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Microsoft in Peru, Living Room
Two pieces of Microsoft news today. tfofurn writes "According to this AP quickie and this Reuters story, both on Yahoo, Microsoft is donating 'about $550,000 in money, software and consulting services to the Peruvian government for educational and "e-government" initiatives' to Peru. The AP story mentions the conflict of this with Edgar Villanueva's proposal to have the government use only open source software. Villanueva (/. interview), you may recall, wrote a famous letter to MS Peru a few months ago." And many people have submitted stories about Windows XP Media Center, coming this winter to a living room near you.
Let me tell you all the horrors of a capitalistic economy.
I own a lemonade stand that sells $5 lemonade. I have about 50 customers every 2 hours, giving me a nice customer base.
You see how I'm gouging people, so you open a lemonade stand for $1, and attempt to show people how to make lemonade at home for under $1.
I'll see what you are doing, and sell my lemonade for $0.50, which is less than it takes for you to make lemonade. For you to compete is for you to lose money. I can afford it, because I have capital sitting in a bank account. You go out of business, and I raise my price back to $5.
This is what MS is doing!
Its basic economics, people.
Now, don't give me the "linux is free" angle. Use the anology, but instead of money, use familiarity with the product, and the popularity with MS products vs open source ones.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It's no different then scheduling the MS Sales Reps to come in for their 1hr long presentation, 45mins after you schedule the Oracle guys to come in for their presentation.
The two end up meeting in the hall, and notice each-other. Within literally hours you get phone calls and email saying to the extent "We really want your business, and well beat anything they offered".
Linux has to be prepared for this. Don't expect companies to back down from Linux competition simply because Linux is free. And don't expect companies not to use Linux as a expendable pawn in negotiations for better rates from existing vendors.
This is after all, how the free market works.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Ah I wish I could find the earlier comment were I said this is exactly what would happen in Peru. Well, no matter, this the usual Microsoft tactic. It worked in Mexico, now Peru. Will it work in Norway, a wealthier nation?
Must be nice to be able to print your own money like that: here's 1,000 CD copies of MS Foobar Pro, each worth $5,000 !! So we just made a donation of $5,000,000 and it's tax deductible (not that we pay taxes). And they'll still have to pay for upgrades. Beautiful! Let's see Open Source beat that!!
And if you were a company 100% on Linux or some other Unix flavor, you think switching to MS would not be "terribly painful and difficult".
Well, uhm... No. At least, not AS difficult. You see, Linux uses well defined standards and file formats instead of proprietary, constantly changing ones.
If it works, and does what they want it to do, why switch?
The business case for switching isn't JUST saving money. It's weening yourself off of said proprietary formats. Being locked in to a certain format might not be expensive RIGHT NOW, but using open formats means that it will never be any more expensive.
Peru: We've decided to check into a drug rehab center.
MS: Here, have some more drugs -- for free.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
How about MS Word, Access, Excel and Powerpoint?
How about how Word 95 can't open any Word 97 docs. (Before you say, everyone does this... what was the necessity for this. If the upgrade was dramatically diferent, and it wasn't possible to use the same format, I might go easy - in this case, it seems really hard to make that argument.)
How about Access 97 vs 2000...
How about MS SQL Server, and your "special" extensions to SQL.
How about Active X, C#, HTML that only works on IE.
How about Kerberos?
How about breaking the OS/2 3.X compatibility mode every time they did virtually anything to Windows.
How about the totally bogus error messages you got in the beta versions of Windows 3.x when you were using DR Dos?
(Some of these are not propriatary file formats, but clearly demonstrate the capability and willingness to use despicable acts to maintain their power - and keep you by the short hairs.)
MS probably has one of the worst records of ANY company in the history of the computer industry. Locking you into a specific "hamster wheel" is their specialty.
If you like being MS's "hamster" go ahead. Many of the rest of us don't really care for it. For many reasons, money out of our pocket being one of them.
Cheers!