p2pnet.net News:- "All those who think Linux will clean Microsoft’s clock who are also people who have never compiled software, please hold up your hand. See, it is the technical community (those who compile – the Compilers) that sees Open Source as the ultimate winner while all the people who actually buy software don’t. The truth is that Microsoft is positioning itself to take on Linux on Linux’s turf if that’s required. Bill Gates has been quite clear that his company’s need for huge cash reserves is to keep it going for up to five years in the face of ZERO sales. So Microsoft could match Open Source pricing without the Open Source and while the compilers might not be swayed, everyone else (the other 98 percent of the market) would be."

The above was taken out of Cringeley’s latest musings subtly entitled The Once and Future King -
Now the Only Way Microsoft Can Die is by Suicide.

He got that right. But Microsoft with or without Bill and the Boyz is now an entity unto itself that’s so huge, so powerful, so completely dominant, so utterly without scruples, so, well, so, that it can’t die.

On the other hand, that’s what they said about the USSR

Anyway, "Nor would Microsoft’s pricing be considered predatory if its chief opponent was free software," Bob goes on. "The fact that most non-free software from commercial developers would also die would be inconsequential, or that would be the claim. But when the decks were cleared and Microsoft was down to, say $20 billion in cash, you can bet the rates would go back up in what might be properly perceived as traditional monopolistic behavior. Only in this case, it would be Microsoft responding to its competition and only inadvertently killing everyone else. On the face at least, it would be legal, thanks to Open Source — the Ralph Nader of software.

"The smartest reader of all suggested that companies be taxed on their market share so that a company like Microsoft with 90 percent share would pay a 90 percent tax rate. The nice part about this idea is that it actually would encourage competition as well as industry alliances. The naive part is that it assumes legislative resolve that does not exist and also assumes Microsoft actually pays taxes which, for the most part, it doesn’t. Still, the idea is clever.

"What we actually have this week is a Microsoft $1.95 billion lighter, but also far less restrained from acting the bully. Take Redmond’s troubles in Europe, for example. The EU’s ruling against Microsoft was based on the peculiar claim that Microsoft’s actions were to the detriment of a list of competitors that included Apple Computer and Real Networks and Sun Microsystems and others, but DIDN’T include any European companies. Sure, the corollary part of the argument was that European consumers had their choices unreasonably limited, and were probably overcharged as a result, but the actual competitors being protected by the bureau charged with promoting competition weren’t even EU constituents. And now the most vocal of those competitors, Sun, is out of the game completely, saying only nice-nice about Microsoft from here forward.

"How convenient.

"A billion to Real and another to Apple, and Microsoft will have silenced all of its victims, bolstering its European legal appeal and making the EU look stupid in the process. You heard it here first."

Want more? Go here.

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