The Scobelizer Weblog has some great feedback for Microsoft. Dare, as usual, provides two insightful responses... Here's my take.
I've always kind of felt that the Linux vs. Microsoft thing is fundamentally a higher-level difference in point-of-view: "do-it-yourself" or "pay for it". (Whether or not the software is free as beer or free as in freedom is pretty much a side issue to me.)
I know there's a place for both models in software because both models exist in the "real" world: some people change their own oil, other people don't. Some people build PVR's, others buy Tivo's. Some people want to configure Emacs to have "code completion", others will pay for an editor with Intellisense built-in.
The interesting question, to me at least, is "What makes someone go down the do-it-yourself path?" (And, the follow-up, "how can you convince someone to go from do-it-yourself to pay-for-it?") The conclusion I've come to is that people view time, money, and value differently.
If I value my time at N dollars per hour and I think I can save M > 0 hours per year, then I can justify purchasing Microsoft Office at any price under M * N.
However, running something that costs $0, like OpenOffice, will probably slow me way down (-M hours per year), and create a net negative value. However, if I value not paying Microsoft more than the time I lose, then I can (and will) justify it.
There's intangibles (and cognitive dissonance) at work, too: "if something's expensive it must have been worth it", "if I spent N hours on this, it was worth doing", "I hate trying to figure out something if I don't have the source", "I hate reading through source code to try and figure out stuff that should have been documented", etc.
To be clear, I don't think one way is any better than the other. However, I'm firmly in the "pay for it" camp so it's sometimes hard for me to understand the do-it-yourself-ers.
There was an exchange on one of the microsoft.csharp* newsgroups a long time ago which I thought summed this up nicely:
Original poster: "Why would I spend $2000 on Microsoft Visual Studio .NET? I can use GCC and vi for free and buy a car instead."
Response: "Yes, but then you'd have to use GCC and vi."
6:22:27 PM 
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