To: David Howe who wrote (56608 ) 3/13/2001 6:32:51 PM From: dybdahl Respond to Microsoft .net is mostly software, as I see it. But today, Microsoft gets most of its money from selling rights to use their software for everyday tasks like clicking on a screen, doing some text, graphics and numbers etc. In fact, if you asked me in 1986, how a spreadsheet would look like in 2001, I would definitely say "there is no such thing as a spreadsheet", and I would say "Word processors will be gone by then and replaced by DTP programs etc." It didn't happen. Why? I don't know. It seems people just don't want to buy more advanced products for everyday use.
StarOffice is good enough for most people, and it's free. In 14 years, it won't be less good for most people, especially not when it begins to take advantage of the fact, that it has been open-sourced, which will probably happen after OpenOffice 6.0 is released.
Visio replacements, PhotoShop replacements etc. are all there now. For free. The desktop PCs remaining in 14 years will run Linux or some free version of Windows, maybe something else, like Hurd or Darwin.
Where will Microsoft go? Not the desktop. Not software for everyday's use. It will be more specialized software. Database servers? Nope. Interbase, MySQL etc. are free and get improved so much over time, that paid database servers are only for special purposes. Basic E-commerce? Guess not. Web-servers? Keep dreaming.
Microsoft .net on the other hand, provides a framework, on which customized solution can be built. Specialized databases that are more advanced than SQL can handle, highly optimized e-commerce solutions etc. can all be built on top of this. It can evolve to one gigantic scripted framework on the internet, approximately like Unix has been on a single server.
What Microsoft can provide in competition with free tools, is added value, more productivity etc. Their problem is, that the open-source community will try to make it as good, and Microsoft will have to support Windows, OS X, GNU/Linux and other platforms in order to stay competitive.
In 14 years, you don't want to pay for an operating system or mainstream software, but you do want to pay to have your problem solved quicker or better. In fact, it will be interesting to see, how small a percentage of the population will know, what an OS is.
Lars.
