...thought.
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The conclusions are pretty much typical Register "taking the data to\r\nthe rediculous extreme". Actually, they're typical "Karsten taking the\r\ndata to the rediculous extreme" -- they're my numbers, I gave them to\r\nAndrew.
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The point is this: 18 months of pushing "Shared Source" has resulted\r\nin precisely 15 commercial adopters, and a few hundred educational\r\ninstitutions (the bulk of these likely MS cert mills, I'd be willing to\r\nwager, though I've got no data).
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By any metric, the program has been a stunning failure.\r\nThat is the reading-between-the-lines point. The stats\r\n(and the Reg suffered an off-by-two-thousand-three error, BTW) are a\r\nlargely light-hearted demonstration of the point.
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The curious bits are these:
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\r\n- Who are the 15 ISV adoptors? Why did they feel compelled to adopt?\r\nAnd more significantly, who are the 149,985 non-adoptors, and why did\r\nthey feel compelled not to adopt?
\r\n \r\n- Who are the 300 educational adoptors? Where on the education scale\r\ndo they fall? Are these postsecondary four-year / graduate\r\ninstitutions, two-year schools, voc-ed, or technical training centers?\r\nWhere are they -- US only, or elsewhere?
\r\n \r\n- What are the deltas in terms between the Shared Source agreements,\r\nand the new program which actually has seen adoption by\r\ngovernments (either ten or twenty signers, depending on the story).
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This isn't just sillyness. There's a serious story about Microsoft's\r\nability to instill trust (or dictate terms) among independents. And\r\nwhatever sway or persuasion they have, it's apparently not much.
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If your message was to avoid overly strong reliance on linear\r\ntrending, mine is to make the same allowance for reading at face\r\nvalue.
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