2006 Software War Map between FOSS and Microsoft

Ant writes "Neatorama mentions Steven Hilton's Software War Map that depicts "the epic struggle of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) against the Empire of Microsoft. It was updated in 2006."

Just Wait till Vista

Just wait till Vista enters the picture! Then there'll be total chaos!

Re:Just Wait till Vista

It'll start shooting itself ... killing other MS Apps ... Awesome!

Re:Just Wait till Vista

Facts:

1.) Vista is an operating system.
2.) Vista fights ALL the time.
3.) The purpose of Vista is to flip out and kill people.

Vista can kill anyone it wants! Vista cuts off heads ALL the time and doesn't even think twice about it. This thing is so crazy and awesome that it flips out ALL the time. I heard that Vista was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon Vista killed the whole town. My friend Mark said that he saw Vista totally uppercut some kid just because the kid opened a window.

Re:Just Wait till Vista

Dude, I heard Vista killed Chuck Norris - with a roundhouse kick!

Re:Just Wait till Vista

s/ReactOS/WINE/g

I love it!

I love that this is presented as a serious piece of news!

This belongs on webcomic or something.

No it wasn't

I love that this is presented as a serious piece of news!

No... actually it was posted on Slashdot

"It was updated in 2006"

Isn't it a bit early to feature this on Slashdot?

Re:"It was updated in 2006"

Just ignore it this time round and read it properly next month when it gets posted again.

I don't know...

It seems to be missing some things. Surely some of the Companies shown fighting MS are also fighting each other? And who says it's a war anyway? Some things are just good ideas, and lots of folks are going to come up with variations. Does that always mean a battle? It seems silly to me, rather than informative.

Re:I don't know...

"It seems to be missing some things."

Why isn't Visual Studio going toe-to-toe with Eclipse?

Where's VBScript vs JavaScript?

What's Web / AJAX services doing in the corner? MS has that capability, too.

What about DirectX vs OpenGL?

I'm sure it's missing quite a bit more, too.

Layne

Re:I don't know...

OpenGL and DirectX are in the bottom left corner.

Ajax not wholly on Mixrosoft's side

To continue the whole "battlefront" analogy, Microsoft has basically captured AJAX tech and is forcing it to work for them, while I would say open source (and Google and Yahoo) are far more on the cutting edge of expanding the AJAX boundaries.

In another ve

Re:I don't know...

but Visual Studio 2005 is without comparison. Eclipse is stone age compared to Visual Studio.

Whaat?? As a full time Visual Studio developer (no zealotry here), I find that 2005 is far superior to previous incarnations(*), and quite decent in its own right, but it doesn't hold a candle to Eclipse. Note that I'm talking about the "native" VS-C# vs Eclipse-Java development here, because obviously both (especially Eclipse) are capable of a lot more.

VS 2005 only just incorporated refactoring support, and it's still pretty limited. It also catches a lot fewer errors (helped by the fact that Eclipse background-compiles your code all the time), and doesn't have half as many smart code-completion features (yeah, it has plenty of "dumb" completions, but Eclipse sometimes feels like it can pretty much write all your code on its own while you just wish it into existence).

That said, I find two big advantages to VS2005: its learning curve is a lot less steep (remember the first time you actually tried to run your program in Eclipse?), and its GUI (WinForms) editor is very simple+powerful (as long as you don't want to dig too much inside the code it generates).

But seriously, I'm interested: What do you find is so much better in VS2005 than Eclipse?

(*) Note: VS2005 is pretty cool when it works. Aside from Windows ME, it has got to be one of the buggiest pieces of software ever to come out of Redmond. In the past 8 months I have bumped into innumerable problems all around: the IDE, C++ and C# compilers, libraries... you can tell they rushed it out the door. I had found plenty of bugs in MS development tools before, but never so many in such a short timespan. Also, it's bloated, but I guess when comparing it to Eclipse that doesn't count :)

Re:I don't know...

I'd certainly choose ASP long before, say, CFM.

Isn't that like saying: "I'd certainly choose leaping head-first into a pit of jaggedy rusty spikes long before, say, burying myself up to my neck near an anthill after having smeared myself with honey."?

War? It's a revolution. Fight for your Freedom.

It seems to be missing some things.

Yes, the war includes all kinds of media and it's creators. Programmers have been joined by all kinds of artists and creators. There's a free media revolution going on. The incumbents have shown their hand and it stinks.

And who says it's a war anyway?

Microsoft and big publishers say it's a war. The goal is TV and Radio broadcast style control of all media. They will sue you in your home (RIAA), at your business (SCO), and at your kid's school (BSA). They don't really care what you do, but they will try their best to have you do as they say.

The goal is to take your money without your consent for any information exchange. You will pay for a M$ license each time you buy a computer. You will pay per minute or byte of conversation on any electronic device, per play of your music, movies novels and textbooks. Your taxes will pay to encoded your information into secret formats and pay again to retrieve it. The new media, paradoxally, will be more expensive and restricted than it's analog and physical predecessors. All of these intentions have been openly declared and loudly demanded by all of the bad actors.

If that's not a declaration of war, I'm not sure what is. The less you know and care, the easier it will be for them to make the world as they wish.

The world does not have to be that way. People do not mind sharing if it cost them nothing and brings greater returns. Excellence thrives in competition and everyone prospers. Success stories are the whole free software movement, which has obliterated the need for non free, and free media: archive.org and creative commons instead of the big three music publishers; YouTube instead of TV; VOIP instead of Telco; Wikipedia instead of expensive paper publications. The economics of electronic data exchange doom the monopoly publishers unless they pass truly unAmerican laws. Fight the bastards by not giving your money to those who would enslave you.

Re:War? It's a revolution. Fight for your Freedom.

They will sue you in your home (RIAA), at your business (SCO), and at your kid's school (BSA).

Almost. The correct way it was said is as the following quote:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in courts, we shall fight on the Web and Usenet, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in cyberspace, we shall defend our Imperium, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the portable, we shall fight on the games boxes, we shall fight on the desktops and on the handhelds, we shall fight in the media; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Imperium or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our bought senators, armed and guarded by the BSA would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World Order, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Slavery is not a binary value

It is the fraction of your economic output controlled by someone else. Slavery can even be voluntary. A good master makes most decisions for you. All you have to do is work hard and do what he says. It is in the masters own interest to keep you in good health and productive. Bad masters not only make their charges miserable, they kill their own golden goose. The problem is that even masters that try to be good make mistakes, and can't account for everything. (E.g. Uncle Tom's Cabin).

Here in America, we have been gradually increasing the slavery quotient from a few percent at the turn of the century, to about 50% today. (Estimate based on middle class wage slave paying 50% taxes. Add 'em up - 15% SS [employee+employer], 15% federal, 5% state, 5% state sales tax, 5% real estate tax, 5% utilities+gasoline+medicare+whatever else they can get away with.)

Once you are used to someone making decisions for you, it is scary to go back to making your own decisions. For example, we just switched from HMO to HSA health insurance. Before, the HMO told us when we could and couldn't go to the doctor (and have them pay for it). We could do the same thing with HSA by maxing out the deductible, but now we have the option of saving the money instead. Seems like a no brainer, but is scary nonetheless.

Re:War? It's a revolution. Fight for your Freedom.

No, he's pretty squarely in our reality, only it's our information that's in the process of being enslaved. If you were to take a good, hard look at the caliber of the people that run the media companies and their proxy organizations, you'd realize that what he is saying is precisely what they are trying to achieve. That they've not fully succeeded yet doesn't make their intentions any less of a concern. Actually, it makes them unenlightened capitalists, in my book, because they have absolutely no concern whatsoever for anyone or anything outside of the revenue stream. And, towards the end of maintaining that flow, they will do anything to anyone, buy any Congressperson they can lay bills on, pass any law that suits them, cause any degree of economic dislocation, as long as they own the distribution channels. Like all successful coups, it will happen because the majority are simply unaware of what is happening: all they'll notice is that "gee, it sure seems like I can't do as much with my computer and entertainment equipment as I used to, even though it's shiny and looks really high-tech and all" and will long for the good old days. Then, after some period of time, even that dim memory will fade and nobody will care because, so far as they can remember, it has always been that way. That's what these people want, total control over our media and usage habits, and total acceptance of that control. It'll take some time, but today's technology permits a level of remote authority that did not exist twenty-odd years ago when Sony was fighting the MPAA to keep the VCR legal.

Might be time to remove SGI...

...from the lower left corner what with filing Chapter 11 and all. Such a pity [fsu.edu]...

Re:Might be time to remove SGI...

That was my thought, too. Maybe they can show MS forces overrunning the SGI position for propoganda purposes;-) "OMG, just look at what those beasts are doing to that poor innocent Code!"

Re:Might be time to remove SGI...

No - a Chapter 11 bankruptcy [wikipedia.org] is explicitly for reorganization not for dissolution. Although it certainly isn't the best thing that can happen to a company, it can actually be a positive since it can allow them to shed some debt that would have otherwise forced the company to completely shut down.

Confused

Is this supposed to be news? Funny? Interesting? Engaging? If I create one and put a picture of Stallman in saint drag humping a penguin will Slashdot publish it for me?

Re:Confused

Please do, for the good of the community, and the joy of all. Seriously I want to see that comic.

Well, as long as you think it's for the good of the community [linuxvirus.net]...

Mono and .Net

Pardon my ignorance, but isn't Mono on the wrong side of the fence? I thought that it should be pictured alongside .Net trying to move into the Free Software camp (or circling around the back to take Free Softare from behind). I mean, isn't Mono just an implementation of a MS technology that's already encumbered by many patents?

Re:Mono and .Net

I think you mean "Pardon my poorly thinly veiled bias". But yes, there is a lot of ignorance in there as well. From wikipedia:

. The patent concerns primarily relate to technologies developed by Microsoft on top of the .NET Framework, such as ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Forms, i.e. parts composing Mono's Windows compatibility stack. These technologies are today not fully implemented in Mono and not required for developing Mono-applications. Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono.

Re:Mono and .Net

Mono allows very few things to run on free software platforms that were not expressly written for Mono, brings nothing not already available with Java or Python and hands direction of technical policy to Microsoft.

Nevertheless, Mono is as lazy and blatant

Re:Mono and .Net

I should clarify first that I'm talking about everything below in the context of where things are placed on the map that the article links to. The core of my argument is that Mono needs to be placed elsewhere on the map, maybe in the Novell front lines.

EVERYTHING is encumbered by patents.

Java is encumbered by patents. The Linux kernel is violating patents. Openoffice and Mozilla is violating patents. Microsoft Windows XP is violating patents. OpenBSD is violating patents.

WTF do you think free software people are freaked out about it? BECAU

Mono the loose cannon

Pardon my ignorance, but isn't Mono on the wrong side of the fence? ... I mean, isn't Mono just an implementation of a MS technology that's already encumbered by many patents?

It's more of a damaged weapon than anything else. Use it if you can and fight to keep it. It might be loose, but you can't just surrender everything that's challenged. The whole point of free software is to be able to use your computer as you see fit. That includes running whatever code you want for whatever purpose you have. I don't have any use for Mono, but others might and I'm glad someone is working on interoperability.

Is this the PG-13 version?

What happened to the in-fighting between KDE and GNOME? It was included in the old version [atai.org].

Not a united front...

...against Microsoft. Look at the names: Apple, Novell, HP, Sun, SGI, IBM -- various combinations of these guys have bumped heads a few times also. And, not all of those names are exaclty pro-FOSS either, maybe they are just anti-M$.

I love how...

I love how the /. crowd needs a Wikipedia link to remind us what Free and Open Source Software is. We'd all be in the dark without that!

Re:I love how...

What's a wikipedia [wikipedia.org] link [wikipedia.org]?

I don't think Google qualifies as FOSS

So why are they on that map?

Re:I don't think Google qualifies as FOSS

Because the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I don't think that I agree...

...with pitting Windows XP against all of the UNIces and other Network Operating Systems. I mean, HPUX really isn't tailored to end users, and Windows XP isn't a server-grade OS. Windows Server 2003 is at least marketted to servers...

I was expecting something more like the Eric Levenez's UNIX Timeline.

It is a Good Map

One thing that this map conveys, is that Microsoft, as a company, has its products and markets all over the place, it is just not focused on doing one thing well. It is competing against dozens of other companies that are working on only the piece of the business that they want and are ultimately making their products better than Microsoft.

If you throw in some other stuff, like the entertainment division with the XBOX-360, you can add another 2 big competitors in Nintendo and Sony.

Also notice that some of Microsoft's competitors may compete against each other, but their focus is entirely on Microsoft, they cannot get a break anywhere. Though this really their own fault for not focusing only a few markets.

Re:It is a Good Map

Digital music players, high-end graphics/visualization systems, search engines.

Freedom as a last hope ?

Looking at the older maps, it is curious how much space that was occupied by proprietary software got replaced with GNU based offerings.

You're not paying sufficent attention to the news.

Any gains by the lunatic fringe are negated by the loss of net neutrality and also by the gains in the prevelance of DRM, "trusted computing" and Patent legislation.

FACT: OSS is doomed. For all practical intents and purposes, OSS is Dead.

"I love the smell of burning FUD ...

... smells like victory."

(apologies to Robert Duvall & Francis Ford Coppela)

Room for improvement

Problems that stick out with this map, off the top of my head:

1. It does not include any indication of the convoluted Sony/Nintendo/DirectX/XBox 360/Bluray/HD-DVD/Windows Media Center conflict; the DirectX vs OpenGL battle is listed as a "front" but OpenGL is depicted as coming from SGI, an irrelivant company who is literally currently in the process of filing for bankruptcy
2. In general lacks any sign of WMA/WMP, or the European legal issues currently related to them
3. In no way indicates Sun's bizarre pseudostalinesque trying-to-simultaneously-ally-with-and-fight-both- sides, -and-failing strategy as regards the GPL and Open Source
4. "Trusted Computing" references fail to note that Apple, who is listed as Microsoft's enemy on this chart, is now using Trusted Platform Module chips
   
5. ODF/OASIS not included

Oblig Sluggy Freelance

Linux seems neat. Conventions like Penguincon support it. Those in the "Know" know it's better. Still, other OS's dominate. Until someone finally argues their point with the undeniable logic of guns and explosives (because guns and explosives trum everything. Duh). Now it's an OS battle in the street and Linux has a penguin's chance in Hell of surviving.

Until YOU arrive on the scene. Sure, you'd rather have the OS wars conducted peacefully via Blogs, one user at a time. But someone just took a shot at you from the iPod-controlled building across the street. And that nice bald guy in suspenders just handed you a loaded missile launcher. Screw logic. This thang is ON!

Taken from the Sluggy Freelance Grand Auto Theft Shirt [sluggy.com]

War? Epic struggle? Get over yourselves.

The good pragmatic folk of the real world will continue to use the tools best suited for the task at hand.

The rest find themselves at the end of the unemployment line.

Why no highlights on the war against Apple, Sun or IBM? They weren't always OSS "good guys", and IMHO, still aren't. Just corporations with their own particular strategies.

So go fight your imaginary "war". Convince yourself that the next version of KDE will totally "kill micro$oft w00t we so rock" and then get all angsty and whiny when it doesn't.

Re:War? Epic struggle? Get over yourselves.

I agree with you, this is stupid. But it was Microsoft who declared this a war [catb.org]. So if you're going to blame someone for being stupid, at least blame the right party.

I would love to continue to use the "tools best suited for the task at hand". Unfortunately, in many cases, Microsoft has, or is trying to, drive the "tools best suited" out of the market. No FLOSS developer has ever tried to prevent me from using MS tools (in fact, many bend over backwards to provide compatibility with MS), but MS is trying to deny me the option of using any other tools, FLOSS or not.

The real war is between Microsoft and the free market, and in that war, I am solidly on the side of the free market.

Kerrigan = Bill Gates??!!?!

Is it bad that that map reminds me of the last mission of Starcraft: Brood War? I mean, you play as the Zerg and start in the middle completely surrounded, and have to wipe out all of your opponents. Does that make Microsoft the Zerg? Bill Gates would be Kerrigan?!!?!

Well....the Zerg infest, assimilate, overpower, and outnumber their opponents, and are led by a single all-powerful Overmind bent on galactic domination. That sounds like Microsoft to me.

I was hoping to see

I'm a little disappointed. What I was hoping to see was an actual look at some of the roadmaps of various F/OSS projects, and to compare that with the timelines for various Microsoft projects. Perhaps as a point of interest it could also include the roadmaps from other companies.
I actually think it would be pretty interesting if someone did this - maybe once every 6 months or so- and kept track of it over a several year period. I think it would give a lot of insight into the complicated dynamics of the relationship between open and proprietary software, between Microsoft and some of the big Linux distributions, and between Microsoft and Everyone Else.
It would at least help to settle the question of who rips the most off of whom.

Just noticed ... friendly against unfriendly

Maybe it's just my imagination or psyche doing this:

All the OS software has those friendly icons. Tux smiles, the GNU gnu smiles, the mozilla dragon smiles, heck even the SuSE animal smiles.

The Closed source software, doesn't want to have anything to do with animals. The Windows "flag" looks kinda like a torn battleflag, the SCO tree looks like you have been drinking for a while and then looked at the tree, passport looks like it wants to invade your wallet. That's just what I noticed...

Re:It's pretty

this map is illegal due to copyright infringement of the Mozilla logos, since they're trademarked.

Trademarks and copyright are not the same thing. They are two different areas of law that have nothing to do with each other. Also, the map has text at the top that says that "All trademarks are property of their respective owners." I'm not a lawyer but that appears to be no different than the trademarks I see in disclaimers on ads in print.