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.
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for targeting Ubuntu is simple. Its getting attention as a credible desktop alternative by the main stream. If one Linux destop is a credible alternative than its only a short leap for the public to make that any Linux desktop solution might be a credible alternative. At that point products start getting evaluated on the merrits and how well they suit a the purchasers organization or individual needs. Windows may or may not come out on top if subjected to any rigor in the decision process.
Apple is one company and the sole provider of a Mac OS solution. They can be controled; there is a specific target to go after if they become more of a problem. Microsoft can deal Apple a good deal of hurt buy just shutting down their own Mac Business unit. Ubuntu on the other hand if allowed to become to popular can't be stopped so easily. If that popularity speads to Linux desktop distributions more generally then Microsoft no longer has a specific entity to go after. The want to make sure desktop a meaningful desktop Linux business remains something that is going to be still born so to speak.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What is it about desktop Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?"
Mac OS X doesn't run natively on all PCs, so Microsoft doesn't have anything to be afraid of. Plus Microsoft has software already developed for the Mac, so they could still make money even if Macs dominate PC sales.
Microsoft doesn't have that with Ubuntu, not only does it run on the same hardware as Windows, but it's being offered as an alternative to Windows by a major player in the PC market.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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?,/i>
Mac OS X doesn't run natively on all PCs, so Microsoft doesn't have anything to be afraid of. Plus Microsoft has software already developed for the Mac, so they could still make money even if Macs dominate PC sales.
Yes, and it's Linux, not OS X, that is the current most-viable legal option to Windows for both OEM customers (new machine b
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish everyone who cried "Apple is stupid for not allowing OS X to run on PCs!" would read your post.
Why in the world would Apple set themselves up as a direct market competitor to a company known to squash competition?
Maybe later, when they reach a point that even Microsoft gets worried... then, and only then, would I expect Apple to consider licensing OS X to run on all PCs.
Alternate summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alternate summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably the over 10 million desktop user base is my guess..
Re:Alternate summary (Score:4, Funny)
...what is it about Ubuntu that's making Microsoft target them specifically?
Somebody showed Steve Ballmer this bug report [launchpad.net]?
Bug #1 (liberation):
Microsoft has a majority market share
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We'll arbitarily assume Microsft is targeting Ubuntu specifically...
Hardly an arbitrary assumption. Erosion to Apple has been on-going for a decade or more, and I'm sure that Microsoft has that fully analyzed and has a multitude of strategies and tactics all ready to roll out to counter any conceivable move from Apple. But Ubuntu has arrived by a comet's orbit out of what had looked like empty space: there really was not much in the other Linux distros to attract Microsoft's core markets. Creation of this position is more likely a response to Ubuntu than to any of the known
Re:Alternate summary (Score:4, Insightful)
There are several other goofy things about the summary.
As you pointed out, there's no evidence that this is specifically about Ubuntu. The other goofy thing in this sentence is the reference to "desktop success," which makes it sound as though Ubuntu is already a successful competitor, and MS is responding to that. Now I use Ubuntu, love Ubuntu, and I think it's great that companies like Asus and HP are shipping machines with Ubuntu preinstalled, but as far as anyone can tell, Linux's share of the desktop is still stalled at about 1%. Asus and OLPC are actually no longer exclusively tied to Linux. I think it's much more reasonable to interpret this as a move to fight against a competitor that is currently not successful at all in any quantitative sense, but threatens to become successful (i.e., start growing beyond 1% market share) in the future.
There's no evidence to back up the part about "specifically Ubuntu."
Uh, except that that MS job announcement specifically refers to desktop Windows. They're clearly advertising for a position for someone to be a cheerleader for Windows versus Linux, to head off any hypothetical future erosion of their market share to Linux.
The SEC filing refers only to servers when it comes to competition from OSS. That's because the server market, not the desktop market, is where MS currently has to compete with Linux and BSD on relatively even terms. So the final paragraph of the summary brings up two points that are unrelated to each other (browser versus OS) and unrelated to the job position (which is about desktop, not server).
Ummm (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it's the point that linux has been doing things on the desktop for 10+ years that microsoft is just barely starting to implement. And most of that is just the eye candy, they still need to copy all the extra functionality.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Netbooks, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you what scares them (Score:5, Interesting)
That Ubuntu is not only well supported, but secure...something they themselves have not been able to manage.
A friend is bringing his system over today for me to install Ubuntu on. Why? Because he is just sick to death of the malware.
You know what? Sick to death is one thing, but sick to death with a good alternative...Microsoft can't have that now, can they?
And the other thing that scares them (Score:3, Insightful)
When you install Windows, you have to dig around for a key. When you install Linux, you just install it.
Terrifying, isn't it...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Try finding the windows install cd for your laptop. Oh right it isn't there, and microsoft won't let you download it. So now when you find a copy of a retail cd, you install it, enter the key and what is the very next thing you need to do? That's right, call tech support in Mumbai. All this for an operating system you legally purchased. If that isn't user-hostile, I don't know what is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because, at least in Apple's case, they know with 99.9% certainty that you are installing on Apple hardware, for which you paid dearly (and with which you bought an OSX license - aka the Apple tax).
Re:And the other thing that scares them (Score:4, Funny)
There's another way to look at it. That code is there to prevent people from stealing the OS since its thats popular. Linux on the other hand has trouble gaining marketshare even though its free. Its almost as if you literally can't GIVE Linux away. You have to come up with a philosophical 'movement' to talk people into using it.
People don't think that way. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you buy a DVD, can you watch it with friends? Or do they have to buy their own copy?
When you buy a book, can you loan it to friends? Or do they have to buy their own copy?
When you buy a CD, can you listen to it with friends? Or do they have to buy their own copy?
I'm sorry, but the license on the microwave doesn't allow other people to eat any of the food I heat up in it. And while I'm eating these nachos, I'll watch this DVD that can only be played in this DVD player attached to this TV.
Oops. The TV fell down and broke and it is out of warranty. Looks like I will have to buy all my DVD's again.
Yeah, that might be the wet dream of the execs at the movie studios. But real people don't see a problem with sharing things that you've just put down cash for.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People don't think that way. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could use Linux as your OS and experience freedom.
Re:People don't think that way. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, your analogy falls down. When you install an operating system ON YOUR COMPUTER, your friends are still allowed to borrow it and check their e-mail. You can even make user accounts for them if you so desire.
Hmmm ... If you were around in the 1980s, you might know that there were a lot of systems that were sold with builtin limits to the number of accounts and/or simultaneous logins allowed. This was true of the Sys/V unix systems, for example. The OEMs would charge you a significant fee for an "unlimited logins" version of the system, and one of the things that got a lot of us really annoyed was that what you got for this extra charge was a change in a single byte somewhere in some system file. In a few releases, the position and value of this byte was published, so one could write a program to change its value. It was sorta like the reports from the 70s about features in IBM hardware that were enabled by cutting a jumper on a circuit board, but it could cost you a lot of money to hire a CS guy to come in and cut that jumper.
Anyway, this sort of silly programmed-in "Pay us to change the byte that enables this feature" limitation was likely one of the things that killed off Sys/V and several other systems. The *BSD and linux systems never did this to you.
It's possible that I may have contributed in a minor way to ending this practice in the unix/linux world. Due to problems with diagnosing login problems (typically caused by the insanity of modems and other comm hardware), I wrote a program that functioned like the getty(1) program, but it had lots and lots of debug features. Its purpose was to document in detail what happened during a login attempt, so that I could diagnose and (usually) fix the problems. It was a drop-in replacement for getty, and I got lots of nice email from people who downloaded it. In several mailing-list discussions of the topic, I explained that I hadn't implemented the usual login limits for the simple reason that I didn't know where the limit was stored. I commented that if the folks at AT&T and various OEMs didn't like the fact that my getty clone defeated their login limit, they should just reply to this message and tell me where the limit was stored. I'd then add it to a feature to my program.
For some reason, they never replied to my invitation. Perhaps they figured out that if they did that, then everyone (on the list at least) would know how to defeat the login limit. And, of course, I'd implement it as I did other features, via an explicit command-line or config-file option, which users could change as they liked.
Anyway, eventually this "feature" was dropped from Sys/V, and it seems to have also disappeared from MS Windows (or maybe I just haven't heard about it biting anyone lately). Something convinced the proprietary guys that this was a bad idea.
But back then, it was entirely likely that you couldn't give your friends logins to your system, or if you did, they might not be able to log in until you first logged out. I had this problem in a lot of situtations, where I was trying to diagnose a remote system's problems, but I couldn't log in because the system had hit its login limit. So we had to have someone at the remote site walk over and try to log someone out, or if that didn't work, they could reboot it. But if they did a reboot, the problem would go away, killing our attempts to diagnose it and fix it.
There's a long history of vendors doing things that make life difficult for their customers, all in an attempt to get customers to pay more for permission to use the computer for what they'd bought it for. Blocking multi-user access is just one of the more annoying such things.
Re: (Score:2)
It's also EASIER TO INSTALL. The Desktop is even almost 100% usable while it installs!
Barring Wubi, the only hurdle is figuring out how to boot to a CD.
lol... (Score:4, Interesting)
just a day or two ago I was reading right here on slashdot about how MS will be adopting OSS; that the main OS was a loss and they would focus on making all their software for OSS.... ... and now MS is gonna strategize against it. Seems to me like people writing these articles actually have no effin idea what is going on.
the acorn becomes the mighty oak...yeah yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
:)
But seriously, I installed Ubuntu last night. I've been a diehard RHEL/CentOS user for years. It just plain worked out of the box for me on a relatively new laptop. It found the Wifi,sound, my bluetooth mouse, asked me if I wanted the "non free" binary accelerated Radeon X1600 video driver, etc. Pretty slick.
I realize that I'm not a typical clueless windows user, but I think this is downright easy to migrate to for a Windows user, especially when Firefox 3.x and Openoffice are bundled along with it. That's enough to satisfy a huge swath of userbase and it's completely free. The entire install only took about 10 minutes too.
Kudos to the Ubuntu team.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My second point was that Apple did the linux world a ton of good with the misleading "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" commercials. That
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You sir have never worked in tech support or talked to anyone who does.
That beast does exist.
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As a matter of fact, I have. However, are YOU aware that not everyone has access to IMAP for their e-mail accounts? You do realize that there is a much larger world then the one you've created in your parent's basement? Ever heard of SMTP? You know, the protocol that the majority of the world still uses for sending/receiving e-mail?
Linux must be fought abroad. (Score:5, Insightful)
As for Linux (on the desktop), that is a serious threat to Microsoft from abroad, not so much in the U.S. Face it, most (by far) Americans are not going to fiddle with Linux, even if they're told it's free and superior, merely because they don't want to relearn anything that was hard enough to learn the first time, and they just want to use whatever is on their computer (Windows). Abroad, developing countries choosing Linux for school and government is a threat because it raises generations of non-Microsoft users who they will have less control over.
Re:Linux must be fought abroad. (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it, most (by far) Americans are not going to fiddle with Linux, even if they're told it's free and superior, merely because they don't want to relearn anything that was hard enough to learn the first time, and they just want to use whatever is on their computer (Windows).
Microsoft's problems start when
- Windows is not what is on people's computer by default
- People click on the firefox icon, notice that it firefox works just like on windows, and their wlan works. And there is nothing else they need to care about.
Basic consumer desktop is a commodity and the "added value" microsoft is providing is meaningless.
Why not Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not Apple? Because Apple isn't selling generic OS X that competes head to head against Windows on generic PCs.
If Apple changed that, you can bet Microsoft would be on to them in a flash.
Microsoft need not worry for now (Score:4, Interesting)
This is because there is trouble in the Linux space. We can't agree on a way forward. Look, the other day, our benevolent leader Linus stated: "Multiple Distributions "Absolutely Required..," as if that would help in stemming Microsoft's progress.
Let me say this: There will always be multiple distributions of "Linux" but what we need is a fully functional desktop with a single supported desktop environment. Nobody...I repeat, nobody is saying there should be *one* Linux desktop or server. Nobody! Other distros can continue to exist but this particular desktop should get the bulk of resources to succeed.
On the desktop now, KDE 4.2 is good and it has always shown promise. By the way, I am a die hard GNOME user who contributes to the project from time to time, but I must say the truth. What troubles me is that folks sing "Linux is great" and so on then they go ahead to dedicate resources to other projects. This approach does not help.
Then we have those who I would say are almost bigots. Why? Because users tell them "...we need a single accepted API so that apps will install across Linux distros..." What happens is that these folks' ideas are shot down but these bigots.
Microsoft need not worry for now. Look at what Apple did. They broke compatibility...took another direction but because they have a single platform with unique names at every incarnation, they own more of the desktop then all the Linux combined.
We can beat Apple because we are open. Then we have folks that create multimedia files in Flash before putting up our very own .ogg files. These folks should at least put files up at the same time. We should at least be seen to eat our own food.
Folks. Let's listen to what the ordinary user is saying.
Does one ever wonder why we who use Linux still command a tiny percentage of the desktop despite having been around for almost a decade now?
Microsoft need not worry for now.
Start handing out free Vista/Win7 discs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
My guess is they'll start handing hardware out for free... What was it that Bill gates said a few years ago? Oh yeah hardware should be almost-free [geek.com]. Let's see he said 10 years out in 1995, I guess he missed it by few years, eh?
Funny thing is that it is almost free, if you don't have to pay for windows ;)
Re:Start handing out free Vista/Win7 discs (Score:4, Insightful)
Ballmer did say he'd rather someone used an illegal copy of Windows over another operating system, so it's not outside the realms of possibility that they'll give you windows for free just to continue the monopoly.
Of course he says that, if you'd calculate the actual number of "Genuine" windows installations compared to the pirated ones their "95% installbase" would melt quicker than ice cubes in a firestorm.
Evolution of Linux is one way (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft views Ubuntu migration as one way. Once someone starts using Ubuntu, chances are they'll never buy Windows again.
This is because Linux can only get better. The idea behind open source is that quality never digresses, because if something sucks, it just gets changed or forked. So, the evolution of Linux is one way. It will always be better and better. This means it's users will always be more and more. It may be slow at times, but it's inevitable. Microsoft is beginning to realize that Linux's market share will always be increasing, and eventually that share will be larger than theirs.
I think they can fight all they want, but unless they can figure out a way to nullify the GPL, the progress will continue.
I can tell you what they're afraid of (Score:5, Insightful)
I can tell you exactly what has them spooked. We have Ubuntu desktops in our office and users get along on them just fine. No massive retraining costs, no one whining they can't get their work done, no software licensing to manage, we can create a custom installation image and drop it on a network drive that comes complete with productivity software, graphics software, web browsing, everything you need. Combine that with corporate Gmail, PHP and MySQL and you have an office that runs just dandy without any Microsoft products or .NET in the mix.
That's what they're afraid of and for good reason. Because running a Ubuntu office is low-cost, low-stress and we can run twice the number of machines per admin we could with Windows. And we don't have to dance on MS's string for product activation, put up with their DRM, pay extra for anti-virus or site licensing. We don't have the virus/trojan of the day suddenly interrupting our day and we're free to focus on productive labor rather than putting so much effort into serving the software and MS.
And my wife, the most potentially destructive computer user anywhere, a person who can trash almost any computer and almost any OS. Always by accident. Ms. I wasn't doing anything and the screen just went black...the hard drive started making a funny noise...it just died...is the screen supposed to be all blue like that? A person who couldn't tell you what a command line was, let alone type anything into one. She gets along just fine on Ubuntu. I haven't had to work on that machine since installing 8.04.
MS should be worried. Ubuntu is a great product.
More scary than Apple? (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless of how big a slice of the pie Apple might be taking, they ultimately work in more or less the same way as Microsoft. OSX and Windows are both traditional proprietary software which are written and sold on a per-license basis. I doubt that Microsoft appreciate the competition exactly, but at least they are both playing by the same set of rules.
Free Software is different, because obviously anyone can have the source code and fiddle about with it and you don't generally need to purchase licenses or whatever. The nature of Free Software is such that if its use ever becomes truly widespread in the consumer market, it is going to change what people (both end users and computer retailers) expect from software as a whole. Since the current way has obviously been very lucrative for Microsoft, that would explain why they would be so worried about Linux etc.
P.S. I'm trying not to make a value judgement on FOSS vs. proprietary software here, this is all Just What I Reckons TM.
They HAVE to fight Ubuntu (Score:5, Insightful)
The threat from Apple is somewhat contained because OS X only runs on premium-priced Apple hardware. Windows is still the OS of choice for the corporate sector and [ironically] the computer illiterate people who call upon their MS-based colleagues, friends and relatives for free tech support. I always found it amazing that the platform that needs the most tech support was so popular with the people who need the most assistance.
Ubuntu is a big threat, and it goes way beyond price. Nobody is going to take their existing Dell or HP machine and reformat it for OS X. But they can certainly do it with Linux. Ubuntu has the slickest packaging of the various Linux options, making it a "Poor man's OS X that can run on the hardware I already have." Historically, only a small percentage of users have abandoned Win2K or XP in favor of Linux. But Vista is another matter entirely.
Microsoft is a company built on the principle of Moore's law. Exponential increases in hardware capability means unlimited new possibilities for new features and a fresh desires from the user community (sometimes fueled by marketing hype but desires nonetheless). Each version of Windows was more bloated than the one before, but nothing stopped the users from merging a new version of Windows into their upgrade cycle.
Three events changed everything:
1. Vista "jumped the shark" on bloat while the rest of the market moved the other way.
2. Cheapie Ubuntu netbooks can do almost everything people really need to do.
3. The iPhone is threatening to turn itself into a hand-held OS X machine.
Running Windows XP on a netbook is like fitting a 350 pound driver into a golf cart. You can do it, but you won't carry many golf clubs. Running Vista on a netbook won't even pass the giggle test.
Windows Mobile was their only lightweight option but it never picked up enough traction to seriously compete with a "real" operating system. Apple had more apps running on the iPhone in the first six months than MS ever had for Windows Mobile.
Microsoft needs to slow down the adoption rate of Ubuntu netbooks while they figure out how to exist in the small, light, low-powered world of ultra-portable hardware. They will need a community of people other than themselves to provide a robust portfolio of applications.
MS is one of the few companies that tries to win a race by slowing the other guy down. In this case, they need to speed themselves up and get in the game.
I'll tell you what it is about desktop Linux. (Score:5, Insightful)
It demonstrates one simple, incontrovertable fact that is absolute poision to Microsoft's business model: operating systems aren't all that important.
Oh,back in the day, when you couldn't shoehorn a real operating system onto a machine with a sixteen bit address bus, it was a given that operating systems for personal computers were horribly inadequate. Every time a new version of the operating system came out, it'd take advantage of something that was now affordable on a desktop that never had been before. So you looked forward to an OS release as a release from some piece of pain or another. So an operating system release was a big deal.
We are in the era of diminishing returns when it comes to new OS releases. Oh, they maybe handle new version of hardware that are marginally better than they old hardware, like Sata vs. ATA, or going back farther in time, more convenient support for things like wifi. And, of course, the OS developers fix mistakes they made way back in the old days.
The problem for MS is trying to drum up the old excitement (with its influx of cash), like when we went from Windows 2 to Windows 3, which made it easy to run more than one application at a time (which was not a concern back when you'd only had 256K of RAM). You've got to add features and treat them like they're revolutionary.
Ubuntu is not without its problems, the biggest of which is getting to work on notebook hardware whose manufacturers consider getting the BIOS to work with Windows getting the job "done". But, once you get it running, you don't sit down to work at your computer and say, "gee I'm working on Ubuntu." Good Linux distros fade into the background, where they belong. Operating systems are just packages of functionality which make it easy for you to get at your data and manipulate it with your preferred tools.
What's scary about a distro like Ubuntu is that it doesn't compete against Windows. That's how Microsoft has won for years, when competitors look at MS products and decide they have to follow Microsoft's lead, even if they were first. With each new Linux distro release, you don't get an attempt to revolutionize the desktop experience. What you you do get the same experience you had yesterday, with a few problems sorted out and a couple of modest refinements. In contrast, with each new version of Windows, MS seems to scrape the bottom of the change barrel a bit deeper, down to renaming and shifting around control panel applets so there's absolutely no way you could mistakenly think you didn't get an upgrade.
Of course, MS has a great deal of opportunity for just fixing the mistakes of the past, which is a good thing. Vista could have been the best Windows ever, except it had too many competing agendas. Windows 7 is shaping up to be the kind of incremental release on Vista that we're used to in the Linux world, and by contrast it will seem wonderful with the XP to Vista transition.
Apple is selling hardware, not software (Score:3, Insightful)
I do believe Apple and Microsoft are not direct competitors, because Apple is selling computers and Microsoft is selling software. And many people even run Microsoft Windows on Apple computers. The only thing Apple does not do is sell computers preinstalled with Microsoft Windows like the other companies that build PCs.
Since Apple is not planning on licensing their os to other computer manufacturers (they did this and the company almost went bancrupt, but was saved by Microsoft) the only os that does compete with Microsoft for coming preinstalled is Linux. If you think of all the companies that sell PCs.
Only one of many targets (Score:4, Insightful)
Once anything gets on their radar, its a target. Its how they do business.
Nothing new here.
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
MS ais probably not worried about Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (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
Cost... (Score:3, Interesting)
What has MS spooked about Linux and not Apple, is that Apple is a traditional competitor who they know how to deal with...
Linux on the other hand, represents an evolution which renders their business model obsolete. If linux attains sufficient market share, then it will entirely break their lockin and show users that they don't need to pay for software.
Re:woo (Score:5, Informative)
After TWENTY FIVE years of effort.
2009-1992 = 17
Re:woo (Score:4, Funny)
Re:woo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:woo (Score:5, Funny)
m/(ba|c|tc|k)sh/
Thank you
Re:woo (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I find anti-Microsoft posts annoying, childish and a mere distraction. (But people who write "Micro$oft" are worse).
In my day to day life Windows, and Microsoft are simply irrelevant. I've got Linux on my machines here, Linux on my desktop at work, and Linux on the servers I manage.
Sure they hold a lot of sway, and they're certainly not an irrelevant company for most businesses and typical users - but me? If Microsoft and Linux remain in the same proportions for the next 20 years I'll not regard that as a failure.
So long as there are sufficient number of people writing, developing, and promoting free software so that we can keep using it in the future with advances in hardware then all is good.
I'd love to see a 50/50 split, but even if it is 80/20 I'm happy. These days Linux is on the radar of most people, and hardware support isn't a challenge.
Back in the late 90s I had a hellish time getting drivers for my Zip disk, my modem, or my webcam. These days? Its all good.
Re:I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:4, Insightful)
$tevey hearts Micro$oft ;)
I don't really care about any split. I simply want open standards to be adhered to, especially in government projects. Then we're all on the same playing field and the split is determined by choice, and not a defacto government subsidized monopoly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, you do care about the split you just don't know it.
The main reason we don't have proper adherence to standards is that there's no pressure to conform. Microsoft etc can make up crappy standards for themselves that vaguely resemble the proper standards. Then anyone that develops to them pats them-self on the back for being "compliant", and nothing then safely works anywhere else. And then you get the "Linux is crappy, nothing works on it" nonsense.
With a 80/20 split, they just wouldn't get
Re:I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is more a question of self defence. I am sure that Microsoft really wants to destroy any way that people can produce software which does not involve them or software that offers services without their involvement. They want to be the gatekeeper, they want to make money from all software usage across the whole world.
The very existence of Free Software, Open Source and even Apple undermines the notion that Microsoft wants to plant in everybodies head : that software is so complex that you need a company as big as them for research, development, production and support of software.
No Free Software or Open Source project has, AFAIK, been started to 'battle' Microsoft. Microsoft themselves, however, feel threatened and have initiated hostilities. It is everybodies right to defend themselves against this.
Re:I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:5, Insightful)
The very existence of Free Software, Open Source and even Apple undermines the notion that Microsoft wants to plant in everybodies head : that software is so complex that you need a company as big as them for research, development, production and support of software.
Paranoid much?
Microsoft is simply a corporation, trying to make as much money as it can. They want as much market share as possible, obviously, but you seem to be taking it out on an emotional limb there.
That's not really paranoia. In fact marketers have a word for it; they call it "mindshare". There are related concepts. For example, what is advertising other than the manipulation of behavior (convincing you to do something you may not have done had you not seen the ad) brought about by "planting a message in everyone's head"? Advertisers will use humor, half-truths, small children, etc. to get you to associate laughter, an inaccurate but convenient worldview, or paternalistic/maternalistic feelings and instincts with their products. Absolutely nothing is sacred to them; nothing is so good or wholesome or precious or innocent or sacred that they won't use it as a tool to create an emotional association that allows them to implant a suggestion. They don't see you as a human being who is equal to them and worthy of respect. They can't, because if they saw you that way, they would be disinclined to manipulate you. They see you as a dehumanized resource to be mined just like so much coal or metallic ore. This is a good fit with the nature of a corporation and the way it calls on human beings to become interchangable parts in its machinery. Beings who are individuals and worthy of love and respect are not interchangable parts in a faceless machine.
If a company sees an increase in sales immediately following an advertising campaign, something has happened other than customers proactively considering all available options and choosing the best solution for their needs based on objective criteria. If the customers were doing that, no advertisement of any kind would change their minds because the dialog of a TV commercial does not change their needs or the facts of their situation. That something that has happened is manipulation by suggestion.
What you call paranoia is the realization that anyone willing to treat people in such an alienated, dehumanized fashion does this because he fancies himself to be their master. As mindless, sheeplike, obsessed with conformity, and unfamiliar with critical thinking as most people have become (yes I do level this charge; do you doubt it?), such a person is unfortunately correct in many cases. I realize that our current economy depends on this system and that the people participating in it are mostly well-meaning and ignorant of the damage that it does because it is difficult to quantify. You can't really assign a numer or an equation to it and our culture is terrible at handling anything for which this is the case because we celebrate cleverness but not wisdom.
Lots of people seem like they want to believe that there are no downsides to our current way of life. I am merely saying that we hear about the benefits of this system all the time; what so few are willing to discuss are its costs. No one is fully informed without a solid understanding of both the benefits and the costs. You were right, in a way, that it was being taken "out on an emotional limb", but that's because the manipulation upon which much of the modern economy is based is primarily accomplished by emotional impact. Contrast that with persuasion, which is done dispassionately with facts and reasoning, and you can then discern the motivation with ease.
Re:I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:4, Insightful)
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But that scheme does not function anymore. Open XML is a perfect example, it has its ISO stamp and all governments tell Microsoft its 'interesting' and adopt ODF as their standard. I am not sure ODF would be so popular without that attempt.
Re:I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agreed. The average citizen has no idea how much they'll hate their current attitude to software in future, when they realise just how important software is to their lives.
Re:I'm not sure that either of you are correct... (Score:5, Funny)
What did Linus say a few years ago? Here it is:
Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.
Interview with the New York Times, September, 2003 [nytimes.com]
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's actions and strategy is based on their philosophy which is fairly Machiavellian. The problem is they have to compete, and work like crazy to try and convince/control people, that will believe what they want anyway.
It's the difference between blue ocean strategy [wikipedia.org] or red ocean strategy. Nintendo recently took on the blue ocean strategy [forbes.com] (red ocean because it runs red with blood from competition). And you can see [purenintendo.com] that it's not really [arstechnica.com] working for them. [penny-arcade.com]
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What if most people don't care about those 'rights'?
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Regarding the low rate of Linux adoption, I don't get what you mean. It is used everywhere, and the world would literally grind to a halt if a small percentage of devices running GNU/Linux were shut down.
Actually, the business world's (and Microsoft's) problem is that linux only has a low rate of sales That's what people are measuring when they say that linux is under 1% of the market. But if you measure installed systems, linux's adoption is much higher than that. How much higher is difficult to determin
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but you forget that decent desktop environments have only been around since the early 2000's or so.
Look at what Nextstep did. They took BSD and made their OS built on that foundation. For a decade they sold it only to a select technical user base. During this time, they worked on improving the interface. Then Apple bought them used that as a base for Mac OSX. A little bit of polish and you have a very nice Operating System.
As you can see, there are many parallels there with Ubuntu and other nice Linux-
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Desktop environments only around since the early 2000s? I guess I just imagined all those PCs we had in high school.
Or is this one of those magical cases where you define "decent" as whatever it needs to be to make you right?
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Sorry, I forgot to add "Linux desktop environments" for my context clue detection impaired buddies.
By decent, I mean ones that weren't fugly that revolve around terminal windows.
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and it's already happened with the HP 1000 [hp.com] which has a very nice GUI on top of Ubuntu.
Re:woo (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has been actively fighting FLOSS since at least 1998. Just read Halloween documents or internal documents regarding EDGI group from Iowa case (dated 2002 IIRC) with ist infamous "under NO circumstances lose to Linux" quote.
You may also read Bill Gates' concernes about how they can cripple ACPI so Linux won't be able to use it (they have made their own DSDT compiler which allows for much more errors than industry-standard intel compiler Linux uses).
They were afraid back then and fought tooth and nails, they continue to do it now. And if you read the documents I mention, you'll see that they have understood that the relative success of Linux on servers was due to open standards. What we have now is that main reasons which hinder Linux' adoption has nothing to do with Linux itself. Office formats, Exchange, DirectX, ActiveX -- all of the above are closed standards and technologies not to mention crippled HTML. Combine that with iron grip on OEM's and you'll get some more reasons for relatively slow growth.
Ultra-cheap netbooks and falling hardware prices have changed the landscape though. Now MS isn't able to threat OEM's with raising per-CPU lincense costs if they sell something else pre-installed. They have prolonged XP's live and give it away for a bargain price instead. They will be able to maintain their grip for some time but this time they'll have to lower the prices. Sure, they remain profitable as all they sell is hot air, but they'll raise much less money than expected.
Re:woo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:woo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:woo (Score:4, Funny)
pervert
Re:woo (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah but if the growth goes exponential, it could be bad news for Redmond in a short amount of time. With other big vendors starting to use Ubuntu on their equipment (see HP and Dell), Microsoft had better be careful.
Personally, I think in the next 5-10 years, the market is going to go through a big equalization. Microsoft will still be important but not the huge Monopoly like they are now. The current recession is a good way to get the ball rolling on that. A lot of places are interested in switching to Linux-based OSes, but they don't want to deal with the costs associated and their current Windows stuff works.
But with Vista and Windows 7 being lackluster, it makes good business sense to start looking at migrating to other solutions. Linux is really the only other game in town. You can't "upgrade" to Mac OS X like you can upgrade any machine to Ubuntu and have it just work. And Ubuntu has made the GNU and Linux systems easy to use for anyone from Grandma to business drones.
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If you're a big company, you've got a lot of recorded history that you legally must keep. The bigger you are, the more this is true.
If you've got a legacy of MS documents that you can't easily move, you're kind of stuck with MS.
This represents an increasing amount of costs that you must pay before you make or sell anything whatsoever, just to be allowed to operate.
Meanwhile, new companies who do not have that legacy can use free software to handle their administration, and they don't have to pay the "MS ta
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:woo (Score:5, Insightful)
actually with that FOSS is your friend. Open Office works better with Office 97 documents than MSFT word 2007 does. Up until at least 2003 a lot of legal departments were using Corel office as that is what they had all their stuff for the past decade.
you want to open tons of random and obscure formats then only FOSS apps supports them all. Comapnies that are stuck with MS Office are begiinng to realize that archiving it requires tons of secondary apps that either cost lots of money or FOSS products that can be upgraded to new hardware/software combinations faster and with minimal effort.
You have a format that only worked in Red Hat 5.0's version of star office. you have the source. you can pay someone to install that app to run, or pull out the format from the source and make a converter for it.
When office 95 doc's don't open for you right you can only beg MSFT to fix it, or try to manually convert them all, however they are giant binary blobs.
Re:woo (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe Microsoft has finally realized what the rest of the world knows. They simply have nothing new to offer. They have to find some way to beat Linux because they can't compete with it. It's only the momentum of their monopoly, 20+ years in the making, that is keeping them ahead now.
After releasing Windows XP-ME, er, Vista, it's obvious to see that Microsoft, despite its numerous "reboots" in the development process, is still so mired in its Soviet-style bureaucracy and upper management that thinks it is entitled to its 90%+ market share.
They are going to have to fall back on FUD more and more as more people (like me) are sharing success stories of unburdening themselves from Microsoft's shackles, even if the actual percentage of users is still small. What Microsoft is realizing is that number of people who are now seeing them as we've always known them to be, arrogant to the point of blindness, utterly contemptuous of users and completely beholden to their shady business practices and monopolistic behavior to be able to do anything else.
In short, time for more FUD.
Re:woo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:woo (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:woo (Score:5, Interesting)
I cannot believe that a company with [Microsoft's] resources cannot come up with great new ideas in computing.
Microsoft employees come up with all sorts of new ideas, but the company they work for consistently fails to execute.
I sometimes wonder if it's because the smartest people (those who have the luxury of ethics) usually choose to work elsewhere, and if they don't, their brilliance is stifled by the fools around (and especially above) them.
I think Microsoft will make an intriguing case study for years to come.
Re:woo (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Mircrosoft the Operating System owns You.
Exponentiation fears (Score:4, Interesting)
No, Microsoft is being proactive. They sat around during the early days of the internet while we struggled with Trumpet WinSock (remember this, guys?)
I kid you not, but I am responsible for three people switching to Linux this week alone, running XP in virtualbox. Their PCs got so slow they wanted to wipe everything and install Vista, but they liked XP, so this is the perfect solution.
If these people convert a few more people, the whole computing shift will change extremely rapidly. In a few years, people will potentially shift quickly and not look back. Windows 95 took hold pretty quickly. Only somewhat related, but look at hardware shifts, which also happen quickly (PATA to SATA in 2004 or so, birth of 3D cards in 1995 or so.)
It is logical for them to do this, and they are smart to be scared. In a way, I wish they would just sit on their hands.
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Maybe it's that mighty 2% market share. After TWENTY FIVE years of effort. Microsoft must be terrified at that sort of "rapid" growth.
Do u mean all linux had tried in past 17 years was to outpace MSFT in the *desktop* market and has failed.
Clue: there is something called a server market too.
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It is GNU/Linux you insensitive clod!
Re:woo (Score:5, Insightful)
If you try to start thinking straight for a second... ...you might start wondering about the correlation between the lowering prices of hardware and the impact this has on a company which depends on software license fees. There is a hard bottom limit to the price of any computing device with for-pay software: the price of the hardware (design, manufacture and distribution) + the ongoing costs of supporting said software + the desired profit for the software distributor. In case of Microsoft those profit margins are traditionally very high for the operating system and application software business, and that is the software which we're talking about here. The same hardware with for-free software can be priced much lower. Now that the for-free software is largely equivalent with the for-pay alternatives (and hold the incessant 'aslongasitdoesnotlookandworkexactlylikewindowsorofficeitisnotreadyforthedesktop' complaints) it is a very attractive proposition for a hardware manufacturer to use the for-free alternative. They can either keep the prices similar and reap much higher profits or lower the prices and most likely see higher sales, again leading to higher profits. They also don't have to bend to the will of an unreliable business partner which has shown time and time again that it has no qualms about backstabbing its partners.
Now I leave it to you as to whether free software is better than, worse than or equivalent to proprietary software. The answer to that question wholly depends on what you expect from the software, what you use it for, what you have used in the last few years and in what discipline you use the software. It has however become clear that for many common purposes there is free software which is fully adequate, and in several cases the free software is better than the closed alternatives.
Re:woo (Score:5, Insightful)
A mac is expensive (i know, not always) and since OSX only comes with apple hardware (in theory) there isn't as much to worry about. With Ubuntu, any Dell, HP, Acer, etc, can have Ubuntu installed. That is a threat, since it runs on the hardware made by your best partners. Not to mention, new versions of Ubuntu (or other linux flavors) run great on Netbooks with a very small flash drive and ram. The only comparable Microsoft product is 9 years old, and about to be two versions behind.
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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...
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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]
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You realize major PC vendors are now shipping Linux desktops on mainstream retail hard you can buy RIGHT NOW, right?
It's not exactly speculation... the Linux mothership is arriving and its pissed.
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I just realized that the last sentence is much more funny for my UK friends.
Just say no to drunk driving, k? :)
Re: Pissed Linux Mothership! (Score:2)
That's awesome! I want to see a picture of that by one of y'all with talented art skills.
The only example I can think of is that episode of Voyager with that species that forced the Borg into a truce because it was so brutally lethal it was smashing them. (Now I have to go find it and watch it again.)
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Hm. Is the fact that it's headed by a *white South African* entrepreneur related at all? Maybe that's Mark Shuttleworth's unique perspective at work - he has a country legacy of apartheid we don't have to deal with, so I think there's a background there somewhere.
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Someone should move you to marketing, Sir. "X is so great that everyone will want it!" is the standard cry of any corporation (when they want your money) and cult (when they want your love).
Also, I "bothered to write so much" because, unlike the average Linux geek, I am aware of the power of good and bad marketing. Anything that patronises black men by making sure to "token black" every page is likely to discourage them from using it.
To put it bluntly, you don't appeal to someone of a particular race/gender
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Windows is slow, buggy and not a good desktop as well.
And it's the market leader.
What's your point?
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Let Microsoft go after Ubuntu. Because Ubuntu is slow, buggy, and not a good desktop.
I don't know which Ubuntu you are talking about but the three machines that I run don't have any problems that they wouldn't have under (or because of) Vista. And I can maintain all three free of cost. Let's not forget that Ubuntu still beats Vista in benchmarks. A "good desktop" is a matter of expectation. Ubuntu with it's GNOME interface is much more than Windows ever was for me. Just because it doesn't fulfill your expectations doesn't mean it's not a good desktop. Windows doesn't fulfill mine ... so wha
Microsoft is NOT single-threaded (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is everyone assuming that Microsoft can do only one thing at a time? Microsoft is a damned big company and, you know what? They can do multiple things at once.
Right now, Microsoft's operating system units are focusing their energies on overcoming the bad press from Vista (Mojave Experiment), shunting the effectiveness of the Mac v. PC ads, and putting oil in the hype machine for the release Windows 6.1 --- err 7. The fact that Microsoft is hiring a single guy -- ONE GUY -- to look the open source competition stuff, is hardly "ditching what is most likely one of the biggest competitors".
Fact is, Microsoft is looking at ALL their competitors, which is *exactly* what they should be doing. Linux might not be a Desktop threat today. What about in 5 years? What about 10? Microsoft is smart enough to think that far ahead.
Microsoft needs Apple; Linux is a threat (Score:3, Insightful)
As others have noted, Apple plays in it's own (hardware) sandbox. Since it's "competition," that's good to keep the DOJ off of their back. Linux, and Ubuntu specifically, can be installed on nearly any machine that can run Windows. It has a modern, friendly GUI which can be learned from scratch at the same pace as Windows. And, most importantly, it's free. When computers were $5k, tacking on another $300-$1000 for software wasn't as big a deal. Now that computers are $500, adding another $500 in software i