Ah, I remember reading more or less the same exact thing on /. in 1992, the first (among many) Year of the Linux Desktop. The intervening, holy crap, 32 years have shown that open source is awesome when it scratches a developer/sysadmin itch and your primary customer base are devs/sysadmins. As soon as you want to sell to average Joe users, you need PMs, and UX people, and testers, etc, and the OSS business models have in fact never achieved to get those in the picture: not once in 32 years, an entire generation.

In fact, 32 years later I would go as far as to say that Microsoft has been deviously clever in promoting Open Source as its Great Enemy, the Nemesis that will bring it down. And while we were all busy promoting Libre Office and what have you, Lotus died, Ami Pro died, Word Perfect died. I.e. commercial companies with half a chance to be actual, true, competition. Open Source will not kill Microsoft. Better commercial software is the only thing that can.

At some point Firefox was quite effective at competing with Microsoft's browser.

So it happened at least once.

WordPerfect beat the brakes off Word, and I will die on this hill.

> Microsoft won't ever be able to compete with free/libre and self-determination

That's an interesting take that doesn't seem to line up very well either with history or the article, which points out that governments have made moves like this in the past, only to return to Microsoft products at some point in the future.

Since at least the late 90's I've been hearing prognostications that Microsoft was doomed because of open source and how it's only a matter of time, and they are now the most valuable company listed on US stock exchanges.

https://companiesmarketcap.com/ - Microsoft is the number one most valuable (publicly traded) company on the planet. Microsoft has been "competing with free/libre and self-determination" for literally decades and they have been able to do it because free/libre isn't something most people care for in the slightest, and self-determination struggles to do the boring bits well - and that's most bits - or to offer any compelling integrated vision, or to compromise to make disparate tools work together for the greater good of the customer.

> and they have been able to do it because free/libre isn't something most people care for in the slightest

flagrant editorialization .. there are countless battles over the course of the MSFT campaign that had serious outcomes..

a simple observation is that "most people" are children, elderly, infirm, crooked or otherwise not in the contest .. "most people" certainly do not speak English at all; they neither care nor not care as they are not meaningfully involved in a way that matters

in other words, PP is partisan gibberish

> "a simple observation is that "most people" are children, elderly, infirm, crooked or otherwise not in the contest .. "most people" certainly do not speak English at all; they neither care nor not care as they are not meaningfully involved in a way that matters"

You can't dismiss "most people don't care" with "most people don't care", it's the same point.

you see this kind of wishful (delusional?) thinking very frequently on hn:

> Microsoft won't ever be able ... their business model is ... have had enough.

statements made with complete certitude, as if these things aren't nebulous to begin with or in the process of being decided. it reads like the opening line to a christopher nolan superhero movie (i.e., a call to arms) rather than a position or even an opinion.

i personally don't understand what people get from the act of writing/posting such things - i mean i'd get it if we were on some hill about to rush into battle but this is an anonymous/faceless tech news forum.

They are telling themselves that and they want others to believe that reality. But it's not based on what's happening in the real world.

Hey, responding in this thread to make sure you see it. Would you be open to conversation re: FPGA deployment in Ukraine? Tips and pointers mostly. I don't see any contact details on your profile, however I would really appreciate if you were to find some time for us... In case you're open to it, please send me a line: ilya <at> hrest.org, or @badt:appar.at on Matrix.

It’s actually the opposite of what you’re saying.

Software freedom can’t compete with having someone else manage your email, documents, and communication servers for you.

The moment you contract someone else to provide those solutions there’s inherently no way to have end to end “free” software experience even if your contractor of choice is using free software.

People don’t subscribe to 365 because Word is better than LibreOffice Writer. They subscribe because someone else is removing a bunch of labor from their organization.

management executives also "capture and exploit their customers" in particular, their employees but also their contractors.. MSFT is enabling that model. All the participants know it. An individual person is not the decision maker. MSFT desktop OS appeals to the decision makers, for better and for worse.