Microsoft buys stake in company tying Linux to Windows

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Campbell" <bill at celestial.com>
To: "Fplist (E-mail)" <filepro-list at seaslug.org>
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: Microsoft buys stake in company tying Linux to Windows


> On Mon, Nov 22, 2004, John Esak wrote:
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com
>>> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com]On Behalf Of Tony Ryder
>>> Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 12:32 AM
>>> To: FPlist
>>> Subject: OT: Microsoft buys stake in company tying Linux to Windows
>>>
>>>
>>> Microsoft buys stake in company tying Linux to Windows
>>> John Fontana, Network World
>>
>>Wow!  That sounds pretty good...   :-)
>
> Microsoft has a long history of buying companies that produce
> products that compete with their Windows base, RealWorld and
> similar accounting software, inexpensive SMTP servers when the
> Microsoft Internet mail servers were about $5,000, and others.
> Rarely do these *nix products last long after the acquisition.
>
> Microsoft embraced and extended Kerberos specifically to make it
> difficult to run their Windows clients on non-Windows servers.  I
> don't see them being interested in promoting a product that makes
> it easier to do this.

Verily.

I was just dealing with one example today,
One client has (had) Great Plains, which MS bought and discontinued all 
non-Windows versions a long time ago.
He hasn't been able to get support for his Novell version in years and 
that's one reason he now has a SCO box and a filePro app from us since 2 or 
3 years ago.

Examples abound. They don't buy things to support them, the buy them so they 
can kill them, or worse, change them into something you don't want anymore.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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