[extropy-chat] economics of scarcity to economics of plenty

[Jack Parkinson]

----- Original Message -----
From: "BillK" <pharos at gmail.com>
On 10/31/05, Jack Parkinson wrote:
>
> For minor examples of alternatives - look at how much better Firefox is
than
> IE... and how frequently it is updated, how customizable... Look at
> Microsoft - a behemoth that takes 5 years to produce the next version of
> Windows - Linux developers run rings around them...
>

Minor nit-picking here. I am no supporter of Microsoft, but they have
a very successful business running just fine, at present.

If IE has over 90% of the market and is bringing in no direct income,
why bother to spend resources on changing it?

Microsoft has bought thousands of the best tech engineers in the
world. The reason they have taken 5 years to produce the next version
of Windows is historical. They spent years flogging the dead horse of
the XP codebase before the VP in charge had the guts to tell Bill
Gates the job was impossible. (He's retiring next year as a reward).
So MS had to start from scratch and write a completely new operating
system, taking the best bits of Linux design and attaching as much of
the old XP code that can be certified good and reliable.

*If it works*, it should have all the good bits of Linux and XP and
continue feeding income into MS.
5 years is not bad for a project on that scale.

BillK

All of the above is true enough - but the point was not that Microsoft are
bad. The point is that a rival and total alien 'economics of plenty' model
of doing business can not only keep up with the world leader - but in some
respects surpass them. All without the corporate support net that MS
employees take for granted...
How many might have predicted that during the early 1990's?
Jack Parkinson