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War with whom? Their customers?
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With anyone who opposes their dominance of the marketplace, or undermines the marketplace as the dominant intrastructure of the world.

There are things that work just fine outside the confines of the Market, but unfortunately, those things undermine the control those who have marketshare. Microsoft and other companies have ceased to be focused on actual revenue as much as they have shifted their focus to owning marketshare.

Revenue being a certain amount of dollars, marketshare being control of a part of the market, regardless of how much it is worth. The controls and limitations that are being incorporated into Microsoft products are features which promote and reinforce the ownership of software, not ones which promote innovation or actual usage of the software to produce anything.

In fact, most commercial software is written to assist people in consuming information, as opposed to creating it, redistrbuting it, processing or sharing it. It's like every peice of software on our windows machine is a little TV set, plugging us in, and helping us more efficiently suck at the great bobbing teat we call the Internet.

They are preparing to for war with anyone who would share, freely distribute, or create something which is not directly governed by the forces of the Market, of which they and others are working on acquiring the largest share.

It all sounds very sci.fi, but I think this sentiment is expressed pretty clearly in any speeches or memo's which have been published from Microsoft, or have been given at various trade meetings and conferences.

Microsoft is a major part of the infrastructure our economy leans on, and for it to maintain its momentum, and for it to keep growing, safeguards for intellectual property and
market values must be built into that infrastructure.

Any threat to that infrastructure is a threat to the economy. Not that I care, but I think that is pretty consistent with how they imagine their position, and are thus preparing for war.


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