Friday, June 07, 2002

This is s-w-e-e-t Red Hat accusses Sun of "Microsoft tactics" in it's new distribution agreements for StarOffice 6.0 What are those loathsome tactics? Well, charging for it, for one. It seems that less than $10 is too much to pay for a complete office suite. In the past, Sun's StarOffice was free to consumers, but the company began charging for the product with the release of version 6. With that version, Sun also started charging companies like Red Hat to bundle the product in their versions of Linux. That's the change that had to do with Szulik's decision to drop StarOffice from Red Hat's distribution of Linux. "We think there are a variety of alternatives," he said. And that change also inspired the Microsoft comparison. That's the problem with these folks -- they're face down in their anti-capitalist ideology about how things should work -- in that mythic perfect world -- blind to the way human beings, all of our glorious flaws and imperfections running rampant, actually are.  Maybe they should hire Ralph Nader as their VP of marketing, since he exhibits such a keen understanding of market dynamics. Particularly nice is the note at the end of the article about Sun creating it's own version of Linux. Fragment that market, Scotty!!! 12:48:33 PM     "Crazy" Ralph is at it again Ralph Nadar has decided that the government should limit it's buying of Microsoft software and go open source. Interesting release from the Citizen's Against Government Waste, to the effect that the idea would wind up costing the government more money and set a frightening precedent for government picking winners and losers in competitive industries. I think Ralph, along with many activists, has as knee jerk, deeply ingrained problem with powerful authority figures. I wonder if many of these people had lousy relationships with their fathers -- who perhaps were a bit overbearing and unloving -- and manifest that relationship in their adult lives by resisting authority. I find Ralph Nadar almost pathologically driven -- and mis-directed -- in his quests of the past 10 years. As with his role in the last election -- which I believe had more to do with stopping Al Gore and his centrist democratic drift -- than advancing any of his policy issues. Well, he did stop Al. Thanks Ralph!   11:24:46 AM

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