'Commercial Partners'

[Eric S. Raymond]

Andy Green <andy at warmcat.com>:
> >wants the desktop and what it's prepared to do to get it.  It ties
> >into a larger issue about what the Linux community needs to do to
> >thrive under competitive pressure, which *is* a question for Fedora.
> 
> What does "competitive pressure" mean in the context of a Free OS?

Competitive pressure for market share from Windows and MacOS, of course.
 
> >This doesn't make me infallible, of course, but it does mean betting
> >that I'm wrong this time is not something to do casually.
> 
> Well good for you, but it doesn't get you a free ride on your dramatic 
> characterizations of "Death of Linux Unless Y'all Do As I Say".  If you 
> spoke of anything to explain the reasoning behind the proposition of 
> Linux dying unless it gets on a large number of desktops quickly on this 
> thread, I missed it.

I think I explained this in some datail earlier.  We need market power
in order to stave off a future where we get DRMed and EULAed to death
because hardware manufacturers figure all they have to do is serve the
Windows & Intel Mac markets.  Down that road lie video cards we can't
use and on-the-mobo TPM to lock us out.
 
>  - Why shouldn't a dramatic growth of Linux on the Desktop have the 
> opposite effect of triggering an apocalypse of attacks from MSFT on 
> their various desktop-related patents?

That will happen once we do *anything* to piss off Microsoft enough,
whether it's the fast-growth scenario I want to see or the boil-the-frog-
slowly scenario you think is good enough.  So it's kind of a wash.

>  - Why is the current frog-boiling method while Linux and the Free apps 
> improve and establish themselves deeper and deeper not good enough?

Because it's not getting us any desktop penetration to speak of.
 
>  - In your theory, is Linux in the embedded space going to die too 
> because MSFT continue to have ~90% of desktops?

No, but lots of Linux in the embedded space doesn't solve our problem either.
Puts no pressure on the video-card makers, for one thing.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>