Re: Software as society (was: Re: Documentation Standards was Re: [ox-en] UserLinux)
- From: "Niall Douglas" <s_fsfeurope2 nedprod.com>
- Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 18:48:40 -0000
On 15 Dec 2003 at 13:42, Casimir Purzelbaum wrote:
Why don't you just join Microsoft? You could surely read and
reuse all their code within their business interests. ;-) Their
business interests are the same as anyone elses too:
diversification, isn't it? And, yes, because it's business
interests that govern peoples lives, you would be on the "right"
side there ;-)
They like any domination based business model seeks to diversify
/themselves/ while pushing their clients in the opposite direction.
Monopolies tend to do that, which is why the more variety the better.
I far prefer the cooperation model eg; like Nokia normally does. It's
why Microsoft have had real difficulty getting into the mobile phone
market because in general most businesses try to avoid getting locked-
in and it's cheaper in the long run to not do so. Microsoft got where
it's got by making a vastly superior operating system at that time
which was 99% backwards compatible - something OS/2 should have been
but wasn't because of IBM's internal troubles at that time. They were
wise however to make NT.
As I'm illustrating, there are many kinds of business interest - I
would even say two general types, productive & cooperative and
exploitative & unproductive. Microsoft some day will need to move to
the former but it will try to maintain the latter as long as
possible.
However, that said, if Microsoft gave me total authority over their
company I'd quite happily join them. I know exactly what I'd do and
mark my words, I'd revolutionise computing forever.
Cheers,
Niall
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