I use Microsoft products every day, because they are really good (not perfect but really good) and because there is nothing that does as much. The problem not that Microsoft does not do a good job - they have a lot of very good people working there, and do a pretty darn good job for the most part.
The real problem is that there is a threat of no real competition, of Microsoft gaining more and more power to prevent competition. When you don't have real competition the prices don't go down and your only choice is to do without, or live according to the only choice you have. And that's not always a good thing - despite some people at Microsoft really believing that they know what's best for all of us.
If Microsoft makes it impossible for anyone to compete with them, this I have a problem with. Because new ideas will be killed off before they are born, or bought out by Microsoft and turned into what they consider should be the way we use computers.
It's like freedom of speech! If you can't start a company because you can't compete commercially with the Microsoft "empire", or Microsoft buys the idea and sits on it, then we don't have the choice of having that idea.
That's why Open Source and the FSF are so great and why I will contribute whenever I can. It is freedom of speech, freedom of expression that it is defending!!!
We need to have competition for the good of the industry and for the good of innovation, freedom and new ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
I use Microsoft products every day, because they are really good (not perfect but really good) and because there is nothing that does as much. The problem not that Microsoft does not do a good job - they have a lot of very good people working there, and do a pretty darn good job for the most part.
The real problem is that there is a threat of no real competition, of Microsoft gaining more and more power to prevent competition. When you don't have real competition the prices don't go down and your only choice is to do without, or live according to the only choice you have. And that's not always a good thing - despite some people at Microsoft really believing that they know what's best for all of us.
If Microsoft makes it impossible for anyone to compete with them, this I have a problem with. Because new ideas will be killed off before they are born, or bought out by Microsoft and turned into what they consider should be the way we use computers.
It's like freedom of speech! If you can't start a company because you can't compete commercially with the Microsoft "empire", or Microsoft buys the idea and sits on it, then we don't have the choice of having that idea.
That's why Open Source and the FSF are so great and why I will contribute whenever I can. It is freedom of speech, freedom of expression that it is defending!!!
We need to have competition for the good of the industry and for the good of innovation, freedom and new ideas.