I think that Linux is still fairly young and although it often pushes periphery to the extreme, it results in competition to do better. The 'survival of the fittest' scenario drives the evolution of Linux.
You should also bear in mind that most Linux developers aren't giving their free time to make sure the operating system is dumbed down enough that semi-retarded Johnny six pack can use it without having to think.
I use openSuse and Smart Package Manager. I am no expert.. but I find it very simple to find and install any package I want - with all of the dependencies taken care of. However, I would say that Linux certainly lends itself to the distribution of free software - the community turns source code into nice packages into nice repositories. Closed source projects have to come up with their own distro-specific packages.
Is the Linux Standard Base not supposed to move us slowly away from distro-specific packages anyway?
I guess the great thing about OSS is that it is constantly evolving and will undoubtedly end up with more than the required feature set. Just think how much the general offering has improved over the last 5 years.
Microsoft know their market. If the letter is genuine, then they are acting like a company that can see its market share slipping in the future. In fact, only a fool wouldn't see it; Microsoft are just trying to slow the whole process down as much as possible by obscuring a fairly obvious choice (ODF). Creating competing specifications will only slow down fast adoption of one or the other.
In respect to businesses 'not noticing' the savings to be had with OpenOffice (and other OSS apps) I think it represents a laziness that will be punished by other more aggressive companies. These companies need to wake up, rub their eyes and realise the benifits
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I think that Linux is still fairly young and although it often pushes periphery to the extreme, it results in competition to do better. The 'survival of the fittest' scenario drives the evolution of Linux.
You should also bear in mind that most Linux developers aren't giving their free time to make sure the operating system is dumbed down enough that semi-retarded Johnny six pack can use it without having to think.
I use openSuse and Smart Package Manager. I am no expert.. but I find it very simple to find and install any package I want - with all of the dependencies taken care of.
However, I would say that Linux certainly lends itself to the distribution of free software - the community turns source code into nice packages into nice repositories. Closed source projects have to come up with their own distro-specific packages.
Is the Linux Standard Base not supposed to move us slowly away from distro-specific packages anyway?
I guess the great thing about OSS is that it is constantly evolving and will undoubtedly end up with more than the required feature set. Just think how much the general offering has improved over the last 5 years. Microsoft know their market. If the letter is genuine, then they are acting like a company that can see its market share slipping in the future. In fact, only a fool wouldn't see it; Microsoft are just trying to slow the whole process down as much as possible by obscuring a fairly obvious choice (ODF). Creating competing specifications will only slow down fast adoption of one or the other. In respect to businesses 'not noticing' the savings to be had with OpenOffice (and other OSS apps) I think it represents a laziness that will be punished by other more aggressive companies. These companies need to wake up, rub their eyes and realise the benifits