Microsoft vs. Open Source = Hilarity Part 2

I like pointing out other peoples mistakes. I hate it when I make mistakes. But I'm only human, and can only fly in my dreams, so I guess I make mistakes too. But I'm not trying to reflect on my failures. That's not my style, I don't fail all that often, there is nothing to reflect on. I'd rather boast about my success. Or this time, other people's success.

A while ago I wrote an article entitled Microsoft vs. Open Source = Hilarity. Well, this is the follow-up quick blog posting.

Yesterday, Mitchell Baker's the president of the Mozilla Foundation talked about Mozilla's success in fiscal 2006. Give it a read, you will be shocked about the amount of money that is pouring in the door. This serves to be a lesson to everyone including Microsoft that knocks open source. Open Source IS here to stay, and it will only get bigger.

If you have not read my previous post let me refresh your memory. Clint Patterson PR director Microsoft:

"The open-source development model has yet to demonstrate the ability to support profitable software businesses that can drive the coordinated research and testing necessary to sustain innovation," Patterson said.

Well, I guess Extensions, Themes, Add-Ons and um ah etc's still don't count as innovation. I guess neither does tabbed web browsing (added to IE 7 in response to firefox), standards compliance (still waiting), and um the few million members participating in this web browsers development community.

I guess the $66.8 million or 25% YOY Revenue increase isn't profitable. I guess a gross profit margin ratio of approximately 0.70:1 isn't that good. And I'm 100% sure that because they are open source they will never be able to leverage the nearly 100 million in cash on hand (well at least 66.8 revenue-17.9 expenses) to support profitable software business that can drive the coordinated research and testing necessary to sustain innovation. This definately won't happen according to Clint Patterson.

I'm going to keep harping on this until Patterson retracts his words, or he dies, or i die.

Dear Microsoft, I am a trusty integrator of your services. Please start to understand just a shred of what's going on here, because it's obvious you don't, and when you go down, your going to bring pretty much everyone else down with you. It's not going to be pretty, and it's not like IBM of the old days. You guys support too much of the PC economy - or pretty much everything in the PC economy outside of internet. Please figure out how to make a proprietary shop demonstrate the ability to support profitable software businesses that can drive the coordinated research and testing necessary to sustain innovation.

(But congrats on the F# announcement, I cannot wait to dive into that language, I just hope you are not becoming the next Sun).

Over and Out