More importantly, the U.S. software ecosystem hasn't really worked all that well for anyone but Microsoft. Microsoft has the money to outspend any competitor, and they can easily crush the upstart foreign software houses. Countries that want to develop their own software industry have no choice but to foster the development of Free Software. Otherwise Microsoft will end up destroying (or purchasing) all of their software houses as well.
Myself personally, I am done purchasing paper books. I can carry around hundreds of books on my visor (with my Compact Flash springboard module), my visor is lighter than most books, and I can even read these books in the dark without waking my wife. Heck, using The Weasel Reader I don't even have to worry about turning the pages.
Baen has got ebooks figured out, and they know it. I can sample books for free, purchase books at $4 a title (or $10 for a bundle of 4), and I can start reading them immediately. Their ebooks almost certainly have a higher profit margin than their paper backs as well. So they aren't just making me happy, it's making them happy as well.
I used to avoid Baen (I made the mistake of reading Mercedes Lackey first), but now I have found several authors that I enjoy reading quite a bit. The Belisaurius series, for example, is quite good. Read "An Oblique Approach" and you will see what I mean (hey, it's free).
I am rather new to this whole e-book technology (I have only had my visor for a couple of months), but I have pretty much decided that dead-tree editions have gone the way of the dodo for me. I like reading on my visor. My visor is much lighter than a hardback, the display is comfortable, and with a sprinboard Compact Flash adaptor I can carry around a ridiculous amount of books.
That being said I still think that Baen has the right idea. I hadn't ever read anything by Eric Flint, and now I am completely hooked. Unfortunately, you can't simply download the latest two books in the Belisaurius series. You have to purchase them. In fact, you can't even purchase them outright. You have to purchase a set of four e-books for the princely sum of $10. Even if I don't like any of the other books that's a pretty good deal. It's certainly worth being able to carry the entire series around with me without looking like a doofus. And by bundling the books this way Baen might get me hooked on another of their authors.
That's what I want, and I am not paying for anything less. I am willing to rely on Project Gutenberg, individual authors, and Baen until the rest of the publishers figure that out.
The state of California just bought over a quarter of a million Oracle seats. How many of those databases are probably storing cookie recipes? I don't mind paying Oracle for those things that require Oracle software, but it is ridiculous to think that you need Oracle for everything.
The stupidest thing about Java and Swing is that even Python combined with wxPython produces snappier GUIs, and wxPython runs very well on both UNIX and Windows. In other words, if you are willing to forgo supporting Macs, you can write a cross-platform application in Python that will be much easier to write and maintain than anything in Java.
The harder Microsoft pushes, the sooner people are going to find an alternative. Microsoft may be rich and powerful, but when push comes to shove they are just one company.
For example, let's imagine what would happen if Microsoft forced the entire financial sector to prefer free software (they are already headed in that direction anyway). Not only would Microsoft lose an important part of their clientelle, but Free Software would gain some well-funded allies. When Free Software gets used, it gets improved, and that improvement would make it easier for those of us that aren't in the financial sector to sell Linux solutions in whatever sector we work in.
More than ever Microsoft has got to sell their version of the future. If they pull out the thumbscrews their customers are very likely to jump ship. Even worse, their customers might actually find that they like being off the Windows wagon.
Microsoft could afford to play hardball when their competitors offered solutions that were an order of magnitude more expensive than their offering, but that is no longer the case.
Yes, but Microsoft has to be careful about becoming the OS of Digital Rights Management. After all, Microsoft's customers don't actually want DRM, and Apple is busy promoting their iMacs with commercials that show cool people making copies of their CDs, and rippy MP3s to carry around in their iPod.
Re:Problem with Making Money with Linux Services
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You have to sign them up for a support contract. You simply tell your customer that for a modest monthly fee you will monitor the machine, make sure the backups are running, etc. You can also throw in a limited number of "free" emergency service hours or whatever it takes to hook them into signing up.
You then write a cron job that does all of the actual work and sends you an email with a nice report on the overall status of the box. Once a month you forward some of these reports on to your customer along with a little message telling him that everything looks good. You might try to use the information to sell him more hardware or software. Phrases like "disk space is getting low," and "your machine spends a lot of time under heavy load" are very useful for selling these types of added services.
If you are careful with this kind of customer and don't gouge them, you can guarantee a steady income. And since the amount of work required is fairly low, you can have all sorts of customers, all of them completely convinced that you are the most competent computer expert on the planet.
If you are selling Windows solutions, on the other hand, you constantly have to worry that one of your competitors will sell him a solution that actually works. Get a reputation as a hack, and then it becomes impossible to find new customers.
Most small businesspeople have no problems paying for solutions that work. With Linux you can easily undercut your competitors and still make a nice profit.
If you would have paid less in rent, then perhaps the company would have turned a profit and you would have gotten a chance to actually grow. That's why Microsoft is worried about the guys working out of their garage, and not the guys who have hired enough space for 30 folks despite the fact that they only have 5 employees. One of the cardinal rules of business is that it is easier to save money than to make it. Companies that can't get that little fact right are not likely to ever really be a threat.
As long as the local politicians are corrupt the people are screwed. They would be even more screwed without the foreign investors (they wouldn't have jobs), but they are screwed all the same. Blaming the foreign investors is the easy thing to do, and in fact it is the tactic that the corrupt politicians usually encourage their people to take. As long as the populace is angry at the one group that could actually help them (the folks with enough money to provide good paying jobs), then the populace is easy to control.
The reason that these sorts of countries can't get better paying jobs is that it is far too risky to invest there. Nike and the Gap can build sweatshops with relatively small investments, and so it makes sense for them to exploit these types of situations. If things go wrong these companies haven't lost anything more than a few thousand sewing machines. Better paying industries, on the other hand, generally require a higher level of education from their workers, and they inevitably require a much higher initial investment. Once you build a factory for $500 million you can't afford to have the government expropriate it, or have some petty politico order it burned to the ground because your bribe wasn't high enough.
Corruption is the enemy of business, and so until these countries straighten out their problems with corruption, then they will never have more than the lowest of low-paying jobs.
A desire to "make the capitalist pigs pay" is precisely why these countries are still stuck in the dark ages.
For example, when these 25,000 revolutionaries rise up you get a war, people are displaced, property is ruined, trade is disrupted, and piles of money are spent on useless goods like weapons. In short, everyone suffers. Then, assuming the revolutionaries win, you have a big pile of uneducated leaders in a devastated country without capital. These countries are lucky to get the worst sorts of slave labor jobs for their people. After all, they have very little to offer potential employers, and they have a history of seizing property which makes foreign investors very unhappy. These countries might be able to talk Nike or the Gap into investing in a couple thousand sewing machines, but they certainly aren't going to get any industries that require skilled workers or large capital investments. Generally speaking these countries have such poor infrastructure and such rampant corruption that it isn't worth even bothering with them.
The only way out of this sort of a situation is to follow the path the United States paved hundreds of years ago. Pay your debts, try your best to stamp out corruption, and invite foreign investment. Once your people are working your standard of living will improve.
Believe it or not the people working in those sweatshops are glad for their jobs. I have lived in Peru, and have seen it for myself. They know that thanks to their employment the chance of their children being able to get an education is greatly enhanced.
Actually, if Microsoft made drastic changes to their file formats at this point (like they did between Office 95 and 97) then it would likely accelerate the migration from MS Office to StarOffice. Microsoft had nearly all of its large customers up in arms over that particular fiasco, and MS Office's competitors are in a much better position now then they were in 1997. Gartner believes that StarOffice will have a 10% share by the end of 2004, and that is without Microsoft pushing their customers into Sun's camp. The harder Microsoft squeezes their customers the more tempting it is to switch.
The fact of the matter is that StarOffice poses much more of a threat to Microsoft than Linux does. Linux requires that you change everything about how you use your computer, and it competes with Windows that comes preinstalled on every computer. StarOffice only requires that you change your office suite--you can continue using all of your Windows software--and it is very compatible with MS Office. More importantly, most people actually pay for MS Office (well, actually most people "borrow" copies, but that is much more difficult with Office XP).
After years of watching Microsoft push their Windows operating system higher and higher up the enterprise food chain Sun is finally actually attacking into Microsoft territory instead of trying to merely defend their own turf. Much of the R&D money that is being used to push Windows into the enterprise comes from MS Office, and Sun's StarOffice will almost certainly put pressure on Microsoft to lower their prices so that they are more competitive.
Sure, it is a well know fact that WordPerfect is still the de-facto legal standard. So much so that the Starr legal report on the dealings between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky (perhaps the most read legal brief in the history of law) was originally available as either a PDF or WordPerfect document. In fact, if it wasn't for the legal profession WordPerfect would almost certainly have ceased to exist a long time ago.
Uh... OpenOffice is essentially a slimmed-down version of StarOffice that is available under the GPL. If you really want to "stick it to Microsoft" you should really consider abandoning their proprietary formats.
Every accountant that I have ever met still grouses about being forced to migrate from Lotus, and WordPerfect is still used by most professions that are heavy word processor users (like lawyers for instance). MS Office was a clear case of software that was "good enough" at a lower price. If you took a serious look at StarOffice you would almost certainly find that it doesn't have "tremendously less functionality." In fact, most people would hardly notice the difference between the two products. This is why, unless something happens to Sun that causes them to stop supporting StarOffice, Microsoft is in trouble long-term with regards to MS Office.
Software that is "cheaper" and "good enough" invariably wins. That, more than anything else, is the secret to Microsoft's success.
This is already very possible by using either Windows Terminal Server or Citrix -and MS makes price concessions to allow this to be fair economical. Also, I think you severely overestimate your shared user performance. 100 users clunky away slowly at a memo is one thing, 100 users working on spreadsheets, graphs, etc is quite another. Expect for a typical 1-ghz range dual processor server with 1-2 gb of RAM to support between 25-35 users. Thats much morerealistic.
I think that you seriously overestimate the similarity between Terminal Server and X Windows. I have seen commodity Intel boxes support twice your 25-35 users using X Windows with comparable applications. In fact, much of the sluggishness of StarOffice goes away if you can count on the operating system already having a copy of the application in memory. Also the cost of licensing for Terminal Server or Citrix is hardly "economical." In fact, most folks simply deploy client PCs because of licensing issues.
Second, MS Office is effectively more expensive only for certain cases. "Select" users are typically pretty big. Smaller users are usually in the Open Licensing program, which will not see this effective price icnrease. Also, not all Select users will see this price increase.
Companies that automatically upgrade ever time Microsoft revs any application save money under the new Select agreement. Most of the rest of Microsoft's customers will pay more. Those companies that are currently on 3-5 year deployment cycles will pay a lot more. Imagine for a moment that you are one of the many enterprises still using Windows NT or Windows 98 with Office 97. These companies could drop the SELECT agreement altogether by switching to StarOffice. They would even get the added benefit of not having to pay for an operating system twice for their new machines. Since they need an upgrade any way you slice it, an upgrade to the less expensive StarOffice makes sense.
The smaller the business the more attractive StarOffice/OpenOffice becomes. These businesses face a much smaller cost to migrate their existing documents, and they stand to save more per seat in licensing costs.
Third, many places do not see MS dependence as a bad thing. Some places like it; some places are neutral to it, some places hate it.
Now that Microsoft can't rely on PC sales to fuel their growth they are much more likely to leverage their monopoly status to the detriment of their customers. The price change for SELECT users and the new anti-piracy schemes for the rest of Microsoft's users are only the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft has to continue to grow, or the stock market will punish them fiercely, but Microsoft hasn't really opened up a new market in quite a long time, and they certainly haven't opened up a market that has the growth potential that Windows and Office afforded them. So Microsoft is quite likely to find that squeezing their customers is their only alternative.
The cost of switching a large 500 or 600 user MS "Select" site to StarOffice would be very substantial. Tempting, but substantial. If you figure between $50-$100 per workstation, plus downtime, installation time (assuming you stick with Windows, btw) training time (if any, not all will need it), conversion time, etc you'd probably have a hard time justifying the case.
I actually agree with your assessment. Switching to StarOffice is likely to be expensive and difficult, and it probably isn't in the cards for many customers. On the other hand, those businesses that have historically maintained longer cycle times on their software will almost certainly see StarOffice as a viable alternative. For these folks the cost of switching is definitely smaller than the cost of maintaining a SELECT agreement.
I'd consider the switch to OpenOffice for an organization as such, but for almost all cases Sun hasn't made this deal attractive enough to create a rush to abandon MS. 10% market share wouldn't be unreasonable, but my guess is 3-5% after 2-3 years.
Yes, I agree. StarOffice is probably not going to create a "rush" to migrate unless Microsoft seriously overplays their hand. StarOffice will keep Microsoft honest, however, and that's definitely a good thing. If Sun could get StarOffice (or even OpenOffice) preloaded on PCs then it could really do some damage.
For many small businesses the retail price is the only price that matters, and for large businesses that are interested in StarOffice Sun would almost certainly offer substantial incentives as well. Heck, for those users that don't need database capability you could even use OpenOffice, which is free software. This would allow you to get some of your less sophisticated users off of the upgrade treadmill altogether. Multiply that out over a few upgrade cycles and the switch to StarOffice makes a lot more sense.
Not to mention the fact that StarOffice would allow you to ditch some of your clunky PC clients altogether. StarOffice would allow you to migrate from maintaining expensive PC clients to X terminals. Instead of hundreds of client PCs to administer and maintain you could have one server, and hundreds of X terminals. One commodity Intel server running Linux will happily support hundreds of users, and this sort of configuration is much less expensive to maintain. The clients are essentially disposable, and all configuration can be done on one centralized machine. The fact that Microsoft is changing the way that it charges for MS Office so that it is essentially twice as expensive in the average case makes the switch even more tempting.
Most importantly switching to StarOffice greatly reduces a company's dependence on Microsoft, in a relatively painless way. Since StarOffice is available for Windows you can continue to use your existing software, and since StarOffice is mostly compatible with MS Office you don't have to worry about starting over from scratch with your important documents. Some of your most experienced MS Office users would need training, but StarOffice's user interface is similar enough to MS Office that most users won't hardly notice the switch. Microsoft has already proven that they have no compunctions against raising their prices, and they have a history of forcing their hand on their customers. While it is certainly true that Sun might attempt something similar, the fact that OpenOffice is available under the GPL makes it much harder for Sun to abuse its StarOffice customers.
The cost of switching didn't save WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, and it isn't going to save Microsoft Office either.
No matter what detractors might say about RMS, the Free Software Foundation holds the copyright to more lines of software than most software companies, and there is an even larger body of software that is released under the GPL but whose copyright is not held by the FSF. You can count the people who are more influential in the software industry on my old shop teacher's left hand. You may disagree with RMS, but you can't discount his abilities as a hacker and as a leader.
By your definition engineers are people who are bad at marketing and sales, but that's ridiculous. Someone "trained" as an engineer, is an engineer. Lee Iaccoca was an engineer that is good at sales and leadership. Engineering, salesmanship, and leadership skills are hardly mutually exclusive.
The part that so many people miss when talking about political contributions is that for every politician you can influence with your money there are two or three of his opponents that now see you as a potential enemy. That's why most companies that give money give to both sides. They can't afford to make enemies. Besides, Microsoft isn't the only company with money to burn, and many of Microsoft's competitors are very important to the economies of much larger states than Washington. In the end, its votes that get you elected, and if you aren't pandering to your consituents you are likely to get run out on a rail no matter how much money you spend campaigning.
Microsoft's "take on the world" mentality works against them in this case. Microsoft may be rich and powerful, but they have made a fat pile of enemies, and these enemies are beginning to organize themselves into coalitions, both in the technology world and the political one. It's not uncommon to see Microsoft's competitors rallying around technologies like Java or Linux, and many of the large companies that oppose Microsoft carry their own political supporters.
In short, it would take a lot more than $20 million to pull Microsoft's fat out of the fire.
I like Tad, and I have read most of his books, so I was excited about the prospect of an online Tad Williams novel. I dutifully read the prelude and the first couple of episodes and I even liked what I read. What's more, I am a recent convert to the joy of reading books on my Visor Handspring. I love being able to carry around an entire library wherever I go.
But a quick bit of math told and some quick Emacs functions told me that I would be paying $18 for an estimated 190K words (or about two books worth). In my mind that is a little steep for a book that I has almost no marketing, publishing, or delivery costs. The fact that the text is available as plain text helps a little, but not enough. If the book were already finished, then I might be tempted, but I am not interested in paying a premium to read a chapter ever two weeks for several years.
Maybe when I have worked through the books at www.baen.com (many of which are available for free) I will be interested in half-hearted attempts like Shadowmarch.
The problem with this is that the OS is not a mandatory component. Take away the processor or the memory and the computer won't work. Take away Windows, and the computer will probably work better.
The fact of the matter is that some folks are already advertising computers without an operating system. In fact, you can now purchase computers sans operating system from Wal-Mart, and at the lower end of the spectrum this phenomenon is likely to increase.
Eventually OEMs that always ship with Windows will find themselves at a price disadvantage. No matter how big a discount Dell gets on the price of Windows, Wal-Mart can sell machines for less. And Wal-Mart doesn't have to worry about staffing up to do software support on their OS-less PCs. Currently Microsoft forces the OEM to support Windows. That means that Dell has thousands of employees whose entire job is to support Windows. By selling the computer without an operating system Wal-Mart neatly sidesteps this responsibility.
There is no question that ESR has mixed in a liberal dose of politics with his economics, but the basic premise is sound. The lower the price of the average computer gets, the more incentive the hardware OEMs are going to have to get rid of the Microsoft tax.
That sounds like what Prof. Tannebaum said about Linus Torvalds and Linux. Years later Minix is still a toy, and Linux is being championed by every large software house in the world minus Microsoft.
Free Software gives students a chance to look at, modify, and contibute to real-life software. And contributing doesn't take a degree or thousands of dollars worth of tools either, it just takes time.
What's more, having the graduate explain how his Apache module, or PostgreSQL extension, or whatever actually works seems like a much better way to interview a potential new hire than asking them riddles.
Everyone always focuses their attention on Linux, but the real barn burner isn't Linux, it's StarOffice. I have been using the newest beta version of OpenOffice for some time now, and Sun has done a good job with this program. Even complicated documents open without problems. The harder Microsoft squeezes their customers the more of them are going to realize that they don't have to put up with Microsoft's antics, and StarOffice is the key.
StarOffice allows folks to move away from Microsoft's proprietary formats without losing all of their old documents, and without giving up all of their current programs (StarOffice runs fine on Windows). Best of all, it's Free Software. No more onerous license fees, no more forced upgrades, and no more unfixable bugs.
Plus StarOffice has the added benefit of allowing for other useful migrations. For example, StarOffice allows you to migrate your desktops to Linux, or better yet to migrate to thin client X terminals. The fact of the matter is that switching to Linux is hard, and for most folks there is little to be gained (they have to pay for a copy of Windows anyhow, why not use it. Switching to StarOffice is much easier, and it allows for a significant savings.
My guess is that many Mac faithful would be tempted into buying new hardware if they got a taste of OS X and decided that it was cool (but way to slow on their old G3).
Remember, Apple doesn't make any money if Macintosh users all decide that their old computer is fast enough. Nothing makes you want to throw out your old PC more than cool new software that runs like crap on your current hardware.
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More importantly, the U.S. software ecosystem hasn't really worked all that well for anyone but Microsoft. Microsoft has the money to outspend any competitor, and they can easily crush the upstart foreign software houses. Countries that want to develop their own software industry have no choice but to foster the development of Free Software. Otherwise Microsoft will end up destroying (or purchasing) all of their software houses as well.
Myself personally, I am done purchasing paper books. I can carry around hundreds of books on my visor (with my Compact Flash springboard module), my visor is lighter than most books, and I can even read these books in the dark without waking my wife. Heck, using The Weasel Reader I don't even have to worry about turning the pages.
Baen has got ebooks figured out, and they know it. I can sample books for free, purchase books at $4 a title (or $10 for a bundle of 4), and I can start reading them immediately. Their ebooks almost certainly have a higher profit margin than their paper backs as well. So they aren't just making me happy, it's making them happy as well.
I used to avoid Baen (I made the mistake of reading Mercedes Lackey first), but now I have found several authors that I enjoy reading quite a bit. The Belisaurius series, for example, is quite good. Read "An Oblique Approach" and you will see what I mean (hey, it's free).
I am rather new to this whole e-book technology (I have only had my visor for a couple of months), but I have pretty much decided that dead-tree editions have gone the way of the dodo for me. I like reading on my visor. My visor is much lighter than a hardback, the display is comfortable, and with a sprinboard Compact Flash adaptor I can carry around a ridiculous amount of books.
That being said I still think that Baen has the right idea. I hadn't ever read anything by Eric Flint, and now I am completely hooked. Unfortunately, you can't simply download the latest two books in the Belisaurius series. You have to purchase them. In fact, you can't even purchase them outright. You have to purchase a set of four e-books for the princely sum of $10. Even if I don't like any of the other books that's a pretty good deal. It's certainly worth being able to carry the entire series around with me without looking like a doofus. And by bundling the books this way Baen might get me hooked on another of their authors.
That's what I want, and I am not paying for anything less. I am willing to rely on Project Gutenberg, individual authors, and Baen until the rest of the publishers figure that out.
The state of California just bought over a quarter of a million Oracle seats. How many of those databases are probably storing cookie recipes? I don't mind paying Oracle for those things that require Oracle software, but it is ridiculous to think that you need Oracle for everything.
The stupidest thing about Java and Swing is that even Python combined with wxPython produces snappier GUIs, and wxPython runs very well on both UNIX and Windows. In other words, if you are willing to forgo supporting Macs, you can write a cross-platform application in Python that will be much easier to write and maintain than anything in Java.
The harder Microsoft pushes, the sooner people are going to find an alternative. Microsoft may be rich and powerful, but when push comes to shove they are just one company.
For example, let's imagine what would happen if Microsoft forced the entire financial sector to prefer free software (they are already headed in that direction anyway). Not only would Microsoft lose an important part of their clientelle, but Free Software would gain some well-funded allies. When Free Software gets used, it gets improved, and that improvement would make it easier for those of us that aren't in the financial sector to sell Linux solutions in whatever sector we work in.
More than ever Microsoft has got to sell their version of the future. If they pull out the thumbscrews their customers are very likely to jump ship. Even worse, their customers might actually find that they like being off the Windows wagon.
Microsoft could afford to play hardball when their competitors offered solutions that were an order of magnitude more expensive than their offering, but that is no longer the case.
Yes, but Microsoft has to be careful about becoming the OS of Digital Rights Management. After all, Microsoft's customers don't actually want DRM, and Apple is busy promoting their iMacs with commercials that show cool people making copies of their CDs, and rippy MP3s to carry around in their iPod.
You have to sign them up for a support contract. You simply tell your customer that for a modest monthly fee you will monitor the machine, make sure the backups are running, etc. You can also throw in a limited number of "free" emergency service hours or whatever it takes to hook them into signing up.
You then write a cron job that does all of the actual work and sends you an email with a nice report on the overall status of the box. Once a month you forward some of these reports on to your customer along with a little message telling him that everything looks good. You might try to use the information to sell him more hardware or software. Phrases like "disk space is getting low," and "your machine spends a lot of time under heavy load" are very useful for selling these types of added services.
If you are careful with this kind of customer and don't gouge them, you can guarantee a steady income. And since the amount of work required is fairly low, you can have all sorts of customers, all of them completely convinced that you are the most competent computer expert on the planet.
If you are selling Windows solutions, on the other hand, you constantly have to worry that one of your competitors will sell him a solution that actually works. Get a reputation as a hack, and then it becomes impossible to find new customers.
Most small businesspeople have no problems paying for solutions that work. With Linux you can easily undercut your competitors and still make a nice profit.
If you would have paid less in rent, then perhaps the company would have turned a profit and you would have gotten a chance to actually grow. That's why Microsoft is worried about the guys working out of their garage, and not the guys who have hired enough space for 30 folks despite the fact that they only have 5 employees. One of the cardinal rules of business is that it is easier to save money than to make it. Companies that can't get that little fact right are not likely to ever really be a threat.
As long as the local politicians are corrupt the people are screwed. They would be even more screwed without the foreign investors (they wouldn't have jobs), but they are screwed all the same. Blaming the foreign investors is the easy thing to do, and in fact it is the tactic that the corrupt politicians usually encourage their people to take. As long as the populace is angry at the one group that could actually help them (the folks with enough money to provide good paying jobs), then the populace is easy to control.
The reason that these sorts of countries can't get better paying jobs is that it is far too risky to invest there. Nike and the Gap can build sweatshops with relatively small investments, and so it makes sense for them to exploit these types of situations. If things go wrong these companies haven't lost anything more than a few thousand sewing machines. Better paying industries, on the other hand, generally require a higher level of education from their workers, and they inevitably require a much higher initial investment. Once you build a factory for $500 million you can't afford to have the government expropriate it, or have some petty politico order it burned to the ground because your bribe wasn't high enough.
Corruption is the enemy of business, and so until these countries straighten out their problems with corruption, then they will never have more than the lowest of low-paying jobs.
A desire to "make the capitalist pigs pay" is precisely why these countries are still stuck in the dark ages.
For example, when these 25,000 revolutionaries rise up you get a war, people are displaced, property is ruined, trade is disrupted, and piles of money are spent on useless goods like weapons. In short, everyone suffers. Then, assuming the revolutionaries win, you have a big pile of uneducated leaders in a devastated country without capital. These countries are lucky to get the worst sorts of slave labor jobs for their people. After all, they have very little to offer potential employers, and they have a history of seizing property which makes foreign investors very unhappy. These countries might be able to talk Nike or the Gap into investing in a couple thousand sewing machines, but they certainly aren't going to get any industries that require skilled workers or large capital investments. Generally speaking these countries have such poor infrastructure and such rampant corruption that it isn't worth even bothering with them.
The only way out of this sort of a situation is to follow the path the United States paved hundreds of years ago. Pay your debts, try your best to stamp out corruption, and invite foreign investment. Once your people are working your standard of living will improve.
Believe it or not the people working in those sweatshops are glad for their jobs. I have lived in Peru, and have seen it for myself. They know that thanks to their employment the chance of their children being able to get an education is greatly enhanced.
Actually, if Microsoft made drastic changes to their file formats at this point (like they did between Office 95 and 97) then it would likely accelerate the migration from MS Office to StarOffice. Microsoft had nearly all of its large customers up in arms over that particular fiasco, and MS Office's competitors are in a much better position now then they were in 1997. Gartner believes that StarOffice will have a 10% share by the end of 2004, and that is without Microsoft pushing their customers into Sun's camp. The harder Microsoft squeezes their customers the more tempting it is to switch.
The fact of the matter is that StarOffice poses much more of a threat to Microsoft than Linux does. Linux requires that you change everything about how you use your computer, and it competes with Windows that comes preinstalled on every computer. StarOffice only requires that you change your office suite--you can continue using all of your Windows software--and it is very compatible with MS Office. More importantly, most people actually pay for MS Office (well, actually most people "borrow" copies, but that is much more difficult with Office XP).
After years of watching Microsoft push their Windows operating system higher and higher up the enterprise food chain Sun is finally actually attacking into Microsoft territory instead of trying to merely defend their own turf. Much of the R&D money that is being used to push Windows into the enterprise comes from MS Office, and Sun's StarOffice will almost certainly put pressure on Microsoft to lower their prices so that they are more competitive.
Sure, it is a well know fact that WordPerfect is still the de-facto legal standard. So much so that the Starr legal report on the dealings between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky (perhaps the most read legal brief in the history of law) was originally available as either a PDF or WordPerfect document. In fact, if it wasn't for the legal profession WordPerfect would almost certainly have ceased to exist a long time ago.
Uh... OpenOffice is essentially a slimmed-down version of StarOffice that is available under the GPL. If you really want to "stick it to Microsoft" you should really consider abandoning their proprietary formats.
Every accountant that I have ever met still grouses about being forced to migrate from Lotus, and WordPerfect is still used by most professions that are heavy word processor users (like lawyers for instance). MS Office was a clear case of software that was "good enough" at a lower price. If you took a serious look at StarOffice you would almost certainly find that it doesn't have "tremendously less functionality." In fact, most people would hardly notice the difference between the two products. This is why, unless something happens to Sun that causes them to stop supporting StarOffice, Microsoft is in trouble long-term with regards to MS Office.
Software that is "cheaper" and "good enough" invariably wins. That, more than anything else, is the secret to Microsoft's success.
I think that you seriously overestimate the similarity between Terminal Server and X Windows. I have seen commodity Intel boxes support twice your 25-35 users using X Windows with comparable applications. In fact, much of the sluggishness of StarOffice goes away if you can count on the operating system already having a copy of the application in memory. Also the cost of licensing for Terminal Server or Citrix is hardly "economical." In fact, most folks simply deploy client PCs because of licensing issues.
Companies that automatically upgrade ever time Microsoft revs any application save money under the new Select agreement. Most of the rest of Microsoft's customers will pay more. Those companies that are currently on 3-5 year deployment cycles will pay a lot more. Imagine for a moment that you are one of the many enterprises still using Windows NT or Windows 98 with Office 97. These companies could drop the SELECT agreement altogether by switching to StarOffice. They would even get the added benefit of not having to pay for an operating system twice for their new machines. Since they need an upgrade any way you slice it, an upgrade to the less expensive StarOffice makes sense.
The smaller the business the more attractive StarOffice/OpenOffice becomes. These businesses face a much smaller cost to migrate their existing documents, and they stand to save more per seat in licensing costs.
Now that Microsoft can't rely on PC sales to fuel their growth they are much more likely to leverage their monopoly status to the detriment of their customers. The price change for SELECT users and the new anti-piracy schemes for the rest of Microsoft's users are only the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft has to continue to grow, or the stock market will punish them fiercely, but Microsoft hasn't really opened up a new market in quite a long time, and they certainly haven't opened up a market that has the growth potential that Windows and Office afforded them. So Microsoft is quite likely to find that squeezing their customers is their only alternative.
I actually agree with your assessment. Switching to StarOffice is likely to be expensive and difficult, and it probably isn't in the cards for many customers. On the other hand, those businesses that have historically maintained longer cycle times on their software will almost certainly see StarOffice as a viable alternative. For these folks the cost of switching is definitely smaller than the cost of maintaining a SELECT agreement.Yes, I agree. StarOffice is probably not going to create a "rush" to migrate unless Microsoft seriously overplays their hand. StarOffice will keep Microsoft honest, however, and that's definitely a good thing. If Sun could get StarOffice (or even OpenOffice) preloaded on PCs then it could really do some damage.
For many small businesses the retail price is the only price that matters, and for large businesses that are interested in StarOffice Sun would almost certainly offer substantial incentives as well. Heck, for those users that don't need database capability you could even use OpenOffice, which is free software. This would allow you to get some of your less sophisticated users off of the upgrade treadmill altogether. Multiply that out over a few upgrade cycles and the switch to StarOffice makes a lot more sense.
Not to mention the fact that StarOffice would allow you to ditch some of your clunky PC clients altogether. StarOffice would allow you to migrate from maintaining expensive PC clients to X terminals. Instead of hundreds of client PCs to administer and maintain you could have one server, and hundreds of X terminals. One commodity Intel server running Linux will happily support hundreds of users, and this sort of configuration is much less expensive to maintain. The clients are essentially disposable, and all configuration can be done on one centralized machine. The fact that Microsoft is changing the way that it charges for MS Office so that it is essentially twice as expensive in the average case makes the switch even more tempting.
Most importantly switching to StarOffice greatly reduces a company's dependence on Microsoft, in a relatively painless way. Since StarOffice is available for Windows you can continue to use your existing software, and since StarOffice is mostly compatible with MS Office you don't have to worry about starting over from scratch with your important documents. Some of your most experienced MS Office users would need training, but StarOffice's user interface is similar enough to MS Office that most users won't hardly notice the switch. Microsoft has already proven that they have no compunctions against raising their prices, and they have a history of forcing their hand on their customers. While it is certainly true that Sun might attempt something similar, the fact that OpenOffice is available under the GPL makes it much harder for Sun to abuse its StarOffice customers.
The cost of switching didn't save WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, and it isn't going to save Microsoft Office either.
Ha Ha, way to bring me back on topic.
No matter what detractors might say about RMS, the Free Software Foundation holds the copyright to more lines of software than most software companies, and there is an even larger body of software that is released under the GPL but whose copyright is not held by the FSF. You can count the people who are more influential in the software industry on my old shop teacher's left hand. You may disagree with RMS, but you can't discount his abilities as a hacker and as a leader.
By your definition engineers are people who are bad at marketing and sales, but that's ridiculous. Someone "trained" as an engineer, is an engineer. Lee Iaccoca was an engineer that is good at sales and leadership. Engineering, salesmanship, and leadership skills are hardly mutually exclusive.
The part that so many people miss when talking about political contributions is that for every politician you can influence with your money there are two or three of his opponents that now see you as a potential enemy. That's why most companies that give money give to both sides. They can't afford to make enemies. Besides, Microsoft isn't the only company with money to burn, and many of Microsoft's competitors are very important to the economies of much larger states than Washington. In the end, its votes that get you elected, and if you aren't pandering to your consituents you are likely to get run out on a rail no matter how much money you spend campaigning.
Microsoft's "take on the world" mentality works against them in this case. Microsoft may be rich and powerful, but they have made a fat pile of enemies, and these enemies are beginning to organize themselves into coalitions, both in the technology world and the political one. It's not uncommon to see Microsoft's competitors rallying around technologies like Java or Linux, and many of the large companies that oppose Microsoft carry their own political supporters.
In short, it would take a lot more than $20 million to pull Microsoft's fat out of the fire.
I like Tad, and I have read most of his books, so I was excited about the prospect of an online Tad Williams novel. I dutifully read the prelude and the first couple of episodes and I even liked what I read. What's more, I am a recent convert to the joy of reading books on my Visor Handspring. I love being able to carry around an entire library wherever I go.
But a quick bit of math told and some quick Emacs functions told me that I would be paying $18 for an estimated 190K words (or about two books worth). In my mind that is a little steep for a book that I has almost no marketing, publishing, or delivery costs. The fact that the text is available as plain text helps a little, but not enough. If the book were already finished, then I might be tempted, but I am not interested in paying a premium to read a chapter ever two weeks for several years.
Maybe when I have worked through the books at www.baen.com (many of which are available for free) I will be interested in half-hearted attempts like Shadowmarch.
The problem with this is that the OS is not a mandatory component. Take away the processor or the memory and the computer won't work. Take away Windows, and the computer will probably work better.
The fact of the matter is that some folks are already advertising computers without an operating system. In fact, you can now purchase computers sans operating system from Wal-Mart, and at the lower end of the spectrum this phenomenon is likely to increase.
Eventually OEMs that always ship with Windows will find themselves at a price disadvantage. No matter how big a discount Dell gets on the price of Windows, Wal-Mart can sell machines for less. And Wal-Mart doesn't have to worry about staffing up to do software support on their OS-less PCs. Currently Microsoft forces the OEM to support Windows. That means that Dell has thousands of employees whose entire job is to support Windows. By selling the computer without an operating system Wal-Mart neatly sidesteps this responsibility.
There is no question that ESR has mixed in a liberal dose of politics with his economics, but the basic premise is sound. The lower the price of the average computer gets, the more incentive the hardware OEMs are going to have to get rid of the Microsoft tax.
That sounds like what Prof. Tannebaum said about Linus Torvalds and Linux. Years later Minix is still a toy, and Linux is being championed by every large software house in the world minus Microsoft.
Free Software gives students a chance to look at, modify, and contibute to real-life software. And contributing doesn't take a degree or thousands of dollars worth of tools either, it just takes time.
What's more, having the graduate explain how his Apache module, or PostgreSQL extension, or whatever actually works seems like a much better way to interview a potential new hire than asking them riddles.
Everyone always focuses their attention on Linux, but the real barn burner isn't Linux, it's StarOffice. I have been using the newest beta version of OpenOffice for some time now, and Sun has done a good job with this program. Even complicated documents open without problems. The harder Microsoft squeezes their customers the more of them are going to realize that they don't have to put up with Microsoft's antics, and StarOffice is the key.
StarOffice allows folks to move away from Microsoft's proprietary formats without losing all of their old documents, and without giving up all of their current programs (StarOffice runs fine on Windows). Best of all, it's Free Software. No more onerous license fees, no more forced upgrades, and no more unfixable bugs.
Plus StarOffice has the added benefit of allowing for other useful migrations. For example, StarOffice allows you to migrate your desktops to Linux, or better yet to migrate to thin client X terminals. The fact of the matter is that switching to Linux is hard, and for most folks there is little to be gained (they have to pay for a copy of Windows anyhow, why not use it. Switching to StarOffice is much easier, and it allows for a significant savings.
My guess is that many Mac faithful would be tempted into buying new hardware if they got a taste of OS X and decided that it was cool (but way to slow on their old G3).
Remember, Apple doesn't make any money if Macintosh users all decide that their old computer is fast enough. Nothing makes you want to throw out your old PC more than cool new software that runs like crap on your current hardware.