Open source software undermines Windows strategy

From the end of the article,

"Starting last year, the company began selling a low-priced 'starter' edition of its PC operating system in some emerging markets. It is, in effect, a standard version of Windows with some of the functions switched off."

What is the point of using time and money on producing a crippled/reduced version of a major product? Where is the value add? Surely a market ideology is the value add and this is a value take.

purple: it's like what the formula companies used to do in South America (sans the death of infants, of course) -- get a person who can't afford the software hooked on it -- then they can't easily switch.

If they understood the freedom of using a product that is the political equivalent of democracy for operating systems they would never even entertain even a reduced functionality version.

Gates used to talk (used to) about people stealing his software in China as a good idea -- at least when the legal issues got straightened out they would have to buy Windows...

Note that lately they've dropped that talk. It's all about "Intellectual Property".

--FeriCyde

Cannot remember nor do I really care deeply, but one of the early versions of NT network capable [3 or 4] had two "distinct" products. However, actually both had essentially the same ability to act as a server with perhaps the desktop version supporting a lesser number of clients. Nonetheless, when someone tested the more limited version the reviewer discovered it had about the same power as the version sold as the network server MS was enraged. Microsoft made it seem to be a licensing issue that should not have been breached, but later I think they took more pains to make sure the cheaper version was sufficiently defective to cause little user confusion.

FeriCyde I was getting at what looks like the failure to do "value adding" being a good indicator of a company failing to compete.

So for anyone to buy an inferior version of the main product, knowing that the full software item already exists, is counter intuitive. Because once it exists as software distribution can be negligible. It is development expense that needs recovering.

I suspect they would be better off doing language specific versions of the full product. A Cantonese only Windows XP would have limited resale cost outside language specific regions and they could then sell at the market regions rate. Probably cheaper to do with well structured code too.

TxtEdMacs: That was either NT4 or 2000, and to turn the crappiest entry-level edition into the Server Edition you had to add or change one file.

Isn't it silly? It's only bullying that's allowed m$ to get away with this kind of nonsense. That and the majority of people still view computers as demon-possessed objects to be feared and loathed, so they lose all powers of rational thought. I think we could conduct a successful LXer fundraiser by selling customized sticks for terrified lusers to beat their machines with.

Tuxchick - consider yourself not only plagerized, but robbed of your intellectual property - I was going to purposely misspell intellectual but being the elitist superior snob I am, I didn't bother because I didn't think anyone would be smart enough to catch the irony. I will take your idea, modify it slightly and make millions with it, effectively shutting you out of any possible profits or gain from your original idea. Hey...ya'll were the ones that said open source should welcome Microsoft with open arms. BTW...If you see Steve Jobs, tell him I said hello.

Steve Ballmer

gaahhh! helios patented sticks! Darn you all to heck!