RE: HBS WK: Who will win Microsoft or Linux?

Stephen, I'm not disagreeing with you, I just don't understand what you
mean precisely by "countervailing influence" below. Could you elaborate
a little please?

I had an additional insight on my Horizontal-Vertical model, that aside
from the Horizontal hot bed of open source activity, and the Vertical
hot bed of open source activity, that there is also a hot spot in
Programming Tools... which doesn't fit neatly into the model I presented
the other day. Who says the cobbler's kids don't get shoes? :-)

There may be other hot spots of open source activity that I am missing
here... Parenthetically, I would classify infrastructure sorts of things
as Horizontal, after all everyone uses TCP/IP...

-Kelly

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen J. Turnbull [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 9:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: HBS WK: Who will win Microsoft or Linux?

    Kelly> If a piece of software is too widely appealing, like word
    Kelly> processors, Operating systems, web browsers, etc., then it
    Kelly> is a prime candidate for a widely supported open source
    Kelly> effort. If it is too vertical, (as in CRM, payroll, the
    Kelly> sorts of things that Perot Systems, PeopleSoft and the like
    Kelly> go after) then large companies will pay people to work on
    Kelly> open source efforts to increase the bottom line elsewhere.

I think there's a lot to what you say, but especially for the "very
horizontal" class the size of demand is a countervailing influence.
Although many software firms, especially Microsoft, are known for trying
to crush their competition, that doesn't mean that there isn't
substantial profit to be made by getting to the market earlier with a
better product, then getting out later, if and when the market gets
commoditized.  (Shapiro and Varian call this the "3M strategy".)







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