The winner takes all of closed source.
In the good ol' Windows days, software was divided between software with source and software without source. Software with source included Word documents, Access databases, Excel spreadsheets, batch-files. Today, it also includes HTML, JScript, VBScript, even script-based virus'es are distributed with source.
Even the traditional "VB for apps, C++ for components" division shows this clearly.
On the Windows platform, Microsoft will always have an advantage on closed source apps, because the customer has to consider the risk on having the software provider closing down. But as the decision to run Windows has already been done, Microsoft has already been selected as a trustworthy software provider in that phase.
Other very trustworthy software providers for the Windows platform often have another agenda. For instance, IBM have the Linux agenda, which can (in some customer's eyes) make them look less credible as a software provider for Windows.
Microsoft is the king of closed source software for Windows. They only want to allow others to do scripting based on their tools, and Microsoft .net is the ultimate step in doing so.
As long as Windows is the dominating platform, and as long as most customers do not use open-source software on their desktop computers, Microsoft is very safe. Therefore, Microsoft has to attack the use of open-source software, and the Linux OS on desktops.
Lars. |
