[PLUG] MS / Open-Source article

Keith Nasman keith at ahapala.net
Thu Jun 3 10:43:02 UTC 2004


Wow, great article. 

Warning: It's long

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0422/040602_news_microsoft.php

In the last two paragraphs the author talks about passion (and the
lack thereof for MS products). This strikes home with me recently on
my Debian laptop. Gnome 2.6 is on its way into the Debian unstable and
the other day after an update, I was excited to see an animated
cursor. I was happy to see that the arrow just got a little orb molded
into it with dots circling in it. I like the feedback and am glad it
doesn't interrupt the pointing end of the cursor, nor does it display
a detached pulsating icon like KDE used to. My first reaction to the
KDE animation (and this is two years ago or so) was to try and shake
that thing off my cursor. It's those little incremental improvements
rather than a Advertising firm media blitz of social engineering to
make you buy something new.

It's all about passion, about being part of a community, sharing in
successes. Sometimes when I relate a cool tool to a Windows guru
friend of mine, he replies "Just like Windows". He just doesn't get
that community side of it. It's like watching your pro team win a
championship versus you being in a recreational league and being on
the winning team.

Keith




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