I guess that as I attempt to tease out issues underlying the "Big Software War" I may as well start with some basic economic factors.
In this and later entries I will assume for numerical simplicity that a Microsoft Windows XP licence costs $100 (US dollars). Adjust the actual numbers up or down according to taste and your perception of reality.
Accept numbers in this and later posts as approximations and reflections of a spectrum within and among countries. As far as I am aware the overall analysis isn't particularly sensitive to specific numbers. That is not to say that timescale and various other quantitative measures won't change if the assumed monetary values are altered.
Let us suppose that your name is Mohammed and you live in, say, Malaysia. Or your name is Surav and you live in India. Or China. Or a host of countries which are signficantly poorer than a typical Western country.
Your family's annual income is, say, $2,000 (US dollars). Perhaps because you want to better yourself (or give your children opportunities you never had) you prioritise a computer purchase - to give yourself or your children access to computing.
[Remember that the truly poor won't be even able to afford basic hardware and some may not even have access to electricity. I will return to the very poor in a later entry.]
You have the hardware. You are then faced with the choice of finding an operating system and applications.
If Mohammed selects Microsoft software he has two basic choices.
He can obtain pirated copies locally at relatively small cost.
Alternatively he can purchase a Windows XP licence (notional $100) and, say, an Office System 2003 licence (notional $400). Let's say to keep the arithmetic simple that his legal option to acquire Microsoft software means he has to spend $500 in addition to whatever he spent on hardware.
On an annual income of $2,000 he has a big problem.
For him Microsoft software may simply be unaffordable. Full stop.
Open source software, say Linux and OpenOffice.org and a host of other open source software is likely to be available for a nominal number of US dollars.
Basic economics means that Mohammed is very likely to purchase open source software. If he purchases Microsoft software legally he could be depriving his family of food, clothing and shelter.
To understand how important people like my notional Mohammed are to Microsoft's future and open source future in the "Big Software War" we need to look at demographic trends, some of which I will discuss in the next entry. In later posts I will look at some economic issues in Western countries and in the corporate sector.
Posted by Andrew Watt at October 10, 2003 09:03 PM