On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 04:23 -0500, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
> On Monday 28 May 2007, Hans van der Merwe <hvdmerwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
> about 'Re: smb://':
> > On Fri, 2007-05-25 at 18:53 +0200, Alexander wrote:
> > > On Friday 25 May 2007, Hans van der Merwe wrote:
> > > > Ye, sure, MS makes up "standards" as they go along, but I dont see
> > > > them conforming anytime soon, so I think KDE must pickup the ball.
> > >
> > > NO!
> > >
> > > KDE/Linux... can't to do things worse only to comply with MS imho!
> >
> > Well, if everyone in the world (basically the 85 odd percent off windows
> > users) upgrade tomorrow to a new MS email client that formats mails in
> > some strange MS-HTML-standard - the first thing that will happen is
> > GMail will start supporting it - meaning most people will have it -
> > which means the Linux community WILL have to support it - thats how the
> > world is today - that does not mean we should not fight it - but Linux
> > must play along to stay relevant.
>
> I disagree. MS knows how to corrupt standards and it's not by suddenly
> changing them. It's slow and steady, "minor" (but incompatible)
> extensions, forgetting a paragraph or two from the spec, putting it in
> released software and refusing to change it for "backward compatibility",
> changing an extension from optional to mandatory, paying lip-service to
> the standard transport protocol but producing an implementation that
> virtually requires always using the fallback transport, etc.
>
> In any case, we don't have to be like MS Windows and we don't have to
> support bad technology just because they do. Assuming we do is just
> giving up; Linux (and F[L]OSS in general) have too many advantages to even
> pretend like they are playing "catch-up".
>
> > I also want all online music to be in OGG format, but who on this list
> > does not have a MP3 and WMA decoder installed?
>
> I refuse to use WMA and I do not have an mp3 *encoder* installed.
>
> Now, I'm going to bow of of the discussion before I catch on fire.
Sorry to make you mad, was not my intention.
Im very pro-Linux (fanboy if you like). I just deal with a lot of
people who are "plain users", as in -> "I double clicked on Doc file in
email and its not working"; now explaining to them that they have the
moral high ground because they use standards is not going to enable them
to work. And most of the time they jump ship back to Windows.
I see all these issues as challenges. To play along with the 85% of
users using Windows is a balancing act.
So, my final assessment (I hope) is, play along to some extend that
people will actually consider using KDE/Linux, and then make sure that
the default behaviour is to do the right thing. MS way of doing things
is just the opposite, they by default do things wrong, but still support
some standards - thats why they are successful; support MP3 but save as
WMA.
E-Mail disclaimer:
http://www.sunspace.co.za/emaildisclaimer.htm
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