Ballmer Claims Linux Is Top Threat To MS

Greyfox writes: "According to Techweb, Steve Ballmer now claims that Linux is one of the top threats to Microsoft going in to 2001. This up from his previous accounts of Linux as being nothing more than a toy etc. Expect to really see the FUD start flying now. As IBM found with OS/2, once MS percieves you as a threat, they attack like a rabid pit bull. I expect we'll see a lot more negative Linux press on zdnet, reporters paid to laud Windows and slam UNIX, fake grass roots movements, and all the other favorite MS tricks." Well, I'm not that quite that paranoid, but I'll be keping my eyes open

Re:The FUD is already flying

Ahh, but did you catch the part where her foot freezes in midair, and the techs had to come out and re-boot her?

/me ducks, but doesn't apoligize for the pun

Re:If Linux doesn't kill itself...

A huge percentage of companies have an IT stategy as follows:

• IT staff are expected to deal with the systems not suggest/develop
• Management staff talk to all sorts of people and make a decision whenever they think they might be smart

Now in this case, MS will never win the managers because they don't have a clue. What they do know is that they are always told the XXX is down because the NT/2000 server is "just being rebooted, back in a mo" AND that they love the B.S.O.D. How many decisions have you seen made in a company to change YYY because of as badly formed reasons as the above...MANY in my case.

If the company has an I.T. staff that actually have some power, then how long before someone brings in a GNU box just to serve ZZZ purpose, and how long before it's strengths in the single sphere push it out to take care of everything it should?

MS may have a monstrous market share, but I do not believe for a moment it is loyal. If Sony relased a consumer product tomorrow running Linux with a windows alike UI (hack up a "complete" windows desktop) and one of the methods (working properly of course) to run win32 programs do you think anyone would be dismissing it because it didn't run MS Windows (or even how many people would pay an extra $100 on purchase to get said MS Windows)?

Re:No. They'll download ISO's, just like ...

M$Linux won't make any money for Microsoft... So there's no motivation to do it.

Right. Just like they didn't make any money from Internet Explorer, and so didn't have any motivation to do it.

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Dead wrong look at Corel

Don't under estimate their power and cleverness. Take for example a certain competator that decided to port their office suite to Linux and contribute heavily to the Wine project. While it may be debatable whether Corel has made a big difference in the Linux world, the M$ response is clear. Send some big bucks their way, show them a possible alternative (and windows friendly) way of surviving. What happens? Corel drops Linux. Look for more of the same in other places. Microsoft has the cash and the balls to do what every they can think of to strangle a competetor and Linux is the biggest threat they have ever faced.

M$ doesn't matter

I'm sure that we will all be able to use Linux whether M$ percieves it as a threat or not. There is nothing that M$ can do to stop Linux. They can't buy it and make it go away. Tough shit M$.

Re:M$ doesn't matter

1) Support tons of peripherals that Linux doesn't

Non-issue. Linux supports all of the peripherals that I've got, and it supports them quite well. Obviously, if a hardware company is closely partnered with Microsoft, Windows is going to support new devices before Linux does. But for the 99% of Linux users who aren't living life on the bleeding edge of technology, it doesn't matter one bit if a driver for such-and-such device isn't available for Linux until next month. If it's popular, there will be Linux support for it, whether Bill likes it or not. Tough titty, as the kitty is reputed to have said.

2) Have a nice standard, easy to use and intuitive GUI

This is only an issue if your definition of "nice, standard, easy to use and intuitive GUI" is "the GUI that Microsoft uses with Windows." If this is the case, by all means, stick with Windows. There are plenty of window managers and desktop environments for Linux (and Unix in general) for people to choose from. To suggest that these are all "non-intuitive" because they're not the one you used in Keyboarding 101 is fallacious.

3) Using MS means you never have to hear stupid arguments about licenses or asinine definitions of "free"

Ditto for Linux. If you want to partake in these arguments, read Slashdot. Incidentally, the only time that I've ever been presented with intrusive dialog boxes threatening me to read the license "or else" and either click on Accept or Reject was for Windows applications. No OSS application I've ever downloaded and built has required me to quibble over terminology or sign my life away.

4) Plus it will be a cold day in hell before you have Office for Linux anyway...

Who cares? Not everybody does "office-type" tasks with their machines. And those who want to do such things under Linux have plenty of tools to choose from, many of which can read and write the "standard" office formats. But in the end, this is like your GUI issue .. if your definition of a "true OS" is "an OS that can run Microsoft Office", then by all means, stick with Windows. Microsoft needs your support. And keep those checks coming! :-)

Re:M$ doesn't matter

1) Support tons of peripherals that Linux doesn't

They already do and despite that fact Linux is still their enemy #1.

2) Have a nice standard, easy to use and intuitive GUI

Their GUI is already standard across Windows, but if MS were to create a Linux distribution, there is no way they could possibly preclude the installation of X and the window manager of your choice. So, moving to Linux would be a step backwards in homogeny for them.

3) Using MS means you never have to hear stupid arguments about licenses or asinine definitions of "free"

...and instead means you never get the choice to argue about licenses and must put up with their terms or else, and "free" means free of cost, minus any actual freedom.

4) Plus it will be a cold day in hell before you have Office for Linux anyway...

Heh, is that supposed to make me quake in fear? :) They can have thier office suite. It won't be long at all before an open office suite matures to the point of useability and starts to really compete with them. Personally, I think Word is the most annoying word processor I've ever used.

Re:M$ doesn't matter

The agreement Micorosft made to never make a version of UNIX was declared "Null and Void" back in 1997-1998. It even was a Slashdot story.

- Sam

Re:No. They'll download ISO's, just like ...

They don't need their own *nix distribution. The Windows 2k kernel is a very nice kernel. Add to that a *nix filesystem and some GNU Tools and nobody would be able to tell the difference...
...except that Windows2k*nix would have better driver support than *nix.

Re:Linux legal vulnerability

Yet the Halloween documents point out how M$ is going to try to smash open-source: not with copyright, but with patents.

Fear not; most of the concepts have prior art dating back 30 years.

--
All men are great
before declaring war

I disagree.

I think that this is much more likely another attempt to say, "Gee whiz, it's tough being Microsoft, we're constantly having to innovate and compete, don't break us up, please!" Linux is certainly a threat to NT/2000, but the 98% of home users who have Windows aren't going to go anywhere soon. Let's keep one eye on Redmond (isn't that always the case?), but I think that this press announcement is more DOJ appeal than anything.

coming soon....

Slashwin
A site dedicated to all the windows geeks out there pointing out all the shortcomings of linux... wait, shortcomings of linux... oh yeah, that's why there's not already a site like this.

Kurdt

Thank you, Gandhi.

Ahem:

First they ignore you.

Then they laugh at you.

Then they fight you.

Then you win.

And MacOS X?

What about MacOS X? Taking the power of Unix based platform, the flexibility of OpenStep and the ease of use of the classic Mac environment this certainly makes it more than just a blimp on M$'s horizon.

What will be interesting is whether MS will move to embrace and port all its office software to Linux or play its usuall dirty tricks, with lawyers et al. Somehow I believe from experience that the latter is true, unless someone is willing to let them have to non voting shares :)

Interesting

From what I see by the submitter, he seems to think that any time a reporter praises something about Windows and/or derieds a *nix variant, that the reporter in question must be paid by Microsoft.

The reality is, in my opinion, that the free software movement must learn to accept that is GOOD about other platforms, which includes Windows, and take people's criticisms to heart. If people are complaining that Linux doesn't have "FEATURE-X", in many cases energy would be better spend developing something similar (and hopefully, though not always, better) than in trying to tell people why "FEATURE-X" sucks or isn't relevant. (Granted, in some cases that mindset is appropriate.)

Anyhow, those are just my musings.
-
The IHA Forums [ihateapple.com]

If Linux doesn't kill itself...

...with infighting about package formats and which distribution is the best.

Then Microsoft will produce lots of documentation "proving" to managers that Linux is much more costly to run.

OS/2 was better than it's MS competition. It still lost because it wasn't marketed correctly. Linux has to be seen to be a viable, trustworthy and above all useful alternative for it to be accepted.

Much as I hate to say this, MS has the minds of the managers, what Linux needs is...

Easy install and use by "normal" users that are ALREADY used to the MS way.

MS compatible applications.

And above all, companies that are willing to provide paid for support for it so that other large companies will accept it as an alternative OS. "What do you mean that there isn't anyone responsible for fixing bugs?"

Zwack...

Usability is the biggest concrern.

I believe that MS was judging Linux as threat because its usablity has become much better. Aside from server type applications, where I think MS knew it had serious competition all along, I don't think that it thought that Linux would ever grow much in the desktop market. But the usability has grown very much over the years, and people are starting to choose it over windows. These people are not novices, but they aren't necisseraly hard-core computer junkies. I fall into this catagory, I am slightly less than a computer wizard. I use Gnome quite a bit, and I find it as easy to navigate as Windows, though it did take a bit of getting used to.
Additionally, Linux seems to be making a toehold in the embedded markets, and since the convention wisdom seems to forsee a migration from large, centralized desktop computers to individual devices, I know MS wants a hefty share of what it sees as the future. Hell, Windows CE wasn't exactly a smash hit.

Re:Maybe not too paranoid

It's unreal how much misinformation is floating around.

MS did not rescue Apple. MS bought $150 million worth of Apple stock. A newsworthy event. But not a big deal.

Apple was having financial troubles at the time. But that was because Spindler in his infinite wisdom didn't believe in the success of the PowerPC, and continued to build $1 billion worth of 68K-based inventory that nobody wanted. Before long Apple realized that everyone was buying PPC's, and nobody wanted 68K's anymore. Apple was sitting on $1 bil worth of machines they couldn't move. End result was one quarter where they had to take a $780 million charge to write off this inventory. Spindler "resigned". Apple changed CEO's a couple times. Copeland was delayed. Lots of various bad news for Apple about this time. Mainstream media stupidly seemed to think Apple is "dying". (As they've said each and every year since 1981.)

Apple was about a $10 billion (revenue) company at the time. MS buying $150 mil worth of stock is not a "rescue".

At this time, Apple began including IE as the default browser, while still including Netscape in install -- but just not making it default. Apple also begain including Outlook Express.

There were rumors that MS was forced into this deal because they got caught with their hand in the till. (Stealing R&D secrets again.) But this is just a rumor.

Re:Nothing is a threat to Linux

Actually there's another aspect to the first group, the Microsoft Zombie VB Developers. Yes, that approach is a lot easier than C programming, but guess what?

MacOS has a comparable product- 'REALbasic [realsoftware.com]'. This was originally a labor of love by a single very talented developer, Andrew Barry, designed to be as approachable and _more_ sensible than VB. When Andrew Barry got exhausted and resigned, other programmers were hired and they successfully took over the development- including bringing it over to OSX.

Most Linux developers may not be into this style of development- it's more drag-and-drop of GUI components and dropping code snippets (even dragging them from the online reference!) into the relevant control events. However, the MZA types will love it- and even if you're not a zombie idiot the accessibility and rapidity of it all is very nice.

I wrote an airfoil data generation program in this language the other night- it literally took only a night of work to produce a working program that did the following:

• drag and drop 'text clipping' with starter foil data into a text area: pre-existing capability of object
• parse the text clipping into arrays from 0-100 on top and bottom wing surfaces with interpolation between missing points
• plot arrays on a canvas object (relatively simple)
• smooth the foil w. sharp or blunt edges (imperfectly executed but OK)
• tweak points up or down including a width factor affecting adjacent points- _way_ easy using interactions between existing controls- most related events got only a line of code or two
• print out the arrays into the original text format to be dragged back out of the window- very easy again, minor workarounds for twitchy editfield implentation

I daresay a lot of people think you can only do that on Windows with VB (never mind that VB is more complicated with a steeper initial curve than REALbasic- you can literally drag stuff into a window in RB and build the program without writing a line of code and it won't _do_ anything but all the controls will 'work' already)

However, even if there's not going to be anything as approachable for Linux (i.e. more dumb-simple than C console apps), a competing product already exists on MacOS and compiles to trad MacOS and OSX apps- and Windows apps for that matter, though the work the programmers have to do to keep that end afloat is 10X as much work as they have to do for the MacOS side, all the bugfix reports are invariably _loaded_ with 'Win' bugs that were fixed or worked around.

Anyhow- not even VB is a permanent safe haven for MS. Comparable products exist.

(BTW- 'the red pen'? Did you by any chance attend the Cambridge School of Weston? If so, you knew me as 'The Poet')

Re:Nothing is a threat to Linux

You could argue that Microsoft's desktop OS is "so great that people would rather pay for it," but it's pretty clear that they're losing that battle in the server marketplace. The change isn't going to happen overnight.

First of all, there is the Microsoft Zombie Army. These are hoards of mediocre developers who have discovered that they can quickly and easily put together mediocre applications and systems using Microsoft technology. I've come across these people and they are entrenched. Basically they are motivated by fear of losing their '1337 status in a move to an unfamiliar technology.

The second effect is what I call the "Japanese Car Effect." Those of you unfortunate enough to have been conscious in the early 70's will remember a time when the Detroit auto makers could Do No Wrong(tm) and Japanese imports were considered crappy "rice burners" bought only by Communists. Unfortunately for Detroit, everyone who "went over" to the Japanese imports discovered that they were high-quality and efficient. They never bought an American car again.

Guess what (usually) happens when an NT user finally "goes over" to Linux?

Re:And MacOS X?

Actually, don't look at it as being Microsoft having to organize fights against Win 2K with Linux *or* Mac OS X. Microsoft, surely sees the writing on the wall. Both of their large market OS competitors are now UNIX-based or derived. They can (should and will) share resources.

While the UNIX market fragmentation might have being one of Microsoft's opening (we can provide an end to end solution, desktop to domain controller...) in the mid 90's, the periphery is organizing itself around the target that Windows presents. It must be scary. Samba, Apache, PHP w/MySQL/Postgres, StarOffice...

Suddenly, the argument that got Microsoft's foot in the door doesn't seem as compelling to the executive team.

If I was Bill, I'd worry, too.

Maybe not too paranoid

As IBM found with OS/2, once MS percieves you as a threat, they attack like a rabid pit bull. I expect we'll see a lot more negative Linux press on zdnet, reporters paid to laud Windows and slam UNIX, fake grass roots movements, and all the other favorite MS tricks." Well, I'm not that quite that paranoid, but I'll be keping my eyes open.

Interesting you should mention it, because the article referenced had this nice little bit:

It is widely expected that Corel, which received a critical $135 million infusion in cash from Microsoft (stock: MSFT) in October, will dump its Linux line of products, such as its WordPerfect suite for Linux, to focus on Microsoft's .Net initiative.

Now I'm not going to go and shout and scream about how Microsoft is buying off a potential competitor, but it does look kind of suspicious. Here's a company that could do a lot to boost Linux as a desktop competitor for Windows, and after getting a big cash infusion from Microsoft they're giving up their plans to do so. It's not a cut and dried as pay for non-competetion, but it does deserve careful scrutiny.

Re:Few things left.

Why persist in comparing Linux to NT? We know NT is pretty crap, so by saying things like "No worse than NT can be.", all you're doing is elevating Linux to 'just better than crap'.

Why can't we aim to "Make an elegant, well designed operating system" (like Apple are trying to do) instead of "Do things the M$ way, only marginally better"...?

Re:No. They'll download ISO's, just like ...

..except that (unlike real Unices such as Linux) it will still have only token POSIX compliance, a proprietary window system, a proprietary programming API and will still break compatibility with other systems whenever Bill feels like it. No thanks.

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Linux legal vulnerability

It's been a full fifteen minutes since the original post, and I've already seen many articles bragging about how Linux can't be bought or otherwise made to "go away." Yet the Halloween documents point out how M$ is going to try to smash open-source: not with copyright, but with patents. They will find (or buy $$$) some lousy, overbroad, fundamental patent which is relied upon deep in the kernel, and while that won't dissuade the hobbyist, it will dissuade the system adminstrator and company management. And they'll keep throwing this sand in companies' face each time they consider using Linux in earnest. ("You, the company are responsible for violating our patents, regardless of how open the copyright is", they will say.) I hope I'm wrong. Perhaps smaller, more self-contained systems such as the *BSD might be less vulnerable, but that's another discussion. Marshall

Re:I disagree.

But if you follow the link you would see that Ballmer is much more interested in the server room than the desktop. Simple reason PC sales are way down but the server market is still growing. The following is from the article "In his talk, Ballmer identified Oracle Corp. (stock: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems Inc. (stock: SUNW) as second-tier rivals because "I think [server sales are] our biggest potential short-term return." And this is why the server room matters more than the desktop for now.