[UFO Chicago] "Microsoft is dead"

[Brian Sobolak]

I stumbled across this essay today. As I think I've mentioned and posted
here before, I'm a big fan of Paul Graham.  He has officially declared
Microsoft dead--not bankrupt, but no longer the evil presence that
made them the target of every Linux programmer's vitriol as in the
past.  No one cares about them any more.

This brings up a lot of stuff... is Web 2.0 perhaps more than we
think--the potential end of the Microsoft hegemony?  Is the GPL v3 a
bigger deal than many think it is?  Will the culture of sharing code
die when you no longer have to compile & install code on your
machine--it's just a service in the cloud instead?

<http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html>

"Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years
starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them.
I mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it
only affected me indirectly.for example, in the spam I got from
botnets. And because I wasn't paying attention, I didn't notice when
the shadow disappeared."

"But it's gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of
Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money.so does IBM, for
that matter. But they're not dangerous."

...

"I'm glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus.evil in
the way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the
Microsoft monopoly didn't begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM.
The software business was overhung by a monopoly from about the
mid-1950s to about 2005. For practically its whole existence, that is.
One of the reasons "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is
the feeling, conscious or not, that this era of monopoly may finally
be over."


brian


--
Brian Sobolak				
brian @ planetshwoop.com
http://www.planetshwoop.com/

"Bad taste is real taste, of course, and good taste is the residue of
someone else's privilege..."  -- David Hickey