Like most technogeeks, I have a lot of pride in the work I do. So much pride that I like to listen in on other people talking about what I've built. Sure, I'm looking for praise; I've got the outsized ego that long-time Unix guys get. But I'm also looking for stuff we can do better next time, features we missed, bugs we didn't catch. Those missing features probably appear on my own list, but my priorities may not match those of real customers; I look for that stuff, too.

The downside to reading comments: my dentist and my doctor get annoyed. My dentist tells me that, if I don't stop grinding my teeth, he's going to have to replace my molars. My doctor has told me I have to reduce my bloodpressure in a big way, and he doesn't like the looks of that throbbing vein in my neck.

I looked at the coverage on geek.com. The article and analysis themselves were pretty fair and even-handed. Then I started reading comments.

“Same ol' thing. MS gives away stuff to stiffle competition. Years later they'll charge everyone twice as much for it after they crush everyone else.”

Oooo-kay. We're competing with a product whose cost-of-acquisition is zero (linux), and we're doing it by dropping the price of competing technology to... zero. How can we “crush the competition” if we're charging the same thing they are?

Look at it another way. SFU adds a bunch of capabilities to Windows; it's an add-on pack of APIs and tools. Windows still costs the same thing it did yesterday. Windows competes with RedHat and SuSE, and now does so on a more-even footing: there's now a significantly larger overlap in identical APIs, utilities, and behavior between the operating systems. Makes apples-to-apples comparisons easier. RedHat runs Unix apps; hey, Windows does, too. Windows runs Windows apps; with Wine or some other (freeware - hey, they're trying to crush the competition!) software, RedHat runs some Windows apps, too. Which platform runs more apps? Which runs them better? Which does so at a better total cost of ownership? Which provides more value to your organization? That is competition.

Bring it on.

This comment kills me. “A friend of mine knows the girl that writes this, yes "THE GIRL". From what I understand there is one girl that pretty much maintains this entire package.”

Yeah. Right. Like Microsoft ever shipped a product with a single developer. The product team has a couple dozen people on it. Both genders, even.

I'm not going to talk about the ones that were downright offensive. I'm just going to go brush my teeth and try to save what's left of my molars.