I have been pretty quiet about the "Big Software War" recently but this article, Fast-Emerging Thai Market Favors Linux seems to confirm the kind of effect I was arguing that we should expect, given the economics and demographics in many developing countries.
The article mentions price cutting by Microsoft in Thailand. It seems to me that that is a strategy likely to cause customer dissatisfaction elsewhere. Why, for example, should someone in other geographical locations pay, say, $100 for a Microsoft Windows licence that costs, say, $37 in Thailand?
The parting comment in the article about an anticipated featuring of "exit costs" in Microsoft marketing is an interesting one. Time will tell but it seems to me to be a much healthier strategy for Microsoft to emphasise the benefits of continuing to use Microsoft products.
It seems that Macromedia's upcoming Flex (formerly "Royale") is to incorporate SVG.
It seems to me to put further emphasis on the question of why Microsoft appear to be proposing to bypass SVG in the upcoming XAML approach.
One of the ongoing points of discussion re Longhorn is the role of XAML and why, or so it seems, XAML reinvents some aspects of SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics.
A new Working Draft for SVG 1.2 was released by the W3C on 13th November.
XAML has been a focus of discussion on the XML-Dev list recently.
Claude Bullard started a thread on Why I Like Longhorn and XAML .
A little later the ever-provocative Gerald Bauer started a thread Inside Redhell: Microsoft XAML Blogger Round-Up . Gerald's "Redhell" presumably being intended as word play on Redmond.
Apologies for marked gaps in posting the last few days. Unfortunately, deadlines make devoting a lot of time to the blog difficult for the moment.
This week's non-technical quote comes from the International Herald Tribune, in an article by William Pfaff, who I assume to be an American resident in Europe:
"But what actually has happened during the past nine months is something Americans have yet to grasp, and that others have yet to say out loud: People outside the United States have stopped believing the American story."
Link: URL: http://www.iht.com/articles/115911.html
It's a phenomenon I now see frequently in the UK but most of my US friends seem, as yet, to fail to grasp its existence or the reasons for it.
Trust, as I mentioned recently in relation to Microsoft, is a fragile thing. Easy to lose, difficult to recapture.