From: Justin Mason (jm at domain jmason.org)
Date: Tue 25 Jul 2000 - 14:47:32 IST
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2000/07/25/eazel/print.html :
As befits the legacy of the Macintosh, everything about Nautilus looks
good -- pleasing colors, pleasing design, pleasing integration of
features. But that did raise one obvious question. If the Macintosh, with
all its ease-of-use pioneering, lost out to Windows for control of the PC
marketplace, what made Boich, Hertzfeld et al. think that Linux plus GNOME
plus Nautilus could threaten Bill Gates' stranglehold over the desktop?
That's where Boich made the most interesting comment of the demo: Linux is
doing to Windows what Microsoft did to Apple.
Apple screwed up, said Boich, by keeping proprietary control of both the
hardware and the software. When Windows turned hardware into a commodity,
Apple couldn't compete.
Linux, says Boich, is going one step further. By making the operating
system a commodity, and forcing software developers to compete on the
basis of what kind of services they can provide to computer users,
Linux/GNOME/Nautilus is threatening, in essence, to prevent Microsoft from
using its control of the software infrastructure to wipe out competition.
--j.
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