> This is just plain crap. M$ was spending $200M/yr on IE development. Good
> GOD there are OS's out there (and far better than Winblows) who's entire
> development cost were not $200M.
And that is why UNIX deserves to be thrown in the trash can. It is NOT a
good operating system. It is poorly designed, buggy and baddly documented.
Read the UNIX hater's manual for chapter and verse. Its success had
everything to the fact it was once given away for free and thereby
established a significantly larger user base than other mini operating
systems.
Only Microsoft, Digital and IBM have actually put a significant investment
into the O/S and had anything to show for it. IBM's OS/2 was rejected by the
market because the clone manufacturers wanted to prevent IBM leveraging a
software monopoly into a hardware monopoly. MicroCHANNEL killed OS/2, not
MicroSoft.
Most hack programmers judge an O/S by the degree to which it resembles the
first one they ever used. I know people who are still appologists for MVS,
who think JCL is the best sytem ever etc.
And UNIX programmers and SYSOPs cling to the privilleges of their trade
guild with the same tenacity that COBOL, FORTRAN programmers and MVS did
before them.
Apple did a nice job of copying the Xerox Parc GUI and then hoped a bunch of
ridiculous patents would give it an everlasting monoploy. If the company had
not been immersed in a fog of smug self satisfaction they might have got
Copeland finished in less than ten years.
The UNIX vendors appeared to think that the O/S was born in a state of
perfection. The Linux community has done more in two years to develop the
O/S than AT&T, Sun and all the other Unix vendors put together did in
twenty.
Most computer companies have been in the business of selling hardware. The
software was merely an unpleasant cost of doing business. Even those who
recognised that software made money followed the idiotic management strategy
of the Boston Consulting group, starve your cash cows of resources so you
can invest in 'stars'.
It is the same brand of management that caused GM to lose almost ten billion
dollars attempting to become an IT business instead of investing in modern
manufacturing equipment and new engines.
But it is MUCH easier to blame the evil Russkies^m^m^m^m^m^mMicroSoft.
The real reason Gates went after Netscape was that he though MicroSoft would
grow fat and lazy the way Lotus, VisiCorp, AshtonTate, WordPerfect, Apple
and IBM did. Andressen and Clark played right into Gate's hand by saying
they would replace MicroSoft.
Fact is that Netscape never had a prayer. Andressen had carefully recruited
most of the best coders from the Web team but he had alienated the main
architects. He wanted exclusive control of the Web. He wanted to be regarded
as the prinicipal reason for its success. Fact is he wasn't.
MicroSoft only did what we asked them to do, integrate the Web deeply into
the O/S.
Fortunately the Appeals court has already overturned Jackson once on that
issue and I have no doubt that will happen again.
Phill
