osOpinion: Once Were Marketing Warriors

[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]

“One of the most powerful factors of Microsoft’s market
dominance these past 10 years, is the view that the company wins
every marketing battle it enters. This is regardless of the quality
of its products on offer within any particular market segment. This
has the following tangible and intangible effects:…”

“In each of these cases, Microsoft’s marketing muscle and
tactical forays into specific constituencies ensures that the
message of ‘If you compete with Microsoft, you will lose’ becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Over the course of many years, from the
late 1980’s onwards, this has been taken as gospel by most industry
observers. Its inflating bubble of marketing success grew with each
victory over competitors and Government anti-trust authorities. I
believe this bubble has now officially burst….”

“I believe the open source paradigm is presently on course
to dominate the technological dialogue between platforms and
consumers. Open source offers too many obvious and compelling
advantages to whatever has come before. (See previous work on
this topic: Shoulders of Giants This is slowly being borne out by
serious analyses such as the recent studies by Bloor Research,
which have shown that Linux beats NT under almost all technical
criteria. (Source) It is in the area of ‘marketing’ where we need
to map out strategies and tactics.”

Complete
Story