Michael Chaney wrote:
Remember, too, that Microsoft has been using InstallShield for their own
installations for years. Without knowing the specifics, I'm guessing
that they wanted to kill off the InstallShield people (perhaps they
refused a buyout) and Microsoft realized that a FLOSS project
replicating their functionality was the best way to injure/kill them.
It would really depend on how good this WiX is though... after all
there are several pretty cool free / open source windows installer
projects out there and they don't seem to have hurt InstallShield much.
It's kind of amusing how a lot of people (often including me, but not
in this particular case) just can't help but interpret any Microsoft
move that sounds altruistic on the surface as having a darker motive
behind it. :-D
The thing to consider is that Bill Gates has not worn the CEO hat for
quite some time (he's CTO), and that could be what's responsible
for the subtle mellowing of Microsoft's formerly ultracompetitive
(euphemistically speaking) business attitudes. So our cynicism may
in fact be unjustified.
People lash at MS harder than usual because of their size, but if you
look at other companies (Apple, for example *) they are just as guilty
as MS of bully tactics, if not worse. It's also not unreasonable to
suppose that MS has realized that such tactics could backfire and have
thus learned to moderate (but certainly not completely erased) their
tendency to compete with 3rd party developers on their own platform.
This could be one reason for their push into more distant areas like
toys.
Corporate cultures can change, sometimes for better and sometimes for
the worse. Furthermore, a company's business attitude does not
necessarily correlate with the quality of their products.
[* IBM is way more aggressive (and obnoxious) than Microsoft is when
it comes to patents, btw. ]
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