I'm on Geek Cruise #15, dominated by dot-net people, and one lone speaker from Sun, Simon Phipps (their Java evangelist).
Simon just wrapped up a shoot-the-bull session, which degenerated into a discussion of Sun v. Microsoft and lawsuits. But earlier, I nearly choked when one of the M$ apologists argued that "open source may work for some things, but it will never work for something like, an Operating System -- Nobody will want to do the unsexy parts llike printer drivers".
Koolaid. They must make them drink koolaid.
Although he hadn't mentioned Linux by name, I then said "So, you believe Linux to be a sheer failure then?"
More unfounded rhetoric and FUD like "the print drivers obviously are being done by $HACKS and $KIDS so they can't possibly be commercial grade".
I felt embarassed for him. But this is what the Open Source community is up against.
Re:Cups, et al.
chromatic on 2003-02-18T03:50:53
Of course it works, it's using PostScript! Though it's controlled by Adobe, it's a reasonably popular standard, especially on the high end.
Now if our friends in Redmond want to discuss why companies refuse to release specifications for people who want to write drivers but are thwarted, we'll have a more interesting conversation.
Back then, he said that the printer system under Windows was a piece of utter crap. It was a holdover from the Win2.x days(!) and hadn't been touched in years.
If Microsoft is claiming that no one wants to write printer drivers, either (1) they're speaking from their own experience, or (2) projecting their past experiences onto the rest of the world.
