Former Windows Chief on Microsoft Vs. Open-Source 387
prostoalex writes "Brad Silverberg, former chief of Microsoft Windows division, who left the company in 1999, is being interviewed by the Milestone Group, on Microsoft specifically, and the software venture capital world in general (Silverberg is currently working as managing partner for Ignition Partners). He provides an interesting viewpoint on Microsoft's understanding of open source: 'I don't think they have figured that out yet, I think that is clear. They are struggling with not so much open source, per se, but rather they are no longer the low price solution. In the past Microsoft was the low cost solution and Microsoft was then competing and attacking expensive proprietary systems from below. Now for the first time the tables are turned and it's Microsoft that's being attacked from below by a lower price solution. Microsoft needs to figure out how it can demonstrate better TCO to justify its higher prices. Another aspect to that, which is an area I think Microsoft is also struggling with, which is when you are as successful and dominant as they are, how do you continue to foster that ecosystem? What really propelled Microsoft Windows success was an ecosystem that they created that allowed other people to benefit from your success. Actually your success was really a side effect or byproduct of their own success.'"
Bzzt (Score:4, Insightful)
Was Microsoft *ever* the low price solution? I'm sure I'm not the only one who laughed at the whole "they haven't figure that out yet" part. They haven't figured *anything* out yet. That's why we got rid of the feudal system -- because government, on all levels (including corporate management) should be for the people, by the people. My point is that Microsoft, being ruled by King Gates, is behind the times while they are trying to be ahead of the times. They are a working paradox. Open Source is to Closed Source, as Hive Societies are to Kingdoms; one clearly is better than the other and I think we can all agree which one it is.
Re:Bzzt (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bzzt (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
Also in my experience doing windows based tech support across the range of MS products most users would probably require pretty much the same amount of training moving from say 98 to XP as 98 to Fedora (Workstation setup) or other Desktop Linux.
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bzzt (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't mean at the outset, in fact a linux solution can take MORE time to setup initially. But since it is generally setup and never touched again that is the only time investment.
As opposed to windows, which requires at least a few minutes of your time everyday, and another dose of an hour or two about once a month. It adds up to more than the extra hour spent configuring linux fairly quickly.
Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that they're no longer really competeing with proprietary UNIX in the data center (they've pretty much taken all they're going to get in that market) along comes a new OS that also runs on commodity hardware, but has the added benefit of being (mostly) free as well.
Once upon a time, they really could argue that they were cheaper than the "big boys". Now, in the portion of the data center market they control, that's not true anymore.
-- Dave
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Interesting)
It's faster and scales better than the Microsoft implementations by all accounts.
Alot of the theories of samba requiring so much more administration assume dancing through firehoops to get directory services.
First directory services are severly overrated, and second their only benefit is reduced administration. If you must roll your own dancing through firehoops solution to get them, they aren't worth it. And since alot of these c
Re:Bzzt (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Interesting)
Was Microsoft *ever* the low price solution?
Yes, they were.
Back in the 1980's when they were first coming out.
The new standard IBM PC with MS-DOS was a low price solution compared to the alternative of mainframe applications.
Now, however, as hardward costs have continued to plummet, the market really wants the established technology to fade into an open standard with insignificant cost.
The IT decision makers are asking themselves the hard questions like:
Rewrapping Windows with added new features to justify charging for it can only go so far. It's actually come a long way for MS, but arguably their "innovation in the OS" theme has been pushing the bounds of the credible for a while.Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, and a Big Mac is a low price solution compared to the alternative of a 5-course dinner banquet.
The PC didn't compete with the mainframe. It still doesn't, really.
I think you were thinking about minis, e.g. PDP:s, VAXen, and the like.
They competed for the same space as the PC, as an office computer. Those were killed off by the PC:s, obviously to the extent that some have even forgotten them completely!
As for "Low cost alternative", I do agree. The PC was a low cost alternative to a mini, and Microsoft Windows made the PC a low-cost alternative to the Mac.
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
I hadn't thought until I read the article just how good the parallels were, and how Microsoft's role has been recast since those days.
Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, once upon a time, they were.
Back in the mid-80s, I worked for a little value added retailer which sold medical billing systems. They sold Xenix/Altos and Pick/General Automation systems with several users on several terminals, and competed with IBM, which sold mini computers which cost far more than the tens of thousands our systems cost.
When IBM PC compatibles became a major force in the market, we were able to undercut our old systems dramatically. We weren't selling MS systems, but every PC system we sold had MS-DOS on it. We were able to undercut ourselves, and cut our own throats.
Microsoft gets a bit of the credit for this, because they provided the standard and open[1] (but proprietary) base that companies like Peachtree, Kaypro and Compaq could build on. Suddenly, there was no need to support a group of engineers and programmers in your home town who could integrate hardware and write software to get the job done. Peachtree and the clones did it from the Bay Area, cheaper and better, as long as better meant cheaper.
MS was always cheaper than what it replaced, jsut as the platform it ran on was cheaper than the minis. MS was making it big on volume. Today, they've got more volume than ever before, but the new competition is able to cut prices all the way to zero, forever, and that's just the opening salvo in the price war. MS aren't stupid. They may figure it out eventually, but they may stumble badly on the way.
[1] The PC BIOS sourcecode was listed in the manual. Command.com was simple enough that you could figure it out using debug.exe.
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bzzt (Score:2)
Remember, we are not talking about home computing or hobbyist type things here, we are talking business computing. For example, the big HP and DEC machines that the noobs here think of as "mainframes" (now, the Cyber 70 was a "mainframe", but the DECs and Control Data refrigerators where just "minis"). Remember, there was a time, long long ago, about the time Microsof
Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Insightful)
You're also apparently unaware of some of the options Microsoft was faced with on their way to becoming the "huge, oppressive, evil monopoly" that made my second favorite operating system. Back in the day, you could drop $300+ on a copy of Word Perfect, or get Word for something like $100. Like Open Source today, Word was the inferior solution from a feature set and usability standpoint, but it was cheaper and offered enough functionality that most people didn't care. Later, Office sprung up as a way to further lower costs by offering the most common pieces of software for one low price. This left Lotus and WordPerfect scrambling to put together a package that was similar and/or better for a similarly low price. In the end, Microsoft's suite was better integrated, interoperated better (e.g. AmiPro/WordPro could open MS documents well but not visa versa, leaving MS as the defacto standard) and above all cheaper than its competitors.
Of course, this was well before they were officially a monopoly, back when Lotus and Word Perfect still had a chance to make a decent product, a chance neither of them was capable of. Microsoft won this war because they had better businessmen. The problem is, they didn't change their policies once they won...and you can't play the "exclusive contract" game once you've out-stripped your competeition.
Finally, your government systems analogy is kind of foolish. Hive Societies may be "better" idealistically, but historically have never really worked beyond a certain population level. On the other hand, kingdoms have been quite stable and succesful, especially in parts of the world where individual wealth and education are too concentrated to promote an egalitarian society. In fact, on the micro level almost all systems break down into localized oligarchies, with a single set of localized idea-men and a series of lackeys doing what these men say. A single charismatic ruler will always have better luck at efficiently organizing people and delivering services than a committee in a constant power struggle -- this happens so reliably, I think it is safe to assume that it is a genetic predisposition in the human animal to choose a definite vision when available.
Extrapolating from this, since user education in the computer field will always a bigger issue than price, and most Open Source packages are by definition indefinite, open ended entities, I think we can safely assume Open Source isn't going to revolutionize the proletariat's desktop any time soon.
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, there are a number of markets in which Microsoft still has the low price solution...for example, if you want a reliable load balanced database, SQL Server kicks the price pants off of Oracle and DB2. Sybase is languishing and open source doesn't have anything remotely near the feature set of these four (no, we can't all use MySQL).
PostgreSQL? It doesn't have quite the feature set of Oracle but IIRC it does support several forms of load-balancing and along with pl/sql and several language A
Re:Excuse Me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely untrue. MS Word has always been different from Word Perfect, but Word was designed around discovery, not around workflow. You can get more done in any version of Word Perfect faster, and WP had cascading markup well before the days of HTML -- a lot of people prefer this to the Microsoft stylesheets and sections method. Word Perfect -- up until 6.0, which was the first attempt to go beyond workflow into the WYSIWYG paradigm and it was slow as he
Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Insightful)
As answered 100 times already, yes, the really were. Even now, allowing that "low price" includes ROI considerations like my time to setup systems, train users, and maintain networks, MS is a decent alternative. I'm a big fan of the LINUX potential, and hope that this or something like it kicks into high gear and gets in all those little places, but until "dumb users" (we all have them in our offices) get over their FUD of not Windows, it's here.
Consider that to the average Joe (think's he's computer savvy, but isn't really) that walks into his local mega-outlet to buy a ready-to-use computer-in-a-box, Windows is installed (although I have seen Lindows-installed PCs on the shelf, now), included in the price. Realistically, yes, the price is in there somewhere, but to Joe, it's "free" (as in "already done for me"). To change the OS, assuming Joe can figure that out, there's at the very least download and install time, if not a direct purchase of an OS box from the shelf to use. In this case, Microsoft can be argued to be the low-cost winner. Before you bash me, yes, this is where MS has been playing badly...monsters in my box.
To another Joe, the really-savvy computer guru, like you, dear reader (who assembles his system from scratch picking the best components money can buy and lovingly screwing them together in is l33t modded case...), looking at the Suse, RedHat, and Microsoft OS boxes on the shelf, no, Microsoft is not the clear winner in the low-price category. (Especilly to the l33t users who say "screw the shelves" and get their latest from BitTorrent.)
Consider also Joe, the manager of the mega-corp IT department, who licenses and maintains 10,000 desktops. MS is again arguably a low-cost winner, again, especially considering the simple ROI factors.
Note, no insult intended to anyone actually named Joe, who may or may not know how to do any of these things...
MS did a great job of figuring it out early. Although it's since been kicked for unfair practices, they started out selling "irrelevant" software to IBM, who only wanted the hardware money, and became a giant. While their own APIs are closed, they've done plenty for the developers who wish to create software to run on their platform. They rallied the world and got basically anyone who makes hardware to provide (either MS or OEM) drivers that work. They did OK figuring plenty out.
And can someone point out a "Hive Society"? Surely you don't mean some kind of bee-like or Borg-like collective or commune... The "kingdom" (more of a republic, really) I live in is doing pretty good, despite all of the bees buzzing around in Michigan and Montana. However, I think I know what you mean. In the long run, yes, the hives may outlast the big, fat kingdom, but in the meantime, the kingdom will, well, get big and fat...MS posts billions of dollars of revenue, and the collection of your favorite other software manufacturers is a shadow of their tax liability...
Now, I know it looks like I'm on the MS bandwagon; I just believe that you can't bash them just because they're the biggest. Pick on them because they behave monsterously; that they do.
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Interesting)
Do the ROI figures include worm/virus/spyware cleanup?
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has produced:
* MS SQL Server (cheaper than the golden Oracle standard)
* MS DOS (cheaper than CP/M and friends)
* Windows 9x+ (when in a Wintel configuration, traditionally significantly cheaper than an Apple Macintosh setup)
* Windows NT+. This competed heavily against *IX workstations, as it was cheap and easier to use for folks that knew Windows 9x but not *IX. It ate a lot of the CAD market and the 3d graphics market.
* Microsoft Mouse. While M
Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bzzt (Score:2, Funny)
Then why do they have such a poor image now? Why do you suppose even so many anti-MS technical users are still using windows today?
The answer is not marketing, and for most people (probably you included) it is not vendor lock in either, no matter how much we like to blame that.
Could it be that the alternatives are either immature (desktop Linux) or prohibitively expensive (Apple)?
No, couldn't be.
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
And that is one thing open source is horrible at. Where has the open source community been the whole time all these worms have infected the world and ruined people's days? Nothing in this world can be a success if you can't spread the word- and kudos to the people who are able to do it. People who build a great product an
Re:Bzzt (Score:2, Offtopic)
Nothing he posted is close to being correct or real. Look at this for instance:
dumb terminal, without so much as a copy of Firefox, to download poor-quality graphics all day long.
Yes, as we all know how all these dumb terminals supported graphics...
For only about $100 per seat, you could run rich multimedia applications (limited by the XT at first, but quickly unlimited)
Limited by the XT? Again, more garbage.
It is only through Microsoft's generosity th
Re:Bzzt (Score:2)
Re:Bzzt (Score:3, Insightful)
> obscene prices -- anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000
> -- for a computer that did essentially the same
> things that Microsoft could do with Windows.
Also, ~$4000 used to be a rather mundane price for a serious "business class" PC. For the longest time, PCs and Macintoshes were BOTH rediculously overpriced compared to the other 68k competitors. PC's only just recently matched t
Re:Bzzt (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh it might not in this or that area at the moment, but history has proven, and will inevitably continue to prove for the foreseeable future, that open source will get to this or that area sooner or later.
Open source doesn't have to release in time to make it's quarterly. It doesn't have to compete, it can lag behind something else today and spend the next 5 or 10 or 20yrs catching up other areas before getting around to it. Open source does not and cannot die. There really is no debating this.
Where the community concentrates their efforts and have been given the time to show the fruits of their labor no commercial entity even begins to compare. More and more we will see projects mature and close source companies ousted. After all, there is no way a commercial entity could compete with the much more yet, yet infinately more stable and secure development which goes hand and hand with open source.
Let TCO wars begin.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let TCO wars begin.. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Or are there such methods, or standards?)
--
Not a native English speaker.
Re:Let TCO wars begin.. (Score:4, Insightful)
another problem is that MS funded TCO studies do not accurately anticipate downtime caused by malware or virus outbreaks. windows may be the winner in some studies, but statistics on paper can't guarantee a lower TCO in real life. If MS wants to be more credible, they should conduct a research on average downtime and estimate of financial damages caused by malware/virus last 6 months. My guess is that the world biggest marketing company won't do.
Re:Let TCO wars begin.. (Score:2, Interesting)
+ Linux is always $free.
+ Linux Support Contracts are never required
+ Commercial Linux products are never needed, because there's always a free, no-support replacement.
+ Administration costs aren't important.
+ Beowolf clusters solve every imaginable problem.
+ Corporate installations are as simple as the HTTP server running in their basement.
+ Business care about their open source ideology.
Of course, once you graduate
Re:Let TCO wars begin.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the real truth of TCO:
If the business is not computer-related, and thus the people in the company are not computer literate and shouldn't be expected to become computer literate, then Windows has lower TCO because it lets you do the simple things simply. If the business is computer-related, or large enough that it is expected to grow some in-house expertise, then Windows has higher TCO because it ONLY lets you do the simple things simply, at the expense of making the complex things really painful to deal with.
Re:Let TCO wars begin.. (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter how much MS spends money on advertising reality does not change. People who have ever used linux know what the deal is. For example ZDNET australia once published a study showing that an average linux sysadmin controlled many more servers then an average windows sysadmin. Until MS makes windows easier to manage en masse this fact will not change.
The real problem with MS is not TCO. It's that the people don't need to go through a procurement process to download and install fr
Re:Let TCO wars begin.. (Score:5, Funny)
They already have; if you go to getthefacts.com [getthefacts.com] and if you fill out a form there, they'll Airborne Express a rather expensive-looking packet filled with facts about Windows and Linux, including:
~jeff
____________________________
Re:Let TCO wars begin.. (Score:3, Insightful)
By "Open Source folks" I assume you mean "companies that sell services centered around open source software"? Keep in mind that most of the developers and people writing OSS don't really care who uses it (though they certainly like when people do). They're not out to destroy Microsoft (well, not most of them, anyways
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Kinda interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
I use OSS/Free Software when it's the best tool for the job. Right now I'm using Opera on Windows XP, but my servers run Linux.
OSS being cheaper($$$) than propriatary software is just one aspect of it being better in certain situations. As much as is possible, I leave my religion and politics out of my professional life.
For RMS and the like Free Software could be called a religion, the b
Re:Kinda interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
In terms of adoption, it's not the ideologies of the developers that matter so much as those of the users, except when they differ to such a degree as to be incompatible.
Users want something that gets the job done that costs as little as possible. Generally speaking they could give a shit if it's open source or not, if it's Free Software or not.
To the user, this is a battle over prices, driven by competition. If Microsoft gives them Office, they probably won't bother with OpenOffice.org, due to the i
Plus ça change ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Plus ça change ... (Score:2)
Two points: (Score:5, Interesting)
That is certainly true, but there's also a pscyhological dynamic as well. In the past (up until 1995) to some degree Microsoft was seen in two ways - the underdog (compared to the still-seen-as-evil IBM) and the platform of geeky freeware tinkerers. You used to have entire cottage industries that catered to the nerd contingent (eg JPSoft) of people who would sit at home
and -on thier dos computers- see what they could contruct on their own and how they could push the performance of their 386sx computers.
So, not only does Microsoft suffer from signifigantly higher TCO, but they also have lost any sort of "outsider" aka geek cred that they may have had pre-1995.
I believe that this, along with the ill-will from Microsoft's more famous stumblings (eg, crushing netscape) have gone a long way to erode any kind of good will that computer users may have once had for them.
Actually, the reverse is true. By and large over the last 11 years -starting with the assimilation of disk compression and one or two symantec technologies- Microsoft has built their success on the successful deployment of third party technologies. The pattern has typically been that a signifigant technology will get a small foothold on the windows platform, and then when it starts to look promising, MS will either buy it out (in the case of many of its' office products) or clone it and make the original redundant (as was the case with netscape).
So, yes, they 'allowed' other players to grow on their platform, but I think it was more a matter of fattening them up for the kill!
More "Studies" Due Soon (Score:2, Funny)
"Microsoft needs to figure out how it can demonstrate better TCO to justify its higher prices."
By funding more objective [adti.net] "studies" [theregister.co.uk], no doubt?
No, it's not competing on price (Score:3, Insightful)
In the realm of personal computers, I do not think this observation is accurate at all. Microsoft's approach was not to compete on price in the normal sense of the word. Rather, Microsoft's approach was to bundle applications with the operating system. Since these applications and utilities were thus already "paid for" (or included for "free" in people's minds), people had less incentive to buy competing applications, even though the competing applications were often better.
I think the distinction is important. If a particular application becomes popoular, Microsoft just rolls a copy of it into the OS, thereby gutting the market for that application. How many people buy Eudora anymore? Or Netscape? Or Trumpet Winsock? This is not the same thing as competing on price.
Re:No, it's not competing on price (Score:5, Insightful)
WordStar and WordPerfect charged plenty for the word processors, plus if you wanted spell-check, that thing alone would cost you extra $300 or so. Then Microsoft came around with Word, which wasn't all great, but sufficiently functional and way cheaper.
The same with Windows NT - Novell is jumping the Linux bandwagon now only because it got its ass kicked by early Windows NT sales, which made Novell look way over-priced. True, early Novell was technologically superior to early Windows NT, but as the market expanded, NT got better and Novell became the bottom-feeder.
Re:No, it's not competing on price (Score:4, Insightful)
When you buy a well packaged linux distribution, on the other hand, it comes with a software package for (as far as possible) every application already covered. Since installing SuSE 9.1 I can't recall having to download a single package, excepting mplayer for DVD playback support, and there are very good reasons why that's not included in the package.
In fact, this is an arguement that is increasingly being used by Linux advocates (like myself) who argue that the total cost of installation is considerably lower than a Windows setup with all the applications required.
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
I can buy a good personal computer for $500, and I am sure the price would have never came down to this level if someone hadn't come out with a universal operating system, with ease of use, to drive consumer demand, and therefore hardware production to the high levels we see today. In 1990 I could walk into WalMart and play a game on a computer(Solitaire), having very little experience with anything other than BASIC on a TRS80 b
huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
The only market MS seems to be slipping in is the web browser market. Even there, with 2(+?) years of doing nothing to improve their browser, they dominate the market.
Re:huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because Microsoft is afraid. Microsoft has campaigns where Microsoft is telling that is it better than Linux. Microsoft is saying bad things about Linux. Now, ask your self. Why is Microsoft doing this if they are standing on solid ground?
Re:huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, just more servers sold! Look we already replaced 2 entire racks this year, not 1 server came with a preinstalled OS.
Its whatever the kids use (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Its whatever the kids use (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its whatever the kids use (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Its whatever the kids use (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I really disagree with your conclusion, but this part of your argument is bullshit. 'Back in the day' making boot disks for MacOS was as easy as pie.
Up until System 7.5 MacOS came on only a half dozen disks, without any kind of copy-pr
Re:Its whatever the kids use (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its whatever the kids use (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Its whatever the kids use (Score:2)
That much is true. The fact that Linux is easier to distribute will certainly help it become more prevalant amongst kids and student types that can't afford to purchase new OSes every year or two.
"In my opinion, Linux is going to win because kids can get it cheap, College students can get it cheap, and it is the kids that drives the next
Re:Its whatever the kids use (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't think kids want to play PC games? And what about IM? Run XP to get the latest IM functionality (try to get the webcam running in the MS IM on Linux. Now try it with XP)
And have you've seen MS seminars at colleges? They give away the OS and compilers.
>Forget TCO and stuff like this.
Business methology isn't going to change in 20 years. You will still need to justify decisions and
Why vrs Why Not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why Not? - Because they are no longer meeting all IT needs, in fact they are basically the problem. Security is more important today.
It's wrong to say that you succeed with Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at how with Longhorn they're systematically attacking Macromedia by going after Flash and Shockwave. They're already trying to demolish Dreamweaver and if they take out Flash, Shockwave and Dreamweaver then Macromedia will be at best a shadow of its former self.
The problem with Microsoft's attitude of "only the paranoid survive" is that it causes companies to see competitors where they don't really exist. Netscape didn't compete with Microsoft and a business agreement with Netscape probably would have worked better. Same thing with Java. Microsoft should have worked hard to be "the best Java platform provider, period." If Microsoft did that then no one would want to run Java on any OS other than Windows because anything else would be second rate.
The only thing Microsoft needs now is an answer to IBM Global Services. Unfortunately they're too busy attacking the trees to realize that the forest is moving in to kill them. Linux is just a few trees in the greater non-Microsoft forest that IBM GS is the vanguard of. The stronger they get, the weaker Microsoft's position gets, and IBM is playing hardball with Microsoft here.
Re:It's wrong to say that you succeed with Microso (Score:5, Insightful)
Netscape presented the vision of making the operating system irrelevant. Let's look at two of the most popular software products of the last few years: Google and Amazon. Yes, these are software products and each is completely platform agnostic. When I use Google or Amazon on Linux running Firefox, I get the exact same user experience as I get on Windows using IE. If this trend had continued, with the browser and its associated control of the user interface firmly in the hands of Netscape, Microsoft's monopoly position as the operating system of choice would have been lost.
Java was a danger due to a similar argument. Windows is popular because the most popular applications run on it. If Java delivered on its promise of platform independence, a whole new class of killer applications could have arose that were independant of the operating system. Microsoft would then no longer be the operating system of choice. Worse, it would not be the choice for the developers making new killer apps.
Killing Netscape and Java were not paranoid manoevers, they were carefully considered and rational defenses of one of Microsoft's two core strengths, the Operating System. Combined with the other strength: Office, Microsoft presents a huge barrier to entry for anyone attempting to wrest monopoly control over desktop computers from Microsoft.
The problem for Microsoft is they took out the companies, not the ideas. By the time they noticed, the idea of a universal browser was too well entrenched to go away. They have not yet succeeded in converting the Internet to a Microsoft only product (despite the best efforts of ActiveX and IIS).
Building a better Java is not an answer. At some point, the competitors would catch up to a standard such as a language, then how could Microsoft compete? Add features? To Sun's language?
And what happens when someone reimplements 80% of Office in Java? And suppose this new version runs just as nicely on Windows as, say, Mac? What's to keep people on Windows then?
No, these companies had to die. Nothing else would defend Microsoft's monopoly. That they attacked these companies is unfortunate, but part of our system of business. That they did so by exploiting their monopoly position is illegal and should have got them more severly punished.
Re:It's wrong to say that you succeed with Microso (Score:3, Informative)
Well, it wasn't what _anyone_ other than Microsoft wanted. That is, by default with with no warnings, it was very easy for your Java would become Windows-dependent, undermining the fundamental value of Java.
Microsoft could have done all of the innovative things (e.g. calling OS-specific COM objects and other routines easily, nice fast JVM) that they did with their JVM and runtime _without_ violating their Java license, simply b
If not now, then when? (Score:3, Funny)
There is a lot of emotion and a lot of psychology in the market and I think we are starting to see some of that again. We are encouraged that the market is growing warmer, but it is not time to throw caution to the wind.
Oh, that's good to hear. I just need my advisor to tell me when it is time to throw caution to the wind.
Wheeeee!!
Developers! etc... :-p (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that MSFT has in fact figured this out, and that's why they devote so much technology and marketing talent into Windows as a development platform.
Say what you will about Windows as an operating system, but the application development toolchain is really, really slick.
Re:Developers! etc... :-p (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Developers! etc... :-p (Score:4, Insightful)
I admit that I have less experience with Microsoft's tools than I do with with the Linux ones. However, I was fairly unimpressed with what I saw. Perhaps I'm missing something -- I'd love to be enlightened, as I see a number of MS people talking about how great the MS development environment is, but it seems to, well, kind of suck to me.
* The build configuration manager in Visual Studio is not very good. You create a new build (I think the defaults in a new project are "Debug" and "Release"), but if you want to maintain several configurations (Build, Release, non-GUI, etc), it gets to be a pain in the ass, and you have to copy options around from configuration to configuration. GNU make is much more flexible.
* A number of people seem to like the editor. I'll concede that it has a reasonably nice interface for completion, but I use xemacs as my editor, and Visual Studio really does not compare, now that I have xemacs set up *just* so. xemacs has similar completion (though without the argument descriptions and with an indexing pass) via etags.
* I've gotten errors/warnings during compilation from VS that I've found unclear before. I will concede that this may just a matter of the fact that I am very familiar with gcc and know its warnings well.
* VS apparently has a debugger that lets you modify code at the source level while debugging (that's one heck of a hack). Haven't played with it, but a few people have spoken of it positively, so I'll fly with it there.
* As GNU make runs, it prints out all the commands that it is executing. If a build step fails, you can see exactly what command was executing and what previous commands did. I've had times when Visual Studio said something like "Tool Command Failed", and I was reduced to commentin out lines in the pre- or post- build environment until the errors changed to determine what was going wrong.
* VS creates a ton of temporary and other files when you create projects. That's a little annoying.
* Pre-.NET version of VS use pseudo-text project files (.dsw). They *look* like text files, but VS cannot handle alternate line terminators on them. This is a pain when checking files into a CVS repository.
* I've had VS crash on me a during builds or other activity fair number of times. I haven't had gcc, GNU make, or xemacs crash on me in a long time.
* Free or bundled-with-VS diagnostic tools on Windows are relatively poor. I've cobbled together a set of tools that I generally use on Windows (filemon, regmon, Dependency Walker), but they don't really compare to the excellent free diagnostic software available for Linux.
* RAD tools -- I'm not a big fan of the Access or other RAD tool interfaces in Microsoft's development tools, but then I don't like glade and friends much either, so I can't really call out either.
I dunno. I'm just curious as to what I'm missing that people think is so fantastic.
Commodity Value (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget that Windows was also running on commodity hardware. In the early years, it wasn't "Windows" - it was Mac or PC. People were buying a platform with all the advantages of commodity hardware; price, selection, customization, etc. The PC platform had considerable draw from the market. It was able to provide value to customers that previous proprietary computing products lacked. And in the end, the commodity platform "won".
That's not to say Microsoft didn't do a good job with supporting developers. They did better than Apple in many ways. But in those days, that simply ensured that "Killer App Version 2.0" was available for the "PC" as well as other platforms.
The real success for Windows was in it's being the catalyst for commoditization of the hardware market. And then riding the ensuing wave.
Now we're facing a possible next wave in IT; commoditization of the OS. Microsoft would clearly have issues with this. And they would rather fight it than try and ride this one too (or at least not start paddling for it until the very last minute). It's interesting to see that one notable who was plowed under by the earlier wave is now trying to set up to ride this one; IBM.
Har (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as Windows continues to be preloaded on a majority of machines, Windows will continue to sell (duh) and some of their apps will continue to sell.
On another note...
Ha! I remember a sentence in 'Undocumented DOS' so many years ago: "Your product may be a DLL in the next version of Windows." So the developers are finally wising up, eh? About fucking time.Re:Har (Score:2, Insightful)
So why don't you start your own Linux company and preload your stuff? You should be rich by about Wednesday, judging your expertise in the field.
The Lord of the OS (Score:4, Funny)
Bill Gates as The Dark Lord (aka Sauron)
Microsoft Corp as Mordor
Balmer, et al as The Nine
Linus Torvalds as Elrond
RMS as Gandalf
Tux as Frodo
Microsoft Windows (TM) as The One Ring
and Darl McBride as Gollum
Sorry, just thought of the parallelism while I was R'ing TFA.
Paradigm change (Score:3, Interesting)
If MSFT really wanted to latch on to the future they would buy Yahoo, Google or Ebay. The era of anyone really caring that much about a document editor (enough tp pay gobs of cash for it) are over.
The story of Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
1980: "Every house should have its own MS OS home-computer"
1990: "Every house should have its own MS OS home-computer, and every company should have our server system"
2000: "Every house should have its own MS OS home-computer, every company should have our server system, and every large-scale company should replace their existing UNIX systems with our stuff"
Linux:
2000: "Every company have our server system, and every large-scale company are replacing their existing UNIX systems with our stuff. Now how about this thought: Shouldnt every house have its own Linux home-computer?"
Linux is allready there at all levels, except for the average home-computer.
Hmm...supply and demand (Score:3, Insightful)
FUD MS success is marketing. (Score:4, Informative)
This "forced" revenue stream continued until just recently when some companies started preloading Linux. MS no longer controls the forced upgrade market. If they stop supporting their older systems now, the 'big' users will start investigating other lower cost operating systems. MS is threatened by Linux because people do not like to be controlled and basically extorted.
Yet again, MS can destroy the Linux market... (Score:2, Interesting)
I keep saying this and I am surprised that MS is not going that route somehow. I thought for sure that this Longhorn project would be some sort of MS implementation of *NIX. (Not Xenix).
We all know MS can do it if they wanted. We also know they like to copy Apple (Look at WIN 95)....it makes so much sense, from MS' perspective, I cannot fathom why MS doesn't build it's next version of
Re:Yet again, MS can destroy the Linux market... (Score:3, Interesting)
If anything, they should keep the NT / VMS kernel and bolt something more secure on top...not the other way around.
Re:Yet again, MS can destroy the Linux market... (Score:3, Informative)
<snicker> Uh, what, something strong like VMS [winntmag.com], perhaps?
They've munged it so much that it's taken until now to make an OS that almost doesn't suck, but that doesn't mean the foundation isn't there.
How about.... (Score:4, Funny)
postosuchus v's coelophysis (Score:2)
this article alluded to evolution I cant help think of microsoft as the archosour postosuchus [bbc.co.uk] and the various linuxes/bsd's as coelophysis [bbc.co.uk] competing for space in the late triassic (220 million years ago) as shown in the bbc's walking with dinosaurs [bbc.co.uk]. The fight for users is hotting up with the nimble carnivorous open source systems eating away at application space and users.
the fact they (MS) dont get it doesn't really surprise anyone. I don't think MS is worried so much about the techno~weenies for example
If you can't beat them, join them. (Score:3, Insightful)
As many here have said, Linux won't go away.
So if MS can't make Linux go away they should simply become like IBM. With there power they could really influence the Open Source community in any direction they want.
The first step is to port Office to linux(it's already working on mac os X, so that wouldn't be to hard to port). Then you make a killer GUI that will smash Apple's aqua to bits and finaly stopping all those switchers from the x86.
The important thing is to keep people on the x86 with office, Space GUI(space is cold and dark you know , gotta keep there old image
Then when they are the employers of 90% of the linux kernel coders (which they surely will be).
Now they have the power to control the way linux moves.
Becuse they employ the mayority of the kernel and surely most of the developers to X and all the other important liberaries.
Now they can optimize the whole system for there killer GUI, office, smb(Don't remember the real name of the protocol
And they can become the biggest distro
Ofcourse they have to do this slowly, phase out windows first in the server area then in the coperate area and last the homes.
They have to understand that there kernel is CRAP and would cost more money to develop to a better kernel then linux then to use the linux kernel.
Remember, there are som really great minds employed by MS. They just need to let them lose.
Lookout!!! MS contaminated by Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
borg collective (Score:3, Funny)
> your success was really a side effect or byproduct of their own success
that's why its called 'the collective'...
Re:Ecosystems are bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
First step is to realise that "The Economy" is something that _WE_ created.... there is no intrinsic economy created by some supreme being.. and we shouldn't get carried away considering it as something holy that needs to be
Re:Ecosystems are bullshit (Score:2)
Or you can model it [creativenz.govt.nz] using pipes and water [creativenz.govt.nz], as done by Bill Phillips [inc.com] at the London School of Economics in 1949.
Re:Ecosystems are bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that models have no value, but if the model tells you exactly what the gold price is going to be in 30 days time (for example), you need to know what the uncertainty is... which means we are back to probabilities and statistics.
A good way to use models is to perturb the inputs slightly and see how your outputs diverge. This is classic chaos theory. If a small change in input doesn't change the output, your model is stable.
Its relation to reality is another thing entirely. I've seen beautiful models that produce beautiful, stable, consistent but utterly meaningless results.
Re:Ecosystems are bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Its relation to reality is another thing entirely. I've seen beautiful models that produce beautiful, stable, consistent but utterly meaningless results.
"There is nothing so horrifying as witnessing the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts."
--unknown
Re:TCO is bogus (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TCO is bogus (Score:2)
Then we move into the world of cost estimation. What is your employee's time really worth? Do they spend more time managing the interface of this app verses that app? The reality is that it is impossible to accurately guess what your TCO will be until you
Re:TCO is bogus (Score:5, Insightful)
Any concept of the inner workings of a Fortune 500 company? i.e. what it means to have thousands upon thousands of non technical users who are now required to use a PC for their job 8 hours a day? Any idea on earth what it costs to support these people? (hint- these operatives may make as low as minimum wage, but the people supporting them certainly don't!)
Re:TCO is bogus (Score:5, Insightful)
You could apply a TCO formula to just about everything. For example, the "TCO" of my car includes:
- How much I paid for it,
- How much insurance costs me,
- What the gas mileage is (how much gas costs me),
- How many people can it hold (how "efficient" is it?),
- How many other uses does it have that would cost me money to get otherwise (like towing), and
- other factors that I'm sure I'm forgetting right now.
One definition of TCO found on the web is (and there are a few):
"The life cycle cost view of an asset, which includes acquisition, setup, support, ongoing maintenance, service and all operating expenses. It focuses attention on the sum of all costs of owning an asset, as opposed to the initial or vendor cost, and is useful in outsourcing decisions."
(From The Bridgefield Group [bridgefieldgroup.com])
Linux TCO (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe there is a project of this type already out there, but I've never seen it.
We could come up with a list of criteria to compare like:
Anyone have any additional items?
Re:Linux TCO (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.cioupdate.com/article.php/10493_1477
http://management.itmanagersjournal.com/managem
are three stories saying that Linux has lower TCO than Microsoft.
Re:Linux TCO (Score:3, Informative)
Learning curve
Scarcity of available employees
Complexity
If it's an open project anyone can contribute, people with any preconcieved notions. I think it would be much more valuable to have a TCO analysis by people 'in the trenches' than by some biased, funded think tank that doesn't operate in the real world.
TCO is VERY real (Score:4, Interesting)
If I were in a shop with 5 servers that never failed, I might agree with your viewpoint.
I now work in an environment that has servers in the 10's of thousands. TCO is VERY real.
Ballpark numbers, a server that costs me $10k to purchase, may cost me $1k a month to run, not counting bandwidth. That $1k a month cost inludes power, cooling, admin overhead, tech overhead, etc.
Over the four year life of the server, that means that 20% of the servers cost was in aquisition, and the server costs me $50,000 over the lifetime of the server. I am more interested in saving that back end cost of $40,000 than I am in the $10k. Knock $1k off that server price, not interested. Making sure that my techs never have to go out to the floor to change a part in 4 years, you have my attention.
I would expect anyone who works in a large IT organization should know this. I am suprised by the amount of folks that do not.
Re:hopefully... (Score:2)
Realistically, that leaves only internal instability as knocking us down from the top, once we get there.
Key phrase: "Former position." (Score:2)