Make that two votes against the war theme. The section headings are fine, but the War/Pawn metaphor is not very inspriational. I think that goes for the scientific metaphors of mass, momentum, and acceleration too. Too many negative connotations for me.
Isn't Microsoft in a war with Linux anyway?
Couldn't you spell Micah's name right? He's the most famous Micah us non-Mike's have going
Time for a Slashdotting. I guess the server is holding up just fine ...
War may not quite be right, but surfing isn't quite it either. If a Company A is competing directly against Microsoft, do you think Company A views it as a surfing competition?
Oh, crud. Sorry about that Micah.
>If a Company A is competing
>directly against Microsoft, do you
>think Company A views it as a
>surfing competition?
Well, depends. If it's an OS company (Apple, Linux), then I guess it's a competition for who can make the biggest wave (or, to keep the metaphor consistent, who can have the most popular wave).
If it's an app company (Adobe, Intuit) then I think it's all about a surfing contest.
I'm all about helping developers learn how to win the contest.
Yes, I want Microsoft competitors to win. I'm judged by how many developers learn to surf on the Longhorn wave. If only Office is on my wave, I've lost.
ok, well sorry;
you can't say you don't like war
when you work for the devil.
if you don't see corporate america as what it is... that's your problem and if you don't see what you work for as being the problem, do you live in a whole? life is more boring at microsoft? i don't find your EULA boring.
or are you being paid to much to see the light?
i hope for the planets sake you don't have a job much longer.
guess i'm just another nut ball to you tho, u trained up goooooood.
>you can't say you don't like war
>when you work for the devil.
Heh, you shoulda seen what'll happen to my soul after signing up for this gig!
I just don't know how you can say "It's not war, it's surfing" when you work for who you do.
I'd say you're less a surf instructor and more the Iraqi Information Minister,
especially when you mouth "Surf Instructor" and your bossii are saying things like "Let's knife the baby", "cut off their oxygen", "Linux is a cancer, it's anti-american..." at the same time.
It is war. Microsoft, with its business practices, has declared war on its competitors and even its own customers.
Therefore, we in the Linux community are fighting not just to win, but to win totally. Only the complete destruction of Microsoft (or at least, a radical reforming of how it does business) will bring a semblance of fairness to the software industry.
The metaphor is apt. I hate war also, but I'm not a pacifist. If someone else starts a war, you fight back.
America has become desensitized to the word "War." Live with it.
Interesting how you turn the whole argument into a plug for Longhorn.
You buisness guys at Microsoft are good.....really good.
It reminds me of that part in "Pirates of Silicon Valley," where Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are talking about how Microsoft ripped Apple off, then Bill Gates turns the whole thing around.
But then thats your job, isn't it?
I feel like I've wandered to Indymedia.... 
Evangelism of a platform IS war, and war to the death, because no detente is possible: only one platform will survive. All other platforms will die, or be relegated to insignificant niches.
This is a natural consequence of markets with strong positive demand-side network externalities (see "Bandwagon Effects in High Technology Markets," Rohlfs, 2001), also known as "network effects".
Microsoft figured this out long before its competition did, and has exploited its understanding ruthlessly. It is not anti-competitive; it is hyper-competitive.
Is it anti-competitive to exploit the law of supply and demand? Of gravity? Of Moore's Law? Of course not. Microsoft may have done unfair things, but exploiting its knowledge of network effects is not one of them. Quite the contrary, it is ridiculous to ignore the realities of the marketplace. Microsoft's competitors behaved ridiculously throughout the 80's and 90's, and Microsoft exploited their folly -- driving its Windows/Office/VS triumvirate to industry domination and phenomenal profits.
Rohlfs calls Bill Gates "the supreme virtuoso" of managing network effects. Those other academic theorists who understand network effects, validate Microsoft's expertise.
Now, in the new millennium, Microsoft is showing the same kind of weakness vs. Linux that its competitors displayed vs. Windows decades before. Microsoft is reduced to claiming -- as Apple did regarding the Mac -- that its product has a lower total cost of ownership (despite its higher upfront cost); that its integration is an advantage (despite its relative lack of flexibility); that customers prefer to deal with a single vendor (even if they must sacrifice other advantages to do so). These arguments did not forestall the decline of the Mac vs. Windows, and they will not -- in and of themselves -- forestall the decline of Windows vs. Linux.
The only hope Microsoft has of retaining and expanding its dominance of the market is to convince independent developers to write their code only, first, or best for Microsoft's platforms (Win32 and .NET). They can only do this if they offer a platform that is so powerful, so cool, so compelling, and so profitable that developers will fall in love with it, despite lingering distaste for Microsoft itself. That is the only hope of ANY platform vendor, at any time, in any market. This is precisely how competition SHOULD work, and how it IS working. Microsoft is working its collective ass off to produce a suite of technologies (.NET) to be this love machine -- but it needs time to complete the technology and to evangelize it to developers.
This is the moment of Microsoft's weakness. If Linux's backers were as as knowledgeable about the management of networks as Microsoft is, as well-organized, and as ruthless, they could exploit this opportunity and crush Microsoft like it crushed its previous competitors. But they are none of these things. They are fragmented, "ruth-full," and i
Fortunately for MS, even if the Linux guys realize it, it is too late and they are too fragmented. MS has the advantage in that it can move as one unified entity, and that it can ship hella cool products in small timeframes. OpenSource takes years to produce anything decent, and it tends to be best at producing clones, not cool new products.
As any company gets bigger it starts to suffer from the inertia that a large corporation generates - I question the idea that "Microsoft can move as one unified entity".
"OpenSource takes years to produce anything decent, and it tends to be best at producing clones, not cool new products."
That was what people used to say about Japan, China and other third-world countries that now supply the overwhelming majority of cheap consumer goods and electronics.
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