Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on January 28, 2003 04:57 PM
Yes, government contracts are at stake. That's the only way that Microsoft can survive, barring getting a monopoly on network connections.
Look, the revenue that Microsoft has comes *only* from Windows and Office, and these are profitable only because they pull in about 5 times what the free market price would be. Everything else loses enormous sums of money. As competition brings the price down, these too will be money losers.
It's too late to "kick butt" at Microsoft, there's not time to rewrite the code before the cash flow stops, let alone redesign the code. Much of the security, stability and compatibility problems in Microsoft's products are the result of flaws in the design.
Bill Gates tells us this in almost so many words with his comparision to the U.S. Apollo program. if we take the metaphor, he's signalling Bush that Microsoft needs $25 billion over 10 years to catch up to and pass the competition. That's just not going to happen, it would hurt the economy to bad to allow Microsoft to continue to stifle the U.S. IT sector.
Google, IBM and hundreds of thousands of U.S. businesses make good money from the Freedom part of FOSS. The best thing that Gates and Ballmer can do now is cash out and go trout fishing for the next few decades.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 28, 2003 04:57 PMLook, the revenue that Microsoft has comes *only* from Windows and Office, and these are profitable only because they pull in about 5 times what the free market price would be. Everything else loses enormous sums of money. As competition brings the price down, these too will be money losers.
It's too late to "kick butt" at Microsoft, there's not time to rewrite the code before the cash flow stops, let alone redesign the code. Much of the security, stability and compatibility problems in Microsoft's products are the result of flaws in the design.
Bill Gates tells us this in almost so many words with his comparision to the U.S. Apollo program. if we take the metaphor, he's signalling Bush that Microsoft needs $25 billion over 10 years to catch up to and pass the competition. That's just not going to happen, it would hurt the economy to bad to allow Microsoft to continue to stifle the U.S. IT sector.
Google, IBM and hundreds of thousands of U.S. businesses make good money from the Freedom part of FOSS. The best thing that Gates and Ballmer can do now is cash out and go trout fishing for the next few decades.
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