[Pc_Support] Windows Vista for free? Three pronged attack on open source

[Damien McKenna]

Someone put in writing a concern I've had since I discovered there would
be seven different versions of Vista:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=11913

My personal belief is that Microsoft will gave away the Vista Starter
edition, possibly also Microsoft Works which I could see being renamed
to Vista Works.  Their rationale for doing this will be an attempt to
capture the "free OS" market.

I also believe this to be part of a larger effort to supplant the open
source movement.  I believe they see three obstacles in OSS: price, code
sharing, data ownership.  They're taking care of (i.e. marketing) data
ownership through their upcoming XML formats for Office 12; the code
sharing is being covered by both their continued and now more publicized
use of OSS internally and the creation of new OSS projects; the former
is being covered by things like the Express editions of the Visual
Studio tools and, as I'm fairly certain, a free version of Windows.

-- 
Damien McKenna - Web Developer - Damien.McKenna at thelimucompany.com
The Limu Company - http://www.thelimucompany.com/ - 407-804-1014
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