Microsoft Corp. executives on Tuesday spent a lot of time talking up the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), which is the company’s vision and technology roadmap for reducing the cost of managing and securing enterprise systems. Elsewhere, Microsoft exec says that open source model endangers the software economy.
Microsoft Details Enterprise Software Management Initiative
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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It’s funny how they love and believe in capitalism and the free market until it’s not going in their favor. Can’t have your cake and eat it too, as they will sorely learn.
Giving something away for free…is not capitalism nor free marketing.
…really, there isn’t.
Gah!! I wish Microsoft would stop spreading such ridiculous FUD all the time. Open source software can be sold easily. Open source is just that: the source code is open. That doesn’t mean it can’t be sold! Free software means free speech, not free beer. And that comment about there not being any “software industry” anymore if open source takes over is crazy — there is a HUGE open source software industry already, and plenty of people are making money. Look at Mandrake — they just came out of a financial crisis and are in the black now! Why? Because people are “buying” their Linux distro — or, more specifically, people are paying for a membership to support the company. Isn’t that a nice business plan? Instead of forcing people to pay for proprietary software, they’re asking people to pay to support the company’s development of free software. And it’s working.
Come on Microsoft. Get with the program here. This is 2004, not 1995. Do you really think anyone cares what you think anymore?
Jared
When Microsoft stares at Open Source is like a deer staring at head lights, they are so taken by their own position and so mind-boggled by the shiny lights as to not react in a coherent way. Nobody wants to continue paying for an operating system that does essentially the same thing as any other OS. People’s needs are fairly generic, a bit of web surfing, email, word processing, some pictures, some music, some web conferencing.
Things have changed, that’s all I got to say. There will be money in niche proprietary markets, such as tax software, AutoCad, etc. But the thrust of computing will from now on be open. The sooner you adapt to this reality, the better off you will be.
Open Source Software and GPL’d software still have their roots in capitalism, it just changes the revenue model a bit. Most companies are not selling software, they are selling their services to support the software (IE: patchs, packages, tech-support).
My question is if OSS/GPL’d software is not part of capitalism, then how come companies like Red Hat, Xandros, SUSE are making money and why is there stocks being traded on the market?
I also forgot to mention that as countries get past the industrial age (economically), they enter a phase of providing serivces. That being said, many countries are entering the service side vs. developing countries
MS must learn to change their financial model to a service oriented model and provide resonable services at a resonable cost. Consider MS software assurance policy with respect to upgrades, most business’ that signed up early feel like they are not getting their moneys worth due to continued set backs in MS developments and releases in software. Now if your in business and require a patch or a badly needed upgrade and have to wait for your vendor to release said product, while paying for said service the whole time, how would you feel. Would that be a breach of contract? Is that grounds for termination of that particular contract. This is poor service in general.
MS has to release software on a timely basis as well as patchs.