[mdlug] OT - no good deed unpunished

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: Bob Dion

> More evidence that working with MS is dangerous.
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/microsoft_mvp_threats/

 When Windows was getting started, they were handing out developer tools
like candy. That's one of the reasons OS/2 tanked - the developer tools
cost many hundreds of dollars because IBM was used to charging mainframe
prices - which you can do when you have people locked in. MS needed to
build support for Windows so they made it very easy and inexpensive to
develop for. They recognized that encouraging more applications for their
platform would make it more attractive to people shopping for operating
systems.

 Of course, now Windows is a huge market with a lot of lock-in. So now
they want to be able to 'leverage' that to extract money from developers.
So they are 'monetizing' their development tools. And so things happen
like the above.

 It's not surprising, but it's just as big a mistake as IBM made. Linux
is taking off and from what I've seen almost every budding programmer
has at least *some* Linux experience. I think MS is going for a short-term
profit and screwing themselves out of long-term platform viability.

 (Of course, given the state of Vista, many of the managers at MS may
have seen the writing on the wall there and are just working to boost
their numbers while they can...)

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                                 (313) 227-2317

 "In an illustrative recent study, subjects were asked their opinion about
  a social welfare policy, which was described as being endorsed either by
   Democrats or by Republicans. Although the subjects sincerely believed
   that their responses were based on the objective merits of the policy,
   the major determinant of what they thought of the policy was in fact
  whether or not their favored political party was said to endorse it."
                - Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg

The contents of this e-mail are intended for the named addressee only. It contains information that may be confidential. Unless you are the named addressee or an authorized designee, you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you received it in error please notify us immediately and then destroy it.