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"do not believe that any legitimate valuable software product has lost a significant piece of their marketshare to free software" Linux is another exception, e
by timf 18y ago
"do not believe that any legitimate valuable software product has lost a significant piece of their marketshare to free software"
Linux is another exception, especially for servers. And Apache httpd.
- brk 18y agoIn the places where linux and apache excel, I would argue that the "paid" software options are not "legitimate" or "valuable".
- timf 18y agoIf the OSS competition being better (in both of our opinions) and more popular than previous giants means that the old option is then no longer "legitimate" or "valuable" then your argument is kind of a tautology. Plenty of people get done what they want done and walk away satisfied with the paid alternatives such as IIS or in the case of Linux another server platform (SSI, mainframes, Windows, etc.). How are these things "illegitimate"? I agree with your point overall, I was just pointing out exceptions. Another one is Xen vs. VMware.
- kragen 18y agoYou think that, for running a networked server, none of Solaris, OS/400, z/OS, Microsoft Windows, OpenVMS, Ultrix, AIX, MCP, NeXTStep, MacOS X, Netscape Enterprise Server, HP/UX, IRIX, NaviServer, BSD/OS, etc., were ever legitimate or valuable? I'm sure that comes as a surprise to the people who spent thousands of man-years writing that software. Or did they stop being legitimate and valuable when Linux and Apache got better than they were?