Microsoft, in their usual “must-have-fingers-in-far-too-many-pies” fashion, are re-inventing Bit-Torrent. Guess why?
No, go on, guess.
That’s right, DRM (Digital Rights Management). While this is not a bad thing per se, I see it as a bad thing when MS are in charge of it. Instantly I can foresee sky-high fees and rediculously complicated licencing schemes to milk the largest possible amount of money from publishers and, as a knock on effect, us users. I would have absolutely no objection if it were almost any other company, but MS have a habit of being greedy.
In my opinion, if MS were less greedy with ALL of their products they would be seen in a better light. There would be less piracy if Windows XP cost half of what it does currently. Lets face it, it’s not like throughput is an issue.
Another thing I can’t understand is Microsoft’s utterly irriversable stance to Open Source. With a userbase like Microsoft’s, Open Source becomes an amazingly viable business model. They could Open Source the next version of windows and charge for support and for corporate licencing, as many businesses want accountability. Businesses will happily pay for support by the software vendor so when a bug occurs it can be delt with by Microsoft themselves quickly and the fix is then available to the masses.
You would also have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of skilled programmers with their beady eyes on the code to help fix and improve the code as they need with the bonus that these changes can go back to the main codebase and benefit everyone.
The problem would be in Microsoft changing their programming practices and entire company structure. Of course a shift such as this could not happen over night. It would take years of change to get to the point where anything coming out of Redmond could be considered open source, but it can happen. Sun have done it; Solaris is now open source and, from what I can gather, is flourishing. MySQL, RedHat and SuSe (amongst others) are all evidence that companies can do well from Open Source products and end up with better products because of it.
Here’s to hoping that Microsoft see the light. I’m not holding my breath.
drac | 20-Jun-05 at 1:09 pm | Permalink
I don’t know if any company would be very different in reaching for more and more profit.
For the next version of Windows to be open source (assuming that it would happen.. it won’t), Microsoft would have to say bye-bye to all the revenue they currently get from licensing. Assuming that’s $1 per license.. is 50 million licenses worldwide a fair estimate ? That’s just 50 million dollars worth of income that they just turned their backs on. They already charge for support and corporate licensing, so that’s just (in their eyes) revenue lost.
They can’t do that, they won’t do it. It was easier in a sense for Solaris because they were a dominant server platform, not a dominant user space platform. In many ways, the complexity of moving server platforms is less (because you can carefully control what software goes on a server). I’m generalizing a lot, of course.. but Solaris and Windows aren’t comparable in that sense.
Control means more potential for profit down the line. Once they open the source, they lose a large chunk of that control. Imagine if third parties come up with service packs or expansions ? At a cheaper price than Microsoft ? Opening the source leads (in their mind) to the loss of countless revenue earning opportunities, both present and in the future.
Splee | 20-Jun-05 at 1:26 pm | Permalink
I agree. For all of your reasons Open MS will never ever happen. I was pontificating on how they could still make money while striving for a better product rather than being selfish and striving for more money.
Once an organisation puts money first before the quality of it’s products (and most companies will do this to some extent) that will be true.
If, however, a project starts that is initially powered by the want, need and love of said project and it’s ability to excel and be the best possible product, then the money from support becomes a nice side effect that helps to keep the product afloat and pay for the resources (in time, bandwidth etc) that it consumes.
Most of the time the project is still driven by the community and developer’s drive towards perfection rather than the cash.