[sugar] [Community-news] on Sugar

[Kevin Cole]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Peter Krenesky <peter at osuosl.org> wrote:

>  The sugar team has accomplished an amazing amount in the time they've
>  spent so far.  However, there are so many features, like security, that
>  were not implemented or implemented as well as they should have been.

Mentioning "Windows" and "security" in the same message, nay, the same
universe, is something of an oxymoron.  When even dyed in the wool
Microsoft fanboys and fangirls are abandoning Vista and begging and
pleading with Microsoft, it just doesn't seem prudent to say "Let's go
with FOSS running on top of Windows".   Though I'm a zealous supporter
of FOSS, if people were saying something like "Let's run Sugar et al
on Mac OS X" I'd be more inclined to say "Wellllll... okay."  Before
Microsoft, the concept of infecting a document, seemed like complete
nonsense.  (WordPerfect and other word processors had macros as well.
But the macros didn't need to travel embedded in the document.)

Put another way: Assuming for a moment, that hell has frozen over, and
Microsoft has decided to play nice.  When a Fortune 500 company (or
two, or 20)  calls Bill et al and says "Holy Crap!  There's a hole in
Vista big enough to fly a starship through!" Do you think the answer
will be "Sorry.  We're working on Sugar right now." Or is the OLPC
project more likely to end up on the back burner?  Not that the FOSS
crowd are all working on the XO night and day, but my suspicion is
that the focus is a wee bit more directed.

And as I've already commented, Microsoft is a bit like Lucy Van Pelt:
"This time I promise to let you kick the football, Charlie Brown"
It's not so much a hatred of M$ as much as it's an incredible lack of
trust.  They'll need to play nice for a couple of years, minimum
before I let my guard down.  I think the reason that FOSS has grown so
much in the past several years has more to do with dissatisfaction
with proprietary software than with cost.  (I've bought and paid for
FOSS.)

-- 
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