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Sitquietly, the easy way. »

I found an excellent article courtesy of OSNews the other day, entitled Does Microsoft have nowhere to run? The article deals with Microsoft and the rise of Linux and the conclusion is one I agree with.

The situation with Microsoft really does remind me of the words of the Tao Te Ching, chapter 76:

While alive, the body is soft and pliant
When dead, it is hard and rigid
All living things, grass and trees,
While alive, are soft and supple
When dead, become dry and brittle
Thus that which is hard and stiff
is the follower of death
That which is soft and yielding
is the follower of life
Therefore, an inflexible army will not win
A strong tree will be cut down
The big and forceful occupy a lowly position
While the soft and pliant occupy a higher place

(Source: www.Taoism.net and Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths in 2006.)

Microsoft are in the position of trying defend a fairly inflexible position, they’ve painted themselves into a corner with Windows and Office and can’t move quickly enough. In fighting against Free Software, they’re trying the big and forceful thing, and as noted in the article it’s not working.

They’re trying every trick in the book to get things all their own way, the open document standard in Massachusetts in one example, their position pushing software patents is another. I can’t help but think how much more progress could be made if they’d just work with the community, all this energy that’s being put into fighting could be out into building really great software. How much better off would we be?

This entry was posted on 6 July 2007 at 2:35 pm and is filed under Free Software, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Comments

  1. Angela says:

    Funny; I just got a laptop and when my Microsoft Office trial expired, I went online, discovered OpenOffice.org and couldn’t be happier. I haven’t done the Linux thing yet but it’s in my future. Hooray for alternatives to the Microsoft monster.
    Aloha
    -Angela

    6 July 2007, 9:19 pm

  2. Peter Clothier says:

    Any idea when the “Sitquietly” software will be avaible to non-geeks? The “hard way” had me totally befuddled. Cheers, PaL

    13 July 2007, 8:19 pm

  3. Richard says:

    Hi Peter,

    I recently realised that there’s an easier way of installing Sitquietly on Ubuntu Linux. If you use the Ubuntu file manager to navigate to the Sitquietly .deb and double click (or single click, depending on how you’re set up) the file it should open in package installer.

    I really should have thought of that earlier. DOH!

    Rich.

    14 July 2007, 5:19 pm

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