Totally disagree with Steve
on this one.
In 96-97 I set up an
ISP, and bsdi was one of the top choices.
It was about 1000$ from
what I remember, and cheaper for
a workstation, and
cheaper in bulk buys
(digiboard drivers wo
rked
well on it, over linux at the time as well).
In tech support, a few
times I called up, I actually talked to to the likes of
Kolstad
, etc, so
it was a
small shop
at the time, and prices would have dropped if sales were
very high volume.
(i was
cust ~#2000 ish)
If Linux didn't come
along, BSDI and other player would have had to drop prices,
and if Linux didn't come in, another would have, i.e. RMS
and herd , etc.
Who is to
say in a few years even BSDi could have done "free",
with a nice
gig for paid support, etc.
So at best Linux bought
us a year (Still a great thing that is!), but not anything
like the what the article says. If Linux never saw the light
of day, the internet would be exactly as it is today, maybe
Android would be a bit different :) but the internet would
be the same.
Am I biased!! used
Linux/GNU/X for over a decade as my main desktop,
servers
for 15+ years
etc, but I am also a realist
,
steve
is smoking crack on this one
big
time.
-tl