> But I also have no doubt that they will fail. I said years ago
> that Microsoft was about to run into a buzz saw when they plugged
> themselves into the 'net; that now seems to be coming true, and I
> couldn't be more happy about it.
>
> And I think it's already started. Ask yourself: just what is
> Microsoft going to sell? Their have two products: software and support.
Linux.
Don't laugh. There is nothing to keep them from bastardizing it, and
selling it as an add-on or with a patented official Windows add-on and/or
porting all their Windows apps. If IBM can sell computers with INTEL
CPU's... Besides, Linux support can be a very good market.
(Listen, I predicted the fall of the Soviet Union before the Gorby
visit. Unfortunately, I was only joking, trying to get the people I was
working with to think outside the box. They thought I was nuts! So was
Tom Clancy's scenario of the gun battle outside the soviet white house in
Red Storm Rising. Sure... and we only saw the Russian army shoot an
artillery shell through the window of that building _live_ on TV how many
years later??? Remember all the paper that flew out the window after that
shell exploded? It made the cover of Newsweek, or was it Time, as well.)
If MS is a distribution company, and has a history of
stealing/buying/bastardizing products, then it is logical to assume that
when they can't beat Linux, they will acquire and bastardize it, porting
everything to it.
Look at it this way, the opportunity of Merced, is forcing you to
upgrade everything. Moving to a new and better operating system is
another opportunity to force you to upgrade everything too! (Are you
listening, MS? Port Everything! Not everyone is going to buy Merced.
Port your tools to Linux, and you have a huge market!)
Worst case, they acquire the source, modify it to use their FAT file
system, add a few compatible calls to run legacy applications, and boom,
we have MS Linux as a "known high caliber" product. That crashes a few
times a week, as opposed to Window's few times a day, or Linux's few times
a year. (I just had a crash -- the power failed and all my clocks and
reset. Not even Linux can operate without voltage. I know my main Linux
box was up over 18 days before the crash.)
Best case, they just port their tool products, and set themselves up
as a major Linux distributor, offering MS style support and training.
OR... they can try to destroy the RNA, the standards, by trying to
extend them. But realistically, as you pointed out, there are hundreds of
developers per each MS employee. So they either sell Linux, or like the
cell that hosts a virus, die. There is too much of a price performance
differential between the products.
Their only alternative to selling Linux, is to move into patented
algorithms and file formats in high price vertical markets, or getting
pork bills passed in Congress mandating specifications in federally funded
projects, much the same way the railroads did. They can try that, but
they are already known as the bad boys, the congressional pork angle won't
work, the crows come home to roost.
Funny, how someone predicted just this scenario some ten years ago,
saying Unix would finally catch on, and MS, backing the wrong standards,
would end up suffering. Though I think they predicted the bulk of the
Unix stuff would come from Japan.
- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----------------------------
-------- MS asks "Where do you want to go?" -------
------- Linux asks "What do you want to do?" ------
-- It is doers, not goers, who built this world! --
--------- Member: http://www.svlug.org/ -----------
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