You should read Microsoft's reply to the essay [0] which contains your arguments and PG's reply to it [1].
It's interesting to review claims from years ago and I think PG was largely right. Microsoft is not completely irrelevant (yet?) but they definitely lost the cultural war and moves like open sourcing .NET show that they want to join the old opponent's positions.
I'll add that I'm not sure if Microsoft's historical influence was evil. They prevented fragmentation and created a unified environment and probably enabled PC revolution.
Comments
You should read Microsoft's reply to the essay [0] which contains your arguments and PG's reply to it [1].
It's interesting to review claims from years ago and I think PG was largely right. Microsoft is not completely irrelevant (yet?) but they definitely lost the cultural war and moves like open sourcing .NET show that they want to join the old opponent's positions.
I'll add that I'm not sure if Microsoft's historical influence was evil. They prevented fragmentation and created a unified environment and probably enabled PC revolution.
[0] http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/04/since... [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html