Albert,

You're wasting your energy on being pis-sed off...

I bet that Microsoft DOES NOT compete with anything that you do. Take your accounting example. Great Plains is a very hard sell for Microsoft and they're not doing well with it. I also doubt that if you're building custom acounting software that you are doing it on the level that great plains is targeting. It's targeted at Microsoft shops that want end to end Microsoft solutions.

Microsoft has grown into different markets. If you heard Steve Ballmer speak at a Fox devcon that was nearly 15 years ago. A lot changes in that time frame, but one thing you have to understand that Microsoft ALWAYS provides extensibility into the new markets they go, so that developers and consultants can extend the systems. This is nothing new - that was SBTs model way back when, but this provides many more NEW opportunities for developers in most situations than lost opportunities.

Another example: Sharepoint. Look at the Portal market. Sharepoint is Microsoft's solution to this space, and while it's gotten very popular recently it's opened up a huge market for developers to extend sharepoint. (not that I think it's worth all the hype surrounding it - it's a behemoth)

And even while it's doing well, for the lower end of the market pure Web based portals like DotNetNuke and Community Server are also doing well (and since they are free these companies make their money off installation, support and consulting).

It doesn't do anybody any good to cry foul. The reality is if you saw a business opportunity that you thought you could fill you would likely take it regardless of whether you'd step on a competitors space. It's the way business and capitalism is supposed to work. If you have a better mouse trap then you have something that you can sell and it will do well regardless whether you have competition from Microsoft or not.

If you don't like it you can always move to a non-Microsoft platform - the choice is always there and see how you do in a 'free' market without the monopolistic evil empire that's out to take your slice of the market. Sorry I don't buy that for a minute...

Microsoft has lots of shortcomings but this isn't one of them...

+++ Rick ---

>What got me started with this was hearing Steve Ballmer telling some people
>the last few days that "Microsoft's main business is developing tools for
>other people to write software". Or something like that.
>
>I guess he's hoping that people have short memories. I think that all of the
>.NET people don't seem to realize that .NET seems designed primarily to support
>Micrsoft's own development efforts. All of their 3rd party development ISV
>efforts are fair game for M$ a couple of years down the road, once they've
>developed some good new ideas and proven the concept...
>
>I'm considering writing a business school dissertation on the topic. Of course
>there's always been competition/collaboration within this industry, but M$ takes
>it one step further - "screwlaboration" might be a new b-school term for it - where
>they colloborate only as long as they can restrain themselves from eating their own
>offspring, making sure that their offspring all have short memories about what's
>happened to everyone else who's ever counted on M$ to behave itself.
>
>Yeah, I'm a bit pi$$ed.