On 8/24/05, Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > What do we have to say to her? Honestly.. I'll tell her that perhaps linux is not right for her... and to check out other for-pay linux distributions which include proprietary technology instead of being completely open source. Moving to completely open source solutions has an opportunity cost, you either value the benefits of open source over the costs or you don't... and that determination comes down to personal situations. I'd also tell her that crossing any operating system boundary has a portability price associated with. The price is higher when you crossing from proprietary to an open vendor. And while there are some technical solution which help.. there is no universal solution to the problem..either for proprietary binary portability or proprietary content portability. For binary portability...anyone walking into the process of 'major' operating system change certaintly needs to expect to have to stop using some binary applications that you were using in the previous operating system. While wine and winex do a good job at helping get access to some windows applications.. they are not universal solutions... just like virtualPC was never a perfect solution. I think point-blank statement about binary compatibility from windows to linux is a very sensible statement to make upfront and I think most people would find that sort of expectation adjustment reasonable. Whether or not wine or winex are helpful solution to this particular person's game problem is a matter of specifics. As for configuration of wine, until someone takes up the challenge again inside RedHat or Fedora to start integration work, its not going to get any easier for the average Fedora or RedHat user to configure wine. As to the anti-virus issue, without knowing the specific vendor there isn't much to say or discuss. Generally speaking, at some point the packaging standardization discussion that is on-going at fedora-packaging is going to have to expand to include proprietary software vendors who are trying to keep up. For proprietary content portability, things like attachments in proprietary formats..or web content such as flash or multimedia, there is some long term hope that open source can re-engineer open solutions as demand for access to this content grows, but such efforts are continually hampered by political and legal issues. This one is the really tough nut. Its completely rational to expect to be able to access your data regardless of what operating system its own..or to access content on the web regardless of your choice of browser or operating system...or hardware. That is every user's dream..every open source developers dream. But some intellectual property laws make it extremely difficult for the open source vendors to make this work widely available without risking a legal assault. There are only 3 ways to make this situation better. 1) RedHat stops being an open source solution provider and licences proprietary technology from other vendors. For every person that would like to see this happen there is another one who would be disappointed. This is a zero-sum game. 2) Technology vendors properly support and embrace the open source community, market share catch-22 3) Laws change so that open source developers and vendors can provide technical solutions without risk of lawsuits due to concerns such as software patents. When I run for US senate, I expect everyone in this community to be donating to my campaign. -jef -- Fedora-marketing-list mailing list Fedora-marketing-list@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
