Cringley is pessimistic.

Post #150,692 by inthane-chan 4/9/04 7:18:52 PM Reply	Cringley is pessimistic. [link\|http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040408.html\|http://www.pbs.org/c...lpit20040408.html] He's convinced that Microsoft has won the whole shootin' match. Nobody wins in a butter eating contest
Post #150,696 by JayMehaffey 4/9/04 9:41:12 PM Reply	I disagre a bit I think Cringely under estimates the degree to which open source software will get in MS's way. I agree that it won't overthrow MS, but I believe that open source software is going to be the tar pit that slows MS down. MS is going to have great difficulty fighting Linux and open source software in general, and they money they spend trying to do so will be money they can't throw at other companies. The other side of that coin is that I think Cringely is too optimistic about MS missing the boat any time in the next decade. If open source doesn't slow MS down enough to make them vunrable, I'm not sure they will anytime in our life times. Bill totally missed the boat on the internet, but they got around that because they could afford to simply buy their way back in. As long as MS can do that, they won't be unseated. Jay
Post #150,716 by andread 4/10/04 1:15:46 PM Reply	.NET? is .NET really going over as well as Cringley implies? VB.NET seems more complicated than VB A Play I Some Music w/ Papa Andy Saturday 8 PM - 11 PM ET All Night Rewind 11 PM - 5 PM Reggae, African and Caribbean Music [link\|http://wxxe.org\|Tune In]
Post #150,740 by ben_tilly 4/10/04 11:11:46 PM Reply	I'm not convinced that he is right I agree that open source is not about to roll Microsoft back on the desk in the near future. But it is sufficient to keep Microsoft from nailing down several more profitable monopolies, and reduce some of its profits from the current one. And in the longer future, well the history of disruptive innovation suggests that companies which are about to get wiped out have their brightest time in the sun just before their markets start vanishing from under their feet. Whether that will happen because of open source applications eroding Microsoft's market share, or because of something else, I don't know. But Microsoft is going to encounter something. It always happens. (And I don't see any reason to believe that open source is not the kind of disruptive innovation that Microsoft should most deeply fear.) Cheers, Ben To deny the indirect purchaser, who in this case is the ultimate purchaser, the right to seek relief from unlawful conduct, would essentially remove the word consumer from the Consumer Protection Act - [link\|http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1246&Page=1&pagePos=20\|Nebraska Supreme Court]

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