[Reader-list] .Net / Hailstorm Initiative

[Menso Heus]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 10:17:03AM +0530, Pankaj Kaushal wrote:

> Most (if not all) things work on linux . The Hardware that does not
> work is obiviously from vendors who don't think opensource people 
> should use there hardware. Earlier when I wanted to install Linux and 
> a particular h/w is givin me problems What I do was change the hardware
> and make sure to tell *others* about it and to ignore it and use some 
> alternative that works. 

What you do, changing the hardware, is not Joe Bloe behaviour. My typical
Joe Blow would order a machine at some vendor and then find out stuff 
doesn't work with XFree86 yet, etc.
 
> Slowly as the user's will increase the h/w vendors will realise the 
> market and things will start working.

I've been hearing that for the last five years too, if it's increasing, good.
 
> till then joe blow *who wishes to use linux* can ask the Local Linux Guru
> about what h/w to buy for his linux box.

True.

> We need enough Joe Blow to give back complaints.
> 
> What you don't understand here is Linux does not work on the philosophy 
> that all the *hackers* are here to work for Mr Joe Blow and his Desktop PC.
> and to make sure that every thing works.It works on the philosophy of give
> and take If Joe Blow tells on the *kernel mailing list* that this dos'nt work
> I'm sure some one will take a weekend to try and sort it out.

I understand that all the Linux people are not continuously trying to make it
work with all hardware. The 'try and sort it out' is not acceptable for a lot 
of Joe Blows. 
 
> >There *is* no opensource streaming format that can compete with Windows Media
> >Player or even Real. This is not a question of monopoly or whatever other 
> >anti-payware slogan you want to use, it simply does not exist.
> 
> Then Why don't you try to contact people who think the same and want to do
> something about it. Try to attract attention of *hackers* who are comming to 
> HAL and see what happens . 

First of all because I don't feel like doing it. Second of all because I don't
have the knowledge on how to do it and don't want to/have the time to obtain it.
Also, I do not have any interest there. In the current market situation I am
able to offer customers working solutions with which they will be able to reach
96% of the customers (latest statistics for several sites we run are that 90%
uses Microsoft Internet Explorer and 6% Netscape, of which 2.21% is Mac, 0.38% 
runs on Linux and the rest is all Microsoft platform). 
 
> People who run Linux machines, who code for GNU and who do publicity
> are not responsible for Joe Blows problem but If Joe tries to be a part
> of the community and help them do his work maybe things would work out.

How could Joe Blow do this? By giving up his daytime job or all his free time to 
figure out how to program certain stuff that he needs? This is very nice, but
it's not Joe Blow anymore, Joe Blow is some manager at some company, works about 
8 or 10 hours a day and wants a desktop machine to work. He is not a computer-
capable person and he has a job. In other words: time and willingness are the 
key factor here.

> I was once like Joe myself :) .

Yes, and you probably still had long summer holidays in school during which you 
could figure all this stuff out and you're following computer education, right? 

> <snip>
> >For some reason people started saying Office 2k would be XML compliant, I didn't ever
> >see MS make this claim. They use a new XML like structure for all their office 2k
> 
> I never said that MS was comatible with XML its Not. And the point is Why Not?

As mentioned before, they adapted it to use in their own program. I think the answer
is as to why they are not: because they didn't see the need, have the time, the budget,
etc, to make it so.

> When an open Standard exists then why use something that is slightly different
> then the standard.

Because they might not have wanted to, been able to, etc implement this. Documentation
on the Office 2k tags is openly available though and they only use this format with 
Office 2k, their .Net stuff seems to be pure XML. 
As one of people said on the url's yesterday, if one would read the specs he would likely
be able to write a parser for it.

> Clearly the reason is to capture the users *who don't know the underlaying tech*

That would be 99% of the users out there. How many Joe Blow computer users do you know
that know what XML is?

> into that ring. Software based on closed technologies is like a virus. If you want
> to share content with ur friends they have to buy that technology too.

As I said before, it's not completely closed, you can get the specs and write parsers.

> Its like saying You can Not share the apples that you buy with your friends just
> because I own the apple tree and I will decide who eats apples.

Untrue, I do get to share apples from the tree, as long as they stay within the group 
of people that paid for that apple tree or people who paid a license to the apple tree
owners so that they can implement the apple-swap protocol the tree-owners created.

> >documents so that they are easily interchangeable with other office 2k programs
> >(e.g. from word to excell to powerpoint without losing anything). 
> >Thus, their goal was not to make an XML compliant application (whether or not 
> 
> Yes, Thats what I am saying out loud  there goal was not to make it compatible
> with XML. because they don't want an open technology reaching the users. 

So that's why they're building .Net now? 
 
> >Thus, they never claimed that the output of Office 2k programs would be things 
> >compatible to the XML standard and anybody saying "when you produce a html with 
> >word 2000 it produces XML" are obviously no up to date on the facts.
> >If they continue with "and Obiviously it is Incompatible with every other XML
> >parser" they are right, since it's *not* XML and nobody ever claimed it was.
> 
> oke it was my mistaque to call it XML its something that looks like XML.
> but the point is not technical at all the point is not that if it is XML or not
> the point is Why Not?

You'd have to phone Microsoft for that, the problem with it is, I think, probably 
more along the lines of "Either we can build on our existing RTF code and release 
it on time, or we gotta swap all our code, rebuilt parts of the engine and it'll 
take another year or so." 

> ok  MS has all the right in the world to use whatever and write there software 
>  how they want to write it. 

Exactly, if the next version of Office will be able to use pure XML that would be 
very nice, if not, too bad. If you can't live with this fact, switch to something
else that can do this. 

> But Joe Blow also has the right to know what is happenning. but normally Joe
> dos'nt know.

Joe blow could have read the exact same websites I posted yesterday to get himself
informed, yet I fear Joe Blow isn't much interested in this either. If he is, he 
would be using StarOffice (if that is already fully XML compliant) or something
else.

> The point is not wether Linux is a better Desktop OS then windows.

This was the point I was trying to make, not for the hell of it but to show that
it's easy to say something is a monopoly, it's another to come with wellworking 
alternatives that will make people switch operating system or desktop environment.

Menso
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