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From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: X11 bashing
Message-ID: <1991Apr23.032345.26162@decuac.dec.com>
Date: 23 Apr 91 03:23:45 GMT
References: <MWM.91Apr18170428@raven.pa.dec.com> <=V6&^Q_.19037@cheers.Bungi.COM> <130081@uunet.UU.NET>
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Washington Ultrix Resource Center
Lines: 26

rbj@uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) writes:

>But I suppose my real purpose in bashing X, just like my
>bashing on NFS, is to warn people who don't really know
>better against following along blindly with the crowd.

	Aye, there's the rub. How many times have you heard some
'Joe User' say "I want to move to UNIX/MOTIF/OPEN LOOK/X/random thing"
and after you talk with h* for a while, you find out that the impetus
for the move is because they read some article in some trade rag
where some vulture consultant group all nodded and said "BLAH is
the Wave Of The Future".

	Educate the customer. Educate the user. If someone makes an
informed and deliberate decision to use BLAH, despite BLAH's warts,
but because BLAH does THING better than any other BLAH, more power to
them - but users/customers who just jump from bandwagon to bandwagon
based on the ravings of Favorite Computer Rag are sure to wind up
unhappy/unproductive users/customers.

	You'd really think that after some of the tremendous
boondoggles the computer industry has had (can you say "OS/2"?) that
some kind of awareness would be growing, but it seems just the opposite.

mjr.
[None of this is he offical opinion of DEC, or any of the otters.]