[rant] owner of squeak

G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl
Fri Dec 21 14:58:17 UTC 2001


Sorry guys,

Let me tell you a story.

The world is ruled by managers.
They have to take decisions... and fast.
First study the details?  Costs to much time..
Knowing the details? It blocks strong decisions..
So they decide and avoid risks:
a wrong decision means another job...

Suppose you go to your boss and tell him all about Linux and Staroffice:

- free stuff, so no one is earning money on that stuff?
- giving away for free?!? you are kidding...
- then there is no money for supporting the product.
- people supporting it for free?!? you must be kidding again.
- Must be a group of amateurs, not earning money, squeak!!!
- Ok, lets suppose it can be free, what then about continuity?

.... Of course we then have to admit that in the Squeak community we only do
what we like,
You cannot build a business on our fun:
- Problems with Squeak under Windows? buy a Mac!
- Browser problems with the Squeak plugin? change the browser(version)!
If Someone pays you a lot, He will expect service or go to court...
So at the end, we have to admit that we feed that prejudice of your boss and
other managers.

(Although I have to admit that in other communities like SourceForce the
community lokks much more proficient Apache, PHP, MySQL... and so many
packages, right-out-the-box (PHPDEV for example))

Another point is that normal people have habits and want to keep these: If
you offer a product like StarOffice, that is so different in look and feel,
then you have to invest a lot of extra time before you can go back to your
normal work...

And last but not least: You do not need the best product as a businessman,
you just need the best advertisement and other tricks to grab the market.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Pair [mailto:spair at advantive.com]
> Sent: vrijdag 21 december 2001 15:08
> To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: RE: [rant] owner of squeak
> 
> 
> Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> > I'm rather upset that our government spent 10 million dollars 
> > buying Windows XP and related software for schools when (a) a 
> > lot of schools here have Macintoshes, and (b) Linux and 
> > StarOffice are available free, gratis, and for nothing.  
> > Doubtless someone who wants to boycott Sun would be happy 
> > that the "owners" of StarOffice "lost a sale", but they 
> > wouldn't have got any money for it, and haven't really "lost" 
> > a cent. (StarOffice is now OpenOffice.)
> 
> That really is an unfortunate waste of money.  I fail to see 
> why anyone
> would spend any money on an operating system these days.  Perhaps your
> government officials were seeking a few perks from the executives in
> Redmond?  Just a guess.
> 
> - Stephen 
> 
> 
> 




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