re: A Former Microsoftie Forecasts Microsoft Doom

Jason Mauss — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:54:00 GMT

I appreciated the fact that the guy did his due dilligence and provided plenty of "evidence" of how many Microsoft challengers are making their way successfully but, this guy has obviously been bitten by the open source bug. Many open source fans like that guy love to have you believe OSS is a lot more successful than it actually is or has "really become a viable option for the[insert name of european country] gov't."

What the guy doesn't talk about, that's actually quite important, is the fact that Linux, Google, IBM, Apple, and everyone else, despite how long they've been around, are all going to face challenges of their own, similiar to Microsoft. And unless this guy can predict the future, there's no way to know that the aforementioned businesses won't make some stupid mistakes of their own, allowing Microsoft or other competitors to take over in the respective markets. That guy seems to forget that one of the biggest reasons for Microsoft's success is because they made the fewest mistakes. Not because they had the best OS or best productivity apps.

And honestly - who starts off w/ an opening paragraph like that? It's the typical "whine about Microsoft products"...that makes him sound like an OSS shill. Well, either that or a major "n00b" - which I doubt since he worked at MS for so long. Sure, we've all had little annoying problems here and there with office products, vs.net, etc. However, if you do work of any real value or importance, you figure out the issue and solve it. Just because a feature doesn't work like you expected doesn't mean you give up. RTFM man.

re: A Former Microsoftie Forecasts Microsoft Doom

Chris Stewart — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:01:00 GMT

Microsoft's doom? Ha! Their presence on the desktop alone will keep them in business for a very very long time.