[john_other_john]

why is Microsoft so lame?

I think much of the industry a joke, and Microsoft a exception.

I have lived through a 30 year saga of battles for really basic baselines to be established, insofar as the wars over office software databases and operating systems are concerned. Yes, I am impressed by what I see now, so much has evolved fantastically, but mostly users perform the same tasks and there is no recorded gain in productivity I am aware of. Gates wanted ubiquity of computers. His actions probably did more to enable that than any other individual. Without Microsoft the sometimes seemingly embittered motivation for Linux would not have been anything like it was. I think Gates always wanted to move on to more interesting goals in computing, and am inclined to think the company open source decisions do more for enabling advancement than anything else, because they make a ubiquitous platform more consistent to write for, the perennial monopoly complaint of a aggressive Microsoft. The cash cow applications are bundled now with facility permitted only by integration at prices only low as they are enabled by dominance, and I see nothing not dominant or lame, about that. I only recently benefitted from VS Community, and am still really happy at that, and I bet BillG would dearly love to give SQLServer away if only he could earn from it like a operating system (it is enough one already) and it's a peculiar delight to think Larry E may actually lay awake at night, one day, fearful that possibility is real. I think the reason has more to do with necessity to pay big sales commission to maintain the ecosystem around Microsoft database business, which provides for the channel welfare in turn supporting the rest. Meanwhile there is no Linux competitor because the GPL is anti competition. Except and unless, like all the big convert lovers of open source, someone uses the ability of cloud VDI to never have to release their code. Then we'll have incentive to make a Linux ecosystem selling desktop seats. I'm sure that's why Microsoft is porting so much, even experimentally.