> MS has no competitive advantage, except that they can get
> products to market faster.
actually, this is probably *not* true. in the early days ms was organized into little groups of highly independent and motivated folks who charged ahead on specific products. but now - and in part because they've purposely made their entire software line so interdependent - like all commercial houses, they'll go through functional specs and product specs and meetings between marketing and various programming groups, and refinement of the design, then architecting and prototyping, then qa. and 3 revisions to get out all of the bugs.
open source groups take the shotgun approach; people will do just what they think is needed, but leave in enough flexibility for others to add additional features. you get something working and functional much quicker, and its probably fine for 80% of the folks out there.
hey, i live on linux.
> But, in a world where operating systems and office
> applications are expected to last two years, that's not a
> real advantage.
this is hardly true. its a microsoft fabrication that you need to upgrade your operating system regularly. i'm still running redhat 7.1, and probably could for a couple more years. hey, after all, how much has solaris changed over the years? well, it has, but the changes are things you'd only really notice if you're running a high-performance server.
like the music industry, microsoft's problem is pricing. once there is competition, the monopoly collapses, and pricing power is gone.
and between open source and msft, the race is almost over. its not like a perpetual competition where msft could always stay two steps ahead. at some point, the operating system is *finished*. the office program is *finished*. most of the software that most anyone ever needs to use is *finished*. then what?
microsoft has prospered by keeping alive the illusion that by changing your oil and swapping out a few lugnuts, they're exchanging your old car for a brand new one.
grr. i'm sermonizing. stop that.
