[Upd-discuss] number of users of free software

[Mashilamani Sambasivam]

I read the following in a harvard review article
(I dont remember the author) I 
happened by chance to read:

Basically its analysis said that microsoft
wins over many users not because it
has a great OS, but because so many people 
made programs that became dependent on the 
OS microsoft wrote.

It said that 'making s/w that other people 
use to make other s/w is one of the biggest 
way of promoting an OS'.

For example, let us say that 'a' users use OS 'o'. Let
us say 'b' users use another popular language 'l' in
OS 'o'. Let us say another 'c' users use the end
applications produced by the language 'l'. Then the
net worth of the OS 'o' is not directly proportional
to 'a' but is directly proportional to
'a+b+c-(aINb)-(bINc)-(aINc)-(aINbINc)', where
IN stands for intersection of the sets, where 
c is a big multiple of b.

That is, if you make one 'software that makes
other software' the use of your OS multiplies
exponentially. For example, let us say one
OS suddenly provides support to run java applications,
the users of the OS multiplies exponentially 
cos it adds not only java users but also all 
the users who want to use the end applications
made of java.

MAIN POINT: 'Making software that helps make
other software (like gcc, mono, java)' multiplies
exponentially the user base. That is one the
primary ways microsoft has been winning (eg: word,
powerpoint, excel etc).

Masi


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