The question for Microsoft is whether it can continue to collect these dues. Vista took five years and $6 billion to develop. Some 8,000 people worked on it. Yet it is two years late. A corporate version was released in November—just before the holidays when few firms would install it. This gave Microsoft the chance to complete small bits of ancillary code to make it run smoothly. Most users are expected not to bother upgrading (see article), but to acquire Vista only when they buy a new computer. With hindsight, the release of Vista may mark the moment when Microsoft's Windows and Office are seen as having reached the zenith of their supremacy.

问题是微软是否能继续保有着一地位。Vista的开发花费了60亿美元和5年的时间。8000人从事这个开发项目。可它的上市还是晚了两年。11月微软发布了一个公司版的Vista——恰好赶在圣诞假期之前，这段时间不太会有公司安装此软件。这就给了微软有机会写出辅助程序以使系统运行更加稳定。预计大多数的用户都不会愿意特意去升级自己的系统，他们只会在下次买新电脑时开始使用Vista。也许事后看来，Vista的发布将成为微软Windows和Office至高地位的绝唱。

Toppling the software Babel

颠覆软件业的巴别塔（译注3）

Computing has changed radically since Microsoft rose to prominence 25 years ago with its operating system for IBM's personal computer. Microsoft unified standards, which made life easier for users and software writers. Both Windows and Office were employed by software developers as platforms for their own applications, nudging Microsoft further towards ubiquity. Now three trends are changing this.

自从25年前微软通过替IBM的个人计算机编写操作系统而声名鹊起之后，计算机领域发生了巨大的变化。微软为软件业制定标准，这使用户和软件开发人员的生活变得更轻松。软件开发人员广泛使用Winodws和Office作为他们自己程序的开发平台，推动微软变得几乎无所不在。而现在三大趋势正在改变这一状况。

First is the rise of open-source software. The code for this is written largely by volunteers rather than a single company. The programs are usually free to use and open to continual enhancements. Companies ranging from start-ups to giants like IBM commercialise open-source software by selling services that support it.

首先是开源软件的崛起。这种软件的代码多数是由志愿者而不是某个公司开发的。这些程序一般都提供免费使用同时开放给所有人继续进行改进。从小公司一直到像IBM这样的业界巨擎都在经营开源软件业务，他们通过销售后期的软件支持服务赚取利润。

As a collaborative venture, open-source can speed up development, make it easier to add features and save users money. The most popular web-server software, Apache, is open-source. So too is the Linux operating system, which is also widely used on servers. Firefox was unknown a few years ago, but now more than one in ten people use it instead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

作为一个合作项目，开源软件可以加快开发速度、让人们更容易给软件增加功能、还能为用户节省经费。最受欢迎的网络服务器软件Apache是开源的。广泛应用在服务器领域的Linux操作系统也是开源的。Firefox（另一个开源软件，译者注）几年前不为人知，而现在超过十分之一的网络用户用它取代了微软的网络浏览器。

The disadvantage of open-source is that some tedious bits of software development may not get much attention and programs end up a bit geeky. OpenOffice, an open-source version of Microsoft's Office, has been slow to catch on. Versions of Linux for PCs are still cumbersome. But, as Firefox shows, that could change.

开源软件的缺点在于，软件开发中一些冗长无聊的部分可能会被忽视，使得最终的程序有些小毛病。微软Office的开源版OpenOffice，由于进展缓慢而赶不上开源发展的步伐。Linux的PC版用起来仍显繁复冗杂。不过，就像Firefox所展现的那样，这些问题最终都能解决。

The second trend confronting Microsoft comes from online applications and the rise of software as a service. The birth of the PC liberated users from their “dumb terminals” linked to giant mainframe computers. As a stand-alone device, the PC ran on its own software and networking was not important. Today the opposite is true.

微软面临的第二大挑战来自于在线应用程序和软件即服务（译注4）的崛起。现在出现了所谓摆脱PC束缚的用户，他们通过自己的“哑终端”（译注5）联网到大型电脑主机。作为独立运行的设备，PC通过其自带的软件工作，是否联网相对来说并不重要。而今，PC和网络的这一关系被颠倒过来了。