No freak'n way . .

Post #76,959 by Andrew Grygus 1/25/03 6:55:45 PM Reply	No freak'n way . . Maybe they will come out with MS Office for Linux in the future Microsoft is many things, but they are not suicidal. They clearly recognize they aren't competitive in any market where they cannot leverage a monopoly. Just look at their financial results. Sometimes they can't even do it with the monopolies (see MSN). To endorse the enemy would break their own monopolies, and they'd have nothing. They will fight tooth and nail, by fair means and foul, untill the battle is won or lost, because the alternative is slow but certain death. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]
Post #77,025 by kmself 1/26/03 4:19:50 AM Reply	Alternatives: Competing on merits \r\n Microsoft is many things, but they are not suicidal. They clearly\r\nrecognize they aren't competitive in any market where they cannot\r\nleverage a monopoly. Just look at their financial results. Sometimes\r\nthey can't even do it with the monopolies (see MSN). \r\n \r\n\r\n I agree with this statement. \r\n\r\n \r\n To endorse the enemy would break their own monopolies, and they'd have\r\nnothing. They will fight tooth and nail, by fair means and foul, untill\r\nthe battle is won or lost, because the alternative is slow but certain\r\ndeath. \r\n \r\n\r\n I disagree with this one. In particular, the "slow but certain\r\ndeath" aspect. \r\n\r\n Losing its monopoly dominance and illegal market control would\r\ncertainly leave us with a vastly changed Microsoft. I don't think this\r\nneed be the end of the firm. \r\n\r\n They would no longer be able to play the game that's worked for them\r\nto date -- one which it appears they've realized from the very\r\nbeginning. Bill Gates's "Letter To Hobbyists" and stories of his\r\n"modest proposal" ~1980 (in a story I've had personally related, he\r\napproached Intel with a proposition to divide the IT market into three\r\nparts: IBM the business world; Intel, embedded and control products;\r\nMicrosoft, the hobby market) both indicate his intent to dominate the\r\nmarket, by illegal means if necessary. \r\n\r\n Instead, we'd have Microsoft competing on merits. And to a certain\r\nextent, we're getting there. Microsoft certainly doesn't want to admit\r\nthis, and is pressing the "integrated solution" message hard (see [link\|http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-981552.html\|Microsoft Show Linux\r\nSome Respect], but they're also being called to task for (and are\r\nresponding to) claims that their software is slow, buggy, unstable, or\r\ninflexible. \r\n\r\n What are the implications of a Microsoft competing on\r\nmerits? Note that that's probably still a Microsoft with a war chest in\r\nthe tens of billions of dollars, a large talent pool, and a considerable\r\npatent portfolio. Anyone care to speculate? \r\n --\r\n Karsten M. Self [link\|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com\|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n [link\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/\|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n [link\|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/\|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n \r\n Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link\|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html\|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n
Post #77,294 by Ashton 1/27/03 5:37:06 PM Reply	Would this not require all new people at the top? that is, can you imagine a Ballmer ceasing to be a snake-oil salesman - and becoming capable of changing all important policy leaders in the hierarchy? (P.T. Barnum earns his MBA and and becomes a CPA.) Can you imagine him retiring - voluntarily? A.
Post #77,374 by Andrew Grygus 1/27/03 9:01:42 PM Reply	It might be instructive to look at Novell Novell basked in a near monopoly on networking and built a very successful sales channel based on authorized dealers. When a credible challenge finally came, they had no idea what to do about it. Ray Noorda went out and bought Novell a bunch of products to help build a competitor to Microsoft's successful integrated approach. Management hadn't one clue in hell what to do with these products and proceeded to pretty much destroy them all: WordPerfect, DR-DOS, Multiuser DOS, BTrieve, Unix, etc.. Yes, they survived, and have some promising products, but they burned through one hell of a lot of legacy market and a few management refurbs finding stability. Microsoft has additional problems. Not only are they accustomed to monopoly control, they have a financial structure heavily leveraged by stock options and expectation of rapid revenue growth which will be painful to restructure under shrinking markets. They are also doing a good job of offending their customers and getting them to look at alternatives quite early in the game. Novel authorization made sure you could get authorized if you really wanted to sell their products. Hell, even I got authorized with little trouble. In contrast, Banyon's dealer authorization process was designed to make it as difficult as possible to sell Banyon products. It didn't take a Microsoft to do them it, they did it all by themselves. [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx]

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