Micro$oft's Slash and Burn in Malayasia

Microsoft: a slash-n-burn policy

Apparently, Microsoft is dumping its software [US$ 300 for a computer with M$ goodies] on Malaysia in response to an acknowledged on-going competitive threat the company feels from developers in the open source community, particularly from Linux software distributors. Notwithstanding that this practice may not be entirely appealing to local software development by Malaysian developers, Microsoft's strategy is remarkable in how it conspicuously proves many of the claims raised by the open source community.

Of course, it's not all about cost with open source software. It's also about interoperability, control and transparency. If these values will be important in our networked computing future, it won't really matter if Micro$oft continues to drop its prices here in the U.S. or anywhere. The kicker is that we need usability peeps to really start contributing heavily to open source software... I feel it happening and I know Debian has a usability project team.

Posted by joebeone at Mayo 20, 2004 10:43 AM | TrackBack