IT Job creations... IT job losses?

[JoeHill]

On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 20:43:00 -0500
CLIFFORD ILKAY <clifford_ilkay-biY6FKoJMRdBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> uttered:

> >So who is the average user who is not so average and what apps does
> >he need that requires M$ ?
> 
> I have a client who uses some very sophisticated (and expensive ~ 
> $80,000/seat) CAD/CAM software that has little chance of ever running
> on Windows. Though he would love to run Linux, it would be crazy for
> him to do that because it would effectively kill his business. Yes,
> Linux is great and can leap over tall buildings and all that but, the
> biggest disservice we can do to Linux is to claim that it is suitable
> for all situations and users.

...but the biggest sevice we can do to Linux (or BSD, or Eros ;-)) is to
break the monopoly, the stranglehold, that MS has on the desktop market,
and thereby give developers a reason to port and/or code versions of
said software for OS's other than Windows. That's why I am convinced
more and more every day that there is an activist component to being an
OSS advocate, or even just as a user. Linux users have shunned the
political debate far too much, I think, believing that they are somehow
above it, and this is wrong.

We obviously cannot rely on the DOJ in the US to enforce it's own
convictions of MS on illegal market manipulation, we cannot sit idly by
and watch MS dodge this, if we expect *nix in general to become what I
believe it is supposed to have been all along, the dominant model for
computing everywhere, more advanced, more secure, more stable, and, dare
I say it, more politically and economically egalitarian.

Linux *can be* "suitable for all situations and users", but it's not
going to happen overnight, and it's not going to happen without users
taking an active and participatory role in the politcal discourse that
so far has allowed MS to quietly carry on it's monopolistic game.

-- 
JoeHill
Registered Linux user #282046
Homepage: www.orderinchaos.org
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Do not seek death; death will find you.  But seek the road which makes
death
a fulfillment.
		-- Dag Hammarskjold
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml