Readers Report
Linux: The Lines Are Drawn
I enjoyed "The Linux Uprising," (Cover Story, Mar. 3), but I think you missed a very important point. You state that "companies invest to create software, sell it, and pour a good part of the proceeds into building more." You then go on (correctly) to compare the making of software to the making of art.
There is a fine line between charging for the creation of a picture (which might be copyrighted) and the creation of a technique of painting (such as a brushstroke). Where would art be if the masters had patented a technique such as the mixing of paints, a triplet of music, or the concept of a sonnet?
Software differs from manufactured articles. If I give away the car that I manufacture, I no longer have a car. If I give away a copy of my software, I still have a copy of that software for my own use. Likewise I now have someone who can (and may) help me improve it for both of our benefits.
Jon "Maddog" Hall
Executive Director
Linux International
Amherst, N.H.
In your insightful piece about Linux, Microsoft's Craig Mundie implies that Linux raises questions as to "whether societies are going to value intellectual property."
Mr. Mundie has blinders on. The rise of open source actually means that societies value "intellectual property" too much to sell it.
Daniel L. Johnson
Menomonie, Wis.
While reading the cover story on Linux, I was amazed at the response the folks at Microsoft had to the threat from the open-source movement. Those at Microsoft who consider Linux a "cancer" seem to forget that the bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows (read free) ultimately doomed Netscape. After all, who would pay for a Web browser when you can get it for free? Looks like the open-sourcers are beating Microsoft at its own game.
Sam Runyon
Pittsburgh
Some open-source developers are hobbyists with programming skills, as you mention, but the vast majority are supporting themselves through careers in the business-technology industry while contributing to open-source. Many have full degrees, PhDs, MBAs, and programming experience measured in decades. A significant number of them have written and maintain the core business applications your story insultingly claims are "beyond their range."
Mark Sobkow
Saskatchewan, Canada
Your story on the "Linux" operating system, which I have been developing since 1984, repeated a widespread error by calling the system Linux, because the name we gave it is "GNU." In 1992, when GNU was nearly complete, Linus Torvalds released a free program that fit the last major gap. The combination, a system more GNU than Linux, is the system you mean. The practice of calling it Linux is unfair to us, but more important, it gives the public an incorrect picture of why the system exists.
Richard Stallman
Cambridge, Mass.
Your story implied that I questioned the integrity and objectivity of IDC's published research. I did not accuse Microsoft of "stacking the deck" in the choice of tasks.
One key finding from our years of research on total cost of ownership for IT products -- validated with this study -- is that ongoing costs over multiple years are more important in explaining total costs than onetime acquisition costs. Linux' cost advantages fall into one cost category: software acquisition and upgrades. Linux is nearly free. But software-acquisition costs are a small fraction of the full cost story.
Dan Kusnetzky
Vice-President
IDC
Framingham, Mass.
Imagine our surprise when we received the Mar. 3 edition and there on the cover was Linux' mascot, Tux, holding our Laidlaw No. 54 Plasti-Swat Flyswatter!
As the world's largest seller of flyswatters, we are honored to see his good taste in choosing an item first patented in 1954. Should the battle with Microsoft and Sun continue to heat up, we would recommend Tux consider choosing our original No. 37 Screen Blade (yes, remember Grandma using this on your backside from time to time?), patented in 1937 and still being used throughout the U.S. as an alternate weapon of choice.
Brent McWilliams
Vice-President, Sales and Marketing
Laidlaw Corp.
Scottsdale, Ariz.
Your recent article on the dramatic impact of Linux on Microsoft Corp.'s software hegemony crystallized a number of obvious conclusions to me. The hundreds of millions of dollars (and euros) wasted in the government antitrust litigation in the recent past was wholly ineffective -- and the need for such litigation was highly questionable. Yet here's this freeware coming out of the (little) blue that's causing Microsoft far more profound problems than [former U.S. antitrust chief] Joel Klein's wasted millions.
Matthew Miller
Jerusalem
|
Copyright 2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Printer-Friendly Version
