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Halloween VII

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sequels-galore dept.

mjh writes "ESR has reviewed the latest Microsoft leaked Linux strategy document. A very interesting read. Summary: OSS is winning some battles, but Microsoft is poised to bring out bigger and nastier guns." To the extent that people read it and gain some insight into what Microsoft is actually thinking about Linux and Open Source Software, it's useful. To the extent that anyone draws a conclusion from this document like "we've got Microsoft on the run", that's just idiotic.

3 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Is this some sort of a MS tradition? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Well, MS admitted that one was real, but I agree that this may simply be something they do to pull the wool over Eric & Company. Strategy documents at HP were appreciably longer than two pages. Also, I got to see some MS strategy (under NDA to HP so you won't hear about it as much as I'd like to tell) and it didn't look like this.

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  2. Why so OS centric? by bstadil · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I don't really understand why this document is so OS centric? The biggest TCO achilles heel for MS must be their Office Suite franchise, but maybe they don't want to "publicly" say so.

    Office account for 60%+ of MS' profit and they are so far up the diminishing return curve that this is where the attack should be. There is a Office 11 beta review today that pretty much says that the user benefits of upgrading is small and more geared at developers and requires total MS on the backend. This is excellent as they are playing right into Open Source's strength: The backend. Foil this and Office 11 will have little to offer over OpenOffice et al.

    --
    Help fight continental drift.
  3. Re:Are you kidding? by metacosm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a troll -- but I will bite.

    First of all, what is the total cost of the software you run?

    If you built your own PC out of parts, you have to purchase your operating system, office, development tools, etc. Lets do a ballpark on just those 3 things (from Microsoft.com). Microsoft Windows 2000 Pro (319), Microsoft Office XP Pro (579), Microsoft .Net Pro Studio (1079). Now assuming you don't do anything else, you just spent 2 grand on software.

    You could probably easily spend another 5 grand on other useful tools (depending on your trade) such as Oracle, ESRI, and much much more...

    Do you steal software? That is illegal, and to some people that is unacceptable, so they use linux, rather than simply stealing what they want.

    The interesting thing is that "Warez" is probably helping Microsoft by adding to network effect. If everyone had to purchase all the software they used their would be a much faster migration to linux (I believe).

    Despite your personal beliefs, I think that linux is becoming a contender on the business desktop. For an array of reasons. The most important of these reasons is cost. Google(run on linux) for information about successful linux deployments, lots of big companies are starting todo it.