Jones
Yes that's my surname.
My real forename is Alun after my Welsh grandfather I chose Aloone because it was my nickname at school and Jonez is just novel way of spelling Jones.
you make a fair point but linux development, but linux development, as we said already, isn't motivated by market share.
I'd agree and it's a shame because we wouldn't be all being ripped of by Microsoft's shoddy software if Linux had a the market share, and it's Linux's loss because it would be a lot better if it did.
microsoft included wordperfect translation in msword purely to snag all the wordperfect users, run wordperfect into obsolescence and gain a monopoly in the word processing arena, this was motivated by a desire for more profit and less competition.
Yes, Microsoft's products will interoperate well with other companies when they want to put them out of busseness.
linux does not compete with anything, it's a hobby project. it just so happens that the model by which it is put togethr (extensive peer review, the same way scientific theories get refined, in fact) is incredibly good, and as a result many companies and organisations have sprung up, that market operating systems based on linux to the public. if anybody is supposed to care about gaining a userbase, it should be red hat (who have actually thrown in the home-user towel and now only deal with big businesses), SUSE, Mandrake, Turbolinux (again, niche market, japanese speaking businesses this time) and so on and so on. Those companies might have it in their interest to do some work along these lines and contribute to the kernel, but at the end of the day it's Linus Torvalds and his "lieutenants" who have the final say over what goes in and what stays out. ALSO, many companies are reluctant to contribute their work because they know that all submissions for inclusion in the linux kernel have to be released under the GPL, so sour grapes often stops them from even putting in the effort.
At the end of it, linux is a hobby project, we as users are lucky it has gone this far, and the companies who market linux are lucky too, since they have much less control over how it goes than they would probably like
Do you believe that Linux will never conquer Microsoft because it isn't trying?
Personally I believe (as you rightly said) the Linux companies make a fair effort, and I agree they don't have as much control of Linux as they would like maybe this is more the reason Linux isn't as popular as it could be.
(if they did have more control, i think linux would just be another microsoft windows, expensive, buggy bloatware).
Well I don't know about that as it's already happened with some distros - take Linspire for example.
It's just a different point of view. Perhaps i could suggest that you get an apple macintosh? :-D
Well I know you're joking but similar issues apply for me to Mac as Linux.