Re: Microsoft needs a help strategy

[Rjack]

amicus_curious wrote:
> "Rjack" <user@example.net> wrote in message 
> ZdWdnaUnF5_BIuDUnZ2dnUVZ_hydnZ2d@giganews.com">news:ZdWdnaUnF5_BIuDUnZ2dnUVZ_hydnZ2d@giganews.com...
> > THE GPL IS THE BEST FRIEND MICROSOFT EVER HAD. Open source advocates 
> > are ideologically blinded to these facts.
> That is an interesting spin to the issue!
>
> The reality is that the GPL has no practical effect on anything of any 
> importance in terms of market development. 

The GPL has a very intimidating effect on *small* proprietary 
developers... they actually believe bullshit propaganda like 
"getting ground up in the gears of the SFLC or FSF" because
of the alleged legal validity of the GPL.

One only need observe the voluntary dismissal WITH PREJUDICE
obtained by Verizon when they told SFLC to kiss their ass.
Many hardware developers have a vested financial interest in 
complying with SFLC demands. Business is the art of making money and 
if it is profitable to comply with silly GPL demands they will do so 
... that doesn't make the GPL a valid business model.

> One could, perhaps, take GPL 
> code and attempt to create a new software product by extending the GPL 
> source in some useful way, but, if you think about it more deeply, that 
> is ever so unlikely to be successful.
>
> For example, say you could safely, without getting ground up in the 
> gears of the SFLC or FSF, hijack the source code for Open Office or Gimp 
> or even Linux itself.  If you try to sell it as a product by itself, 
> with nothing added, you are going to fail, since the product is already 
> available at essentially zero cost and you have nothing to differentiate 
> yourself.  If you add some useful improvement, you are still faced with 
> a market that is mature and will only spur the incumbent suppliers to 
> duplicate your improvement for their own products.  The customers will 
> classically wait for the incumbent to adopt the new feature.

***********************************************************************

> Can you 
> seriously believe that another office suite or graphics package or OS 
> platform can make any headway against things like MS Office, Adobe 
> Photoshop, or Windows itself?  The marketing and business issues 
> involved in such an endeavor totally swamp the technology issues.

************************************************************************

For the first time ever, considering the present economic crisis at 
hand, it is possible that netbooks and lightweight applications can 
make serious inroads into the home market -- perhaps even small 
businesses since many must cut IT costs just to survive. A netbook 
or minimal desktop with a FreeBSD operating system could open a 
market for small developers. Small businesses often require little 
more than a good $39 GUI text editor. I have a feeling there is 
going to be a lot of unemployed software people in the next few
years who will be willing to try a shot at proprietary programming
endevours.

Sincerely,
Rjack :)