They are currently in the #2 in the four step Gandhi scale
The famous "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" is not an authentic Gandhi quote. That is, no one has ever found any evidence that Gandhi said it. Personally, I think it's a great line, but too modern -- too sound-bitey -- to have come from Gandhi (though he was certainly capable of wit, e.g. http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/will/CPP/gandhi.html).
It's common for great lines to get falsely attributed to great persons: it increases their chance of being repeated. One might call them "cuckoo quotes" since, like eggs planted in other birds' nests, they are memes planted in other people's reputations.
Edit: I love the internet. It turns out the one-liner is a paraphrase of a speech made to a clothing workers' union (presumably not by Gandhi) in 1914:
First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.
Because Microsoft's monopolies are hurting competition and the evolution of our practices. We certainly don't need them pushing a new search engine through MSN Messenger or Windows updates.
Perhaps, but is Microsoft, a convicted monopoly abuser, the right challenger? Microsoft has already a powerful grip on the whole industry (why do you think multi-processors and 64-bit computing took that long to catch?) for us to feel too comfortable with them gaining more power.
Google has a monopoly on search, but Microsoft has a couple at least as valuable as Google's.
Competition between giants is a good thing. And a sense of urgency in the marketplace is good for third party companies, as it places pressure to buy rather than build.
Because Microsoft's monopolies are hurting competition and the evolution of our practices. We certainly don't need them pushing a new search engine through MSN Messenger or Windows updates.
>Because Microsoft's monopolies are hurting competition and the evolution of our practices.
What monopolies? Plenty of people use Firefox these days, some even use Chrome and Safari. Personally, I use Opera. Or perhaps you are talking about OS - well, OS X is nearing 10% market share, and (AFAIK) showing no signs of slowing down. The only real monopoly MSFT has is Office, and honestly, that's because it's far and away the best office suite. OOo is pretty good, but definitely inferior to Office.
If anyone has a monopoly on search, it's Google, to the point that "Google" has become a synonym for search. If you're really anti-monopoly rather than just anti-Microsoft, you should be rooting for Bing.
You ever wonder why there isn't any other good office apps? Is it perhaps because a several time convicted monopoly abuser is using the power granted to it by its multiple interlocking monopolies to prevent this from happening?
I'll not even get into their shenanigans with ODF and ISO but did you ever noticed that IE doesn't have a spellchecker. What a strange omission from a modern browser, unless of course you have a monopoly in the OS, the browser and Office software and can happily screw customers to maintain them.
Half of web 2.0 is built on a reverse engineered feature from IE that was only put in so that users of Exchange could have a superior "web" experience as long as they used IE and not an actual browser.
>You ever wonder why there isn't any other good office apps? Is it perhaps because a several time convicted monopoly abuser is using the power granted to it by its multiple interlocking monopolies to prevent this from happening?
Uh, no, I'm pretty sure it's because creating an office suite is a hell of a lot of work, and because Office is really pretty good, and so it doesn't make business sense for anyone to compete right now. If Office were lacking, you'd see competition. As it is, I don't think the (near) monopoly on office suites is actually hurting anyone. It's not like Microsoft isn't innovating - I've been using Office 2010 builds for a month now and it's very solid, with tons of improvements over Office 2007.
1) they ignore you 2) they laugh at you 3) they fight you 4) you win
Let's hope they never get beyond 2.