Re: tlug: MS watching Linux and Borg revealations

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

Karl-Max wrote:

<Big snip to cut to the chase>

> NEVER forget: M$ is NOT concerned about technology. They are
> concerned about making money - and if Linux holds more promise
> of making money than their present OS's, they'll drop them like
> the proverbial hot potato.......

Exactly.  Above all else, they are concerned with making money (just like
all other software companies, but for some strange reason, nobody spells
it "$un Micro$y$tem$"), which is why they'll never do it.  The amount of
money they would lose by throwing away what they've invested in NT
(billions) and all the applications software that would become obsolete
(more billions) and the market share they would  lose to Apple (from
people who just didn't want a UNIX-alike system, even if it had the Win95
GUI) would be immeasurable. The price of MS stock would plummet.  Bill
Gates would personally lose billions of dollars thereby.  A lot of his
fortune is tied up in Microsoft stock.

And of course, they would also lose a tremendous amount of face if NT were
done in by a UNIX-alike, even it was their own distribution of it.  After
all, the whole selling point of NT is that they claim it will do what UNIX
will do, but easier.  To dump NT for Linux would be to admit that they
were full of crap all along.  They'd rather keep tweaking NT and try to
live up to what they advertise than switch to Linux.   And if they somehow
get NT 5 right (it's having trouble, but assuming it will fail would be a
dangerous error), NT will deliver on a lot of the hype of the past two
years.

On a related note, a recent Gartner Group study says that they expect MS
to cut IIS loose from NT Server and make it an extra-cost item.   Also,
expect MS to do away with concurrent licensing.  All in all, the Gartner
study says that the TCO of NT Server and of MS Office/Back Office products
is fixing to go way up for corporate licensers.  They should not consider
the cheap buy-in price as something that they will be able to count on.
If things go right, this could be good news for Linux distributor,
for Applix, for Oracle, for everybody else who is getting on the Linux
bandwagon these days.   Linux may well emerge as the core of the
competition against Microsoft, pushing Sun out of that spot to a great
extent.  There is a long road between here and there, and standardization
issues to be resolved, but it's certainly possible.

Cheers,

Jonathan

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