Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 11:17:10 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: FreeBSD Advocacy <advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FreeBSD and Microsoft Message-ID: <20010628111710.E9802@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <001a01c0ffb1$d5a18300$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>; from tedm@toybox.placo.com on Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 02:08:02AM -0700 References: <20010628102030.B9802@lpt.ens.fr> <001a01c0ffb1$d5a18300$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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Ted Mittelstaedt said on Jun 28, 2001 at 02:08:02: > > So, it's now time for Microsoft to decide how their own future as a company > is going to play out in this environment. Naturally, they want to make sure > that however they are going to fit in, it's going to be in an area that > makes money. And, what they are seeing is examples of companies like IBM > and Apple who are in effect taking a base of Open Source and creating a > superset of functionality that is layered on top of it, then charging for > that functionality. And, people are paying them for it. -snip- > If you look closely at Microsoft products, you will see that in general they > are mostly about style, not substance. For any given package, 90% of it is > user-interface code, and about 10% of it actually does useful work. Since > the majority of software purchasers pay for style before substance, it's no > surprise why Microsoft has been so successful. > > Microsoft, contrary to what you might think, knows all about this. And, > when they contemplated that their strategy of fighting against Open Source > wasn't ultimately going to succeed, they obviously asked the question "why > can't we apply our very successful 90/10 rule of GUI/substance code to Open > Source UNIX as well?" Are you suggesting that Microsoft plans in the long term to roll its own pretty-face products based on FreeBSD (or other open-source Unix), like Apple is doing? Do you have any evidence for that suggestion? Incidentally, recent moves by Caldera seem to suggest that per-seat licensing of a "prettified" distribution is not incompatible with linux either. This week's lwn.net editorial takes a surprisingly positive stance on this. - R To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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