With all the news lately about Microsoft including an online registration process in the XP versions of both Office and Windows, I saw a story beginning to take shape. Microsoft clearly has a monoply on the desktop market, with pretty much everyone forced to use Windows as their desktop, and even more users forced into using Office for productivity, Outlook 2000 or Express for mail, and IE for browsing. The defenders of this status quo always point to the benefits of this arrangement; one standard, quality software, integration, etc. People said these things about the Phone Company, too. But now, like the phone company, MS is starting to collect the Monopoly Rents they've worked so hard to build.

Now, instead of paying for MS software once, and using it on all your home computers - something most people would consider reasonable, you must install once on EACH computer, even if it's one of many in your home, and is rarely used. Don't worry, though, they haven't forgotten about the corporate user. Recent licensing contracts with large enterprises have eliminated the perpetual use clause, forcing their customers into a subscription-based model of software.

This makes sense, both for Microsoft and probably for some of their customers, as well, since most businesses purchase upgrades in advance -with "software maintenance" plans, (often for fixing bugs in the original shipping product - another story altogether) which are pretty much the same thing. Microsoft benefits, since their revenues from market growth aren't what they used to be, and they need to develop an income stream somehow. The .NET platform is part of this strategy, the perfect platform for "renting software". Don't forget Nathan Myvrohld's statement some years ago that MS should charge financial institutions a per-transaction fee for use of MS software. Microsoft needs to move to a subscription/fee based scheme in order to protect its profits.

Fortunately, there are 3 things working against this shift: customers don't like it, the current and continuing antitrust actions, and finally, the free / open source software movement. Even so, the first factor doesn't prevent Rents, the second should be less of an issue under the current administration, and the third really only threatens MS in the server market and the third world market.

Even if market forces eventually disrupt the MS monopoly, right now we really have only 2 options:

Break Up or Pay Up.