AW: [LINK] ACS calls for government open source mandate

[Auer, Karl James]

> Von: Johann Kruse [mailto:foon at iinet.net.au] 
> > Seems he's shot himself in the foot there. Think where we would be 
> > today if only that HAD happened! Lightyears ahead.
> 
> Unix is not exactly ahead on the desktop.

You've missed my point. I was saying that *if* Unix had been mandatory
on government desktops in the 80's, think what the world - and Unix
desktops! - would be like today. It seems likely to me that the whole
open/closed debate would never have even happened, open source would be
as simply a matter of fact as proprietary stuff is now. And IBM would
have wised up a lot quicker :-)

I don't think modern Unix desktops are all that bad, certainly not
things like the Mac, but KDE and Gnome are pretty good. Unfortunately
Microsoft has done such a good job of defining the desktop that it takes
a lot of mental effort to look at the matter dispassionately. Any
feature the MS desktop has is "essential", anything it doesn't have is
some how fringey and non-critical.

Regards, K.

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