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Ok, maybe I'm not being clear, I'm not talking about MS just raising prices on certain licenses, but really across the board. What if they also jacked up their

Ok, maybe I'm not being clear, I'm not talking about MS just raising prices on certain licenses, but really across the board. What if they also jacked up their license costs for the ones "cooked into the machine", and also their Enterprise/Volume licensing? Heck, I think they have even more room to screw their customers with the Enterprise licensing, not only for Windows but all their other enterprise products too. What are big businesses going to do, suddenly switch to Apple? Obviously, they couldn't do this overnight, but they could certainly jack up their enterprise license costs to 5x when they come up for renewal. They'd probably want to avoid doing this too much for some things where there's actually competition (like with SQL Server: businesses might switch to Oracle), but with Windows, MSDN, etc., they could. Where are customers going to go?

tajen 10y ago
It's a company with millions of dollars on marketing. You can bet they've studied their price point and it is exactly at the right ratio between sale quantity and sale amount. If Linux became unsafe/untrusted (e.g. unapproved by S&P500 audit companies for example, or if black hats activities were discovered at the kernel level of Linux), however, they would become a monopoly on PCs, and they indeed could triple the price.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  I'm sorry, I have to disagree with this. I don't see how the perception of Linux's security would have anything to do with Microsoft's pricing for Windows. As much as I wish the case were different, Linux is simply almost never considered as a viable alternative to Windows (on the desktop), except in a few rare cases which are so rare, they become big news items (e.g. city of Munich government). Both companies and individuals are too invested in Windows and its software ecosystem to even contemplate a change, except maybe to Macs. I do see more people switching to those, both individuals and companies actually (I almost interviewed at a small company that was all-Mac). So if MS quintupled their prices for Windows Home/Pro, I could definitely see that spurring a defection to Macs, though I still doubt it'd be that big because of the installed base of Windows software that doesn't have a Mac version. Also, Macs just don't seem to be set up for enterprise use the way Windows is, and while Linux can be, it takes more IT competence than I've ever seen at a large company (which these days seem to be outsourcing to external vendors anyway).

tajen 10y ago

It's a company with millions of dollars on marketing. You can bet they've studied their price point and it is exactly at the right ratio between sale quantity and sale amount. If Linux became unsafe/untrusted (e.g. unapproved by S&P500 audit companies for example, or if black hats activities were discovered at the kernel level of Linux), however, they would become a monopoly on PCs, and they indeed could triple the price.

Grishnakh 10y ago
I'm sorry, I have to disagree with this. I don't see how the perception of Linux's security would have anything to do with Microsoft's pricing for Windows. As much as I wish the case were different, Linux is simply almost never considered as a viable alternative to Windows (on the desktop), except in a few rare cases which are so rare, they become big news items (e.g. city of Munich government). Both companies and individuals are too invested in Windows and its software ecosystem to even contemplate a change, except maybe to Macs. I do see more people switching to those, both individuals and companies actually (I almost interviewed at a small company that was all-Mac). So if MS quintupled their prices for Windows Home/Pro, I could definitely see that spurring a defection to Macs, though I still doubt it'd be that big because of the installed base of Windows software that doesn't have a Mac version. Also, Macs just don't seem to be set up for enterprise use the way Windows is, and while Linux can be, it takes more IT competence than I've ever seen at a large company (which these days seem to be outsourcing to external vendors anyway).