A significant part of their argument rests on the fact that the market likes Windoze...they seem to think that empirical market share directly translates into consumer preference in a situation of competition. It doesnt take an economics degree to tell you that this is not necessarily true.
They also have problems with support for open-source software...they dont seem to realize that the same people who are writing the softwares and a significant portion of their users are proficient in HTML...and are capable of documenting the common errors, pitfalls, etc. If they'd done their homework, they'd see quite a bit of documentation online. Dont get me wrong, I know there's much room for improvement in terms of information flow re: OSS support, but they seem to think that it does not exist... I guess they dont know about usenet or mailing lists and #linux.
They are also neglecting side-effects and side-payments, if you will, that companies and users receive as a natural result of OSS...eg., establishment of protocols, standards, etc in a purely efficient manner. You dont need a degree in economics to know that the best decisions for consumers are not always realized by a profit-maximizing firm (think about sports...why are there so many crappy teams? excessive competitiveness simply isnt profitable). While there is a significant fracturing in the systems and software standards available as a result of OSS, their differences do not hide general trends of convergence (eg. mp3, and dont pretend that unrestricted mp3 is gonna disappear cuz of some pay-for-play standard). MP3, I think it is safe to say, would not have come from the profit maximizing behavior of record companies, yet it seems to be pretty good at satisfying a consumer demand.
They also state that even linux advocates dont think Linux can survive in the face of an unrestricted Microsl0th...where on earth did they dig this BS up...
In short, I could have come up with a more compelling argument as to why Quake will never replace ATARI 2600.
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A significant part of their argument rests on the fact that the market likes Windoze...they seem to think that empirical market share directly translates into consumer preference in a situation of competition. It doesnt take an economics degree to tell you that this is not necessarily true.
They also have problems with support for open-source software...they dont seem to realize that the same people who are writing the softwares and a significant portion of their users are proficient in HTML...and are capable of documenting the common errors, pitfalls, etc. If they'd done their homework, they'd see quite a bit of documentation online. Dont get me wrong, I know there's much room for improvement in terms of information flow re: OSS support, but they seem to think that it does not exist... I guess they dont know about usenet or mailing lists and #linux.
They are also neglecting side-effects and side-payments, if you will, that companies and users receive as a natural result of OSS...eg., establishment of protocols, standards, etc in a purely efficient manner. You dont need a degree in economics to know that the best decisions for consumers are not always realized by a profit-maximizing firm (think about sports...why are there so many crappy teams? excessive competitiveness simply isnt profitable). While there is a significant fracturing in the systems and software standards available as a result of OSS, their differences do not hide general trends of convergence (eg. mp3, and dont pretend that unrestricted mp3 is gonna disappear cuz of some pay-for-play standard). MP3, I think it is safe to say, would not have come from the profit maximizing behavior of record companies, yet it seems to be pretty good at satisfying a consumer demand.
They also state that even linux advocates dont think Linux can survive in the face of an unrestricted Microsl0th...where on earth did they dig this BS up...
In short, I could have come up with a more compelling argument as to why Quake will never replace ATARI 2600.
$0.02
Dig in!