The article is two years old. I remember reading it then and not being very impressed. If you buy into their networking effect logic, people would use WORD.DOC for all of their email.
I wonder what the authors think now that Vista has flopped. Neither of them have anything related since but their peers have something Dustin would enjoy: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5724.html I don't think these authors fully understand the rational and implications of free software. Though they publish, they seem oblivious to the fact that their computer is their press and must be as free as possible. They implicitly trust Microsoft and others who own their computers. The current wiretapping scandal is going to make the advantages of freedom more apparent as it reduces trust in more traditional information services companies. It's hard to see how economists don't recognize the harm Microsoft does. Free societies depend on the free flow of information and taxes on that flow are harmful to the entire economy. Microsoft has been at war with free standards from the beginning but has really picked up the pace in the last ten years. These costs are never more obvious than they are now, with M$ rolling out yet another OS, and document stack that require everyone to buy everything all over again. At least they have good sense to publish using the web and pdf. On Sunday 18 November 2007 1:19 pm, B. Estrade wrote: > I found this very interesting. > > http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4834.html > > Brett
