Didn't it come out in the DOJ/Microsoft trial that one of the government experts estimated that MS spent about a billion creating and marketing Internet Explorer, then giving it away for free?
The $450 million spent now has higher future dividends (hurting MS, market for high powered servers, publicity and branding) that still justify not making direct revenue on the product.
> Even at $500/user, MSOffice provides a more featureful set of functionality that the end users desire.
You're assuming two things: 1) that StarOffice won't be advancing in functionality and 2) a majority of users actually take advantage of all the whiz-bang features in the latest versions of MSOffice.
Don't forget the "good enough / cheap enough" maxim. If the product does enough for low end needs, but at a much lower cost, it will take hold. And it starts to slowly move into the middle and high end markets. It just has to survive long enough to do so. MS is able to do this because it has the money to subsidize such projects. But open source or non-revenue products work just as well.
We keep seeing this over and over in the computing industry (hardware, dev languages, MS's entire business model and product line). Why can't people grasp this? MS should be worried, because this is happening to their two biggest cash cows now (OS and Office).
I've coded GUI frameworks for Java on Windows and Solaris day in and day out for going on three years. I haven't seen a VM bug in more than a year. JDK bugs, occasionally. Application bugs, of course. But not VM bugs.
> Why do you ankle-biters have such a problem with people making their own decisions about their own lives?
JWZ, while I respect all the work you did on Netscape/Mozilla, I think you're missing the point about why people are upset about your departure.
It's not that you left, it's the way you did it. It grew beyond being a decision about your own life.
When the spokesman for a project leaves and rips it apart, that's all the media needs to make a field day out of it. We're still constantly seeing stories about how Mozilla is a "failure" because of the way you departed. No one interviews the hundreds of people who disagree with you and are excited by Mozilla's progress. And in a world ruled by sound bites and shallow reporting, your critique was all the masses needed as proof.
So I think you're incorrect that your critics have a problem with you making a decision about your own life. They just wish you could have shown more leadership by not tearing down something they're still fighting for.
It was completely rewritten to be modular and threw out much of the old, crufty code base. These things just take time, and it's nearing the final stretches now. Check out the project plans!
1) Why is a statement made by Alan Baratz of _SUN_ given weight about the future of Mozilla, which is owned by AOL?!? Some context, please?
I know Sun and AOL have an alliance going to bring Java to Netscape 5.0 and other deals, but since when does Baratz have any say in Mozilla?
My suspicion is that the reporter blew it. Someone probably asked Baratz about the strengths of the Java Community Process, his speciality, and he compared it to Mozilla. Reporter misinterprets the quotes which, when reread don't seem to apply to Mozilla anyways. Netscape rep denies the whole thing to boot.
2) Where's the "astronomical delays" that the story link is supposed to be referring to? Mozilla made a hard, but ultimately correct decision to completely rearchitect the whole product from the ground up last year in order to be more modular and support more standards. They're meeting their publicly posted milestones. The nightly builds work well and are making visible progress. Why the FUD even in the story posting?
3) Why do people keep claiming there aren't outside contributors when I see their contributions in the checkin logs every day?
4) Why are Slashdotters so quick to take this misquoted story as gospel?
If Windows is made a no-charge product, it will (probably) survive.
Your car analogy is way off base. Neither GM, Ford, nor any other car manufacturer gives their cars away for free. (Don't think about business models here). If someone came along and gave away cars for free, they would take off in a heartbeat. The cars might not be so flashy at first, but these free cars rapidly gett better over time until they meet almost everyone's needs.
Maybe one or two of the car companies would stick around with much smaller markets by catering to the luxury crowd that wants something substantially different. But most of their market share would evaporate quickly.
Barring free Windows, a patent war, or some other act of God, pay-per-license Windows is (eventually) toast. Unfortunately, by that time MS will have used its monopoly profits to buy a prime position in the new computer industry based on services, not hardware/software.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't it come out in the DOJ/Microsoft trial that one of the government experts estimated that MS spent about a billion creating and marketing Internet Explorer, then giving it away for free?
The $450 million spent now has higher future dividends (hurting MS, market for high powered servers, publicity and branding) that still justify not making direct revenue on the product.
> Even at $500/user, MSOffice provides a more featureful set of functionality that the end users desire.
You're assuming two things: 1) that StarOffice won't be advancing in functionality and 2) a majority of users actually take advantage of all the whiz-bang features in the latest versions of MSOffice.
Don't forget the "good enough / cheap enough" maxim. If the product does enough for low end needs, but at a much lower cost, it will take hold. And it starts to slowly move into the middle and high end markets. It just has to survive long enough to do so. MS is able to do this because it has the money to subsidize such projects. But open source or non-revenue products work just as well.
We keep seeing this over and over in the computing industry (hardware, dev languages, MS's entire business model and product line). Why can't people grasp this? MS should be worried, because this is happening to their two biggest cash cows now (OS and Office).
Interestingly enough, at the root page for ZDNN, if you read down their headlines in the "Rumors and Comment" section, they are:
"Is it over for Linux?"
"Win2K will ship this year"
"Web journalists' dreams"
Coincidence?
I've coded GUI frameworks for Java on Windows and Solaris day in and day out for going on three years. I haven't seen a VM bug in more than a year. JDK bugs, occasionally. Application bugs, of course. But not VM bugs.
> Why do you ankle-biters have such a problem with people making their own decisions about their own lives?
JWZ, while I respect all the work you did on Netscape/Mozilla, I think you're missing the point about why people are upset about your departure.
It's not that you left, it's the way you did it. It grew beyond being a decision about your own life.
When the spokesman for a project leaves and rips it apart, that's all the media needs to make a field day out of it. We're still constantly seeing stories about how Mozilla is a "failure" because of the way you departed. No one interviews the hundreds of people who disagree with you and are excited by Mozilla's progress. And in a world ruled by sound bites and shallow reporting, your critique was all the masses needed as proof.
So I think you're incorrect that your critics have a problem with you making a decision about your own life. They just wish you could have shown more leadership by not tearing down something they're still fighting for.
Ummm... that's exactly what Mozilla did.
It was completely rewritten to be modular and threw out much of the old, crufty code base. These things just take time, and it's nearing the final stretches now. Check out the project plans!
This story is really fishy...
I've got some questions about this story:
1) Why is a statement made by Alan Baratz of _SUN_ given weight about the future of Mozilla, which is owned by AOL?!? Some context, please?
I know Sun and AOL have an alliance going to bring Java to Netscape 5.0 and other deals, but since when does Baratz have any say in Mozilla?
My suspicion is that the reporter blew it. Someone probably asked Baratz about the strengths of the Java Community Process, his speciality, and he compared it to Mozilla. Reporter misinterprets the quotes which, when reread don't seem to apply to Mozilla anyways. Netscape rep denies the whole thing to boot.
2) Where's the "astronomical delays" that the story link is supposed to be referring to? Mozilla made a hard, but ultimately correct decision to completely rearchitect the whole product from the ground up last year in order to be more modular and support more standards. They're meeting their publicly posted milestones. The nightly builds work well and are making visible progress. Why the FUD even in the story posting?
3) Why do people keep claiming there aren't outside contributors when I see their contributions in the checkin logs every day?
4) Why are Slashdotters so quick to take this misquoted story as gospel?
Wait, that one's easy to answer...
Now who's thinking insde the box?
If Windows is made a no-charge product, it will (probably) survive.
Your car analogy is way off base. Neither GM, Ford, nor any other car manufacturer gives their cars away for free. (Don't think about business models here). If someone came along and gave away cars for free, they would take off in a heartbeat. The cars might not be so flashy at first, but these free cars rapidly gett better over time until they meet almost everyone's needs.
Maybe one or two of the car companies would stick around with much smaller markets by catering to the luxury crowd that wants something substantially different. But most of their market share would evaporate quickly.
Barring free Windows, a patent war, or some other act of God, pay-per-license Windows is (eventually) toast. Unfortunately, by that time MS will have used its monopoly profits to buy a prime position in the new computer industry based on services, not hardware/software.