Public Works Canada solicitation about FOSS

[colin davidson]

In traditional software companies, on of the most difficult problems
faced is maintaining multiple versions. This isn't much of an issue in
the FOSS world, because the source is available and developers can
just wash their hands of version and move on (if someone really cares
about that previous version, they can "scratch the itch" themselves
either by maintaining it for themselves or by paying someone to
maintain it).

Microsoft has solved this problem (for themselves - their "solution"
only hurts their customers) by simply closing down previous versions
(stopping support AND stopping legal sales of the outdated versions).
The reason they don't simply abandon them is that this then makes the
unsupported version the main competitor for their new software and
encourages others to stick to previous versions, confident that their
applications will live on.

I am fairly convinced that one of these days, one of the sporadic
customer revolts will catch MS offgaurd and kill them for all
practical purposes.

Cheers, the other Colin

On 2/9/09, Alex Beamish <talexb-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 7:49 AM, Neil Watson <tlug-neil-8agRmHhQ+n2CxnSzwYWP7Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>  > On Fri, Feb 06, 2009 at 01:23:30AM -0500, Robert Brockway wrote:
>  >>
>  >> I expect large companies supporting OSS (such as IBM) are already
>  >> working on their submissions.
>  >
>  > IBM can be somewhat bipolar by offering Linux one moment and AIX the
>  > next.
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>  --
>  Alex Beamish
>  Toronto, Ontario
>  aka talexb
>
> --
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