Dear Howard Strauss, I read your article on-line in the Syllabus....interesting reading. http://www.syllabus.com/article.asp?id=8460 I'm still trying to decide if you were being sarcastic, or if you really view Linux and Open Source as a toy/tool for "teenagers too young to work at Redmond, hackers, virus creators, and a menagerie of others"? If you were writing the article with "tongue in cheek", then kudos, you managed to stir up some serious discussion about Linux. If you were serious when you wrote the article, then I have to wonder if Microsoft paid you to write the article as yet another piece of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about Linux. The end of the article has a line that your are "the manager of technology strategy and outreach at Princeton University." My experience with some managers is that they only know what their employees tell them when it comes to technical matters, especially so in the IT world. So my question to you is, do you know a server from a desktop? Do you know what the Linux operating system is? Do you know what Open Source software is? Did you know that Apache web server, an Open Source application, currently runs on almost 66% of the web servers on the Internet? Don't believe me, check out www.netcraft.com. As of 03Nov2003, Apache accounts for 67.41% of the web servers on the Internet. If Linux and Open Source are indeed a toy/tool for "teenagers too young to work at Redmond, hackers, virus creators, and a menagerie of others", then why, pray tell, are major manufacturers supporting and utilizing Linux in their production environments? Why does IBM, a major player in the IT world, support Linux on their products, including mainframes? Why has Novell bought Ximian and is now looking to buy SuSE, both of which are Open Source, one an application, the other a distribution of Linux? If Linux is the root of such evil, why then has a Linux firewall been protecting my home network FROM intruders for over 2 years with a 100% success rate of keeping out intruders and worms? Why then is an embedded Linux device serving as a dial-up modem and firewall combination for my retired father and his WindowsXP computer? If you are really so deluded that you believe Linux to be the root of such evil, then I neither hate nor despise you, I pity you. Please feel free to keep you head buried so far in the sand that you can't see the world changing around you. Linux and Open Source are here to stay, and will only continue to gain market share, both in the private sector and in the business sector. Linux gives companies and private individuals the opportunity to get off the hardware upgrade merry-go-round that Microsoft would have everyone believe is the norm. Microsoft's operating systems keep getting larger and larger each year. Meanwhile, my Linux based firewall is running on a Pentium1 computer with only 128Megs of RAM and a simple 1.5 gigabyte hard drive. I would love to see Microsoft beat that. I welcome your comments/rebuttal. Sincerely, Todd Young _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list