[ILUG] Is Linux dying?

[Paul Jakma]

On Mon, 5 Jul 2004, Paul Reilly wrote:

> you can't download it anymore. The companies which are releasing 
> commercial desktop distro's are filling a niche which the community 
> hasn't delivered on. By focussing on the little things like 
> open/save dialogs, decent file system browser etc, they are making 
> a Linux based desktop OS usable. I think the FOSS teams will get 
> there in the end, but the companies will be leading the way, since 
> they are more focussed on what the non-technical end user needs.

I'm just curious... where exactly did you get this idea that ("the 
community" and "the FOSS  teams") != "the companies"?

Go through the OpenOffice, GNOME, Linux kernel, etc.. CVS or BK 
ChangeLogs/commit messages and you'll find many @sun.com, 
@redhat.com, @suse.de, @ibm.com, @ximian.<whatever>, etc, email 
addresses. For the remaining email addresses, with a bit of 
investigation you will find that some of the people concerned still 
are employed by those companies.

This thread has been an eye-opener. I'm amazed that people have the 
impression that these corporates are busy sucking code from "the 
community" and hiding it away in a corner, when the truth is that 
these corporates are employing many of "the community" to work on 
these projects.

> Paul

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
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