Some of the best analysis of the Microsoft/Linspire deal was written by Dennis Byron (Research 2.0) Should this deal eventually involve vouchers like the Novell deal, he says, what we might be looking at is Microsoft’s graceful exit from Windows (well, maybe not graceful and maybe not without milking it for a good decade, a la IBM and its mainframes). Microsoft would leave the software to open source, grab onto Ray Ozzie’s vision and turn its attention toward managed services like Office Live. Bryon says the telltale sign will be the “Live” logo appearing everywhere. Read more.
The idea is interesting and maybe not completely off base though it seems unlikely that Microsoft is actually crafting this as a main strategy … Gates began his software programming career with the idea that software was valuable and should be paid for. Back in the day of the Atari, the idea was that people paid for the hardware and got the software for free (or nearly so), much like we pay for the television set and get the content for next-to-nothing.
He became the world’s richest man on that idea and there doesn’t seem to be a reason to believe that he or his buddy Steve Ballmer are ready to throw in the towel. Seems more likely that their strategy will be to try and add domination in the SaaS market to their resumes. Yet, SaaS as the main source of income for Microsoft does make sense as a backup plan, should open source continue to be the market disruptor that it appears to be.
