Harvard Study weighs in on MS vs. OSS debate
Their basic argument is all things being equal, Microsoft fails to dislodge OSS altogether, and OSS fails to break MS's monopoly entirely. I'm okay with that, to be honest - I think that's a realistic point of view, and despite my bias towards OSS, I can believe that's a good model for how things will work out. However, while I agree with their conclusions overall, I disagree with some specific points:
"In addition, a larger installed base [for Microsoft] also implies that there will be more feedback on bugs and more suggestions for new features." I'm not sure I agree with this. In principle, yes, but in practice not everyone who uses an OS files bug reports and send feedback. Who does? An active minority who have the technical know-how to do so (therefore to some extent it's dependent on how easy it is to file bug reports and give feedback, and how useful/specific such feedback is), those who are very passionate about the OS, and those who have a serious pain point with a specific feature or features of the OS. Therefore, it's not entirely accurate to say that more users equals more bug reports and feedback - it's better to say that more of these specific types of users means more bug reports and better feedback. And I'd argue that Linux users as a whole tend to fall more into these categories than Windows users.
"The basic trade-off is the following: With a duopoly, more individuals and organizations use PCs because prices are lower, and this raises welfare. However, with a duopoly, no operating system ends up exploiting fully its potential because developers' efforts wind up divided between the two systems. However, with a monopoly, the efforts to develop new software and improve the platform are directed towards one system only and this may turn out to be better from a social welfare perspective." This takes a far too simplistic approach to the relationship between a software monopoly and software development. In practice, there are other issues to consider:
- How easy is it for developers to develop on a given platform?
- If there are cross platform development tools, efforts to develop applications for an OS aren't split between OSes - they benefit both
- A monopoly leads to software homogeneity
- From a security perspective this is not in the social welfare
- It can also lead to a lack of innovation because there are no alternatives to experiment with new ideas and approaches to things.
"we were also surprised to find that piracy may end up increasing Microsoft's profits". I don't think you should be surprised by this. I don't think Microsoft is and it's a fairly well known phenomenon in geekdom that MS would prefer piracy to using an alternative.
Other than that, I think this article has a lot of good points. Some interesting thoughts on how FUD (and other morally questionable approaches) is a strategic approach that can benefit MS.
