Re: Viability of Linux companies (Was Re: A Linux Today story has been mailed to you!)

[indradg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hi,

Been watching this thread with some amusement for sometime... so here goes
my 2 bits to the global byte pollution ;-)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Kingsly John" <kingslyj@xxxxxxxx>
> On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Arun Sharma wrote:
>
>  |Sorry, JavaScript is not the standard. ECMAScript is.
>
> But ECMA is a recent development.. and anyways JavaScript is more
> compliant with ECMAScript than jScript!

come on! June 1998 isn't exactly the day before yesterday....

> (If you download the latest JavaScript manuals from netscape ... you will

> see that most of the stuff meets ECMA specs.)

MSFT does make the following claim -- "Microsoft® JScript® 5.5, a powerful
scripting language targeted specifically at the Internet, is the first
scripting language to fully conform to ECMAScript, the Web's only standard
scripting language.". Although, since its from MSFT we have to take some
salt with that.... ;-)

>
>  |> I don't think any of these can be called standards... M$FT openly
preaches
>  |> the embrace and extend philosophy..
>  |
>  |Linux uses the clone() system call. This is not in POSIX. Why is it not
embrace
>  |and extend ?
>
> Linux didn't start out to be what it is today.... so it's not exactly
> POSIX compliant... But, doesn't Linux aim to be POSIX compliant someday
??
> M$FT always wants to be a standard on/of their own.

IMHO, this is getting ridiculous... lets admit something honestly...
Mozilla is good, but Netscape has really messed badly. Admit it! It has
lost the browser war, it has lost all the early advantages and its top gun
status when /it/ was able to direct and focus setting up of standards. And
it is making us old-timers who had embraced NS with open arms when it was
the first major commercial application to become open source, look stupid
in front of our closed-source colleagues.

Netscape has done a lot of good things. But they are no longer with /it/.
However sad that might be there is no way we can escape that reality. It
has lost its momentum and focus. With some many exciting new technologies &
standards coming through why should i (either as a developer or an user) be
pulled back from utilizing those? In a production environment, I wouldn't
use a product just because its open source, I would use it because it is
good!

Staid, old-fashioned interfaces doesn't cut it anymore, if you are trying
to address the mainstream. We need rich development interfaces that allows
us to do neat stuff. What about dynamic Client-side interactivity using
HTML 4.0?
What about using CSS/CSSP which properly utilized can optimize and easy
away a lot of development & maintanence blues? I want to use SVG/VML to
display my rich 2D graphics. I need client-side XML rendering for a
corporate intranet project... can I do it anytime soon with NS? Sure, I
could use HTML 3.2, it would work on all browsers, but why should I? Why do
we use KDE 2.0 on our boxen, instead of sticking with fvwm or tvwm? They
/ARE/ fast! and /FAR/ less memory intensive... WindowMaker was a personal
favorite for a long time. But do use fvwm instead of KDE 2 on our new,
blazing fast machine??? I don't think so ;-)

And don't tell me to
"build-your-own-if-you-are-not-happy-as-you-have-the-source", if developing
a browser was my cuppa tea I would have been doing that, rather than using
& debating on the (de?)merits of one. So there ... ;-)

Most open-source projects are managed on the basis of meritocracy... why
should the yardstick for judging NS/Mozilla be any different from that? 
Apart from us linux users, how many people in the world really bother to
get themselves this worked up over NS? IMHO, Konqueror seems to have a much
better prospect in succeeding -- the silent contender of the browserspace
race. Maybe even Opera.... but NS...? well who knows....

To my mind, sad it might be, NS is becoming a more like a martyr. In its
time, it has pushed a lot of standards, plenty of useful ones too. It was
the undisputed leader of the browserspace. But now that the shoe is on the
other foot (read MSFT), it is suddenly bad if MSFT tried to push ahead a
standard. Sure, the way MSFT goes about doing this does leave me
uncomfortable many a times. But MSFT can't be pronounced guilty just
because as a market leader it is trying to push a standard. Its a funny
mentality....

IMO, its high time, we stop taking cover behind the Holloween (sp?)
documents.... more MSFT witchhunting we do, the better it is for MSFT. For
while we are busy lighting the witch-hunt bonfire, MSFT would have gained
more  marketshare and hammered in yet another nail in the coffin of the
alternative browsers.

And lastly for all ye NS fanatics, have you compared the difference of
scripting between NS4.x and NS6.x? Makes the cross-browsers developers'
lives are little more easier, doesn't it? *<g><d>&<r>*

--indra.



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