I read about an exchange that he had
with the Romanian president. The problem that many Romanian users were running
pirated copies of Windows, but many programmers in that country could not afford
to buy Windows so they whet their programming teeth using illegal copies. The
contradiction was that if he stamped out piracy, then he would be reducing the
pool of talented programmers that he would need if Microsoft was to increase its
presence in eastern Europe.
He faces similar problems in other developing nations. As a former educator, I
know that whatever is modeled at school carries over into later life and into
the home. If schools in one jurisdiction run Macs, then you find more Macs in
the home. If it is PCs then you will find more parents buying home PCs.
Now, many developing countries are moving towards open source because they can
afford it and Microsoft has had to counter with initiatives of its own, such as
when the offered low cost versions of Windows XP, called the Starter Edition,
in China. The problem was that they had to remove much of the functionality of
XP so that they did not undermine their efforts to sell full licensed copies for
money to business where the real money was to be made. So there weren't as many
takers of the offer as Microsoft anticipated. People preferred to full pirated
version which was readily available and cheap to a legitimate stripped down
version that was even cheaper. For Microsoft, it is a Catch-22 situation, until
they learn that money can be made in other ways.
As developing countries and even business in the developed world start using
open source, then its image will improve and that acceptance will increase. What
started out as a cost savings move, threatens to undermine Microsoft's status as
market leader. That is far from happening, but Microsoft is getting panicky. You
can read any number of stories about leaked emails and internal memos at
Microsoft and you can see from their FUD campaign against open source that there
is unrest in Redmond.
The problem is that it isn't working because anyone who makes important
decisions regarding servers and service plans knows that Microsoft's assertion
that Windows servers are 10 times cheaper than Linux ones is a crock. They see
the savings because there are already so many companies running mixed networks.
They know what is working and what saves money and do not need to be lectured to
by anyone about their own bottom line.
In a recent podcast I heard a Sun spokesperson speaking about Sun's newfound
commitment to open source and from his viewpoint he sees open source as being
the future and that Sun is 100% commited to it. We shall see as they say, but if
Sun can make money from open source then so can Microsoft. The big money is in
virtualization, servers and support and not on the desktop, anyway. Embedded OS
is also becoming huge. The problem is that Microsoft has been fixated so much in
certain areas that it hasn't got much of a presence where the big money is to be
made. That is why VMWare stock is so high. They are strategically placed and
have a lead on their competitors in a very big and exciting area of growth. That
is also why Sun bought Innotek, makers of Virtual Box.
Windows users and the open source community alike. I have never
bought into the idea that it nees to be a winner take all situation. I hope that
we can co-exist and then everyone wins. It seems that bombast is giving way to
rational and pragmatic solutions. Then we can put aside our differences. Right
now there is too much suspicion and not enough good will on both sides to make
it work. The future should be interesting to say the least.