As some of my previous boneheaded questions to this mailing list have shown, I'm a complete newbie when it comes to Debian and Linux and the development process for Debian packages and standards, so be warned that the following may be particularly stupid but...
It seems to me that, as regards the whole problem (brought out in this discussion of the Microsoft memo) of M$ decommoditizing things, the Debian community is *reacting* when it could be *proacting* and thus helping to solve the problem. The problem was well defined in a recent bit of email (I forget who the sender was, I deleted it before I realized I'd want to credit the author). A new, extended M$ HTML standard will not only be incompatible with the old HTML stuff (forcing everyone to upgrade to the propriatary M$ standard) but it will become popular largely because it will have a lot of new, neat special effects that the www community likes. All M$ has to do is supply a browser that supports it and everyone will feel safe in using the new standard (knowing everyone will be able to read the new style web pages). But remember that the Debian development community is far larger (and faster) than M$. Moreover, being composed of hackers who like neat special effects just as much (if not more) than the next guy... and this is the important bit... the Debian development community is much better suited to develop an extended standard for HTML that includes the desired new special effects, but is still backwards compatible with the old stuff. It can probably turn out a better product far faster than M$, and supply the open standard (and accompanying software) free to the public so much sooner than M$ can that by the time the M$ people can catch up, the Debian standard will have become popular (and free). Possibly even short circuiting M$'s attempts at developing a propriatary standard of their own. Particularly if the Debian people supply executables (with source) that work with Debian, and Red Hat, and Windows XX. Moreover, I think this is the perfect chance for the Debian people to use some M$ type marketing tricks against M$, without sacrificing any of their principles. If I understand correctly, Linux, as well as most Debian software, runs far faster and more reliably on most platforms than the M$ garbage will. Now graphic processing can get pretty resource intensive... I wonder what would happen if a few of the effects (not the imortant ones, you still need those to work on Windows systems as bait to get Windows using people to adopt the Debian standard) but a few of the really neat ones are resource intensive enough that will run like molasses on a Windows based system. I'm not saying that you should intentionally make bad code that will have that property, I'm saying that graphics processing is so resource intensive that it will be easy to find a lot of really desirable effects that are going to have that property even with the most efficient possible Windows code. Now given a new open standard, with neat effects and free software, 2 years before M$ can offer the same thing, and throw in a few goodies that look really neat but will crawl on a Windows system, and there could be lots of fun to be had. Ok, enough of my silly daydreams. I may be talking total nonsense here. But with several Debian groups dedicated to attacking various Debian related problems of porting Debian to new platforms, etc... Why not a Debian development group dedicated to finding places where software companies are trying to extend standards into something propriatary and then to develop better, open, Debian standards faster and generate the supporting software free? Ok... I'm finished. NOW you can start laughing. :) -Kevin
