ESR Says as PCs Get Cheaper, Windows Will Die

james writes "Eric Raymond reckons Windows will be obsolete because people won't be able to afford it soon." Owning the OS gives MS too great of an advantage. They'd sell the client for 5 bucks if it meant that they could still control Office, the server market, and the zillions of other markets that their OS monopoly lets them crush.

Comments

*smacks self*

[BitHerder]

Dammit! Must learn to read irony! Dammit! Dammit!

Microsoft has recognized the problem since long...

[Florian]

...and that's why Microsoft is switching its business model from selling boxed sets to subscription services. This already is the case here in Europe where corporate/public service/campus licenses of Microsoft programs expire after 24 months (don't know about the US). With tying future Windows releases to .NET-based services, Microsoft will be able to charge much less for the installed OS, but get their revenue on subscription fees and by charging for each extra feature/service a user decides to employ. ESR's rhetoric is uninformed and makes the Free Software/Open Source community look stupid. Besides, the recent troubles of Linux kernel development show that the "Bazaar" model has its limitations/doesn't scale. As soon as a project has gained a certain size and complexity, you inevitably need centralized structures (see XFree86, FreeBSD, gcc, libc, Emacs, Mozilla...).

If Free Software/Open Source doesn't want to be (wrongly) put in the same bag as the dotcom bubble rhetoric of 1996-1999, it should dissociate itself from the rhetoric bubbles of ESR.