why I fear open source can't win the war

[Mike Kallies]

On 8/5/06, bob <ican-rZHaEmXdJNJWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
...
> This tale bothers me on a number of fronts.
>
> a) that a major national provider can hook up with a convicted monopolist to
> "ensure" that standard email software doesn't function
>
> b) that some obscure "bug" may exist in the combination of OO, Firefox,
> Thunderbird,  The Open CD,  Windows XP home,  Norton that renders dialup
> "useless" ... and more importantly that the effort to sort this out will mean
> that it likely will remain a bug
>
> c) that problems like a) and b) are what will ultimately prevent open source
> software from ever reaching the mainstream home user
...

If I understand correctly though, you just described how a partnership
with MSN cost Sympatico a customer.

I installed Firefox on a machine which I gave to my parents.  I hid IE
as best I could and gave them a restricted account on the machine.
It's just a Win2k system.

The worst which has happened so far was my father trying to order
tickets through AirCanada and being told by an automated message to
upgrade his browser.  They wanted something which would support
ActiveX.

I told him that the computer was set up to be robust and relatively
easy to use while requiring minimal fidgeting and customizing.  Air
Canada doesn't respect that.

He was happy with that answer.

The machine has OO and uses dial up too.  It hasn't been a problem at
all.  Although I'll have to go look at it to see how many worms,
viruses and trojans it has picked up :-)

Microsoft seems to recognize that between personal firewalls,
antivirus, antispam and system updates, MacOS or Linux are becoming
more and more attractive to their userbase.   Microsoft has been
losing quite a few battles as of late.

-Mike
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