Still, this whole Microsoft trial has had me thinking….How did Microsoft get to be such a dominant force in the first place? Sure, they may have used some questionable business tactics, but what were the things they did well? Are there any lessons that the Linux community or Linux companies can learn from Microsoft? I think there just might be a few….
There Can Be Only One: Jon “Maddog” Hall refuses to allow Linux to splinter like Unix.
On Monday April 3, 2000, Federal Judge Thomas Penfeld Jackson issued his ruling in the U.S. vs. Microsoft antitrust case. The verdict? Guilty. No big surprise there.
Still, this whole Microsoft trial has had me thinking….How did Microsoft get to be such a dominant force in the first place? Sure, they may have used some questionable business tactics, but what were the things they did well? Are there any lessons that the Linux community or Linux companies can learn from Microsoft? I think there just might be a few….
So how did Microsoft come to control so many standards in the software industry? Well, for one thing, they did it by setting the standards for people to write to. Now, I’m the first one to stand up and extol the virtues of the open source development methodology, but if it has one weakness, in my opinion, it’s a lack of standards.
Say what you will about freedom of choice, when it comes to choosing a GUI, that freedom comes with a price. Programmers need standards to write to. If the average corporate developer looks into porting his GUI app from Windows to Linux, he will most likely be confused…
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