John,

I like that comparison, probably right on. GM made the short-sighted move towards building SUV's, while Toyota & al were preparing for the inevitable diminishing fuel supply. And now Toyota is about to bypass GM in all measures -- units sold, revenue, profit...

By dumping VFP, MS has gone that much more in the direction of BDE's (Bloated Development Environments), which guzzle development time, which in turn will also eventually be in short supply, regardless of how "renewable" source it may be.

Pertti

>I suspect Microsoft is having the same problem that GM did in the 80's
>
>The conventional wisdom at the time was that the American auto makers could not make small economical cars.
>
>A friend of mine was a executive at GM
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>He said that the idea was pure bunk.
>
>GM's problem was that they had so much market share that they risked being subject to Anti-trust allegations by the U.S. Government.
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>So, because there was a higher margin on the larger cars, they left the sub-compact segment for their competitors.
>
>I believe Microsoft is in a similar dilemna.
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>They have to decide which part of the market to focus on.
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>Clearly, the most profitable is the Enterprise segment.
>
>I can't help but wonder that the biggest threat that Linux poses is that it can't grab enough market share to alleviate their potential Anti-trust woes.