Re: Boycott Microsoft Website

From: Jeff Read <jread@stevens-tech.edu>

Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Chris Lomont wrote:

Microsoft bashers need to do some homework. Microsoft is about a 10

billion a year company, much smaller than software companies like CA
  and
  associates. Microsoft is not a huge financial power - look at
  revenues
  from AT&T, IBM, GM, Chase Manhattan banks, etc, all of which are an
  order
  of magnitude bigger than Microsoft.

Microsoft is not a monoply - they control about 50% of the PC
  markets
  software. PC market, although big, is not all software, and 50% is
  no
  where near the legal definition of a monoply. Again look at Intel
  chip
  coverage, AT&T phone service, your local electricity providers
  (100%
  coverage).

Neither Intel nor AT&T have a 100% monopoly -- infact, "Ma Bell" was
broken up by the government.

Also, Microsoft does not make license agreements that any
  competetive
  company wouldn't do if given the opportunity.

The software industry is growing like the car industry 100 years
  ago.
  There were 100+ car companies around the turn of the century, and
  over
  time they were assimilated or closed leavig only a few big ones left
  in
  the US. If you wanted to make a new car company, you would be hard
  pressed. As the software industry matures, it is natural to have a
  few
  big players and very few others. Every industry (electric, phone,
  car,
  financial, appliances) has grown in such a pattern.

Which of you has the clout to build a 2 billion dollar fab plant and
  make
  Pentium chips, or the staff to develop apps with the breadth of
  power
  like Office Suite, NT, or Visual C++ 5.0? The days of garage shop
  software are limited, and big releases mean big bucks to develop,
  support, and market. That's life....

Let's take your analogy with the auto industry one step further. In the
50's and 60's, "hot rodding" was a popular thing. A passionate movement
of hobbyists would dedicate much of their free time to hand-tuning the
performance of their cars, simply because it could be done, and it took
time and dedication and when you were finished you had something you
could be proud of. There are still a number of small companies that
produce kit cars and kit planes for do-it-yourselfers to assemble and
enjoy. It's that spirit of building something yourself that they're
trying to capture -- something that can't exactly be captured by going
to the used car dealership and buying a 1992 Ford Taurus.

It's the same with computer software. A movement of old-time hackers
from the 60's and 70's (like Richard Stallman) and younger folks
interested in cutting their teeth on serious software development
without selling their soul to a big-time company like Microsoft, has
gotten itself together and produced some really clever software with
just as much breadth of power, as you call it, as what you mentioned.
These include Linux, GNU Emacs, the DJGPP compiler (which, incidentally,
was used to write Quake), not to mention graphics editors, music
composition software, games, file utilities, compilers for the gamut of
programming languages, and other OS's (like a freeware version of
Windows). It's these people that deserve our respect, and not so much
Microsoft, which has in a few ways "bent the rules" to give itself the
advantage.

I believe that the age of the hacker has finally come to the PC. And,
I'm looking forward to it. Maybe, just maybe, it will inspire and
motivate the big boys like Microsoft to produce programs of much higher
quality than they have now.

--
Jeff Read (jread@stevens-tech.edu)
Linux / Win32 Hacker
Home Page: http://pcteen.home.ml.org
Game Page: http://menger.eecs.stevens-tech.edu/~jread/sprite32.html

References

Boycott Microsoft Website
Jack Teh <jteh@usthk.ust.hk>
Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
Chris Lomont <clomont@omni.cc.purdue.edu>
Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000