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Re: Microsoft needs a help strategy


From: amicus_curious
Subject: Re: Microsoft needs a help strategy
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:35:38 -0500


"The Lost Packet" <jmthelostpacket@googlemail.com> wrote in message news:EXNel.102870$626.48501@newsfe09.ams2...
Rjack wrote:
Rjack wrote:

 From the findings of fact in US v. Microsoft (1998)

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

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Open-Source Applications Development

51. Since application developers working under an open-source model are not looking to recoup their investment and make a profit by selling copies of their finished products, they are free from the imperative that compels proprietary developers to concentrate their efforts on Windows. In theory, then, open-source developers are at least as likely to develop applications for a non-Microsoft operating system as they are to write Windows-compatible applications. In fact, they may be disposed ideologically to focus their efforts on open-source platforms like Linux. Fortunately for Microsoft, however, there are only so many developers in the world willing to devote their talents to writing, testing, and debugging software pro bono publico. A small corps may be willing to concentrate its efforts on popular applications, such as browsers and office productivity applications, that are of value to most users. It is unlikely, though, that a sufficient number of open-source developers will commit to developing and continually updating the large variety of applications that an operating system would need to attract in order to present a significant number of users with a viable alternative to Windows. In practice, then, the open- source model of applications development may increase the base of applications that run on non- Microsoft PC operating systems, but it cannot dissolve the barrier that prevents such operating systems from challenging Windows.
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Note the prophetic finding of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson:

"In practice, then, the open- source model of applications development may increase the base of applications that run on non- Microsoft PC operating systems, but it cannot dissolve the barrier that prevents such operating systems from challenging Windows."

So what has changed? A gain of maybe 2% (exclude proprietary Apple) in market share of non-MS operating systems in the past ten years?

Seems to me that the open source business models are an abject failure compared to proprietary models.

Sincerely,
Rjack :)


if they were an abject failure then /nobody/ would be using them.

I suggest you look at the Linux installed base for such things as:

PDAs
cellphones
digital satellite/cable receivers & DVRs
GPS systems
mp3 players
routers
network attached storage systems
web servers
supercomputers

...and then compare that with proprietery installed base for same.

Get back to us with some real numbers, or I say you are full of shit.

You confuse the mere existence or use of open source with the open source business model referenced. Cellphones, for example, are complex hardware devices that use an OS at their core. I assume that Linux is used by some, but I thought the general case was something called Sybian, but it hardly matters. The same is true of all the other things you list. The business addressed by these products depend on proprietary product design rather than the kind of OS used. An MP3 player is a piece of hardware, mostly made by Apple or at least best made by Apple in most consumer minds, it might have some software inside, but nobody cares. They think iPod is the best and others may be OK, too, but what they think has nothing to do with what is under the hood, just what the unit looks like and how well it works.






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