Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> __/ [ nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ] on Friday 18 May 2007 17:41 \__
>
>>
>>>
>>> The cash cow is dying, just like DRM. Countries embrace OpenDocument/PDF
>>> and, either way (whatever happens to oh-oh XML), see the articles below.
>>> |
>>> | The only competition at the moment is from open source office suites,
>>> | OpenOffice in particular, which around one in five Reg readers are
>>> | personally using.
>>>
>>> Google manager: Google Apps replaced Microsoft Office at 100,000
>>> businesses
>>>
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | Simon's official response explained the business rationale behind
>>> | offering support for OpenOffice.org: "OpenOffice.org has becomep
>>> | henomenally successful, Sun alone has shipped more than 70 million
>>> | copies of OpenOffice.org 2.0," he said. "Out there, there
>>> | are maybe 100 million copies of OpenOffice.org. It would be
>>> | senseless to ignore that opportunity."
>>
>> There is a question of what percentage of the market is needed before
>> monopoly lock-in tactics become ineffective. It seems that Firefox
>> has now reached that percentage---businesses are designing standards
>> compliant web sites (with a few exceptions like Microsoft itself)
>> because they don't want to lose Firefox customers.
>>
I suspect that it's a function of margin, market size and market share.
If the market is large and margins are very high, then you'll probably
tend to get niche players to meet the demands of those who do not have
the typical setups. When margins are very narrow, and/or markets are
small, then ignoring even small proportions of a market is probably
economic suicide.
Of course, you have to balance that against the risks associated with
whatever action Microsoft might choose to take against you if you do
attempt to address the niche, since their action could well reverse some
of the gains you get from serving that market.
It's quite amazing how much damage on rich, unregulated and unethical
monopoly can do.
>> Something similar is no doubt happening regarding office file
>> formats. Office 2007 and OOXML are obviously aiming toward lock-in,
>> but the total market share of all competitors---OpenOffice, Google
>> office, etc---is growning, and it may be too late for lock-in to
>> work. Also, if major countries start requiring ODF---Norway, for
>> example---this will certainly create pressures for standards, even if
>> they are in a minority.
>>
>> My point is that such efforts don't have to reach a majority to have a
>> large impact. Local pressures for standards, or pressures restricted
>> to certain segments of the market, if they are large enough, can be
>> important.
>>
>> This is apart from the question of regulation, of course (what will
>> the EU do, etc). Based on what the EU has complained about before,
>> recent moves by MS seem provocative, for example, MS making sure Samba
>> doesn't work with Vista, or of providing free, temporary copies of
>> Office 2007 without any way to covert to older or other formats.
>
> Taking this slight off topic, I believe the same applies to poisonous people
> in forums. When they lack an audience that occasionally gives them a
> (virtual) high five, they lose interest in participating. The level of troll
> activity in COLA has gone down recently.
>
I think you're quite right. I would imagine that our trolls will get
payback on the basis of the number of responses they manage to get.
Clearly, if they're just noise in the group, then they will not be
getting so many.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
|
|
