Microsoft is hiring a "linuxman"

[Gilles Gravier]

Hello!

On 04/01/2010 14:18, Odd wrote:
>
>> I'm confident that whatever Microsoft puts behind this effort (we can
>> think of many things, not all of them nice and fair) they still will not
>> win against open source.
>>     
> Not until they give away Windows for free. It has been speculated
> about Microsoft doing so, and earning money on support and ads
> instead.
>
> Btw, scroll down to competition:
> http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar09/10k_fr_bus_01.htm
Yeah. So they know their competition... :) Doesn't mean the company can
handle it.

It's very hard to move from a license to a services model. And building
it mandatory in the product would not necessarily work. For example, ads
in enterprise deployments would be promptly rejected. So it would come
back to mandatory service... i.e. not really free. Linux CAN be free if
you can afford your own support staff. Windows probably never.

And they would have to do that for MS Office as well...

I still think it would take them too big of an effort.

Gilles.