From: kevin lyda (kevin at domain suberic.net)
Date: Tue 10 Aug 1999 - 16:56:43 IST
Twomey_Mark at domain emc.com spoke thusly:
>Lets hope they spend more time in the future being distracted by such silly
>ideas. It might allow someone to sneak up on them and finally break their
>hammerlock on the PC desktop.
oddly i wrote an osopinion piece on this last night. if you go to the
linuxworld site you'll see tons of product announcements. many are
applications that compete directly with apps that microsoft makes for
windows (and is the leader on that platform).
if those companies see a market there, then why doesn't microsoft see
a market there? how is it that companies with less cash - and less
access to cash - can justify a linux (beos/solaris/etc) port while
microsoft can't.
the answer is completely obvious - and completely at odds with users'
best interests. microsoft is leveraging their applications to retain
their os marketshare.
if linux could run office 2000 (and vmware/wine/bochs don't count)
microsoft would sell less copies of nt. that's hypothetical since there
isn't a copy of word for linux, but if it did exist and i had to choose
between a bet on rain in dublin or less sales for nt i'd have to think
about which to take. in addition i think their application divisions
fear competing on a platform they can't control - particularly if the
one they do control starts to lose ground.
and why is microsoft acting this way? it doesn't seem to make sense in
the long run and it seems quite iffy legally. for a company doing the
opposite look at ibm. they're helping linux on ppc boxes (home of aix)
and on ia64 (home of their monterey project). they're offering users
choice, and believe in themselves enough to do so.
woah, holy ranting! i'll chill now, really.
kevin
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