Day: May 3, 2001

When I wrote about MS executive Craig Mundie make the DOJ’s case, I had no idea he’d be so explicit about the evils of business models that include giving away a service. Here’s an excerpt from the speech he gave today:

It [Open Source Software] also fundamentally undermines the independent commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product rather than just the cost of distribution.

In this sense, open source software based on the GPL mirrors the .com business models that proved the least successful during the past year. They ask software developers to give away for free the very thing they create that is of greatest value in the hope that somehow they’ll make money selling something else. In effect, it puts at risk the continued vitality of the independent software sector. The business model for OSS may well be attractive for software as an adjunct to hardware – the model of the ‘60s and ‘70s – or for service businesses that do not generate the revenue needed for major investments in technology. But as history has shown, while this type of model may have a place, it isn’t successful in building a mass market and making powerful, easy-to-use software broadly accessible to consumers.

Giving one thing away in order to sell another product? Isn’t that Microsoft’s busines model? Get IE Explorer, Media Player, etc. free — just buy a copy of Windows.

Did Mundie hire David Boies to ghostwrite this for him? Sheesh.

I’m pretty much a slacker — I leave the workaholic stuff to my wife, Lisa. She’s working 18 hour days this week running the 36th International Congress on Medieval Studies.

More then 3,000 academics giving 1,700 papers in more than 600 sessions. And she’s the person in charge of it (the largest conference on medieval studies in the world, she tells me).

All this week she’s been living in the main dorm where they’re housing all of the people who fly in for this. Which, of course, means my daughter and I get to fend for ourselves.

Which in itself wouldn’t be so bad since Emma and I get along fine (Lisa says it’s because my daughter has an almost a carbon copy of my, umm… unique personality), except that the kid has been sick most of the week.

There’s nothing like waking up to have a four year old climbing into your bed, standing over you whispering that she feels like she’s going to be sick, and then immediately demonstrating that in fact she is going to be sick… all over you. Typically my wife and I would share the duties of taking time off work to take care of Emma, but since Lisa’s busy with her conference, I’ve spent several days at home with her.

Not that I mind because my work is slow and I have to admit that I am a big fan of children’s television shows. And, of course, kids make the funniest observations about illness.

For example, a major topic in our house lately has been the precise function of blood. Emma has the temperament and outlook of your average rugby player, and so is constantly involved in minor scrapes. Using her keen power of observation she has noticed that the pain she feels from such scrapes is closely associated with bleeding in the area. Utilizing her keen power of induction, she has concluded that the blood causes the pain, and has been requesting that we remove the blood from her, which, of course, would thereby prevent the pain from recurring (which my wife points out is technically true, but there are probably less extreme ways to prevent pain from scrapes and bruises).