Re: Re: Viability of Linux companies

[Kingsly John <kingslyj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 22 Apr 2001, Arun Sharma wrote:

 |On Mon, Apr 23, 2001 at 09:21:24AM +0530, Kingsly John wrote:
 |>  |What I would like to know is what you mean by "failed". BSDs are very much
 |>  |alive and used. 
 |> 
 |> He means it is not as popular as it should have been if it had really been
 |>  open source .
 |
 |There are two fallacies in the above statement:
 |
 |(a) Something is not popular doesn't imply that it's closed source.
 |(b) Something is open source doesn't imply that it automatically 
 |    becomes popular.

Hmm... you can replace open source with free.

 |Sometimes which class of people a product becomes popular has a
 |significant impact on viability. How popular is IBM's mainframe
 |OS (whatever its called) ?

I'm sure that there is a class of people that would love BSODs and I'm
sure corporates would have invested huges sums of money into solutions
based on that OS when something as stable as BSD was available for free.

Kingsly

	        .:: Kingsly John                ICQ 14787510 ::.
               --------------------------------------------------
            .:: Linux 2.4.3 #9 Mon Apr 23 11:52:01 IST 2001 i686 ::.
            --------------------------------------------------------
           `:. Posted to the list on Mon Apr 23 12:57:40 IST 2001 .:'