The future of Ubuntu Linux.... Will it make Micky$oft go bankrupt?

[sdavmor]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Amit Kumar wrote:
> 
>>> Everyone looks at things differently. Looks like we will agree
>>> to disagree.
>>> 
>> Nobody has to comment on coming together of Linuxes. Does it
>> really not matter? Would love to hear on this.
> 
> Really, you should ask questions like this on the sounder list, not
> here... but I can't resist.
> 
> No, it _doesn't_ matter.  So many Linuxes (and Unixes, too) exist
> because we _want_ diversity.  Ubuntu exists in large part because,
> at the time of its introduction, Debian was in its third (iirc)
> year of "imminent release" of "sarge".  Debian users were getting
> fed up with the slow release cycle. Otoh, the every-six-month cycle
> of Ubuntu is too much for some users.
> 
> Unix/Linux development is evolutionary not revolutionary.  Just
> like Darwin's theory, Linux develops by slow mutation - some
> mutations are advantageous, and we keep them; some take us down an
> evolutionary dead end (e.g. Caldera or Corel).  Sometimes, as with
> Corel Linux, while the animal as a whole is not equipped to compete
> in an OS-eat-OS world, some of its better adaptations show up again
> in later evolutionary paths, just because that mutation would
> _always_ give an advantage.
> 
> Have I sufficiently mangled that metaphor, yet?

Not at all, Derek.  That was a very lucid and concise reminder of the
reason-for-being of multiple *nix platforms.
-- 
Cheers, SDM -- a 21st Century Schizoid Man
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