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<TITLE>RE: GNU discussion</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>>As you point out, with Apple taking BSD software and 'competing<BR>
>against BSD', the market share for vanilla BSD is reduced. You can't<BR>
>however know whether in the medium-long term this is an 'overall good'<BR>
>which sped up Freedom through other interactions in the future or an<BR>
>overall bad. Apple geeks may migrate more easily to vanilla BSD<BR>
>because they are exposed to the standard terminal, and are frustrated<BR>
>at the limitations they find.<BR>
<BR>
More importantly (and very relevantly to this list) you can't compete for consumers on a basis of "Not as good, but _more free_." If completely open phones are going to achieve any sort of dominance, then the same kind of work will have to go into project to support the capabilities that consumers want.<BR>
<BR>
More likely, this will prompt other phone manufacturers to try to find ways to compete with the iPhone in as reasonable a time as possible. Some of those ways will likely be based on Linux, and will likely wind up being a mix of proprietary and open source software, but the net outcome will be that there will be a larger amount of more capable open source software available in the product space, and more open source software being used in more devices like the NEO.<BR>
<BR>
It's pretty crazy for folks to be saying, "But...those guys are _competing_ with BSD!" Of course they are, that's what they _do_. And to compete back, BSD would have to get better. But "BSD" doesn't have goals of this sort: someone would have to take the initiative to make it happen. Wishing won't make it so, and somehow keeping Apple from doing it on their own won't either.<BR>
<BR>
But the suggestion that Apple's doing something wrong or something they shouldn't do by competing sounds...well, kind of like the stuff Microsoft likes to say about Linux, y' know?<BR>
<BR>
"He who sets out to slay monsters must be careful that he does not become a monster himself in the process."--Friedrich Nietzsche<BR>
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