Issue 3. [Re: [ros-general] ROS-User-Issues]

[John Vandenberg]

On 10/27/05, jwalsh at bigpond.net.au <jwalsh at bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> My ISP has sent all of us a blunt eviction (by stealth) notice, otherwise, I like most
> other simple DOS  users, am more than  happy with what I have already.
> They also said  their policy is conditioned by Microsoft.
> I don't really need NT. Is it something I have got to have?

Justin, I have bad news for you.  Big ISP's support popular platforms,
and their support staff don't often stray too far from the rolled
answers.  If you tell them you are still on Win95, I expect you have a
moderately good chance that someone at bigpond will know the answer. 
But ReactOS is not your salvation -- 99% of their support staff will
wonder what drugs you are on if you ask for support and tell them that
you are using ReactOS.

I know this personally because I have been unable to find an ISP that
will openly support my mother running Fedora.  In regional South-East
Queensland where my mother lives, her options are limited to either a
large ISP, or a tiny ISP, neither of which want to understand Linux at
the tech-support level.

At the end of the day, if you choose to use unsupported software, you
need to find your own support, either through mailing listings, or by
purchasing it from someone else.

> I am carefull not to put a lot of energy into a "Code Farm", for the large corporations
> (to my knowledge M$  invented the practice, I've merely identified it).

It sounds like you are asking ... `If I risk my neck for you, will I
get a chance to kill Englishmen? ' (Braveheart)  I suspect that the
answer is `Fight for [ReactOS], and you get to kill English! `.

Besides that aside, there is always a very good chance that open
source will benefit large corporations.  For example, in the future,
IBM might choose to roll out a ReactOS environment as a way of running
Win32 services.  But whenever open source is used in this way, it
means big business can use their money to either funnel back into open
source, or employ more R&D staff, or solve world peace.  And as we
have seen with IBM, when a big corporation uses open source to make
money, the human nature within the company usually means that from top
to bottom, the company has decided to be a responsible part of this
interwoven world.

I hope you find a relaxing way to assist open source here in Oz during
your retirement.

--
John