Desktop Linux (fwd)

[Chris Brenton]

On Wed, 2004-02-25 at 23:59, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 11:00:17AM -0500, travis at scootz.net wrote:
> > That is true, but there is also a problem with the Linux comunity in that
> > they think everything should be free. 
> 
> There are certainly some people in the community who feel that way...
> But I don't think that statement characterizes the whole community, or
> even the majority of it.  You're talking about Stallman-esque zealots.

You hit the nail right on the head. Any time you have a large community
it becomes difficult to make generalizations. Its a matter of whether
you embrace those differences or try and reduce the description of
everyone to a few bullet items.

> The only company I know of who falls into that category is Loki, and
> as I mentioned elsewhere, they failed because the managment gutted the
> company, not because they weren't selling titles...

I think a lot of this is more due to market share. For example a lot of
folks who switch to Linux are concerned with security, so you tend to
find a lot of security products that support the OS. The percentage that
want to drop a lot of $$$ on games may not be as large. Then again the
community has grown so large that this demographic might have changed.
It would be interesting to see what happens with it over the next few
years.

> Many people in the community /do/ feel that the source code should be
> available to anyone who buys the software.  I'm in that camp.  But
> most of us don't allow our philosophy to get in the way of getting
> stuff done (or in this case, having fun).

Well said. :)
C