Non-geeks writing about Ubuntu

[Paul O'Malley]

Mike DeBerardine wrote:

>the article seemed very anti-Microsoft. you need to keep in mind that
>Microsoft is running a business...one of the world's largest businesses at
>that, and even if you say it's terrible that they charge 100 dollars for
>their operating system, you have to look at it from Microsoft's point of
>view - we're in demand, we have the market - we set the price, they pay it,
>we give lots of people good jobs, and we set the curve - Microsoft isn't
>like Ubuntu, a business corporation with a product to sell and nothing more
>  
>
/me rofl

It is a free market, or so some would tell us.
I do keep in mind that Microsoft(tm) are trying to run a monopoly.
I do remember it being touted as being better for computing than 
Unix(tm) which is
I do keep in mind the points that end up in the Get the Facts(tm) 
campaign, one after another the items there fail under close scrutiny, 
at least for me, do they for you?
I do keep in mind that when a school I visited to talk about GNU/Linux 
got software for free from Microsoft, that was free as in cost not Free 
as in Freedom. Where was the value in that?
I do keep in mind that the software they got from me they can share with 
their friends and manipulate to fulfil their own tasks.
I do keep in mind the fact that there is no need to go and buy a anti 
virus software and firewalls from some other company to keep my computer 
safe when I get GNU/Linux software.
I do keep in mind the following companies names, Mandriva, HP, IBM, 
Novell, RedHat, Linksys, MySQL corp, many more and lastly but by no 
means least Canonical who have a support based model. It might surprise 
you to think that there is a business model there also.
I do keep in mind that as a result of GNU/Linux having many companies 
worldwide involved working hard to deliver services, and most of them, 
if not all of them, are not in court accused of anti competitive practices.

They, as in Microsoft, should, as I quote from the immortal words of 
Jack Charlton (ex soccer manager Republic Of Ireland), "Go and 
compete".  Furthermore, I urge them to stop what I believe to be the 
futile effort of trying to kill the competition through lobbying for 
laws, which will end up being used against them as much as against any 
others, in ways they have not imagined.
Permit me a minor digression, if someone claims that patent infringement 
should be a criminal offence, may I ask if  Microsoft were to loose such 
a case, who should go to jail the coder or Steve, Billy boy or Craig?

In general people hate nothing more than not having choice and those 
that remove choice risk customer rejection, which I think is a factor on 
what is going on at the moment when you see the Apple sales, and Linux 
adoption.

Oh as for me not getting their technology, I don't _need_ it, nor do I 
want it, do you?

If you want more games on Linux don't buy the windows version and send 
back the box of the game to your supplier looking for a version to run 
on your operating system.

Regards,

Paul
Have a virtual coffee on me.