Re: Microsoft begining to open source Windows 2000?

[Steve Underwood <steveu@coppice.org>]

larsg@trustix.com (Lars Gaarden)  wrote on 08.03.01 in
<3AA7DFCD.1000502@trustix.com>:

> You can accuse MS of a lot of things. Being stupid and ignorant
> of the market is not one of them.

I'd have to disagree there.

In the mid 80's MS had never had a really successful applications
product, even though Word, Excel and others had been around for some
time. The market leaders, like 123, were mostly copy protected with
schemes (e.g. key floppies) that were annoying to legitimate customers,
but hardly affected pirates. MS woke up to the opportunity, made a
splash about how their products were not protected, and their
applications market share soared. Windows, and a packaged (if far from
integrated) office suite just finished the job of killing the
competitors. You can genuinely say a measured level of openness was the
key to their success. If 123 and others had reacted earlier, and removed
their protection schemes, MS might not be as dominant as it is today.
With the momentum that gave them, and a few dirty tricks, MS have never
looked back (though they don't often look very far forward, either).

Now MS is loosing sight of this. How long will it be before their
increasingly restrictive tactics backfire and kill them as surely as
dumb copy protection killed 123's 90% market share? Maybe they will take
care to only put restrictions were they don't hurt day to day usefulness
(i.e. don't piss off the user) - maybe they won't. What we hear of
Whistler suggests the latter.

The only survivors in this industry are HP and IBM, and even they are
mere shells of their former selves!

Regards,
Steve