xcopy32 and xxcopy

[DCT Jared Smith]

>>Imagine if you're selling an OS. Not giving it away, selling it.
>>Now imagine you realize that one of the tiny parts of the OS you're
>>selling is allowing people to easily replicate your OS anywhere for
>>free.
>>
>>Would you keep that part in your OS? Why, if so?
>
>Sun charges quite a bit for Solaris.  It ships with a pile of tools
>that let you make an exact copy of a system (ufsdump, dd, tar, pax,
>etc) as well as install customized versions of the OS on thousands
>of machines at once (JumpStart).
>
>If Solaris did not ship with these tools, it would make it easier
>for competitors to sell Sun's user base on a more "complete" and
>"useful" OS.  So they keep and actively support them.  Since
>Microsoft is a monopoly as far as Windows-compatible OSes are
>concerned, they can strip out whatever functionality they damn well
>please with impunity.

Well, sorta. They would not consider Linux "a threat" if they had
such pure impunity. They realize they've got to build adequate
software, and frankly, I believe they do. Limited, bloated, over-marketed,
but adequate.

The point I was making, and left out the premise regarding monopoly,
was that it's easy to criticize the small things Microsoft does
wrong. It's harder to criticize 'why' they do it, partly
because when you start looking at 'why' you start realizing
they're doing the same thing you'd do in their position, in
many cases.

Rather, I propose, as always, leaving off the part of the
conversation where we hate Microsoft.

Not because we love 'em, but because if we're truly building
a better solution than they are... we can't be making the
same mistakes, or else we're just the same and the solution
exists elsewhere.

True competence doesn't need to excuse its weaknesses by
pointing out the weakness of others.

And if the solution isn't GNU/Linux, what is it?

-Jared