I agree "mindless drivel" may not be a very constructive thing to call
it. But I think it's in order to be a bit harsh here. I'll be a bit
long winded.

Lots of people one time or another in their life get the idea that
they have a great talent for programming. Then they get a compiler and
start out on their new masterpiece, and fail miserably because it's
quite obvious when a program works and when it does not. Most people
then give up, but others keep trying and eventually may become
competent programmers after a lot of training and experience.

Lots of people one time or another in their life get the idea that
they have a great talent for business. Sometimes they start a company
and fail miserably, but usually they are content to tell other people
about their great marketing plans. Consequently they don't really have
any contact with reality. This is exploited and encouraged by tons of
books and courses (even at universities) that teach a lot of bullshit
that have no real use for running a real business. But it enables
people to repeat catch phrases and buzzwords and makes them feel
comfortable in the delusion that they are great entrepreneurs.

In reality it's quite hard to make business, probably even harder than
being a programmer. It takes experience that is really hard to come
by. And let's face it, it usually also takes lots of money. People
tend to forget that Bill Gates didn't start out with two empty hands,
he started with two empty hands and a million dollars or so that his
mum gave him. There are a few people who really succeeded in building
something "from scratch" and most of them never read any of this
"entrepreneurship" bullshit or went to any "business school".

Now I don't know anything about tmhgm's background and I don't care.
But I do wonder, what are his credentials for claiming that his
business plan would be anything worth taking into consideration? Just
because faulty business plans don't immediately explode like faulty
code does, doesn't mean anyone's opinion on the matter is valuable
just because s/he spent a few hours thinking about it (how many
people here have a clue about how much time Ralph Schmidt, to take an
example, spent in the last day, week, month or year improving MOS?).

The MOS team have (collectively) a lot of expertise when it comes to
the market for operating systems. They know the competition, they know
quite a bit what is requested (because many of them work
professionally in this field). Several are or have been operating
their own companies.

So you think you know better? Ok, fine. But maybe it's in place to be
a bit humble about it. You know, there are people around here who
spent years not just *thinking* about this problem but actually
gaining hard, first-hand *experience*. And if they follow your plan,
chances are that *they*, not you, would fail miserably. And in my
experience most people prefer failing miserably with a plan they
devised themselves, than with something handed to them from someone
who doesn't hold a stake in it.



[ Edited by merko on 2006/4/2 0:14 ]