Jim Rapoza at eWeek has hit the nail on the head commenting about the Microsofts War on Open Source. This is one of those articles that is like Al Gores new book, The Assualt on Reason – they take your breath away with their concise lucidity. And of course there are echoes between what Microsoft is doing and and whats going on in Washington. Dont miss Jims fine work here.
Now clearly SaaS, GUI Integration and Web 2.0 are moving away from MS technology (and Redmond is begging to get back in with SilverLight, Atlas, and IE8 another year late). But Open Source is moving not just against Microsoft FUD but also IT and broader executive inertia. In an equally concise analysis, Steven Vaughan-Nichols gets at this problem of what is holding Linux and Open Source back. Its inertia – the cost of the change over is perceived by many as not worth the hassle.
So here you have the current dynamic – customers tired of high costs and software licensing excursions into your companies sites by Redmond that are 5-times more zealous than product support and delivery on Trustworthy computing. Likewise, Software vendors are tired of being picked off one by one as markets they developed through years of effort get big enough for interest by Redmond and then the inevitable Borg-like pricing invasion by Microsoft(note this is not a Win-by-better-features but rather just-good-enough attack supported by 90% desktop OS, IE and Office monopolies and often a freebie if not outright giveaway) . And developers, especially Web developers, seeing Microsoft absolutely thwart W3C and other Web standards while Redmond plays catch up and proprietary variation with tools and APIs like .NET over Java, JScript over JavaScript and now SilverLight bypassing SVG, XUL and being way short either of cross platform or cross browser direct and guaranteed support from Microsoft.
On the other side Open Source plus commercial software vendors are offering lower cost, richer support, and equal if not better software. How long will inertia hold out against these opposing forces. I suspect not a few stock gurus and arbitrageurs are trying to fathom the critical catastrophe point/event for placing their short positions.
(c)JBSurveyer 2007 If you liked this, let others know:
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