OSS Officially On Microsoft's Financial Radar Screen 639
seldo writes "More news from Microsoft's latest quarterly filing: according to eWeek, Microsoft says it may have to lower its prices in response to competition from open-source software. From the filing: "To the extent the open source model gains increasing market acceptance, sales of the company's products may decline, the company may have to reduce the prices it charges for its products, and revenues and operating margins may consequently decline". This is a fairly major revelation from Microsoft, and if it happens, it may be one of the biggest wins yet for open-source software: what do you know -- competition works!"
What? (Score:2, Informative)
Linux was on the space shuttle, and look what happened to it! Linux proliferation will only cause more disasters. Fuck linux!
Don't talk crap. NASA uses embedded BSD for their critical stuff. Anyway, the disaster was a hardware fault, not a software fault.
it's true! (Score:2, Informative)
But who wants XP anyway?
Re:That's good (Score:2, Informative)
Oh did I mention I've only had XP crash on me about 5 times total (twice for crappy nvidia drivers and 3 or so for crappy RAID controller drivers; neither of which were programmed by MS)? And my machine is constantly used and it up 24/7.
In my ~9 years of using various Linux distro's I think I've had it crash on me nearly as many times as the various versions of Windows.
The problem in general is poor system upkeep. I have a good track record because I take care of my machines; be they Windows or Linux.
Oh and I purchased a legit copy of XP and it sure as hell didn't cost me $300.
And how in the world did the parent post get marked insightful? Try troll. Oh yeah if you rag on MS you're not a troll. Silly me.
Re:MS Office will be hit first (Score:1, Informative)
My point is that Windows sometime in it's existance must have shown some good sides, compared to other operating systems.
Re:MS Office will be hit first (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm... Gates sells "thousands" (he actually sells about a million [yahoo.com]) of shares every month because 1) He's got 600 million of them gathering dust, 2) MSFT didn't start paying dividends until recently (even at $0.16/share that's only $96mm per year), and 3) the guy needs to live. Can you get by on a mere $96 million per year? I didn't think so.
Gates sells a fixed amount of shares every month - he always has and likely always will. One major reason is so that people can't draw weird conclusions from his personal stock sales.
Re:Prices??? (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC (I used to work for MS tech support. Don't flame me) rates are as follows:
Office gets 2 free application support incidents, with each incident thereafter costing $35, with no timed charges. Installation support is always free.
Most of the home products (Works, the games, etc) only get free support for installation. $35 for each incident for anything else. Even if it's a 30 second "Sorry, your data's hosed.".
Now here's where it gets tricky... Professional support for stuff like "I have this massive spread sheet in XL that isn't working, but all of my 900 lines of macro code appear to be right", "Access forms aren't working like I think they should", or "Exchange is acting funny" start at $245 per incident.
An incident is defined as follows:
I could be wrong tho. It has been over 6 months since I left tech support hell to do something else for a while. I worked my way out of support twice before, just to get shafted by the company that I was working for, so I'm kind of shying away from the IT industry.
Government (Score:3, Informative)
This is because of governments such as Germany's opting to mandate open source instead of mandating using the best available package, regardless of what that is*
* = Could be OSS, could be MicroSoft, could be a proprietary UNIX, could be Mac, etc.
Re:Quick Translation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MS has only two products, was :Margin compariso (Score:5, Informative)
I adore how cute it is when some FUD is propagated on Slashdot, and soon you can hear it being repeated verbatim as stone-cold facts time after time by Slashbots. Microsoft has three profitable divisions: Client, Server Platform, and Information Worker. I'm hardly surprized that some dullards interpreted that as "Office and Windowz!", yet in reality those three divisions account for the overwhelming majority of products with the Microsoft name on it. SQL Server? Yup. Visual Studio? Yup. Visio? Yup. SNA Server? Yup. Indeed, if you looked within even the unprofitable divisions you would find a bevy of highly profitable items: The Home and Entertainment Divison encapsulates Microsoft hardware, such as mice and keyboards, which themselves are highly lauded and tremendously profitable, however their profitability is being masked by the xbox.
This is all so laughable anyways, and indicates the core naevity of most open sourcers. Egads Microsoft mentioned open source! The reality, of course, is that such filings must include forward looking risks of any sort, including potential lawsuits, and envisioned risks by the pundit community. The fact that open source is mentioned in there is a given. To make this even more hilarious, though, the prior [nasdaq.com] quarterly report included the same risk statement, while the quarterly report before that included the statement "the availability of competitive products or services such as the Linux operating system at prices below Microsoft's prices or for no charge" as a risk factor. Looking at the annual report from 3 years ago [nasdaq.com] yields the statement "With an increased attention toward open-source software, the Linux operating system has gained increasing acceptance. Several computer manufacturers preinstall Linux on PC Servers and many leading software developers have written applications that run on Linux. Microsoft Windows operating systems are also threatened by alternative platforms such as those based on Internet browsing software and Java technology promoted by AOL and Sun Microsystems. " and " The Company continues to face movements from PC-based applications to server-based applications or Web-based application hosting services, from proprietary software to open source software, and from PCs to Internet-based devices.". I'm sure I could go back two more years and find similar forward looking risk statements.
I suspect that someone read an SEC filing for the first time in their life and thought they found a real revelation (as did the Slashdot editors when they posted this), when it's the same thing that has appeared in their filings for years now.
Re:Officially on their RADAR? (Score:3, Informative)
This is the actual radio transcript [navy.mil] used as the basis of the parent joke.
The SEC works...not competition... (Score:3, Informative)
In Microsoft's case, they are following the SEC's guidelines like many other companies. This is a change for many companies. In Microsoft's situation, we have seen these very recient changes;
Years ago, they should have issued dividends...now they plan to.
Decades ago, they should have broken out each division of the company and discussed profits and losses in each...now they do.
Decades ago, they should have discussed all reasonable impacts on thier profits for each division...now they acknowledge open source.
Don't think this is a new thing for them. Open source has been a potential impact on MS's profits for a couple years. The only thing that has changed is that MS must acknowledge it as a possibility. If they have suffered an actual loss due to open source, the SEC will pressure and eventually require MS to report the loss after it has happened. As of now, no loss is obvious. Microsoft is speculating and has not acknowledged a loss due to open source -- yet. f they did not point this out, it could be the basis for a future lawsuit if a loss occurs.
Thank the SEC, though late themselves, for doing things now that force transparency...that forces some information into the open so we have a better chance to judge on merit not PR.
Do not read too much into 10-Q filings! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I think this is mostly... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:why the gratuitious propaganda? (Score:4, Informative)
Unless I'm mistaken, VB was the first programming tool which allowed programmers to build applications with a click and drag GUI interface.
You're *very* mistaken. The first incarnation of graphical interface builders was probably at Xerox PARC in the late 70s. I say "probably" because there may have been an earlier one that I don't know about. Through the 80s there were at least two different competing Smalltalk development toolsets, each with a graphical UI app tools.
I personally worked with a half-dozen different tools that pre-dated VB. One of the best (*still* one of the best, over a decade later) was the NeXTstep UI Builder. Fantastic tool. Even back in the days of DOS applications, prior to Windows, I used a number of click-n-drag UI tools to build both text and graphics mode interfaces. I would imagine there were some early tools for the Mac as well, although I didn't use them.
In the research world, there have been a number of attempts to build *purely* graphical programming environments, in which you never typed any code whatsoever. The earliest of these that I'm familiar with was completed in the mid-80s (unfortunately I forget the name -- can anyone help)?
So, no, MS did not invent click-n-drag app development. I'm sure that somewhere along the way MS must have invented *something*, but I can't think what it might be.
Re:When MS cuts prices.... (Score:3, Informative)
It's a SiS motherboard, with audio/video/nic/usb on the motherboard. The best I've found is Mandrake 9.1 beta 1 has no sound but the network works; beta 2 and 3 are the reverse (no network, but has sound). Red Hat 8.0 has sound but no network.
This machine works fine with Windows 2000, so it's not a hardware issue. And this machine is several years old!
I really want to switch over to Linux but it's not a no-brainer.
Re:MS has only two products, was :Margin compariso (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, and I am sure that they make money off the gumball machine out in their front lobby too. That doesn't mean that the proceeds from said gumball machine have any great effect on Microsoft's bottom line. Last quarter Microsoft generated an operating income of $1.97 billion on revenues of $2.44 billion. MS Office had similarly ridiculous profit margins with an operating income of $1.88 billion on revenue of $2.41 billion. There are plenty of companies with those kinds of revenues, but only Microsoft has the combination of high revenues and ridiculously high profit margins. Even Microsoft's server software margins are only about half of the Windows and Office profit margins. I can guarantee you that, compared to Windows and Office, the profits on keyboards and mice are insignificant. What's more, there is no possible way that Microsoft could ever be even a tenth as profitable selling hardware.
Thanks to Windows and Office Microsoft is the software powerhouse, without the huge profit margins from these two products they probably wouldn't even be competitive.
Re:I'm your muppet in a sea of BS. (Score:2, Informative)
If you could read, you would know that he was not comparing the "proffit" on Office and Windows to keyboards, he was just pointing out that Microsoft has many profitable products, not just Office and Windows.
The fact is that there is nothing new here but failure. M$ gets into each new market the same way, by dumping
No, Microsoft gets in each new market by offering products that people want. The didn't get the largest OS market share by "dumping". They got there by making a product that everybody wants so bad that they wait in line to buy the next release of Windows at midnight the day it is released. Do you seriosly think that "big dumb corporations" would "stick Office on every one of their 7,000 peons desks" if the corporations and peons didn't want to use it?
People are realizing that free makes economic sense. blah blah blah marketdroid blah blah proprietary blah blah blah blah
Who are these "people"?? The 2% of users who use Linux? Or the 95% who use Microsoft? I'll tell you what makes economic sense. Buying a product that everybody knows how to use, from the senior engineers down to the HR secretary. Why is it better to transition to "free" software if you have to spend thousands forcing people to learn how to use it, even when the majority do not want to learn?
Slammer, Code Red, Nmedia, SirCam, I love you, Klez, la te da te da
Are you suggesting that Linux would be any better [yahoo.com] if they had a 95% market share?
Oh, and quit with the freeking dollar sign whenever you mention Microsoft. You look like a damn fool.
Re:When MS cuts prices.... (Score:3, Informative)
But still, look at all the hardware manufacturer sites; just about all of them have necessary drivers for Windows Me, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. A lot of the hardware manufacturer sites seriously lack Linux drivers, so if you're a newbie user it could end up being a aggravating experience finding Linux hardware drivers unless the commercial Linux distribution manufacturer is really on the ball about this. Red Hat's support for the more common PC hardware is quite good, but when you get the oddball stuff, that gets troublesome fast for newbie users.
Re:Margin comparison... (Score:3, Informative)
There is some issue about the amount of stock options that should be showing as a current expense, but no one wants another market crash, so don't worry.
Re:Margin comparison... (Score:3, Informative)
All the arguments I've seen in which Linux doesn't beat the crap out of Windows are simply lies.
Re:When MS cuts prices.... (Score:4, Informative)
Something to notice is that just about all of them need drivers for ME, 2000 and XP -- you need different drivers for every version of windows (OK, a bit of an exaggeration -- but only a bit!).
I don't remember having to hunt down a Linux driver for something since RH5.2. Windows, on the other hand....