Re: [Sheflug] Things Move on ...

["Bob Mottram" <fuzzgun@xxxxxxxxx>]

2008/6/20 Richard Ibbotson <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Looks like Bill Gates is on BBC-2 at 7 p.m. tonight.  Money Program
> special report.  About his retirement and what he plans to do with
> his wealth.  Hopefully help out a lot of disadvantaged people in
> places like India, China, Africa and so forth.


...by dumping gratis (or nearly gradis) software onto them.



> No one knows what might happen without Bill at the helm but the hope
> from a lot of people (millions of them - including Hollywood and the
> New York financial sector) is that Microsoft might finally die in the
> way that IBM once did.  I suppose not but we can only hope.


I think this is already happening, at least amongst software
developers.  I can remember ten or more years ago a career at
Microsoft was something which young developers aspired to.  That
doesn't seem to be the case now (It's Google now).

Although things still look relatively rosy for Microsoft I think
there's trouble ahead for them, in terms of progressively draining
developer mind share and challenges to some of its core products
(particularly Ubuntu and OpenOffice).  All of their recent exhersions
over OOXML are really aimed at trying to cling on to domination of the
office productivity software market, which apparently still
constitutes about a quarter of the company's income.  I think the
amount of profit which can be made from this kind of software is
likely to diminish, especially if the economic situation becomes
tougher.

- Bob

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