Sunday, June 29, 2008

The old UNIX Wars

From a slashdot comment:

Don't you know the new required thought pattern? We aren't supposed to remember how nasty IBM were.

They are meant to be thought of as the poor unfortunate victims of an evil Microsoft, not the over confident and arrogant giant company who's failure to understand the market handed the world of computing to a small company whose owner lived on junk food and didn't wash much.

Being old I remember the time when Microsoft were this great company who liberated the computing world from the Unix wars. A company whose philosophy of getting their product out there cheaply and on everything meant I could finally afford a computer after several years of wanting, but not being able to buy, a Mac.

There was a time when Microsoft were the good guys, where people suddenly found that they could write a product for DOS and it would run on almost any computer. That meant it was possible to become a software house with a lot less effort and money than before.

I rather suspect people just don't realise what it was like before DOS.

Ok it didn't stay that way, or didn't unless you're a big Microsoft fan, but when I were young it was true.

Personally I wish they would get with the Open Source movement. I've been an open source developer for over five years, working with both Linux and Windows, and the lack of high level co-operation between the two camps is, in my opinion, is preventing a huge leap forward in computing.


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