Re: Linux, UDI and SCO.

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
21 Sep 1998 18:09:58 GMT

Followup to: <m0zL8XQ-000aQwC@the-village.bc.nu>
By author: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox)
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> > The users win if Unix wins. If this means that some vendors release
> > proprietary drivers for Linux and end up eating support costs for the
> > rest of their life, it's a lot better than if those vendors encourage
> > their clients to use Windows NT, because it's supported.
>
> If your interest is "trash microsoft" then maybe. If your interest is creating
> a world with a truely free software base its a different matter
>

Yes, although you have to win your battles before you can win the war.
I suspect that *at the moment*, the biggest battle is closed standards
(spearheaded by Micro$oft) versus open standards (which Unix is slowly
migrating towards.) Open standards is a (necessary but not
sufficient) precondition for free software, and the more power M$ gets
the more in danger they are (look at I2O, for example -- the I2O
consortium is widely claimed to be effectively controlled by Intel and
Microsoft, although I have no idea to what extent that really is.)

If closed standards prevail, free software is history.

-hpa

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