Re: [OT] Re: Perl Doesn't Suck

Stephen Zander [[email protected]] quoth:
*>
*>Speaking as someone with feet firmly in both camps (I'm a Blackdown
*>member and the Debian maintainer for the jdk and some of the largest
*>perl modules in that distribution), IMNSHO the fatal assumption made
*>by millions of people is that Java is OpenSource just because it's a
*>*language*.  It isn't.  Get over that expectation and life becomes
*>simpler.

Well, I think a lot of people don't consider the OS v CS when choosing a
technology and, honestly, it's not the point I was trying to make.

I see too much griping about how anything that isn't open source sucks,
etc. while all around us there are fewer and fewer choices to make. I
don't care so much about licensing as I have my own personal choices that
aren't shared by everyone nor do I expect them to be so or consider others
who don't to be stupid. But I am very concerned that as time goes by that
diversity in platforms and in software will cease to exist.

George Carlin had a interesting observation that our lives are filled with
meaningless choices at the grocery store, 165 breakfast cereals, over 100
different kinds of mustard, and that while we have these meaningless
choices we have little diversity in important choices; 2 poltical parties, 
2 or 3 major media companies, 2 home computing platforms, etc.  I have
this same feeling when looking at computing these days.

Saying that Microsoft Sucks has not had much effect on its market share or
in deterring people from using it. I wouldn't expect much more of an
effect by saying Java or anything else sucks. Obviously, there needs to be
a better method of making open source technologies more attractive to more
people.  

e.