[rescue] Ultra 5 OS

[Carl R. Friend]

    On Mon, 19 Apr 2010, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:

> Whatever it says, it has to leave him with the impression that it will
> make him MORE money, not less. If he thinks that people will use it to
> avoid paying license fees, or to keep using old hardware instead of new,
> I'll bet it will do more harm than good.

    A point that can be readily made is that allowing non-commercial
use of the product can only help it in the professional workplace by
ensuring that there remains a steady stream of people who know it,
understand it, and like it.

    Linux has the mind-share it does precisely because it's heavily
used at the hobby layer when folks are first getting their minds
set on what they like and prefer.  Microsoft play at that very well
when it comes to the management layer as well -- there's a built-in
cadre of folks to whom it is a familiar "known quantity".

    If Solaris is taken completely closed, that mind-share will just
evaporate.  A chap I work with who is a highly-vocal Linux bigot
pretty well summed up why he dosn't like Solaris -- it's "elitist"
and wasn't available at the laymans' (hobbyist) layer when he was
in his formative years.  Guess which OS is "winning" at $PPOE.

+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)            | West Boylston       |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast            | Massachusetts, USA  |
| mailto:crfriend at rcn.com                        +---------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum           | ICBM: 42:22N 71:47W |
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