"W. Kent Starr" <elderburn / mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:oEE97.13910$WD1.598320 / e420r-atl2.usenetserver.com...
> On Tuesday 31 July 2001 14:55, MikkelFJ wrote:

> carries with a significant social danger as well. If one corporation

I agree with that point of view - but that might be a too heated political
discussion to take up here. But it is certainly revelant to discuss
independence as such.

My point is that you can use inventions of MS or Sun without being too
dependent of them. For example you can use the IL language, without using
the MS .Net runtime. You can also take the ambitious approach of building a
GnuNet as GnuNet is doing. I actually think it is better a better solution
for several reasons:

1) better technology (for once MS actually did something clever and haven't
yet spoilt it) 2) better integration 3) a real alternative to MS rather than
just an alternative.

And say the Open Source community actually succeeded in making an actual
alternative to MS. How long would it take MS to figure that out and adapt
the technology? The only thing they are afraid of is that they would not be
able to do that due to the GPL - which is why they are attacking it. But GPL
is not sufficient for widespread success. A lot of commercial companies need
to back up around a standard - like gcc doesn't put a GPL license on the
compiler output.

Mikkel