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

To: McClam who wrote (67099)	4/11/2002 2:48:59 PM
From: Charles Tutt	Respond to of 74651

If winning is equated with market share, then free can be a pretty tough competitor, as long as the free and not free products aren't totally disparate in capability. Of course, free doesn't bring in as much revenue as not free. JMHO. Charles Tutt (SM)

To: McClam who wrote (67099)	4/11/2002 4:45:34 PM
From: nommedeguerre	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

McClam, "Not in Econ 101" True for manufactured goods, but there are no scarce resources involved in producing a line of code and once produced the cost of replication is insignificant at best. The money is to be made in the application and support of the software. Microsoft has made it blatantly clear that competition will not be tolerated hence there is no point for someone to compete under the old concept of building the better mousetrap. Anyone desiring to support a custom spreadsheet for example, is better off contributing to OpenOffice and then consulting on the application/customization of it. The option of customizing Excel does not exist and introducing a competing spreadsheet is no longer realistic. The only recourse is to make no money off the tool itself but make it off the services you offer for that tool. Contribute to the tools you use and your job can become more efficient and profitable. All professionals give away time by keeping abreast of developments in their field. Spending time contributing software to that field, reading about it in a trade mag or trying to use a new whiz-bang ActiveSomthing standard, is still time given away. More fun and beneficial to contribute enhancements that are needed now than to wait for them to possibly show up when it is convenient for the agenda of a "federated" software source. Whatever the hidden economics are behind the open-source movement, the fact is they are producing code at rate that I would never have thought possible two years ago. Whole industries are based on the application of mathematics but most mathematicians are far from wealthy. Something else must drive these people to give away their time for the benefit of all. Cheers, Norm