begin oe_protect.scr
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> __/ [ nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ] on Wednesday 21 June 2006 18:53 \__
>
>> Quote:
>> -----------
>> Microsoft is in crisis, and crises sometimes demand bold action. The
>> company is demoralized, and most assuredly HAS seen its best days in
>> terms of market dominance. In short, being Microsoft isn't fun anymore,
>> which probably means that being Bill Gates isn't fun anymore, either.
>> But that, alone, is not reason enough for Gates to leave. Whether he
>> instigated the change or someone else did, Gates had no choice but to
>> take this action to support the value of his own Microsoft shares.
>> -------------
>> End quote
>>
>> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060615.html
>
> It's more enjoyable watching a boat sink while lying on a sandy, sunny, and
> remote beach than being in that boat, hearing people yell and jumping onto
> dingies. Gates has put his sunglasses on. And he's going to Disneyland. Ke
> sera sera.
>
I've been saying much the same thing in this group for a long time now.
I do not believe that MS has the required internal culture to survive
its current woes without considerable change. I do not believe that just
changing the senior management team will be enough, it'll take much more
than that, so I'd expect to see a lot of departures across the company,
top to bottom, over the next few years. I'd personally suggest that
5-10 years will be the time taken to turn MS around from an amorphous,
directionless, ammoral group of bullies into a professional, well-lead
ethically sound organisation with a reasonable and achievable strategy.
Unfortunately, in that time, MS will probably have to give up huge
swathes of monopoly, this means income, which means it's going to use
up tremendous amounts of its reserves in staying afloat.
This change is going to require some fairly basic, fundamental, changes.
One is, in my view, going to /have/ to be the abandonment of the Windows
code-base. It's quite clear that it is not maintainable, even by a
company with the resources MS has available, and because of MS's dubious
business practices, it's probably not GPLable either, as they've
probably got a lot of code they shouldn't have, and perhaps won't want
to take the risk of some company claiming stolen code (can anyone think
of a company that might consider that? One with deep pockets, perhaps
one which has been similarly threatened?). It's way too risky, so it
won't happen.
MS /might/ look at a purchase of Apple - this would be a strategic
masterstroke, and might even have been on the cards for some time,
and /could/ even explain the odd decision of Apple's to move to x86
processors. Apple have a viable, quality, modern OS, with an excellent
GUI, but with all the advantages of Unix under the bonnet. All the hard
work has been done, /and/ MS could offer dual-boot XP/OSX machines on
Apple hardware. If they were /really/ smart, they'd keep the machines
badged as Apple, too. Most people probably wouldn't even know.
Option B would have to be a move to Linux or a BSD, but then there'd be
the huge risk that MS would want to port the Windows shell, which would
be a 5 year job, probably, anyway.
Option C might be to buy up codeweavers, fix up the Wine code until it's
good enough, and then restart the Vista work on a linux+wine base. This
would be arguably the technically best solution, and would bring the
significant advantage that MS would get to benefit from all the native
linux applications out there, although they'd probably look to find ways
of stopping them from running on /their/ version, unless they were 'MS
approved'.
Oh, it's que, not ke, btw.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean
the same thing.
-- A. Lincoln
|
|
