Jim Allchin: Losing a Franchise

Date: February 1997

Snippet
From: Jim Allchin (exchange) Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 1997 5:17 PM To: Bill Gates Cc: Paul Maritz

Subject: "Losing a Franchise - The Microsoft Windows Story" (a new harvard Case study)

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1. Why are we doing so many things cross-platform? Are there more Macs, OS/2 or Unix clients today as a % or less than a year ago .. I consider this cross-platform issue a disease within Microsoft .. We should be asking for specific innovations to restrict to Windows ..

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I see the same pattern here as with Novell a few years ago. Some people believed we should drop our work in TCP/IP and only do IPX/SPX work. It took significant effort in order to convince the PSD team to accept TCP for Windows 95. Why? Because we were in copy mode of Novell. We are doing it again. There is a time for this clone strategy, but the better long term approach is always to attack from a more strategic perspective.

Full Exhibit
http://boycottnovell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/plex0_2658.pdf