Public Works Canada solicitation about FOSS

[Evan Leibovitch]

Alex Beamish wrote:
> As Rob has already indicated, operating systems are not necessarily
> one-size-fits-all; offering a choice makes it easier to convince a
> customer that IBM has a solution that will work for them. And this
> puzzles me about Microsoft: instead of continuing to sell and support
> Windows XP, they insist on closing down a now stable operating system
> and forcing their customer to buy The New Thing, Vista. And then
> Microsoft's compounding the problem by coming out with Windows 7,
> meaning some customers will skip Vista altogether and go with that
> product instead. That's weird
Not really, if you consider their business model (selling software licenses)

Once everyone has XP on their computer, the market is saturated. People
expect not to have to pay for security updates. So the only way to get
recurring revenue out of that market is to offer a 'feature' upgrade
that requires a new license.

The feature upgrade also justifies a price increase -- The cost of
Windows 7 for netbooks will be significantly more than the existing XP
licenses.

I don't necessarily agree with that model, but I wouldn't call it wierd.

- Evan

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