Re: Microsoft needs a help strategy

[Rjack]

Robert Heller wrote:
> At Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:56:25 -0500 "amicus_curious" <ACDC@sti.net> wrote:

> Microsoft is already hurting and is probably facing long term problems
> (with or without the JOD or FTC enforcement).  

The World is littered with pundits and experts (especially free 
software advocates) who have predicted Microsoft's demise for the 
last fifteen years. This year 2009 and Microsoft still has 90% 
market share of operating systems.


"... The Microsoft Corporation, as some of you know, has a market 
capitalization of several hundred billion dollars, and possesses 
fifty billion dollars in cash at the moment. It is the single most 
profitable monopoly in the history of the world. I am deeply 
grateful to Mr. Mundie for his accurate assessment of the current 
state of affairs between his organization and mine.

So why does he think that we're doing something important to him? 
There is naturally a certain degree of partisan chagrin in what he's 
saying. We're not destroying the global software industry, *we're 
destroying the monopoly*, which has been exercised for quite some 
while now by his employer, despite the best efforts (the temporary 
best efforts) of the United States government, the European Union, 
and a number of well-funded commercial competitors who have 
uniformly failed." --  Freeing the Mind :
Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture
Eben Moglen* June 29, 2003

So much for "destroying the monopoly". Could it be the "open source 
services" business model is broken?

Sincerely,
Rjack :)