Don't Be a Sharecropper

An anonymous reader writes "Tim Bray, best known as an XML Heavy, has an entertaining rant about why you should be developing for *n*x, OSS, or (especially) the Web. Because if you're on a proprietary platform, you're a "sharecropper"."

Comments

*n*x?

[fafaforza]

OK I have to ask. What the heck is this?

I was willing to tolerate *nix, since it might, however remote and esoteric, be an attempt to gather all Unixes under a single label. But *n*x?

I sure hope it does not deteriorate to a four-letter-word-like ***x. Or maybe *x or x^ ?

Re:*n*x?

[Anonymous Coward]

how does HP-UX fit into this wildcard scheme?

and did you ever wonder what would have happened if Dave Packard won the coin toss? We'd have PH-UX... try to pronounce THAT one!

If Tux phux, then we'll have little tuxes running around!

Envision the future

[geekmetal]

Where the land shall belong to the farmer
Where the system software is transparent
Where the programmer can develop without fear (of the owner)
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

adapted from Rabindranath Tagore's Geetanjali

Re:I'm not a sharecropper

[awol]

Since I haven't paid for a Microsoft license since Windows 95, I consider myself a squatter.

Well if you're still there by Windows 2007 you will have adverse posession and it will be yours forever.

Particularly since the landlord has done nothing to improve the property since you started your occupation