Microsofts usual strategy of if you can't beat them, buy them and kill them
isn't going to work in this arena. So, they're turning this coin over and
playing the flip side. They will leverege two things. First, their Corporate
Name recognition and reputation (I'm talking about US. middle managers here
folks, the timid you never got fired for buying Microsoft types--please spare
me the rants about Microsoft's reputation being in the dumps, that's only among
those of us who aren't going to be fired for not buying Microsoft), and
second, a wonderful operating system base that costs them exactly, let me see
..., hmmm ..., nothing.
They will begin by selling Microsoft Linux for about $99.00, and corporate
America will eat it up. Then, as they add on their proprietary stuff (which,
of course, only works with MS Linux--something, by the way, I seem to remember
Caldera trying for a while with their first release???), the price will climb,
right up to where NT 4.0 server is now. You will be able to buy just plain MS
Linux, or MS Linux Deluxe, which will include MS specific stuff like Office,
proprietary network management stuff, etc. Of course, because of the GNU
license, they will have to write these addons from scratch, but they can do
that by hiring a bunch of unix developers (if they can find any who'll work for
them. My guess is they will).
So, they'll sell Windoze NT and MS Linux for about the same price. But here's
the really sweet thing: Their development costs for the MS Linux line is
.0000004355946 of the cost of their NT development over the past 10 years.
As St. Paul said, "think on these things". You can bet Microsoft is.
Mark
****************************************************************
J. Mark Shacklette J. Mark Shacklette
Principal Partner Committee on Social Thought
Pierce, Leverett & McIntyre University of Chicago
316 East Franklin Street jmshackl@midway.uchicago.edu
Barrington, IL 60010
jmshackl@plm-inc.com
****************************************************************
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/