Re: [TCLUG:4131] FW: Your Open Source Acid Test Article.

[John R Sheets <dusk@smsi-roman.com>]

"Schlough, Mark (NM IT)" wrote:
> 
> This is the answer that came from the e-mail I sent to Ted Lewis about his
> innane article about the "Acid Test"
> 
> > Yes, I agree. Infact, Linux may be what standardizes UNIX. Unfortunately,
> > it may be too late as Windows NT is rapidly ascending the scale of larger
> > and larger systems. We shall see.

Broad, short-sighted statements like this are very frustrating to
me, and betray a certain blind trust in the Microsoft publicity
machine.  Assuming NT were to continue to grow at its present
rate, I might agree.  But this ignores everything that's going
down with the anti-trust suit, as well as the current situation
with Microsoft's OS engineering problems, i.e. Windows' lack of
scalability.

It's going to be another 2-3 years before the next major release
of Windows.  Microsoft themselves have grudgingly admitted this. 
(I'm not 100% sure how NT5 fits into this, but since NT5 is now
Win2000, I think it's all the same deal.)  This adds up to 6+
years between major releases of their OS....1995 to 2001+ (NOTE:
my fact-checking software is currently broken, so please correct
me if I'm wrong :).  How are they going to maintain their current
marketshare gains when they're lagging so far behind in the
technical spectrum?

Well anyway, I think it'd be good advice to Mr. Lewis to hold off
on any long-term trend analysis until after the impact of the
anti-trust suit is clear.  Not to mention the 2.2 kernel, the
GNOME desktop project, Redhat's 15 minutes of fame, and Mozilla.

"Grumpy" John (c: