> My only concern with WIND's long term prospects are Microsoft.
> Unlike many, I believe Bill Gates has tremendous vision of what
> the future holds and so I've come to be wary of any sector he
> targets.
I've never been accused of lacking an opinion, and my opinion on
Bill Gates is quite strong! Visionary? Not even close! If I could
characterize Bill Gates in a word, it would be "reactionary". IBM
handed Gates a virtual monopoly in the PC market, and he has done
nothing but use the resulting profits to protect that monopoly. He
may be a competent businessman, but he doesn't have a creative bone
in his body. The basis for my viewpoint follows.
PC users struggled with MSDOS for years, until Apple started taking
market share away from MSFT with the MacIntosh Graphic User Inter-
face. The result: Gates reacted by introducing MS Windows. Apple
sued, but lost. The technology, which Apple licensed, was developed
by Xerox.
PC users were stuck with exchanging data by carrying floppies around.
Then Novell, based on work being done on Local Area Networks in the
UNIX community, introduced Netware. When Novell became large enough
to impact MSFT's bottom line, Gates reacted by introducing MS LAN
Manager. However, Novell had established such a large installed base
of Netware users that LAN Manager remained a second-rate product. It
was the success of the non-proprietary TCP/IP protocol that ultimate-
ly doomed Novell to a diminishing market presence. Even so, Gates
didn't acknowledge TCP/IP until Win95 was introduced. Not much vision
there!
MSFT didn't get into word processing and spread sheets until Word
Perfect and Lotus defined their respective markets. No innovation
here, just follow-the-leader. This also applies to the SQL/relational
data base market, which Oracle defined and still dominates.
The first 32-bit processors were introduced in 1986. MSFT didn't
produce a 32-bit (almost) version of MS Windows until 1995. Never
mind that PC users had been buying 32-bit PCs for the better part
of a decade! I guess Bill didn't have his glasses on, or, with his
infinite wisdom, didn't think PC users were "ready".
MSFT couldn't even spell "Internet" until Netscape created the WEB
Browser market. Now Gates just does his best to clone the Netscape
product and calls it Internet Explorer. MSFT is fighting so many
fires on this front that they have very little energy left for any-
thing else. Mr. Gates was COMPLETELY blind-sided.
Bill Gates has vision? That borders on sacrilege! If you want vision
in the computer business, look to Sun Microsystems and Silicon
Graphics. Gates is blinded by $$-$$ signs.
As far as Bill's money goes, it can do a lot of things, but it CANNOT
create engineering talent out of thin air. The caliber of people
needed to successfully participate in the embedded RTOS market is
very high; this is a critically limited human resource. It is
precisely this fact that pushes companies toward commercial RTOS
solutions. All the money in the world is not going to change it.
-Dave Lehenky |
