Microsoft Admits Linux is Cheaper?

Fri Oct 3 13:27:00 GMT 2003 Microsoft Admits Linux is Cheaper?

Link: Microsoft Linux Chief Urges Channel To Resist Short-Term High Of Linux Margins

Oh, those short term highs. Frankly, I'd be more afraid of these short term highs:

Taylor acknowledged that Microsoft slashed the price of its Windows Small Business Server 2003 in part to fend off competitive threats in the SMB space, and said the company eventually will have to cut the price of its software across the board. Microsoft has already lowered the price of Windows clients to $2.50 per user in some improverished nations, Taylor said.

Naturally, if Microsoft can succeed in wiping out Linux, the prices would go right back up. It's classic drug dealer strategy too: here's the cheap stuff that gets you hooked, or in this case locked in to Microsoft. Once you are hooked, the price goes up.

That Microsoft foresees the death of competition is obvious:

"Once 3.3 million Unix servers go away, it's tough to ask them to be 100 percent Microsoft," Taylor said

Microsoft has done nothing to help make them "go away", of course. Not that they need much help. Sun had had a bad week, reporting bigger than expected losees, and got slammed by both Merrill Lynch and Eric S. Raymond. SGI has responded to SCO. As SGI has access to the source code SCO claims has polluted Linux, one would think they ought to know better than anyone how real SCO's claims are. If their analysis is correct, SCO doesn't have a case at all.

Meanwhile, Microsoft ducks and dodges, funding studies that show them in a good light and probably quietly burying those that don't.

But Microsoft may finally have to answer for its shoddy software: Microsoft faces class action over virus crashes will be interesting to watch. The EULA has protected them so far, but maybe this will be the start of the end of that. I've often wondered why a third party, damaged by someone else's use of Microsoft software, can't sue. That would be quite a class: everyone who has had to deal with thousands of bogus emails from SoBig and Swen worms.

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