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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rusty Johnson who wrote (48026)	7/19/2000 2:29:15 AM
From: JC Jaros	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

You're confusing an OS with a GUI --- Oh, NOW you tell them. <g> -JCJ

To: Rusty Johnson who wrote (48026)	7/19/2000 10:37:12 AM
From: Tom Chwojko-Frank	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

The OS and GUI are intertwined enough on the desktop to make them inseparable. (Whether that's good or bad is up to you to decide.) That is not true on the server, which is why flavors of Unix can succeed in that market. I also never claimed that Windows is the best OS out there, but it is competitive. MS Office is a great product due to it's ease of use (GUI). Porting it to Linux would mean porting the Windows GUI to Linux. That's not trivial. But it is doable. We'll see if it gets done. Operating systems and office suites are not free. It's total cost of ownership that matters, and that includes support. MS Office is easier to use, hence less long term support. We'll see if other OSes compete here as well. Regarding the findings of fact: The statement I originally responded to was that Microsoft gained its marketshare (and I assumed Windows share of the OS market) illegally. The findings of fact state that Microsoft acted illegally after it became a monopoly by leveraging that monopoly. It is not illegal to become a monopoly, it is illegal to abuse monopolistic power. I made no statement as to whether I agreed or disagreed with the findings of fact. MS does some things well. The open source/Unix community does some things well. It will be interesting to see who succeeds, and if the Open Source movement can keep itself from fragmenting. Tom