ESR: Microsoft Could Collapse In 6 Months (updated)

mjh writes: "ESR gave an interview in which he says, 'I now think that Microsoft monopoly is going to collapse for other reasons in the near future.' He basically says that the drop in PC prices will cut into the margins that PC sellers can afford, and that they'll drop the M$ tax, and replace their bundled OS with something cheaper, like Linux. This was a very interesting interview." It's a good read, and ESR seems to be mellower in it than in some other venues (and to me, that makes him more persuasive than usual as well). However, the idea of Microsoft collapsing because of lost OEM-license dollars seems pretty stretchy -- they make money in a lot of other ways, and have a nice war chest to draw from if licensing losses should become anything like a crisis. Updated by timothy, 13 Dec, 5:52GMT: It's Microsoft's monopoly which ESR said could collapse, not the company per se. Apologies for the poor phrasing.

Comments

People still want MS

[enterfornone]

What the vendors do won't change the fact that most people still want MS products. MS is the "standard" on the desktop, if you want to share office documents you need MS products, if you want to play games you need MS products.

Vendor support for Linux will not happen unless a large percentage of the general public wants it.

Here's your Reality Check

[Greyfox]

Microsoft's monopoly isn't going anywhere anytime soon (Though with Bush in office, the case against them will be dropped.) Linux has come a long way in user friendliness since I first started using it, but it's still missing some very important pieces which it very well may never get. A decent word processor topping that list. Don't say Staroffice, I'd rather have my flesh flayed away rather than use that bloated piece of shit. I'd say a decent mail package, too, but at least the Helix guys are working on one of those. Many of the Linux users I've known use Netscape Mail, which sucks as a mail client.

Not to mention the fact that all the game people are still writing to Windows. Now you and I may know that you should play games on your Playstation 2 and leave your computer free to run stock simulations, but Joe Average Luser wants to play games on his PC. Telling him to buy a Playstation 2 is simply hiding your head in the sand, though he probably actually already has one. Loki's cool in that department if you don't mind getting titles that were released for Windows 3 years ago and you don't mind buying them off the Internet, because you're not going to have any luck finding their stuff in any of the local brick and mortar stores (At least not where I live.)

And don't think Microsoft is going to sit there and let Linux compete either. They're going to do their damndest to prevent the Open Source community from competing with them. Do you think it's a coincidence that Joe Average Luser can't get DVD player software for Linux? Microsoft is a BIG contributor to the DVD consortium. As more and more media gets tied up in copy-protected formats, Open Source software proponents will have a much harder time pushing their software since it won't be able to play any media off the net.

Hey Timothy read that again...

[The Big Bopper]

...ESR didn't say that MICROSOFT was going to collapse. He said that their MONOPOLY would collapse. In other words, they would have to compete on more equal ground. Given how many people read your editorializing, I think it is important to make that distinction in your comments.

ESR = Extremely Stupid Reasoning?

[Chester K]

ESR sez: and that they'll drop the M$ tax, and replace their bundled OS with something cheaper, like Linux

....and completely ignore what the general public wants, selling them computers that can't run their favorite software and games. Yeah, companies last real long when they do that. I hear DVD drives are expensive too, perhaps OEMs will drop them and replace them with Betamax drives.

We're not there yet

[verbatim]

I'm not going to claim to be an authority on this, just gonna give my two cents and let the slashdot crowd tell me if I'm off my rocker here.

Linux is good. It's not great, yet, but good. I can name several big institutions that run their entire network with Linux, FreeBSD, and DU. It's a great system for computer enthusiasts, "hackers" (not necessarily the malicious kind), and geeks. It is still not ready, however, for the average computer user. I know this because I work support for the average computer user and have a good understanding of what users want.

Users DO NOT want to spend days figuring out how to setup a device. Nor do they care about kernel level optimizations or text-file configurations. They, as their name implies, USE the computer to play games, browse the Internet, process documents, and draw pictures. Linux HAS all of this, except it is missing the components that keep the low level "tech" from them. Case in point: most Windows users will stare at you blankly if you ask them ANYTHING about the "command prompt" or "dos-mode". Isn't that something they got rid of a long time ago? Wasn't it something only used when computers were a geek toy? The answer is YES. Windows, for the most part, does not require the user to operate the CLI at all. Linux, OTOH, almost requires the user to have at least some familarity with the console and text-files, directory structure and conf file locations. Why do some "personal" versions of Linux come pre-installed with a web-server? Huh? It's still AIMED at people interested in computers.

Maybe a splinter group (or is there one out there?) should focus on adapting Linux to the common person - one that my mother could use, and one that I don't have to spend days massaging (note that I enjoy playing with Linux on a lower level, so this isn't really a concern for me).

I think, at the present time, Linux can NOT replace Windows on the average desktop - and possibly not for at least another year. Add to that the fact that Linux/X is a much different experience than Windows.

BeOS, OTOH, is a much better direction in terms of something to de-throne the giant.

Bah, but what do I know anyhow? ;)

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

[bugg]

I think that predicting the death of the monopoly of Microsoft is a bit presumptious. Given it's current share, even winning the new PC market (which I doubt for other reasons that will come later) won't lead to the death of the monopoly.

Microsoft's dominance of the desktop has reached such a critical point where it's hard to expect the entire world to change. Predicting that [one | some] free operating system(s) will cause Windows to lose it's majority (a prerequsite for Microsoft losing it's monopoly) in six months is a bit like predicting that the US will convert to metric in six months.

Sure, we use base 10 for everything, so one could argue that the US will switch to metrics shortly because it makes sense. But we (as a nation) are so comfortable with the english system, as we are with the Windows platform, that change will be slow and painful. ESR says that the fact that PCs are getting cheaper is a good indicator that PC manufacturers will get fed up, but this I doubt.

I say this because PCs have always gotten cheaper, and hardware is getting cheaper as well. Given how most people see windows as indispensible, they have no objection to paying for a license. If the so-called "MS Tax" ends up being a much larger percentage of the total cost of the computer, I think the logical response from Microsoft would be to lower their prices; not to keep charging an amount people won't pay until they die.

Microsoft keeps up with things; they aren't about to lose their monopoly due to changes that were expected (cheaper, smaller, faster) but will rather require many more unexpected events to appear on the horizon: but note, MS has their radar up.

Re:I'm fed up of this windbag

[AintTooProudToBeg]

Imagine if MS spokesmen spent their time with unfouded attacks on Linux.

http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/news/msnw/Li nuxMyths.asp