The future of Ubuntu Linux.... Will it make Micky$oft go bankrupt?

[Derek Broughton]

Amit Kumar wrote:

>>
>> Everyone looks at things differently. Looks like we will agree to
>> disagree.
>>
> 
> Nobody has to comment on coming together of Linuxes. Does it really not
> matter? Would love to hear on this.

Really, you should ask questions like this on the sounder list, not here... 
but I can't resist.

No, it _doesn't_ matter.  So many Linuxes (and Unixes, too) exist because we 
_want_ diversity.  Ubuntu exists in large part because, at the time of its 
introduction, Debian was in its third (iirc) year of "imminent release" of 
"sarge".  Debian users were getting fed up with the slow release cycle.  
Otoh, the every-six-month cycle of Ubuntu is too much for some users.

Unix/Linux development is evolutionary not revolutionary.  Just like 
Darwin's theory, Linux develops by slow mutation - some mutations are 
advantageous, and we keep them; some take us down an evolutionary dead end 
(e.g. Caldera or Corel).  Sometimes, as with Corel Linux, while the animal 
as a whole is not equipped to compete in an OS-eat-OS world, some of its 
better adaptations show up again in later evolutionary paths, just because 
that mutation would _always_ give an advantage.

Have I sufficiently mangled that metaphor, yet?
-- 
derek