🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <25056@mirror.UUCP> garison@prism.TMC.COM (Gary Piatt) writes:
>In article <2574@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> Jeffrey A. Sullivan writes:
>=>Try to put it in your perspective:  You develop a whiz-bang new piece of
>=>software that everybody -- but EVERYBODY -- wants to run (e.g., an
>=>OS), and start making millions on it.  But all of the sudden, all of
>=>your competitors bring up amazingly similar OSes and your profits
>=>decline dramatically.  Wouldn't you seriously think about suing?

>Frankly, no.  If I had already made millions of dollars on my software,
>I would assume that the development costs had been covered and that 
>anything that I made over production costs (diskettes, shipping) was
>clear profit.  I would drop my retail price to cover production and
>a small profit margin, knowing that my competitors could not match or
>beat the price and still cover their (still outstanding) development
>costs.  The competition would go down in flames and I would once again
>be the only producer of said software.

Keep in mind that for any company that wants to live longer than a
couple of years, development on this product never ceases, and also this
product is becoming the cash cow for the company, so you need this money
to keep coming so you can develop the next generation of machines and
software.  Just because development costs on System/Finder 1.0 have been
covered doesn't mean that you don't need money anymore... who's going to
pay for the creation of 2.0? The users of 1.0.

If you never intended to enhance your product this reasoning might
hold up; but even then your competition quickly surpasses and swallows
you, no matter how low your price is.

Also, when a company has a cash cow the size of MS-DOS and comes looking
to squeeze in on your market, you _better_ defend yourself.  I
personally don't think a lawsuit is the way to do this, creativity is;
but your scenario just doesn't hold water.

>Apple is suing Microsoft solely for the public attention (in my own
>opinion).  Consider this:  Apple makes Macintoshes, Mac II's, etc;
>MS-Windows was written for PC's.  Where's the competition?  Apple is
>not losing any business to Microsoft.  

Nope.  Think about it.  When you buy a mac what are you buying? The
Apple name? Probably not.  The windowed interface, and the productivity
and ease-of-use gains it returns? Probably.  Now, if you were the only
one in town selling something people loved, and someone started selling
a product that could offer very similar benefits, fewer people would
have to buy yours.  Suddenly, people who would have had to come to you
for windows could get them somewhere else-- perhaps not as well
executed, perhaps not the most original execution (forgetting for the
moment the Xerox question), but offering most of the same benefits.  
Add to that the possibility of working with equipment the buyer already
owns, and of course Apple loses business.

Besides, the attention they get is mostly negative out of something like
this.  They're suing because they see a substantial threat to their own
interests-- holding a near-monopoly on WIMP environments for personal
computing, especially in the lucrative business market.

>In fact, it could be argued that
>Apple gets free advertising evertime someone uses Windows; sooner or
>later, a Windows user could be expected to purchase a Mac... going to
>the horse's, uh, mouth, as it were.

Well, that's just silly.  As Windows improves it becomes _MUCH_ less
likely that someone would decide to buy a mac after using windows.

-Antonio Romero   romerom@confidence.princeton.edu