[diskussion] Ny Microsoft

[Jeremiah Foster]

On Sep 24, 2007, at 9:08 PM, Anders S. Lindbäck wrote:

> Martin Olsson epostade redan 2007-09-25 04:28
>
>> För visst skulle det trots allt vara en stor vinst för FLOSS om  
>> världens
>> största mjukvaruföretag till slut "förstod" OSS (och i ett senare  
>> skede
>> kanske till och med FLOSS).
>
> Microsoft förstår öppen källkod -

I totally disagree. They do not understand either Open Source or Free  
Software. If they did, they would use it, as they are starting to.  
Remember MS is not really good at understanding technology trends,  
they thought the Internet was a "fad" and did not feel they had to  
support TCP/IP in their protocol stack!

> det är därför de är så hårt
> inriktade på att ta död på den.

They want to kill _all_ and _any_ competition. That is how they work.  
If you can't buy them, kill them. They have always operated this way,  
this is why they have had so many problems with regulators.

> För om denne skulle blir dominerande
> så skulle de inte tjäna några pengar öht.

Again, not true. They could easily release their APIs and still  
dominate. If Office was Free (which it may be soon, who knows) they  
would still have 90% of the desktops worldwide. A free office suite  
would be an excellent way to sell an operating system. In fact, this  
is what they do already. They allow a thriving grey market and black  
market in their products to get it on as many computers as possible.  
They could easily dominate if they gave away their software.

> Microsoft har ju varit
> 'dumma' nog att sälja bort supporten till sina OEMer - och det
> är ju där man tjänar som bäst pengar inom öppen och fri programvara.
>

Not sure I agree with you there. Oracle, the world's number 2  
software maker had a profit increase of 25% this quarter. They are a  
pure software play like Microsoft, so just doing software is a  
profitable business. Hardware on the other hand is risky because of  
commodity pricing. Look at Dell, they were once the largest computer  
supplier in the world, now they are struggling; hardware sales and  
support is a very competitive industry and the margins are thin.

  Microsoft has always been aggressive with competition and  
marketing. It is this ruthless competitiveness, without regard for  
regulation, that has built the company. But now that (finally)  
governments are punishing MS they are starting to see real  
competition. Microsoft software has always been good, good enough  
anyway, but the competition is significantly better, and customers  
are starting to see that. However, if MS suddenly got religion and  
started to release things under the GPL, or some other license, they  
would maintain their market share despite the fact that Apple, Linux,  
and Sun et. al create significantly better operating systems.

The threat from Microsoft has always been their unfair business  
practices. Even if they adopted the GPL that would not stop them  
bundling their products with their OS, it might even let them get  
away with it in the eyes of regulators. A Microsoft that begins to  
understand free software, the way Apple understands it for example,  
is a dangerous thing indeed.

	Jeremiah