On December 19, Michael J. Miller Jr. wrote:
> >   Survival in the commercial marketplace has nothing to do with
> > product quality.  If it did, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt back
> > in the Windows 3.0 days and we'd all be living much happier lives.
> 
> Here I disagree.  The product may not be the best or great, but it
> has to meet a certain quality point or it just won't make it.  To

  NT is "making it".  Next question?

> be successful you have to balance a lot of different factors.  The 
> cold hard reality of the world is that technical superiority doesn't
> matter.  I've seen dozens of technically superior products come
> and go over the last fifteen years.

  Sadly, here I must agree.  I too have seen such products.  I think
it's a grave injustice, and it has often made me consider moving off
into the mountains somewhere to practice volunteer veterinary
medicine...rather than watch truly GOOD products quashed by armies of
suited morons who've never seen a computer before.

> In my opinion I'm not of shaky ground at all.   Sun is showing interest
> in FreeBSD, and has offered documentation and help to NetBSD and you're
> posting to this list saying that their OS is shit.  Correct me if I'm

  Well, basically, yes.  I'm sure all of us here appreciate their
help...it's not like I'm trying to be ungrateful or anything...but I'm
not going to lie to them and tell them I think Solaris is great just
because they're being nice to us.  Do you really think they'd listen
to me, anyway?  They've got huge buildings full of suits who swear up
one side and down the other that Solaris is the end-all be-all of
operating system design.  I sincerely doubt they're going to lose any
sleep over hearing that I don't like it.

> wrong here, but that just doesn't make sense.  Especially since it 
> isn't true.  There's and old saying that goes "If you can't say anything
> nice, don't say anything at all."  After this post I'm planning on
> following this very wise saying.

  Same here...let's just agree to disagree...we've both got good
points and the experience and the balls to back them up...nothing
constructive will come from this debate turning into a flame war.


                            -Dave McGuire
                             mcguire@neurotica.com