Windows Monoculture Myopia Revisited 319
round stic writes "eWeek magazine has an interesting look at the effects of the Windows monoculture on IT budgets, even as everyone agrees on the severity of the inherent security risks. The article contains interviews with Dan Geer and others who warned about the risks of the Windows monopoly three years ago. The article coincides with a piece in the Observer that suggests Vista is the end of the Microsoft monolith because of how complex the operating system has become."
End of a monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
bah (Score:1, Interesting)
sabotaging own install base (Score:5, Interesting)
End of the monopoly... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to play devil's advocate here (so don't bite my head off); while Windows may be complex, its ubiquitous nature does reduce the need for applications to be particularly portable, and for programmers to be particularly knowledgable. That's an arguable benefit, but it maybe the drive for varied OSes has its drawbacks.
It would obviously be preferable to have a well-written universal OS, but that brings us around to the old saying: The best kind of government would be a benevolent dictator, but how many dictators stay benevolent?
Windows and M$ may be evil, are certainly a pain in the arse, but are they also just an inevitable consequence of the technological and economic environment we have created? If it weren't M$, would we just be having the same problem with someone else? If the devil didn't exist, would it have been necessary for us to have created him?
What do others think about this? (Again, I'm only playing devil's advocate - I want to see how others view this situation)
Just to add to this.... (Score:4, Interesting)
With that being said, they have done quite a bit of evil too. But there's so many negative posts about Microsoft, I had to comment on the one positive post that I saw that wasn't just a "microsoft rules you lunix users muhahahaha" troll.
Ok, Mods, do your job. Mod me down for saying something positive about evil evil bad bad Microsoft.
Three years ago? (Score:2, Interesting)
What took them so long? That was 2003 - it was a "monopoly" (Not really - it never has been and never will be...) long before then.
Re:Just to add to this.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong. I used to be a Microsoft hater. Being a FreeBSD person, I used to also be a Linux hater because of the zealotry. In my old age, I guess I have settled down a bit and realized that everything has its place, including Microsoft. To the average
I don't think its the end of a monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
Another neat note is that MS's XNA framework and GAme Studio Express is just out in beta and quite a few people are liking what they see. Unfortunately, it'll take another beta release to get the Content Pipeline out the door, which means painful conversion of Mesh files, but thats ok for now, as people get to learn the IDE.
I've always been told that making money has nothing to do with having a decent base product. While that might not be the selling point, the fact that you have good accessories, or at least desirable accessories usually can push the fence-sitters onto your side.
*NIX will never die. Windows will never die. I don't think it matters how much each side tries, since the appeal (to the GP) of "Widely Used" vs "Better" have always offset.
Re:End of the monopoly... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be vastly better if we have well-written universal API layers. Like Java, C#/.NET/Mono, Qt, GTK, and other beautiful cross-platform toolkits.
Unfortunately, except for Java and C#, we don't have any toolkits that go "all the way" in being cross platform, with the possible exception of Win32 (WINE), but Wine is reverse engineered, not bottom-up designed, so there are limitations.
There's no reason for application interfaces to be deeply tied into the OS. Properly engineered, a user-space environment on Linux should be able to run Windows or OS X or whatever applications, and vice versa. The reason we do not have this is not because of engineering limitations, but because of vertical vendor lock in. Lately, this seems to be easing slightly.
I envision a future where applications come with API requirements, not OS requirements. "Requires GTK 2.42, OpenGL 3.0, and SDL. OpenAL 5 required for 3D audio." Software manufacturers would probably support particular "distributions" on the box ("Runs on OS 12.5, Mandriva 2012, and Windows Super-Next-Hubble-Viewpoint"), but like *current* binary software for Linux you shouldn't have many problems installing on the "wrong" distribution; with minor API-requirement caveats.
Think Python applications (these are often cross-platform). Think Java. Think C#. As CPUs get faster, we can put up with some of this overhead; and indeed, in some cases there is very little overhead (WINE does Win32 in userspace on Linux really quickly. Imagine if Microsoft gave up the OS business, but just started selling something like Wine. The "Windows" application layer for Linux, OS X, Unix, Solaris, whatever.
If you want an example of this environment, look at Linux, Solaris' Linux Application Environment, FreeBSD's Linux Application layer, and lxrun, the Linux application layer for (ick) SCO Unix. IIRC, AIX is also Linux compatible.
I think it can work; and giant commercial developers have no problem operating in this multisegmented space. Sure, there are a few more compatibilty bugs than in the Windows monoculture, but there's a greater diversity of applications and environments (from very small systems to giagantic systems), and if the commercial OS space was more competitive in the Desktop world (multiple vendors of multiple pedigree OSs) we would see these compatibility issues worked out quickly.
Slight nit with the CISO's position (Score:3, Interesting)
This is much smarter security-wise and economically than trying to support many different operating systems in production systems. For one thing your support costs go way down, especially if you choose the right vendor, because you are buying and deploying in quantity. While you as (for example) a SUSE shop will still get slammed hard when Linux is targetted, the shop that tries to suport Linux and Windows at the same time will get hit with Linux AND Windows vulnerabilities. Furthermore, it's likely that no matter what operating system is vulnerable, some mission critical system some place will be compromised.
So, a possible strategy is to standardize, but on something that is not a dominant "de facto" industry standard. For larger outfits, you may choose to standardize differently for different divisions and subsidiaries. You still get the scale effects of standardization, and while it does mean you respond to more security problems, you're probably scaled and organized in a way that makes this possible to handle.
One problem of course is that presumes you have a choice of applications which can meet your needs. One of the arguments some economists (who have magically rediscovered some of the disadvantages of competition) is that software is subject to the "network effect", which amounts to that if there is only one platform to target, then the market for software for that platform is bigger. This means you benefit from the competition in the application space. The downside of course is that you suffer from lack of competition in the OS space, from the OS vendor's attempts to tilt the playing field in the application space, and of course the monoculture effect.
These days various flavors of Linux are at least as good as Windows by any reasonable standard, when considered as an operating environment for your computer. Linux and BSD fall short availability of suitable applications for these customers, and support for those applications. In some application areas, Unix flavors are a bit ahead of Windows IMHO, but overall the Windows market has the full spectrum of applications better covered than Unix. This barrier is a catch-22; developers will come to a platform when there are adopters, and adopters will come to the platform when there are developers.
So, a legitimate strategy to avoid the monoculture problem is to use a Unix derivative such as Linux, BSD or MacOS. However the practicality hinges on the differential in application availability being less than your concern for security.
MacOS is probably the most important player to watch. It may well break the network effect log jam, to the benefit of Linux and BSD as well.
The one place where movement towards this rosy future can be thwarted is in standards compliance. Consider the number of web servers that run on Unix variants, but whose clients are overwhelmingly Windows desktops. The standardization of HTTP, HTML and these days javascript makes this possible (although failure to support standards inflates costs). Standards for data interchange and communication are a critical enabler of a heterogenous software ecology. Without them you cannot work with suppliers and customers who make different vendor choices than you.
Re:TFA perpetuates myth (Score:4, Interesting)
Where would they both be now if they stopped fighting in, say, 1999?
In DRM hell, of course. There is where you can see how correct RMS was, back in the day. The GPL is of course the only thing that effectively stops MS from embracing and extending GNU/Linux. If Linus Torvalds hadn't learned about the GNU project and the GPL, lots of hard work by lots of people in the kernel could be made irrelevant.
Re:But what about INERTIA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell no, they will do whatever the trade magazines and microsoft sales drones tell them to do. I have yet to meet ONE IT director that not only understood what the hell he was in charge of, but had the ability to even formulate a plan on how to research and impliment the best solution for the company.
The last job I was at, the new IT director demanded that the video production department be brought up to corperate standards... Which meant getting rid of all the G5's the new server raid arrays, etc.. and replacing them with absolute piece of crap Dell pc's and windows based video editing and composting solutions. Productivity of that department was utterly decimated by a retarted moron who is horribly overpaid even though every one of us was telling him it was a very bad idea.
So productivity went down to ZERO, morale was destroyed, the whole thing was such a mess we had to hire outside contractors to get our work done pay for advanced training for all staff and the director asshole got a "bonus" for losing the company money.
Risk analysis for managers and techies (Score:3, Interesting)
If you go out on a limb and choose something different then your "risk" of getting the crap beat out of you if you fail is HIGH and the return is LOW.
Accountability for the people who choose MS products for their organizations will help. If your boss said "if a SINGLE desktop gets infected with a virus or spyware you are fired" would you choose Windows as your desktop/server OS?
Re:End of the monopoly... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm starting to think, as a result of this discussion - see other threads - that Windows (or something like it) was an inevitable phase in the evolution of OS software. Much like the IBM PC in the 80's, as somebody else said, at first it was fear of the unknown and incompatibility that drove people (well, the market in general) to stick with what they knew. Then, as the requirements became more clearly defined through experience and familiarity, alternative solutions to well-defined problems became available, and we now have thousands of PC and component manufacturers all using the same standards. In the case of M$ though, they've used every trick in the book to keep their standards as closed as possible and keep everyone else out of the market, which may explain why this phase has lasted so long. The cause of their market dominance could be seen as a combination of their anti-competitive practices and the fact that they pretty much "got their first" in gaining market share during that crucial stage of OS evolution.
So maybe, with luck, we're looking at the same evolution of the OS market. Universal platforms and APIs are the way things will progress, and within a few years your choice of OS will be seen as a matter of taste, preference or function (as it is with Linux now).
I must say, I do like your vision of the future.
What is competition (Score:4, Interesting)
If we look only at PC hardware
People bought MS DOS, not PC DOS, not Dr DOS
There were a few windowing environments and task swapping/multitasking
Deskview (sp?) GEM, OS/2, GEOS
People still bought MSDOS (Dosshell swapping later and MS windows multitasking)
They also leveraged their default status, when they went QBasic and the default editor, did anyone notice it was very similar to the QuickBasic and QuickC environments? (I loved QuickC 2.5 at the time)
123-> Excel
Wordperfect -> Word
They simply make a good enough product, and work on the weak points till it's no longer clearly inferior to the competition.
It's a very effective way to compete.
Re:bah (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:bah (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What is competition (Score:2, Interesting)
GEM (Digital Research), TopView (IBM), MS Windows all came out as graphical shells over DOS. You still needed to have DOS in the first place. In contrast, OS/2 was the origin/inspiration of Microsoft Windows 3.0.
Lotus 1-2-3 originally competed against Microsoft Multiplan, and completely crushed it (what? you've never heard of Multiplan? Guess why?). Bill was so mad that the next version of MS-DOS broke API compatibility and Lotus apopeared to be "buggy". Lotus had to issue a fix once they understood what had happened. Yes, Excel did eventually win, and I'll tell you why shortly.
Wordperfect had the market cold against everything, because they supported nearly every model of printer on the market. In addition, the formatting scheme that the program used made sense, IMHO much more so than Word style sheets. Yes, Word did eventually win, and I'll tell you why.
Bundling.
Around 1994, Microsoft put a word processor (Word), a spreadsheet (Excel), something else, I can't remember what, and made them all work together. One could even use Visual Basic to script up special applications with these things. It still wasn't enough to get people to switch.So they dropped the price for the whole package to $150 USD. Nobody could compete with that, so everybody else lost. Once MS had the market to themselves, they slowly raised the rate on every new version of MS Office until it was profitable again.
Re:You forget business volume licensing (Score:2, Interesting)
Next, a lot of the business from the big companies comes from Celeron / Athlon / P4 business. Most of these computers don't have the memory, CPU power, or even the video card (most use on-board accelerators) to power Vista.
I know, I know, RC1 looks a lot better than Beta2, but it still won't run on my "noob-machine" (Celeron 1.2Ghz, 512 RAM, Intel graphics solution). And this is the typical type of homebrew computer you'll see in use.
The way I see it, I don't think that many people will upgrade to Vista, at least, not right away. Vista is terribly complex, and for some things, XP is actually easier to use - I wouldn't be surprised if some people actually go back to XP, after their experience with Vista.
-Christian
Re:Please read the Observer article before comment (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm starting to get the idea that MS doesn't even LIKE their OS anymore. It's just too much to maintain, while other programs like Office provide lots of money with less than half of the development costs.
Re:End of the monopoly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the kicker here is - these things ARE pretty much cross platform; Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, etc.
It's where you need to talk to the OS (Administrative Script Programmers chime in here - ) that causes the problem.
Sure, I can use a Perl script to admin my windows network, to talk to Active Directory through the ADSI interface, talk to the event log, registry, or file system through the WMI or WIN32 interface, etc.
But that script isn't portable.
I can do stuff on ANY unix, like create users, archive logs, secure permissions, etc. - and with the exception of specific paths (/usr
So - with the exception of this kind of scripting - we're pretty much already there. Pick your language. Pick your runtime environment.
What does this tell us?
The real battle is for the Server Market, and the mindshare of the network admins out there. Microsoft has made a lot of headway in the Server Market. No doubt about that. They totally made Novell their bitch in the 1990's. But there are signs they're losing their momentum. Part of this has to do with the failure of their focus on
Re:What is competition (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not what you know...
Re:bah (Score:1, Interesting)
I know several people fired because of using or buying Microsoft. Even a link has been posted by someone else about getting fired.
http://blog.lobby4linux.com/index.php?/archives/8