On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 09:01 -0400, Brian Hurt wrote:

> 
> It's weird, and I don't understand it, but there are a lot of people for 
> whom Microsoft is a comfort zone- 

Huh? What's weird? Where have you been the last 3 decades?
Microsoft put computers on everyone's desktop, just as
Bill Gates said he would.

I guess 99% of all desktops run Windows. Quite a lot of
servers run Windows too.

What's more, strange as it may seem .. programming is
a *commercial* activity. It is done to support commerce
and programmers expect to get paid for what they do
in the day.

Solaris does ok as a server, Linux does well in networking,
and is gaining acceptance as an embedded platform.

It is only recently that anyone challenged MS on the
desktop with anything half-way serious: Apple with OSX.

Judging by how unstable Ubuntu is, it has a long way to
go to be considered a contender.

I don't hold out much hope: the Open Source community is much
more conservative that commercial developers. After all most OS
software is still written in .. C .. long after MS made C++
their standard application language ..

So exactly who is living in a comfort zone?

-- 
John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net>
Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net