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Microsoft's struggle to compete with 'free'
,----[ Quote ]
| Back in 2002, as Roy Schestowitz calls out, Microsoft was desperately trying
| to figure out a response to Linux. The problem wasn't Linux as a
| product-level competitor. The problem, as its Windows chief, Jim Allchin,
| told a small gathering of Microsoft partners (PDF), is that Linux changes the
| nature of software competition with odd things like "community" and "GPL
| licensing," the latter of which Microsoft didn't like one bit :
|
| We feel a huge threat from Linux. Maybe we shouldn't, which is a question
| you could answer from your perspective...There's Linux the community.
| We're going to learn from Linux the community. Incredible what they
| did...We're going to practice and practice and practice (to learn how to
| respond to Linux)...
|
| GPL is the licensing model. We thlnk it's very bad...We don't think it's
| have a problem with that, at least on licensing. But GPL, we think it's
| very bad basically for the world, but especially for the United States.
|
| This is not surprising, given that Allchin had earlier deprecated Linux
| as "an intellectual-property destroyer" in 2001.
|
| But name-calling was proving not to be enough, and for a reason that Allchin
| and Microsoft struggled to grasp, but one that its partners, which distribute
| the bulk of Microsoft's software, felt first-hand on the front lines. When
| Allchin later asked the participants what the biggest driver of Linux is,
| they didn't mention its modularity, high performance, or other
| characteristics. Back in 2002 (and, indeed, today, in many instances), one
| thing mattered...
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10148928-16.html
Recent:
Microsoft threatened on antitrust non-compliance
,----[ Quote ]
| As surely as night follows day, so Microsoft is regularly upbraided for not
| complying with the US government's landmark 2002 settlement for breach of
| antitrust laws.
|
| Now, six years into a seven-year settlement monitoring process, presiding
| settlement judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has told Microsoft's she doesn't
| think it's going far or fast enough in meeting the terms of the deal.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/25/mcirosoft_antitrust/
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