[GRLUG] Novell, having fun are we?

[Bob Kline]

Possible.  As Gates now enters his philanthropist
phase,  trying to go from robber baron to just nice
Bill,  who only wants to help the world,  it might be
a sign that even he doesn't see how M$ can maintain
its grip much longer.  A true monopoly was fun for 20
years,  and M$ still generates about $1B in cash each
month,  of which Bill gets about 1/3 because of his
massive stock holdings.  So he'll likely mellow out
now and just bask in the glory of handing around
$billions of dollars.

Yes,  the forces against M$ are big now.  Google. Oracle.
Linux. And the business world no longer knee jerk
buys the latest round of garbage from M$,  complete
with mandatory software upgrades.  Home users,
who are now used to $300 PC systems,  won't shell
out $500 and more for a copy of windoz and some
office products.  And after decades,  both individual
users and corporations finally, in one way or another ,
want open standards.  Companies like M$,  IBM,  and
the old AT&T, can no longer declare standards which
the rest of the world must adopt. AT&T and IBM
were actually positive forces decades ago in doing
this,  because otherwise there would have been
anarchy.  But their work is now done in that way.

I guess the remaining question is just what niche M$
can now turn to and call its own.  Unix,  now in the
form of Linux,  has now likely gone from the OS of
the future, which it has been since roughly 1969,  to
the mainstream OS.  And it's a tribute to the
Internet that Linux is a global phenomena. M$ never
really had much to do with the formation of the
Internet.

Anyway,  I guess I could really care less what becomes
of M$ as long as it doesn't become another obstructionist
force,  like Caldera. Never an innovator of any stature,
as opposed to a repressive monopolist,  it will likely now
try to horn in on someone else's work in some way. But
I don't think it has a lot of leverage any more.

   -Bob




On 11/6/06, Ron Lauzon <rlauzon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bob Kline wrote:
> > Color me skeptical.  Time will tell. Sure,  M$ just
> > wants to make more money - lots of it if possible -
> > but will its tactics really change so much?  I
> > suspect it will be good  ol'  M$,  as long as it
> > continues to get the lion's share of the revenues
> > in any collaboration.  It expects this.  Insists on
> > it in all likelihood.
> >
>
> I believe that MS has seen the light and wants to change.  Mr. Bill
> "retiring" is a good sign that is the case.  But MS is like an ocean
> liner - it won't turn on a dime.  It will take time (alot of time) to
> turn around.
>
> I expect that, for the short term, it will be business as usual.  In the
> medium term, they will be less cutthroat.  In the long term, I expect
> them to become like IBM (which, interestingly enough, is exactly what
> Microsoft did, just before IBM changed) and play in the Open Source
> world nicely.
>
> --
> Ron Lauzon - rlauzon at acm dot org
>    Homepage: http://7lauzon.home.comcast.net/
>    Weblog: http://ronsapartment.blogspot.com/
>
>    DNRC: Lord of All Things That Are Fattening
>
>    "To be sure, conservative radio talk show hosts have a built-in
>    audience unavailable to liberals: People driving cars to some
>    sort of job." - Ann Coulter
>
> Microsoft Free since July 06, 2001
> Running Mandriva Linux 2007
>
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