On Company000's acquisition of Company001 [LWN.net]

On Company000's acquisition of Company001

Posted Nov 6, 2003 10:13 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774)
In reply to: On Company000's acquisition of Company001 by coriordan
Parent article: On Novell's acquisition of SUSE

> Despite seeing it just last week, I can't find/remember where I heard it.
>
> But even with this data removed, my point stands.
>
> Companies can give users freedom, and still pay wages. RedHat, CodeWeavers,
> g10code, MySQL AB, Ada Core Technologies, etc. have been doing it for years.

Right, and I have no doubt that one can build a successive business based on the free software. However, saying that only 6% of MS's income comes from the software sales you in fact imply that the other 94% of its multi-billion assets are legal (in the sense of FLOSS spirit). It allows MS to cry loadly: "See, we get our money in the same way these dirty commy hypocrites want (and use) themselves! Why should you (business) bother considering using free software? Why should you (senators) consider using the antitrust laws against us?"

I believe the 6% number related to the desktop OS sales only (and still I'd expect it to be higher). Other rumors say that desktop OS + Office sales amount to roughly half of the yearly MS income.

If it were 6% or so indeed, MS would happily made its software free (as in beer), since the neglible 6% would be easily compensated by a jump in the installed base (and hence, support fees).

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On Company000's acquisition of Company001

Posted Nov 6, 2003 17:10 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

> 94% of its multi-billion assets are legal

Source of income cannot justify holding power over computer users.

> Why should you (business) bother considering using free software?

Because without software freedom, you do not fully own your data. And with file format lock-in, you cannot choose the best tool for the job.

> Why should you (senators) consider using the antitrust laws against us?

Because monopoly status of the OS has been used to gain monopoly status in the Office software realm as well as other realms.

> If it were 6% or so indeed, MS would happily made its software
> free (as in beer), since the neglible 6% would be easily
> compensated by a jump in the installed base[beer]

I don't know much about Windows anymore. There could also be business motives for putting a high price on the box. One thing to remember is that their install base couldn't get much higher no matter what they do.

As mentioned, I can't put up a decent defence for this statistic, but I can still defend that software freedom does not have to destroy profits.

On Company000's acquisition of Company001

Posted Nov 6, 2003 21:21 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]

> I can still defend that software freedom does not have to destroy profits.

Well, it does destroy profits - _unfair_ ones.

On Company000's acquisition of Company001

Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:04 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

> Well, it does destroy profits - _unfair_ ones.

Ok, I'll concede this much :)