[SLUG] RE: AutoCAD Clone for Linux - IntelliCAD now in beta

From: Bryan J. Smith (b.j.smith@ieee.org)
Date: Sun Nov 28 2004 - 23:34:46 EST


On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 22:45, Ken Elliott wrote:
> Once they started to change the code base, they fully committed to Win32.
> You could still buy the Unix and Mac versions for years. It wasn't a
> 'Microsoft Thing'.

There was the Win32 commitment, but also the Microsoft buy. One could
argue it was enevitable, but one could also argue the buy accelerated
it. ;->

> Sorry, but it was. I saw the actual numbers and both Unix and Mac were a
> drop in the bucket. They did consider porting the new core, but the cost
> outweighed the income by far. Considering how badly they screwed it up,
> they didn't have the time or resources. Besides, Unix workstations were
> high priced in those days (>$10K typical), and customer wanted NT-based PCs
> for the lower cost. I agree that MS has done some arm twisting, but the
> business case was clearly there.

Sounds like Intergraph. They thought NT was their savior, hence why
Bentley Systems had the first native NT application in Microstation.

Unfortunately, as Intergraph and Bentley Systems found out too late in a
Gates visit to Huntsville, Gates said "dual monitor wasn't worth his
bother" even though OS/2 had it (NT would not until 5.0/2000).

Luckily for Intergraph and Bentley, Matrox came up with extending the
framebuffer on its cards and tricking NT into thinking it was one
monitor. I'm sure they would have done things differently.

I guess my point is that people decide to work with Microsoft, only to
find out they sometimes they only hurt themselves.

-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                    b.j.smith@ieee.org 
-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly
retraining for the latter, omitted "software assurance" costs in 
compatible desktop OS/apps for the former, no free/legacy reuse for
latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.

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