You're right, the subscription model don't threaten microsoft, they're just a sign of a maturing business. Growth may slow, but it's still amazingly profitable. What threatening MS is indeed Linux (and other open source products such as Open Office, Firefox, etc.).
And the reason is a bit ironic, because while the free software/open source movement began (and remains) focused on subverting proprietary corporate control of software and ideas, its biggest impact so far is allowing a new form of cooperation between competing corporations, enabling them to gang up against Microsoft. Imagine if all the Microsoft's major competitors, led by IBM, got together and colluded to spend literally billions of dollars to take on MS -- MS would discover the wisdom of anti-trust laws pretty quickly.
But no anti-trust laws are violated because IBM, et. al. are just giving away the code their engineers write for free. Journalists and advocates like to paint Linux, etc. as the result of voluntary work of thousands of enthusiasts, but the reality is most of the contributions to high profile projects are funded by companies that have decided it's in their stategic interest to contribute. For example, Sun didn't spend a $100 million to acquire StarOffice just to give away the source code (as OpenOffice) for altruistic reasons -- rather they placed a relatively small bet on screwing up MS's second biggest cash cow.
Back to the irony: the computer industry is not creative enough to figure out that it's in their interests to give away their intellectual property -- it was left to Richard Stallman, an unabashedly leftist idealogue, to invented the GPL software license (which Bill Gates called "communistic" just a few weeks ago) with its "share and share-alike" terms that enabled software companies to give away code without the risk of their competitors using it unfairly. So today you see IBM defending the license in court against SCO, and, somewhat amazingly for a company that epitomized 50s corporate conformity, being fined by the city of San Francisco for spray painting peace symbols, hearts, and linux penguins on the sidewalk.
-- adam
On Apr 1, 2005 6:59 PM, joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote:
>
>
> Dwayne Monroe wrote:
>
> >
> > This problem -- this ubiquitousness of its products and, therefore,
> > hair pullingly frustrating competition with earlier versions of itself
> > -- is compelling Microsoft to engineer and enforce, step by step, a de
> > facto subscription model for their software where you're never done
> > paying.
>
> Well. OK. In this regard, it's part and parcel of the whole "you must
> now rent your life" phenomenon which starts to sweep into everything.
> But then how does this presage its demise? Why wouldn't it get away with
> doing just that?
>
> Not contentious, curious...
>
> I would presonally be much happier with a universal UNIX OS.
>
> Joanna
>
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