From the "
Best Unix OS / BSD / Linux distro" thread:
[Post Subject Edited to "Windows is your Friend!!"]
What is wrong with Windows? I mean, it's not like Bill's dad was a CIA operative who arranged to have Windows be adopted by Government agencies, thereby making it the standard for worldwide use, or that it has intentional "backdoors" built into it to ensure that everything you do can be secretly monitored or that Black Ops can be funded by stealing from thousands of different accounts because they have all online bank passwords. Maybe Bill gets a bad Rap- it's not like he uses his ill gotten wealth to institute Eugenics programs in Africa, which are experiments for use on us or anything....
I know. But I get Ayn Rand flashbacks sometimes...
You can make up all the conspiracy theories you want, and they
might be true, but the factual evidence that I can see is that the government has always been biased against Microsoft, and it was the private sector choices that resulted it in its current market share. Sure, Microsoft depends on IP laws, but so do all of its competitors, and, as pointed out above, it was the least Washington-lobbying company out there until it paid the price through DOJ bullying as the result.
FLOSS is just too
featha-teathn' for my tastes. Voluntary communism is still communism - an inferior economic model that produces inferior results and leaves everyone dependent.
I understand how hyper-competition in the free market would quickly drive basic software costs to 0, but there will always be room for innovation and hardware / service bundling through which companies can make a profit. FLOSS puritanism, which doesn't only apply to copyleft, wants to put an end to that and encourages people to only use free software, even if it sucks and the total cost of ownership is much higher. A policy of paying a little bit more in software licensing could mean higher software quality, greater productivity, and better career potential for all (except Linux's #1 fan Hugo Chavez perhaps).
FLOSS is inseparable from government force, not just in its culture (most GNU zealots also want "net neutrality", etc), but in its basic economic model as well. A huge fraction of it is written by government-supported students and organizations. When you download Windows software you are downloading from a voluntary entity, when you download FLOSS software the bandwidth most likely comes from the tax victims in one way or another. Government control over the Internet is the GNU commies' ultimate goal...
Perhaps the best solution is a pragmatic mixture of UNIX software, both permissively licensed FLOSS and
proprietary, that can run on all UNIX(like) operating systems / environments: Microsoft Interix, MacOS X, AIX, *BSD, MINIX, HP-UX, Tru64, SCO UnixWare / OpenServer, etc, etc, etc.