I know, it’s a dead horse, along with DataSets versus BEs, VB.NET vs C#, and all the other *blog post topics that tend to crop up every month or two . Remember, I’m an open source hippie, and pretty liberal to boot. I was raised that way, so it’s not really my fault, but it’s how I tend to think. So, here’s my take on MS charging lots and lots (enterprise prices) for Team System:
Ballmer said "Developers, Developers, Developers" right?
Now, if you’re like me, you heard this and thought of armies of developers, writing good code, saving the world – one unit test at a time. Some of us may have linked this sentiment to our own drive to create quality software createsystems that work, in some kind of “greater good” of software development way. But we were really just kidding ourselves. The real meaning of this statement was “… they’re they key to our success…” ie “…they’re the key to shareholder profit…” We all really understood (even us hippies) that this statement really meant:
“Developers, Developers, Developers : this is how Microsoft stay uber-profitable and continue to crush our enemies.”
Which is fine. No problem here with companies making money… Hey, even hippies have to retire and own boats.
But here’s where I’m a little confused.
If Ballmer really sees us developers as the key to MS making money, why would they price Team System out of reach - and even un-license us MSDN subscribers from using parts of it? Especially since we’re writing .NET code with the stuff. It’s not like Java shops are going to be buying Team System and using it to manage the process of writing Linux code, are they? Wasn’t he saying that MS needs to enable developers? Isn’t this what you were saying Steve?
Perhaps what Ballmer really meant is “Developers, Developers, Developers – We're not charging you guys enough!"
Every day, I'm more and more interested in open source.
I often wonder if I could do what I need to do without any MS software installed on my home computers. Don’t get me wrong – I love Microsoft. I’ve lost friendshps over my love for them. I just don’t love giving them too much of my money. Hey, I’m already devoting my career to their technology, what more do they need from me? Revenue from the four computers I have sitting in my house?
Finally, a shameless self-serving announcement
I really like Telligent's open source model. Information Week has a cover story on Open Source this week. They’ve called it a “Boomlet.” I think they’re right. I’ve decided to release WSMQ as an open source application, with a licensing structure similar to Telligent’s. I’ll be posting more about that in the next few weeks.
-Brendan
* This BTW could be the fatal flaw with blogs and is a topic for another post “Cyclic Redundancy Patterns in Blog Post Topics” (the other fatal flaw is that people like me can comment on issues like this, and get a Google ranking companies would kill for .. is this really a good thing?).
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