From: "Geo." 

"Thees Peereboom"  wrote in message
news:4genuucros396mi4tt72t13gat7qm3hlvp{at}4ax.com...

> A (potential) hack is also a clear sign that something's wrong with
> the software.

I don't agree. The reason I don't agree is because I have yet to find
software that they claimed was secure and couldn't be hacked. Everything
can be hacked, it's just a matter of getting the right people hacking at
it. Some things are easier than others but everything has bugs.

> You seldom work *with* a vendor to solve a problem, he
> will always have a different agenda, exceptions apart. *You* want good
> software, *he* wants a good profit.

Price/Quality/Service, these three things are the key to becoming a market
leader. Pretty much in that order. So I agree it's a balancing act but if
it doesn't qualify as "good enough" then it's not going to sell.

> It's all your choice whom you'd want to be dependent of, the MSFT's of
> this world or the OS community.

I don't see much difference. I've met some of the NT team and they really
did impress me both in knowledge and attitude about the quality of their
work. But those people don't write all the code in the product. There are
lamers on the NT team as well. I figure it's the same for Linux.

The only time I think this really makes a difference is when it becomes
obvious, as was the case with OS/2, that the corporate attitude will not
allow the product to succeed. I think it's also important to realize that
can happen with any product including OSS and shareware, for example
atguard or neotrace or even Netscape where they get bought up by some big
corp.

Imagine being an ISP totally committed to Netscape (as you said, dependent)
only to have it bought up by their biggest competitor, AOL. I mean could
anyone here fault Klaus if AOL offered him $500mil for Knoppix and so he
sold it to them?

Geo.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-4