🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 4 Apr 2000 16:44:52 +0100, phil hunt <philh@vision25.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
>But if Windows + Office were open sourced, i would expect companies to 
>come forward to sell Windows+Office distributions, and perhaps add their
>own enhancements. Like Red Hat with Linux.

Been there, done that. IBM tried the "better Windows than Windows" bit with
OS/2, and fell flat on its corporate face. While a lot of the blame for that
has to be laid squarely at the feet of IBM's abysmal marketing, there's a
lesson there for anyone who would try to compete with Windows by trying to
out-Windows them: M$ was able to position Windows as the only way to run
Windows apps by making gratuitously incompatible changes and then trumpeting
their status as the only system what would run the changed programs. IBM was
perpetually plying catchup.

This is why I believe that open-sourcing Windows itself, and/or licensing
others to modify and sell it, will not curb M$'s monopoly abuses. That would
do nothing to prevent M$ from selling their version of Windows as the only
one, true, guaranteed-to-be-compatible-with-everything-past-future-and-
present Windows, and consumers would stick with theirs. It's a nice visible
patch that corrects nothing fundamental.