____/ Mark Kent on Tuesday 04 September 2007 18:50 : \____
> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>> ____/ Mark Kent on Tuesday 04 September 2007 08:59 : \____
>>
>>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> I'm still tempted by MEPIS myself, maybe even Debian (from which MEPIS is
>>>> once again derived, after it threw out Ubuntu).
>>>>
>>>> Choice is great. It also forces those that play not to act selfishly.
>>>> There's virtually no lock-in. Once strike and you're out.
>> ^ typo
>>
>>> It very much depends on what you're doing with your machines, and in
>>> particular, if you've anything "binary-only" floating around, or any
>>> single-sourced peripheral type which cannot readily be replaced.
>>
>> Watch tomorrow's news. I have some insider information.
>>
>>> Having the OS as GPLed software makes a huge improvement to the lock-in
>>> risk, but it doesn't eliminate it, especially if you've got binary
>>> drivers in there.
>>>
>>> It's all about the height of the exit barrier, the cost of exit,
>>> compared with staying with your existing vendor.
>>
>> A few months ago, in Matt Asay's blog, IIRC, I read about investors raising
>> some ugly questions like "yeah, but what's your lock-in strategy?".
>> Apparently, being kind to the customer is no longer as important as
>> imprisoning as many customers as one can.
>>
>
> Being kind to customers is not going to sit easily with investors used
> to being able to invest in companies who would hook in victims and then
> squeeze them repeatedly for cash over the years. The idea of people
> returning to a company because they *like* what they do seems somewhat
> alien to many software company investors. They are going to have to
> learn how to get used to this, though.
Standards-based Web-based software makes an easy escape route. Many companies
have come to the realisation that part of the selection criteria (for
software) should involve mobility (as in dependability on a single supplier),
not just security (another lesson they learnt from Windows) and acquisition
cost.
The ideas are apparently getting through, but many companies have been trapped.
Vista introduces many new lockins -- shackles that are *very* hard to break.
What do the regulator do? They declare the antitrust action a "success" and
let Microsoft do its 'thing' for the investors again, namely "kill the
competition, show us the money".
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | < http://debian.org >
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Cpu(s): 27.3%us, 4.8%sy, 1.0%ni, 62.1%id, 4.4%wa, 0.3%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
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