Server/Clients.

I think it's happening a lot more then you think, it just takes time to configure and roll-out.

I think they are thinking more of thin clients with some sort of remote desktop thing.

I myself would like to strive for Linux Termimal Server type of installtion at our work, check out this Story from Newsforge and the one year follow up which chroniclaes the city of Largo Florida government deploying Linux Terminal Server/Clients.

I think it's happening a lot more then you think, it just takes time to configure and roll-out.

I expect that to change soon. I read this story earlier today about how LinSpire is making the CNR software and warehouse available to other distros. Finally, Linux might have an easy to understand, easy to use software installer/uninstaller. This is going to go a long way to ease peoples fears about buying a Linux PC and might just help jumpstart the consumer market towards the OS. If that happens, and if more software makers distribute their software via CNR, you might just start to see Walmart sell Linux software.

The Free Software Foundation disagrees with you. The GPL requires you make ALL the source available.

Kazehakase is another Gecko-based browser to keep an eye on. Newsforge wrote an article about it back in 2005.

LOLROFLMA no! LUNIX is far behind windows in terms of crash support and exploitable vulnerabilities enhancements. LUNIX cant even run the best windows programs . and even who wants to use a operating system where INet explorer and MSN doenst work, and theres not even a defragment program lol. plus command lines are for old geezers who probably have false teeth gui is the new thing.

UM, GET WITH THE TIMES!!

lol

My direct personal experience differs from your speculation.

My direct personal experience differs from your speculation.