[KLUG Advocacy] Re: Advocacy digest, Vol 1 #11 - 1 msg

Bryan J. Smith advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
04 May 2002 21:21:30 -0400


On Sat, 2002-05-04 at 19:06, Adam Williams wrote:
> There are others I could think of: Informix, OpenMail, etc... that were
> great products that suffered from targeted marketing but in reality
> probably died as a result of hopeless marketing and corporate
> cluelessness.

I would argue that bundling and OEMs are key.  Just ask 3dfx and Corel. 
You can outsell your competitors 2-to-1 or even 3-to-1 on the shelf, and
still not make a dent!

> I mention this as I think there is still a realistic chance that M$ will
> successfully crunch Open Source...

You mean "limit" Open Source.  Unless by "crunch" you "limit."

A key to this is legal.  Despite its proprietary interfaces, Microsoft
protocols and formats _do_ eventually get reverse engineered in 1-2
years.  So Microsoft will be _forced_ to sue to stop it.  Worse yet for
Microsoft, 3rd party reverse engineering "interferes" with their
strategy of changing protocols and formats to be just "slightly"
incompatible to force upgrades.  Hence their move to "rental," which
exchanges one negative for another.  It's hard for Microsoft to be
completely anti-competitive with OSS around.

And even if they do sue, it could become probitively expensive. 
Especially since their software revenues are down, although they are
quickly becoming an "investment" company now.  It will be interesting to
see what happens, and much Microsoft can sustain its stock prices. 
Microsoft will _always_ be influencial and will _always_ have cash, but
they might have a stock price more like $30 (which would bring their P/E
ratio "back to reality", of which it's already half-way there now), and
have only 50% of the market.

> Yes.  Witness gnome-vfs ...

Windows has the same and Netscape has done a fine job of discovering
them in Windows, and complementing them as a _full_replacement_ for MS
IE.  Just like Caldera was able to create, with only a 600 line
modification, a way to _completely_replace_ MS-DOS 7.x in the Windows
4.x products (i.e. Windows 95/98).  And what happened when Microsoft
changed Windows 4.x to be more "DOS independent"?  You got Windows ME, a
total POS.  Microsoft _finally_ learned that it was NT or bust for
consumer Windows.

> But does this mean the web browser (or any application) and the OS are
> one?  No.  All the above could happen on Linux, FreeBSD, AIX, Solaris,
> or (E! gads) M$-Windows. (Yes, there is a Win32 port of GNOME).

Better yet is GTK+ 2, a fully multiplatform base with full accessibility
and internationalization features.

> Something else sits on the OS (a component layer, desktop manager, user
> interface, all it what you will).  In cases such as Linux it is pretty
> easy to conceptualize where one end and the other begins.  IMHO,  with
> Linux, the point of OS-endage and platform-architecure-beginage is best
> described as "glibc".  But on something like Win32 it is quite a bit
> more muddy,  although there still is an underlying API, upon which
> things like OLE, DDE, COM all rest.

Which changes every 2-3 years.  .NET does this again, although it's
really a means to get everyone to stop writing for DOS-based Windows,
and actually implement "multiuser aware" applications.  Something UNIX
has been spoiled with since its inception.  ;-P

> Mostly I think the "browser bundling" arguement is spurious, and a
> really dumb tactic.

"Bundling" is right.  And it was _used_ to get MS Office its
marketshare.  Microsoft used "buy back rebates" to actually _pay_ OEMs
to ship MS Office instead of other suites.  Then when it had a 80%
marketshare, it started charging $400/pop.  Was this ethical?  No.  What
it illegal?  Hmmm, interesting.  Are PC OEMs stupid day in and day out? 
Yes!

Now back to the browser ... There's nothing like bundling an application
with as many lines of source code as the damn OS!  Do I think Microsoft
had the right to bundle a web browser?  Yes.  Do I think they had the
right to bundle a full application?  Technically, it *DID* hurt
consumers.  They should have bundled a minimal browser and then an "add
on" that the consumer considered installing.  But *NO*, the bundled the
whole clusterfuck solution!  Now do they have the right to tell all OEMs
what to do, or else?  No, but I'd rather blame the OEMs themselves
before I let government dictate Microsoft terms.  PC OEMs are
Microsoft's bitch now, although the ones that aren't die.

Bullies suck.  But regulated bullies are worse.

What would you rather have?  A bully that wants your lunch money?  Or a
school that forces you to pay a bully 1/2 of your lunch money?  In the
case of the former, at least a bunch of kids could band together and
tell him no.  In the case of the latter, everyone has to conform.

The bully is Microsoft.  The school is government.  And the bunch of
kids that _used_ to have choice, but now don't after "regulation," are
the community often referred to as Linux.  ;-P

> Did M$ use monopolistic practices to brow beat competition?
> Have they deliberately created egregious barriers-to-entry
> for new competition?  That is the real question at hand.  I
> suspect M$ is very happy the more things focus on the whole IE
> issue.   Did they prohibit OEMS from offering other products?
> Did they design products in order limit interoperability?  To
> me those are the real questions.

But the OEMs won't speak for fear of retaliation.  God knows IBM, Intel
and Gateway 2000 have felt it!

-- Bryan

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--------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan J. Smith, SmithConcepts, Inc.  mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
Engineers and IT Professionals    http://www.SmithConcepts.com