Tim May writes:
At 1:53 PM -0700 12/27/97, Patrick May wrote:
The President should issue an executive order mandating that all government agencies immediately remove all Microsoft operating systems from their machines, to be replaced with Linux. All Microsoft products should be eliminated as well. The standard text format should be LaTeX. All businesses receiving money from government contracts should be required to use the same tools. [ . . . ]
Much to be said for this "free market solution." Certainly the Justice Department has no business screaming "monopoly!" if it's still "standardizing" on MS products. [ . . . ] On the other hand, requiring _any_ language, program, or OS is probably a mistake. If the Arctic Cartography Office wants to keep using its Macs, why should some bureaucrat force them to scrap their Macs and use Linux?
(Yeah, yeah, a form of Linux, MK-Linux, runs on Macs. But Adobe Photoshop doesn't run under Linux. And Mathematica doesn't run under Linux for the Mac (last I checked). And so on. The point is, why standardize at the end of a gun?)
Okay, so I'm a UNIX-head; I forgot about the Macs (a dangerous thing to do, given the ferocity of their supporters). If the government were to adopt my suggestion, two major results would be: - The third party market for Linux software would grow rapidly and enormously. - The government's software budget would be reduced dramatically. I consider both of these to be Good Things (tm). The government wouldn't be forcing anything at the point of a gun, they'd simply be making a financially responsible vendor selection (hey, there's a first time for everything). Our tax dollars shouldn't be wasted on substandard software when superior, cheaper alternatives exist. Regards, Patrick May S P Engineering, Inc.