Re: Microsoft needs a help strategy

[JEDIDIAH]

On 2009-01-24, amicus_curious <ACDC@sti.net> wrote:
>
> "Robert Heller" <heller@deepsoft.com> wrote in message 
> news:0KidnX6Y8YWJDObUnZ2dnUVZ_rfinZ2d@posted.localnet...
>> At Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:26:44 -0500 Rjack <user@example.net> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> 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?
>>
>> Not if you look at RedHat stock prices vs. Sun's:
>>
>> http://ostatic.com/blog/how-can-red-hat-be-worth-more-than-sun
>>
>> RedHat is doing *something* right...
>>
> Or investors are doing something wrong.  Sun's woes are the result of not 
> effectively coping with the RISC vs CISC issues in the hardware arena.  Sun 
> was done in by Intel, not Red Hat.  Red Hat and Linux itself prosper, to the 
> extent that you can call it prosperity, from the shift of specialized Unix 
> to PC/i386 architecture Unix, i.e. Linux.  A lot of money went out of the 

      IOW, Sun failed to do what Redhat and Suse were doing all along.

      Sun chose to ignore the PC revolution while Redhat and Suse built
themselves on it. Yes, Sun is the proverbial buggy whip company trying 
to avoid the perception that Ford is putting them out of business.

      Before the ascendancy of Linux, there was a fairly respectable
x86 version of Solaris. Companies that weren't willing to use Windows
as a server OS and not willing to pay highway robbery for Sun hardware
used this OS on PCs. Had Sun not treated it like a red headed stepchild
it may have been Sun that harnesessed the PC revolution in Servers.

      Instead it was Redhat and Suse.

> system with this change and the Unix pros are certainly hurting the most. 
> Meanwhile, the market share of Windows in the server space grows each year. 
>

       Revenue grows. 
 
       That's not quite the same thing as marketshare.

-- 
     Apple: Because a large harddrive is for power users.
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