Microsoft is hiring a "linuxman"

[Odd]

Gilles Gravier wrote:
> 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.

True.

> 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.

Yeah. I'm assuming they would rely on support in the enterprise
sector, not ads.

> 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.

Never say never. ;)

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

They are already making a free web version of Office, to counter
Google Docs.

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

MS has the money to do almost anything they want to.

(Don't take the above as I'm endorsing MS. I'm not.)

-- 
Odd