[Gllug] Barbican website - accessibility issues

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Tue, 2002-11-12 at 20:07, Garry Heaton wrote:

> >On the positive side I would argue that their (Microsoft) products have
> >made IT affordable to many more individuals and organizations than
> >would have been possible otherwise - I suspect you disagree with me on
> >this!
> 
> Since the biggest selling-point for OSS alternatives has been
> Microsofts's licencing fees, yes, I have to disagree. Here's what a
> 25-client office server will cost you:

<snip costings>

Shockingly, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of defending
Microsoft ;-).

Your costings are valid today, but remember that whatever OS you use,
you're paying for the hardware. It was Microsoft who commoditized the PC
to the extent that IBM clones became the standard, and economies of
scale kicked in to allow PC's to become affordable to Joe Average.
Remember that software started out free - it came with your hardware,
which was proprietary and wincingly expensive.

IBM, in their rush to get a PC to market, used an off the shelf set of
components, with the exception of the BIOS. Compaq cloned the BIOS, and
DOS would run on anyone's PC clone. Microsoft provided a layer of
abstraction above the hardware that allowed PC's to become cheap
commodities. The existence of cheap clones was, IMO, a necessary
precursor to the free software movement gaining any real traction.

It's interesting to note that Microsoft have for years fought to
ruthlessly kill anyone that might do to them what they did to IBM - make
a commodity out of their product. Thus the focus on killing Netscape
when it seemed the browser might become the new desktop, and make the OS
irrelevant, the effort to undermine Java, which again held the same
promise. Microsoft puts all their effor into making sure that developer
mind-share targets Win32, because they understand that the OS doesn't
matter. This is why the most potent, and for Microsoft, the most
dangerous free software apps are those that run on Windows as well as
Linux. When all the apps a user is running are cross platform, changing
the platform is easy...

So yes, I would agree with the original poster - MS dd make things more
affordable and accessible, and their actions were, IMO, a net positive
until the early nineties.

Mike.


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