From: paul@hawksbill.sprintmrn.com (Paul Ferguson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 95 20:38:39 PST
To: daleh@ix.netcom.com (Dale Harrison (AEGIS))
Subject: UNIX bashing?
In-Reply-To: <199501300427.UAA21533@ix3.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <9501300437.AA20704@hawksbill.sprintmrn.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



> 
> I don't mean to toss gasoline onto this fire, but......
>

Too late...

 
> Unix as we know has a vanishingly small probability of ever becoming 
> 'mainstream'. There's a two-orders-of-magnitude gap between the installed 
> base of Dos/Windows and that of Unix. That gap has grown, not marrowed 
> over time. This is however no reflection on the obvious technical merits 
> of Unix. Market dominance is based not on technical superiority, but 
> rather on technical sufficiency. Once an OS acheives technical 
> sufficiency any further technical improvements will have a diminishing 
> marginal effect on that OS's market performance. Once the OS is 
> technically sufficient, non-technical factors begin to dominate. The 
> market failure of WinNT is a classic example of this. Its failure is 
> unrelated to its technical merits (or lack thereof), but rather on 
> econmic and social factors the even a company withe the marketing muscle 
> of MicroSoft has not yet been able to overcome. (OS/2 is of course an 
> example of an even more dismal, perhaps terminal, failure for many of the 
> same reasons.)
>


UNIX is a _networking_ OS, in my mind, above and beyond anything else
which the 'mainstream' may desire.

If I want Excel, Word or Powerpoint, I'll use my PC (which is completely
compatible, via PPP, and able to exchange data) to work within these
obviously proprietary formats. :-)

Microsoft hasn't really made any attempt to enbrace the UNIX community.

Why should we emmrace Microsoft?

- paul

 
_______________________________________________________________________________
Paul Ferguson                         
US Sprint                                          tel: 703.689.6828
Managed Network Engineering                   internet: paul@hawk.sprintmrn.com
Reston, Virginia  USA                             http://www.sprintmrn.com