Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: emacs, etc.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 12:05:41 EDT

I'm not arguing that MS is not conspiracious and perhaps even more so than 
most other companies (though your remarks don't indicate that -- ever try to 
repair a Ford with GM parts?). I am saying that they were aided and abetted 
in this conspiracy by almost all other software vendors and (perhaps 
especially) by the free-lance programming community. If that community had a 
better product, as they very likely did in the early days of Windows and even 
MSDOS, they should have pushed for its adoption rather than sitting back and 
esoterically working on toward perfection in every detail in little cells 
hither and yon around the world. Much of the condemnation of MS is sour 
grapes, a convenient excuse for people who did not have the gumption to get 
their own system out into the competition, for fear it would be rejected by 
the great unwashed (as it might well have been, given the bell and whistles 
many of them had in place of useful features). And now, having lost (or 
pretty much given up) the battle they continue to perpetuate their 
"superiority" by refusing to do anything else for the unwashed, preferring to 
perfect yet more jewels for the elect -- and grumble that they can't make a 
living at it. I just suggest that they might -- particularly within a 
collegial project like Lojban -- consider those outside the cabal 
occasionally and design something for general use -- Windows, DOS, even OS, 
if being uncliquish is too much a problem.
By the bye, if Windows hadn't won, I doubt that Linux would be free.