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

Microsoft vs. Open Source = Hilarity

I wanted to comment on some amusing quotes from a C-Net article titled Microsoft Resumes Bashing Open Source. Firstly, Clint Patterson, public relations director for Microsoft's Unified Communications Group says the following:

"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. "Many in the open-source software community have shifted to hybrid business models. They are making the same business decisions as any commercial software company in terms of what products and services to give away, what intellectual property to protect, how to generate revenue, and how to participate in the community."

I wonder if Microsoft recognizes that the Mozilla Foundation (Firefox) with 90 employees made over $52 million dollars in revenue in 2005. I don't want to suggest that's almost $600K per open source developer but I just did. Not to mention that Firefox has pushed browser innovation further than any other company could have anticipated VIA Extensions, Themes, Dictionaries, Search Engines, and Plug-Ins - Something Microsoft claimed was not possible.

I laughed pretty hard when I read this quote from Matt Asay, vice president of business development at open-source document management company Alfresco:

"The open-source community has actually been shifting away from hybrid models," he said, pointing to Alfresco, Funambol and MuleSource as examples. "Hybrid was yesterday's model, when people were still trying to get comfortable with the shift. Tomorrow's is 100 percent open, with 'proprietary services' on top."

Those services, Asay predicted, could be either for support, as in Red Hat's case, or as in Internet-hosed services, the kind of thing Yahoo is getting more serious about with its $350 million acquisition of open-source e-mail software maker Zimbra.

This is the way I've thought of Software recently, so I guess it's tough to take MicroSoft seriously when they seem to again be nothing more than one step behind the pack. Any how ...

Over and Out

Firefox The Most Common Browser To Hit This Blog

I installed w3counter a couple days ago on my blog and I'm shocked to see that the vast majority of the hits are coming in from the Firefox 2.0 browser.

Check out the graph below. Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 account for about 52% of the hits on this site leaving Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0 with a measly 37%.

One thing that shocks me a bit is that there is actually a Blackberry Browser hitting the site. Sweet Sweet Sweet

Over And Out