GNU/Linux Advocacy

[Eric Dunbar]

On 20/02/07, chombee <chombee at nerdshack.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-02-20 at 09:28 -0500, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> > Frankly,
> > I think Microsoft is starting to get the open source/Linux "threat"
> > and are starting to respond appropriately (in terms of retaining
> > market share). Most people don't really care about "controlling" their
> > software -- they want stuff that does what they need and want and
> > costs as little as possible.
>
> You think they're going to start giving Vista away for free? Or make it
> run on the cheapest available hardware?

There's little money to be made on the cheapest hardware. If you're
not going to be sinking $$$ into hardware, it's unlikely that you have
the appetite to sink $$$ into software either -- it's not really a
market that Microsoft will be losing (though, long term they might
lose since certain individuals will be used to free ($) software to go
along with cheap hardware so they'll be reluctant to plunk down $ on
software when they do have $ to spend).

It'll be interesting to see where Windows goes in the next few years.
I don't think "horse power" is going to be a major issue in
determining whether Linux eats away at Microsoft's market share --
whenever there's an OS switch of note (whether it's from one version
of Windows to another, or the switches on Mac from System 6 to 7, from
68K to PPC, or from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, there's a lot of
complaining, but that dies down as newer, faster hardware trickles out
or the software is optimised (as what happened with Mac OS X -- the
newest versions run quite a bit FASTER and better than preceding
versions on OLD hardware ;-).