Subject: Re: TPR agenda
James Love (love@cptech.org)
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1998 12:51:27 -0400
Message-Id: <35F01A8F.17212952@cptech.org> Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1998 12:51:27 -0400 From: James Love <love@cptech.org> To: roundtable@cni.org Subject: Re: TPR agenda References: <v03102804b213126dd60b@[209.70.103.172]> <35EDD1BC.CDFD8422@cptech.org>
James Love <love@cptech.org> wrote:
>
> entity which owns Linux. It is created by thousands of volunteers. It
> is the world's first complex consumer product which is created by
> consumers (users) without a corporation.
Someone wrote me to complain about the hyperbole of this last
sentence, pointing out accurately that Linux is hardly the first free
software.
Of course, what I should have focused on is the magnitude of the
endeveaor. Here is case where the free software is directly competiting
with the core of Microsoft's monopoly. Linux is a direct substitute for
Windows 98 and Windows NT.
Much of the development of Linux is a direct response to Microsoft's
monopolistic practices. Users are trying to fashion an alternative that
the commerical market apparently cannot provide.
There is simply no way that Linux or other free software platforms
could develop so fast and become so good without the Internet. Email,
newsgroups and web pages, all run on public domain free protocols,
provide the technology that empowers consumers to create a product that
threatens the core product which is the basis of a very most important
monopoly (2nd largest firm in the US by market valuation).
We find this very interesting. For TPR members, it is worth
pointing out that Linux is now being ported to consumer electronics
devices (including the Palm Pilot), fast non-intel processors (alpha
chip, etc), and things such as set-top boxes. jamie
-- James Love, Consumer Project on Technology P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036 202.387.8030; f 202.234.5176 http://www.cptech.org/, mailto:love@cptech.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a16 : Tue Mar 23 1999 - 03:33:40 EST