>Some more developments in the linux / opensource woyld:
>
>1.) Tim O'Reilly responds to the Microsoft "halloween" letter with an
>(open) letter himself:
>
>http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/press/tim_msletter.html
>
I think Tim really misses the boat on this one. Of course MS could make money in an open-source world (just like RedHat, et al. do: provide service and support, consulting services, etc.) But there is no way MS, in such a world, could sustain the kind of profit margins it has selling proprietary software.
This is something the entire software business is going to have to face. Oracle, Netscape and the others are providing support for the Open source movement right now in an attempt to hurt MS. But if the open source philosophy starts winning over their corporate clients, (as it should: the case for having access and control over mission-critical software is a powerful one, even for idiot IS managers) their profit margins (and stock prices) are gone. Bye, bye, paper billionares!
Fire up your hard drives, comrades - this time around, the revolution will not do windows!
Jim Baird
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