Microsoft To Counter Open Source With 'Basic' Software Line (opens in new tab)

So now instead of making bad products by mistake and incompetence, they make them by intention, and sell them cheaply hoping that people will spend money on a bad basic product, instead on a free feature rich product. Its like these people are making cars and selling them at high prices, and these other people are giving cars for free, and now Microsoft sells cheap cars without seats and hoping that people will drive cheap cars with out seats, instead of normal cars with seats for free. Am i wrong?

Seriously, I think this is a bright idea: After all, I could use a less daunting word processor than MS Word that is still fully *.doc-compatible.

The problem is rather: If they sell it at a 30$-price point, how are they going to compete against the shareware crowd?

stupid...they are basically admitting they cannot control their feature bloat and ui's.