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Andreesssen: Why Open Source Will Boom - in 103 Words
An anonymous reader writes "You gotta love Marc Andreessen's 12 reasons why Open Source is set to boom: can anyone use fewer than 103 words and still adduce as many reasons as he does?"
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Foreign governments will tend to use Linux, and encourage their industries to use it, to avoid dependency on software from the evil USA?
Seriously though, governments would be well advised to avoid dependency on software so heavily subject to the control of any other country's government, it shouldn't depend on anti-American sentiment in particular.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
"Only a fool thinks price and value are the same." - Antonio Machado
Two years ago, at my previous employer, I sat across the conference-room table from Mr. Andreessen while several of Loudcloud's salesmen and "sales engineers" literally shouted at me and the other developers and admins on the tech staff that our reliance on "shareware schemes" (the lead salesman's term for FOSS) was going to be our company's downfall and that we were fools not to let them save us. Six months later Loudcloud morphed into Opsware and got out of the enterprise hosting business. We hadn't signed their contract, either.
Maybe he was thinking counter to his salesforce even then, though that is giving him the benefit of some large doubt. I don't think he was actually thinking about anything in particular related to that meeting, since he spent most of his time checking information on his Blackberry and filling out a Federal security clearance application, and didn't participate in the meeting other than to sit there and look famous.
In any case, this story makes me laugh, only half-ruefully.
Also, since when is desire for control over one's computing systems 'anti-American sentiment' (point 5).
We actually took this question to a Professor in the Education department.
We were concerned about Bon Jovi's song where he says "I'll be there for you. These five words I say to you". One person said "Ha leave it to Bon Jovi to screw that one up. It's six words." I however was convinced it was 5 words.
The whole thing got bigger than it needed to, but the professor didn't have an immediate answer.
After reviewing with some colleagues including 1 who was an attorney, the general consensus was that it was indeed 6 words. It's also a contraction, which is pronounced as 1 word, but if you diagram that sentence, you have to separate the subject and the verb.
Therefore, if you accept the decision of the Professors (and attorney), What we acutally have is Andreessen's "Why Linux will Boom in 106 words" due to the 3 contractions he used in his list.
Although, there is a good argument for either side..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
No. Tony Blair is on your side. The majority of sane British people think Bush is one of the biggest retards ever born, never mind definitely the biggest retard ever to hold office.
(Case in point, the other day he appeared on BBC News saying "There is no middle ground between good and evil". WTF? Even 8 year olds have a more sophisticated weltanschaaung than that! Somebody send the man to a high school Ethics lesson. Even 12 year olds, when presented with a classic 'moral quandry' scenario, notice within about 5 minutes that there is almost nothing but middle ground.)
OTOH, the majority of sane Brits probably also have a general affection for the American people, culture, etc, and an appreciation that democratic capitalism is the worst system - except for all the others. This was the same feeling before Bush, the same during Bush, and will be the same after him.