[ Thanks to robt
for this link. ]
“Let us examine the notion that Microsoft has become like
butter, the high-priced spread. For Office XP Standard Edition,
CNET’s November 18th average price was $390; for Corel Word Perfect
2002 Suite it was $270; for Lotus Smart Suite Millenium, $210; Sun
Star Office was $80; and Open Office was and still is $0 (free
download at OpenOffice.org).“It is estimated that the Office Suite alone accounts for
$10-billion of Microsft’s $30-billion in annual revenue. For
Windows XP Home the price was $190; for Mandrake Linux 8 it was $27
($0 on direct download); for Windows 2000 Advanced Server it was
$2,350 for one CPU 25 users; Redhat 8 Enterprise edition with
unlimited users was $149; Solaris 9 on x86 with unlimited users,
$90. The estimates vary from $8-billion to $12-billion for the
revenue brought in by the Windows server and desktop editions.
Microsoft’s Visual Studio.NET was $750; GCC and other GPL developer
software on Linux, $0.“So for more than two-thirds of Microsoft’s software portfolio
by revenue the company is no longer the best price/performance
producer, but in fact often has one of the highest purchase
costs…”