Re: Microsoft needs a help strategy

[ZnU]

In article <CIidnXnYA-_9ruDUnZ2dnUVZ_tPinZ2d@posted.localnet>,
 Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com> wrote:

> At 26 Jan 2009 00:32:24 GMT Rockinghorse Winner <rockinghorse@deadtime.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Rjack had the audacity to say that:
> > 
> > > Rjack wrote:
> > >
> > >  From the findings of fact in US v. Microsoft (1998)
> > >
> > > http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm
> > >
> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > > Open-Source Applications Development
> > >
> > > Seems to me that the open source business models are an abject 
> > > failure compared to proprietary models.
> > >
> > > Sincerely,
> > > Rjack :)
> > >
> > 
> > As a business model, I must concur. As a model for innovation and quality,
> > it has simply run circles around Windows.
> 
> Right.  In many senses, *there is no business model* that really works
> well for *software*.  You either get a monopoly (eg Microsoft) selling
> a poor quality product.  Or you are stuck in some sort of high pirced
> nitch market (eg Adobe). Game software is the exception, since it is
> emphemerial.

In the Mac software market there are a fair number of successful 
non-game commercial applications from small independent shops in the 
$10-100 range, and some of them are pretty good.

I have heard from Windows developers this can be a bit trickier on the 
Windows side because there's so much junk out there that good apps from 
small developers tend to get lost in the noise, but still, I imagine 
some can do pretty well for themselves.

(I'm leaving the Linux software market out of this because it's mostly 
dominated by OSS.)

-- 
"What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them
‹ that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer
apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too
small, but whether it works [...]"        -- Barack Obama, January 20th, 2008