>So a lot of smaller companies will innovate to a much higher extend that
>one large company
>because each of the companies has their way of doing things.
>
>This is what really gets me.
>We have been standing still or even have been going backwards for years now.
>I cant even imagine where we might be without Micorsofts politics .........
1. Microsoft has never been, or ever will be, a "software company" - they
are a MARKETING company, and a damn successful one (definition: success =
$$$ > 0)
2. They buy up other companies, not to prevent competition (which is the
ultimate result, I admit), but to own successful products.
3. They then fsck up those products (FrontPage 1.0 by Vemeer was a great
piece of software - when M$ got their teeth into it, it turned into crap).
4. Re: the anti-trust case - no-one forced people to buy Windows - they
could have used CPM, Unix, OS/2, etc. etc. etc. Windows became the
"standard" because people liked it.
Where M$ fscked up is when they released Windows 3.0 - originally, Windows
was a run-time environment for Ventura (I think - may have been PageMaker).
When WordPerfect came to them and said "We like your O/S - we want to make
our software run under it", M$ should have said "No, we sell WORD as a WP
program - go write your own GUI - in fact, we'll make damn sure it WON'T
run under Windows". Yes, they wpould have been relying on the "strength"
of Word to win over WP users.
Nothing illegal in that....
But where M$ will never succeed is with the likes of the average SLUG user
(i.e. people who WANT to learn about their O/S and want to "improve" it) -
the average punter wants to turn his computer on and process words, surf
the net, etc. Doesn't want to know about device drivers, INI files, etc.
people with even a little level of IT knowledge will soon realose what a
loosing proposition Windows is in the long term - although there is a need
for a "turn key" distro that doesn't let the user into the "guts" of things
unless they really REALLY want to go there.
Jon
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