Great stuff again, WT!
This article on MicroSoft was a good read:
Quote:
Why Microsoft will never go with open-source
Lately, Microsoft has decided to deride and attack the open-source movement with strongly-worded rhetoric designed to create a panic in the technology marketplace. Many people have spent countless hours talking about why their arguments are incorrect and full of bunk. Fewer people have examined the facts of what lies beneath these arguments. The truth is this: Microsoft cannot and will not ever support the open-source or even the open standards movement.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/co...760032,00.html
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There is an interesting similarity between the MicroSoft vs. Open Source confrontation and the RIAA vs. P2P battle. Both Microsoft and the record industry base their businesses almost exclusively on selling shrink-wrap products and licenses. Both would find it very hard to switch their basic business models even if they wished because of the numerous existing licensing and royalty agreements. On the software side, open source movement is free from that sort of limitations and can effectively create a parallel world of possibilities over which the allmighty M$ has virtually no power but to bitch about it. On the media side, the entertainment industry giants are similarly powerless to stop the inevitable progress of p2p technology and the formation of parallel distribution channels. Both are facing the same basic challenge: to change from monopolistic shrink-wrap sellers to service-based businesses. It is a drastic change in a business model and in the related mindset. Just imagine the record industry instead of pushing aggressively their latest 'talents' to us asking us
how we want to be served.
- tg
