Re: Release plans

[Richard M. Stallman]

We were talking about why people keep using Windows.  Why Windows
became successful is a tangent, which I don't want to take up.  So I
will only comment on a couple of things you said about the free
software community.

    - The advertising campaign from MS said to the user "you should decide 
    what programs you have on your pc". Very smart. If you tried to tell 
    users that there are better programs (there were!) then you just had to 
    face that the user "wanted to decide".

    - The free software world in my opinion did exactly the opposite. It 
    said to the users "we know what is best for you" (because we are 
    smarter).

The whole free software world did not say one single thing.  That is
not what the GNU Project says.  Which part are you talking about?  It
could be that some people said that.  But I don't know that it is
true.

Without specifics, we cannot draw any conclusions.

    - First ms focused on GUI aspects and usability. When I read messages 
    from experts at ms on this subject I often found the messages 
    surprisingly good. It looked to my like they did take it seriously - and 
    that really requires much thought.

We have had to play catch-up in GUIs just as we did in the lower
levels of the system.  When Windows appeared, we did not even have
a complete working command line system.