I know that Borland might not exist today, if it wasn't for Anders. But Borland is no MSFT, and will never be. Most Delphi buyers are database tool buyers, not programming tool buyers. This means that most Delphi buyers don't value the quality of Delphi, they mostly buy it because they can develop database apps fast. Anders may have delivered a lot to Borland, but not enough to make Borland the biggest software company in the world. And the question is, will he be able to deliver the technology to Microsoft to make it keep or increase it's market share, or will Microsoft .net fail to provide the next cash cow for Microsoft. I believe that the basic Microsoft .net technology will not become a cash cow, but services based on .net might.
The history of Borland also shows that middleware isn't easy to sell. I mean, who does actually BUY a Corba ORB? I know a few who do (all americans!), but it's definitely not a mainstream thing to buy when NT has DCOM built-in. Therefore, I don't see any ways, in which people would BUY something ".net" because it's ".net". Nobody will. They will continue to buy programming tools, services and applications. If you buy a shoe, you're not interested to have the price for the glue specified separately.
I don't agree on your points on dBase, but that's another story.
Lars. |
