Just a reminder of what is being asked here

Posted Aug 18, 2006 15:23 UTC (Fri) by AJWM (guest, #15888)
In reply to: Just a reminder of what is being asked here by Erich_J_Ritzmann
Parent article: Linuxs iPod Generation Gap (Red Herring)

>When Linux makes life altogether easier for people, that is when Linux will be ready for the masses.

I don't care about Linux being ready for the masses. I care about it being ready for me (which it has for over 10 years), and for being ready for people who pay me to work with it (which it has been for over 5 years). There's enough of a critical mass that Linux isn't going away any time soon.

Personally, most things that are "ready for the masses" I don't want to have anything to do with. That's not elitism, just a matter of personal taste. If something fits my needs or my tastes, I don't really care how many or how few other people like it or don't.

> What of the fact that erstwhile nearly bankrupt Apple has used a pragmatic hybrid OSS model to become what Linux aspired to be a decade ago?

Nearly bankrupt Apple? They had a few $billion in the bank and little debt when they bought NeXT. (It's just that with W95 out and Copland foreshadowing Longhor^wVista in terms of development delays, the "analysts" thought Apple was a goner.) NeXT, er, Apple then just tweaked up NeXTOS with an updated kernel and gave it an Apple paint job. OSS was a sideshow for Apple, always has been.

> There is a place for FOSS idealism

Idealism? Nay, pragmatism. I tend to avoid buying anything (computer related or not) that will lock me into a single vendor, or which doesn't allow me the option of fixing it myself or modifying it to my own ends. I regard that as part of the basic freedom to do whatever the hell I want so long as I don't hurt anybody else. Alas, far to many of "the masses" not only don't care if somebody else can tell them what to do or not to do, they actually prefer it. Fine, for them there's Windows, or MacOS X.