Re: Microsoft Navision buyout?

[Kenneth D. Reiszner]

Christopher Browne wrote:

> > At 11:36 PM 5/7/02, Reinhard Mueller wrote:
> > > > Can any competing midrange or enterprise software survive
> > > > on Windows, against the $Billions of Microsoft resources?
> > >
> > >Sure it can. If it is Free Software.
> > >Free Software always survives.
>

My impression is that this is Bill Gates in a partial state of denial and a last
gasp effort to keep Windows going. Partial because you see Microsoft hedging its
bets with other acquisitions like MSNBC which will continue even if the software
part of the business goes belly up.

There are only two ways that I see for Windows to survive more than another 5 at
most 10 years. Legislation making free software illegal and Microsoft to somehow
embrace open source (maybe only the OS at first) and compete as the predominant
provider. Both scenarios are unlikely but there has been some awfully bad (and 
so
far successful) legislation regulating software in the recording industry. I 
don't
know how the second scenario would play out but I'll bet there is somebody at
Microsoft that knows how.


> >
> > On Windows?   That's debatable.

> Indeed.
>
> The APIs change often enough that what's Particularly Keen now isn't likely to
> function anymore in another few years.
>
> Consider trying to run Corel WPOffice on Linux; it uses WINE as part of its
> execution substrate, essentially "running on Windows" even when running on
> Linux.  I did an install of it a couple months ago; a brutally irritating
> process with severely unsatisfactory results.  WINE of 2000 doesn't play too
> well with libraries of 2002, nor do the "native" bits of WPO2K.  It sort of
> barely ran, for a while.  Given another couple of years, it probably won't
> even "barely" run.
>
> And when everything newer depends on COM interfaces, and that gets changed
> over to "BizTalk-SOAP-2003" in "Win2003", well, it sure means that "always
> survives" is debatable.
>
> Frankly, the same is true if you're desperately trying to keep up with
> whatever API GNOME or KDE are using today...
>
> I'll bet that a lot of X11R5 software is still quite usable, though...
> --
> (reverse (concatenate 'string "moc.enworbbc@" "enworbbc"))
> http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/rdbms.html
> If you  ever drop your  keys into a  river of molten lava,  let'em go,
> because, man, they're gone.
>
> --
> (concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@acm.org")
> http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/unix.html
> "On the  other hand, O'Reilly's book  about running W95 has  a toad as
> the cover animal.  Makes sense; both have lots of  warts and croak all
> the time."  --- Michael Kagalenko,
>
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