On Nov 17, 6:48 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
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> ____/ The Ghost In The Machine on Tuesday 18 November 2008 01:07 : \____
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> > On Nov 17, 1:35 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > wrote:
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> >> ____/ ness...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on Monday 17 November 2008 19:41 : \____
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> >> > <Quote>
> >> > Minister of Government Administration and Reform Heidi Grande Roeys
> >> > said she was granting 2 million kroner ($285,000) to the national
> >> > center for free software to adapt and promote OpenOffice for such
> >> > government use as public reports, accounting and archives....
>
> >> > In April 2006, the Norwegian government announced a long term program
> >> > to step up use of open-source software to reduce its dependency on
> >> > computer giants like Microsoft.
> >> > </Quote>
>
> >>http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jw4MPPI93SAQa9K17qq...
>
> >> >http://www.dagensit.no/bransje/article1541178.ece?jgo=dne
>
> >> They adopt OpenOffice.org?!?! They must have missed that *ahem* 'study' that
> >> urmmmm... Microsoft just 'found'.
>
> >> Truthfully, OpenOffice.org was downloaded over 10 million times in about 3
> >> weeks. How many copies of Office does Microsoft license each week? How much
> >> of it is 'pirated', i.e. given by Microsoft for free to keep Google Apps,
> >> OOo and the likes of them from gaining 'too much' of a momentum?
>
> > One can establish an extremely rough upper bound
> > easily enough; Microsoft's raw revenues are $60B/year.
> > That translates into about $3.5B over the 3-week period,
> > and if one assumes that Microsoft Office is (a) the primary
> > revenue generator and (b) sells for $1000 retail, then
> > that translates into 3.5 million new licenses over that
> > 21 days, max.
>
> Microsoft is entering debt, Ghost. That's a fact, acknowledged by Microsoft
> itself. Like the Federal reserve, they could be keeping a poker face. They got
> busted before.
If it's anything like the Atari debacle back in the 80's, they could
be in for some interesting times (though not in a good way).
In any event I'm going by Yahoo! financial data, which is presumably
from corporate reports. If these are inaccurate the SEC might
have a few words with them... ;-)
>
> Microsoft earns money from its software in very few countries. In most
> countries it gives it away in order to stay relevant. Even in the developed
> world, Microsoft software is now almost free... because GNU/Linux is doing
> well, particularly on sub-notebooks.
>
>
>> If one instead assumes $150 retail (student variant), the
>> figure ups to 23 million new installations. The real
>> bound is hopefully somewhere in between these two.
>> No doubt someone might point me at the actual figure,
>> if it's publically available.
>
> You're bound to miscalculate here.
No doubt. ;-)
> They sell things like campus licences that
> are anti-competitive and even got sort of banned in Norway, IIRC,
> thanks to Linpro.
>
>> I'm not sure I want to accept either of my generated
>> figures, absent more digging.
>>
>> If one incorporate piracy (which cannot be officially
>> counted!) the figures inflate further. I frankly would
>> think that 230 million new Office installations over
>> a 3 week period is a highly unrealistic number, if one
>> assumes 90% of all installations are pirated, but even
>> a 10% piracy rate ups things from 23 to 25.6 million.
>> If one uses the lower 3.5 million, one gets either 3.89
>> million or 35 million.
>
> "Piracy"? You mean lockin/gifts from Microsoft, right? Microsoft is endorsing
> this openly.
I'll admit I have no idea what to use here apart from the
RIAA-suggested term, though one could use a phrase such
as "unauthorized software installations". After all,
there *are* real pirates in locales such as Somalia,
who are a little more vicious than someone hawking an
illegal duplicate.
And of course under certain conditions these software
installations will hook the users thereof, at least
until Microsoft comes a-visiting with the traps set
in said installations (these traps are part of the
upgrade process, presumably), and cuts them off.
There are also possibilities of ancillary sales --
presumably a user with a pirated copy of Vista might buy
a legitimate copy of Office, for examples.
>
>> If one assumes the fantastically low 0.1% adoption rate
>> for those 10M OpenOffice downloads, one gets 10,000 new
>> users of OpenOffice; if one assumes a (hopefully more
>> reasonable) 10% adoption rate, one gets of course 1M.
>> If one assumes the highly optimistic 99% adoption rate,
>> one will get 9.9M new OO installations. Which is closest
>> to right? Absent more info, I've not a clue, though one
>> hopes for the best case scenario.
>
> One sure thing is, OOo gains ground quickly and its only
> rival is $0 Office (or $3 Windows+Office), which is killing
> Microsoft's cash cows.
It's old and stringy anyway. ;-) Of course, I'm curious as to
what the time frame is for such efforts as Midori, assuming
Midori is the next direction for Microsoft's operating systems
and not just a thought balloon thrown out there for pundits
to look (and maybe shoot) at.
>
>> (In my case, I download it through Gentoo, so have no idea
>> whether I'm counted therein or not, or how many times,
>> as there are also issues regarding new release versions.)
>
> A lot of copies come to GNU/Linux through the repos, so these
> are not counted. The same goes for virtually any GNU/Linux
> distribution, which typically comes with OOo.
>
> The true numbers you will not find or be able to obtain
> from Microsoft.
I would trust openoffice.org before Microsoft, in this case. ;-)
> Watch this document:
>
> http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/comes-3096.pdf
>
> Microsoft is proud to have adopted a modern-age Goebbels-like
> strategy. That's the company's policy.
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