What Microsoft Could Learn from OSS and Linux

An anonymous reader writes "An article on OSWeekly.com discusses a few things that Microsoft could learn from OSS and Linux. 'As Microsoft continues to understand that open source does not mean they cannot generate a decent profit, I honestly wonder if they will eventually "get" that releasing MS Office code to the open source community is their only option. Since the whole threatening to sue thing will be met with the same fan base response, just like the RIAA, it is certainly not a wise decision. And if Microsoft thinks Open Office is a pain now, try suing people over it, then see how many people refuse to buy their products.'"

Comments

Piracy

[ShedPlant]

Microsoft already has the benefits of their product being free for home/casual users. It's called "piracy".

Besides which, Open Office is in no way a real threat to MSOffice's success and market dominance. Like Microsoft is supposed to throw away their monopoly because someone else has made a word processor for free? Right.

Office and Exchange are why people buy Windows

[billstewart]

Microsoft's got a tight-knit set of products out there - businesses want to run Office because everybody else does, so they buy Windows to run it on, and buy upgrades to Office when it comes out, and buy upgrades to Windows when Office needs them. And they run Exchange for somewhat dodgier reasons, but again they buy Windows to go with it, and if they've got Windows they can run Office. And they developed IE and IE-dependent web site products mainly to make sure that people didn't replace their operating environments with Mozilla and Java, which would have made it easier to junk Windows.

Just about anything else could be released as Open Source, or given away free, and they'd do ok. They've done some things like that - Netmeeting was the first widespread H.323 voice/video/data/conferencing product, and while they didn't give out the source, the product was free beer (on Windows, of course), and was a reasonably standards-based reference implementation that everybody else in the industry could use. But messing with Office is messing with the crown jewels.

Re:Get real

[Short Circuit]

Get real, indeed. The summary writer clearly doesn't understand the situation. There's no reason for Microsoft to open the code for office in a manner that allows community copying.

My prediction? Microsoft is going to convert their Office product to a series of ActiveX applets and serve it up through Internet Explorer. Homes and small businesses will access the applets over broadband Internet connections, and larger businesses will be offered a chance to license an Office server either as an application or rack device.

The only reason they haven't so far is because broadband penetration in their target markets isn't high enough yet. At some point, they're going to decide that a sufficient percentage of their market has broadband, and they'll discontinue client-side-installed Office software.

It's unfortunate for them that broadband didn't spread more quickly. This administration gives them the perfect atmosphere of leniency. If they could have released an online Office two years ago, they could have established their position as the de facto way of doing business before a potentially more strict administration came along.