Re: [PLUG] ESR: Last phase of the desktop wars

["Eric S. Raymond via plug" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

Walt Mankowski via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>:
> Frankly his whole post sounds like wishful thinking to me. I don't see
> how "their services business is expanding" leads to "their OS business
> will no long be profitable".

It's not the expansion of their service business that's the main
driver here.  It's the fall in desktop PC sales.  The money they can
make from Windows licensing is decreasing, but the NRE to maintain
that huge blob of Windows code is not.

A smart profit-maximizer will see what's coming - the crossover point
where Windows NRE exceeds the evenue from Windows licensing - and
position the company so they cam be out of the OS-building business
*before that happens*.

That's what I think Microsoft is doing.

What Azure gives them is a place to make money that's not dependent on
Windows licensing.  Without that, they'd have to defend the OS
business to the death even as their licensing revenue tanked.  With
Azure, preparing to bail out of OS development is thinkable

OK, so maybe you think that's a wacked-out prediction.  But there's a
long trail of people who thought my predictions about open source were
wrong, and, uh, they're not looking very prescient these days, are
they?
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>

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