On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 05:38:19 +0000, Wouter Vanden Hove said:
Just noticed 2 recent "academic" papers at http://mice.uni-muenster.de/mers/index.htm
The German c't magazine runs this article by Stefan Krempl
http://www.ct.heise.de/ct/04/01/045/
with the conclusion "Die bezahlten Studien können so hauptsächlich als neuer Hinweis darauf gesehen werden, wie groß Microsoft die Bedrohung durch freie Software einschätzt." (Those paid reports should primarly be viewed as an indication on how seriously Microsoft rates the threat of Free Software [for their business]).
There is also an article in the current German Linux-Magazin (http://www.linux-magazin.de/Artikel/ausgabe/2004/02 (TOC only)) by Harald Milz where he claims that this job motor by MS is only due to all the problems and defects of MS software and thus a lot of companies make a living on working around these bugs. With MS software getting better over time this market will dimish.
Much like car vendors would deliver broken cars and many garages are required to let the customers make actual use of their new cars. Whether this is an advantage for the economy is another question ;-).
Werner