[OT]Productivity and lesson learning, Linux style?

By Roy Osherove In Off Topic

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Historical article · Originally published November 16, 2004; technical details may be outdated.

[Warning: the following link is to an article that is _anti-Microsoft_  you've been warned]
This article is a very interesting read. On one hand I feel bad for the dude that fell into the teeth of BSA, and I feel kinda happy that in return MS got the opposite of what they wanted - less profit and bad publicity. Why is that? because (and this is only based on what I've read there is only so much I know about this so I might be wrong) it looks like they did that man an injustice and it was unfair.
Hey, I love MS products but if I was in his position I don't know what I would do.
 
"Has Microsoft tried to win you back?
Microsoft is a growing business with $49 billion in the bank. What do they care about me? If they cared about me, they wouldn't have approached me the way they did in the first place...And I'm glad they didn't try to get me back. I thank them for opening my eyes, because I'm definitely money ahead now and I'm definitely just as productive, and I don't have any problems communicating with my customers. So thank you, Microsoft"
 
Hell, I bet there's some lesson to be learned from all this.
 
All that said, some of the things that man said on the interview make me wonder if I'd ever want to work for him myself:

"...The other thing is that if you look at productivity. If you put a bunch of stuff on people's desktops they don't need to do their job, chances are they're going to use it. I don't have that problem. If all you need is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop, a word processor. It's not going to have Paint or PowerPoint. I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody had a Web browser. For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting, why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy. It just creates distractions. "

 

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