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They do make many billions profit on software every single quarter. Who cares if the market is not very sexy? If you think there's only 25 people working on W

They do make many billions profit on software every single quarter. Who cares if the market is not very sexy? If you think there's only 25 people working on Word, I think you're off by an extremely large margin.

aragot 12y ago
If you planned on making a competitor of Word, would you copy all its features and throw 5,000 people at it? Of course not. No, I don't think Word is 25 people. But a relationship of mine made an Excel in js with 3 people and sold enough copies. Before you say I'm wrong again, no this Excel-in-js isn't isofunctional. It's just what the customer needs. Point being: You can make great software with few people, and IBM could do it easily.
- AlisdairO 12y ago
  > Before you say I'm wrong again, no this Excel-in-js isn't isofunctional. It's just what the customer needs. isofunctionality is implied by saying you could make 'a Word'. I wouldn't dream of disputing that you could make a word processor that offers some limited subset of Word's functionality with a small team - but that's not making a Word-class product, it's making a simple word processor.
  - aragot 12y ago
    I agree we can't reproduce Microsoft Word with isofunctionality with 25 people (obviously). I agree my past comment made it sound like that. I currently feel negatively from the readers, so I'm testing that again: I've written a comment below with figures and sources to back my claims - See comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8956544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8956544
easytiger 12y ago
They make billions by corporate lobbying and political marketing
- AlisdairO 12y ago
  I wasn't commenting on IBM's methods - although I think attributing the entirety of their profit to scammery is extremely far-fetched - but on the choice of market. My comment was simply to point out that I don't think there's any shame in targeting boring market segments, and that there's clearly plenty of money to be made.

aragot 12y ago

If you planned on making a competitor of Word, would you copy all its features and throw 5,000 people at it? Of course not. No, I don't think Word is 25 people. But a relationship of mine made an Excel in js with 3 people and sold enough copies. Before you say I'm wrong again, no this Excel-in-js isn't isofunctional. It's just what the customer needs. Point being: You can make great software with few people, and IBM could do it easily.

AlisdairO 12y ago
> Before you say I'm wrong again, no this Excel-in-js isn't isofunctional. It's just what the customer needs. isofunctionality is implied by saying you could make 'a Word'. I wouldn't dream of disputing that you could make a word processor that offers some limited subset of Word's functionality with a small team - but that's not making a Word-class product, it's making a simple word processor.
- aragot 12y ago
  I agree we can't reproduce Microsoft Word with isofunctionality with 25 people (obviously). I agree my past comment made it sound like that. I currently feel negatively from the readers, so I'm testing that again: I've written a comment below with figures and sources to back my claims - See comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8956544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8956544

easytiger 12y ago

They make billions by corporate lobbying and political marketing

AlisdairO 12y ago
I wasn't commenting on IBM's methods - although I think attributing the entirety of their profit to scammery is extremely far-fetched - but on the choice of market. My comment was simply to point out that I don't think there's any shame in targeting boring market segments, and that there's clearly plenty of money to be made.