Paul Graham on great hackers - Microsoft [LWN.net]

Paul Graham on great hackers - Microsoft

Posted Jul 29, 2004 21:59 UTC (Thu) by mbp (guest, #2737)
In reply to: Paul Graham on great hackers - Microsoft by tjc
Parent article: Paul Graham on great hackers

He's right that it's not repeatedly. I humbly submit that he's wrong that it was just a lucky break: it was a pretty good insight, though maybe Gates was just lucky to be the first one to see it and ruthlessly exploit it.

One of Microsoft's insights was that since software has no marginal reproduction cost, if you can charge a per-unit price you can make a lot of money. One of Open source's insights is that since the marginal cost is zero, a free market tends to drive the price down to zero, and it's good to look for other models than charging per copy.

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Paul Graham on great hackers - Microsoft

Posted Jul 30, 2004 0:50 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Microsoft's success depended on what is in hindsight a huge error by IBM: IBM did not insist on owning the OS for the IBM PC. If they had so insisted, Microsoft would have collected a one-time payment and consulting fees or else would have lost the business to someone else. Microsoft would then have been just one application developer among many for the PC, with no privileged position. That's what Paul Graham means when he writes: But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM.