Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: A Microsoft Distro
Author: Chuck Shotton Posted: 3/8/1999; 10:34:16 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 3/5/99 Msg #: 3797 (In response to 3792) Prev/Next: 3796 / 3798
Imagine that, a Microsoft product that didn't need to be upgraded!Therein lies the reason why you'll never see Microsoft do it. Windows and Office upgrades are the revenue stream that fuels Microsoft. If they can't get revenue from incremental O/S upgrades on a regular basis (whether it's from consumers or box vendors), their entire strategy unwinds. It's much harder to get the application upgrades. Look at how many people still use Word 5.1 on a Mac or Office 95 (or earlier) on a PC. Turning to a freely available O/S completely undermines the bulk of their revenue model. So Linux is a threat, even if they rebranded it.
It is somewhat like the issue armchair CEOs threw at Apple for a long time. Namely, that Apple should abandon the hardware business to the clone manufacturers and become strictly an O/S and applications vendor. While one step lower in the architecture stack than Microsoft, it's the same as telling Microsoft to abandon Windows and focus on writing applications. Windows is Microsoft's "hardware" and just like Apple, throwing away the revenue stream from the "hardware" makes it virtually impossible to transition to a revenue model based on income from the layers above (O/S in Apple's case, apps in Microsoft's case.)
If Microsoft was split into two companies by the DOJ, for example, it might make sense for the applications company to adopt Linux as a platform. But unless some artificial force intervenes, it doesn't appear to be in Microsoft's best interests to do anything other than try to downplay Linux as the toy of hackers. They are too wedded to their current "hardware" platform to do anything else.
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