Microsoft May Be Targeting the Ubuntu Desktop 583
mjasay writes "Microsoft is advertising for a new director of open source strategy, but this one has a specific purpose: fight the Linux desktop. 'The Windows Competitive Strategy team is looking for a strong team member to lead Microsoft's global desktop competitive strategy as it relates to open source competitors.' For a variety of reasons, this move is almost certainly targeted at Ubuntu Linux's desktop success. With the Mac, not Linux, apparently eating into Microsoft's Windows market share, what is it about desktop Linux, and specifically Ubuntu, that has Microsoft spooked?"
Reader christian.einfeldt notes Microsoft's acknowledgment of the FOSS threat to their business model within SEC filings, and suggests that this job posting could instead be about maintaining Internet Explorer's market share lead against Firefox.
Re:woo (Score:5, Informative)
After TWENTY FIVE years of effort.
2009-1992 = 17
Re:woo (Score:2, Informative)
It is GNU/Linux you insensitive clod!
Re:woo (Score:2, Informative)
2009 is going to be the year of linux on the desktop! THIS time I mean it! Not like the other TWENTY FIVE times.
In the last 6 months, 3 real persons (not geeks) around me migrated from Windows to Ubuntu. Before that, nobody that I am aware of.
I am still happy with my Mac OS X, which is much more polished. But I am glad to have a fallback solution for the day when Apple begins to behave badly...
Re:woo (Score:3, Informative)
2% might not be much, but the rise (and fall) of linux (like all things in statistics) will be a bell curve. 2% is the bit where the graph starts to look pointy.
That said, first microsoft have to do something about the fact that half of their customer base can't tell the difference between windows 7 and kubuntu..
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/soa/Is-it-Windows-7-or-KDE-4-/0,139023769,339294810,00.htm [zdnet.com.au]
Re:the acorn becomes the mighty oak...yeah yeah (Score:3, Informative)
You sir have never worked in tech support or talked to anyone who does.
That beast does exist.
The more attacks from ms the better (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft analyses open source (Score:3, Informative)
A number of commercial firms compete with us using an open source business model by modifying and then distributing open source software to end users at nominal cost and earning revenue on complementary services and products.
These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software. Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives [sec.gov]. To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline.
Open source software vendors are devoting considerable efforts to developing software that mimics the features and functionality of our products, in some cases on the basis of technical specifications for Microsoft technologies that we make available
Re:woo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:woo (Score:5, Informative)
"f you've got a legacy of MS documents that you can't easily move, you're kind of stuck with MS."
There's a lot of truth in this, but just the same, for the vast majority of organizations it's the content of those documents which is really important, not the exact layout (think about how quickly in real terms most large organizations managed to transform all those business-essential forms and documents from paper to electronic form - less than a decade for most - and that was a much more costly transition in terms of the human hours involved than merely reformatting some .doc-formatted files).
My suspicion is in years to come there's going to be a lot of demand for tools like the (open source) Australian government-funded Xena [sourceforge.net], an "XML Normalizing tool" for converting almost any digital document format you care to name to an open XML format for archiving and re-use.
Re:MS ais probably not worried about Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Excuse me...
30+ million is NOT 0.1 percent of the market.
Novell pinned it at that back three years ago at BrainShare.
If you go off of the web stats line, you're missing that many sites that are covered aren't of interest to Linux people or that if they are, there's very much a bunch of us out there with altered browser idents (You CAN alter that, you know...) so that they look like an XP box so that the sites out there that're stupidly coded won't block them out because only "Windows" machines are supported...
If you go off of things like IDC figures, you're dead wrong there. That's based off of reported sales of given OSes. With Linux you don't have to buy to use. Moreover, the "reported sales" of Windows are off by a bit always.
In the case of XP, I've two machines that they claim as "sold". NEITHER are running it right now.
In the case of Vista, I've a laptop they're claiming as one of their sales. Sure it's sold. But it's not being ran on it, nor will it ever be.
You can't base things off of the numbers out there right at the moment because they're either measuring it in a flawed manner or you're relying on honesty out of the people reporting it, etc.
Re:Simple (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ummm (Score:3, Informative)
How about if before you call something useless, you actually try it out instead of just basing your opinions on youtube videos.