[Discuss] Essentially all free apps will soon be available on Windows

[pw]

Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> I am writing this post because there is an unprecedented opportunity now 
> for
> free (as in freedom) applications to be ported to windows because of CMake.
> Furthermore, I am all for such ports since I strongly believe that once 
> most
> typical Linux apps are available on windows, the MS desktop monopoly power
> will finally start to weaken as a result.
>

Wouldn't we still be stuck with a proprietary OS though?
People would still require MS windows to run ported software.

The windows desktop monopoly is not MS Office, it's the
*Microsoft tax* paid by everyone when they buy a machine.

The only way to break the desktop monopoly is to either
make a better, more functional desktop so desirable that MS
is all but forgotten, or make it illegal
to force a buyer to purchase windows as a built-in part of
the price of a computer. Make it law that the hardware and
software be separately priced and subtractible from one another
if that is the customers choice.

People have had OpenOffice for a few years now and it doesn't
appear to be making any real dent in MS Office or operating
system usage. Thunderbird mail and Firefox, as popular as they
are, are not drawing people to linux or BSD.

People need to think more like tobacco companies and
McDonald's. If you want market share you need to lock
in those behaviours at an early age. You need to do what
Microsoft does. If your OS and desktop are the only thing
an *average kid* has ever seen or used, you've won the
desktop war.

Look in the K-12 schools. Who's there in a big way?
Microsoft and Apple. If you want linux desktop share
you need to get your ass to the PAC meetings and down
to the school board office and start demanding that
they stop wasting tax dollars on expensive software
from Microsoft and Apple and start using free operating
systems like linux and BSD. Start demostrating the product.
Tell them it's FREE! FREE! FREE!.

Even then you'd need to convince 4 full generations
of MS-OS users, in government and the public,
that Microsoft as a government standard is a bogus idea.
The public schools only do what the government mandates.
Maybe make linux part of the highschool computer cirriculum.

But if MS-OS comes bundled in the price with the computers
that the school buys, you've already lost.

Anyway, I can't see how porting all the great linux
software to windows is going to help linux market share.
People should *refuse* to port software to MS OS on the grounds
that the OS is closed source. Just have better software on linux
and brag about it. People will start to wonder why they ever bought
MS in the first place.


Peter