Slashdot Mirror

ven if their share rises from 2% to 4%,

Their share has moved from 2% to 6% already gartner You'll need a new line now.

that, in 2003, said "IDS is dead", has "failed to live up to the hype," "is a market failure," and "will be obsolete by 2005." Sure Gartner, whatever.

These guys have little credibility left in my mind.

"Hehe, a nokia story, I'll mention n-gage and i'll get +5 funny" stupid slashbot moderators.

In all, 208.6 million desktops, notebooks and x86 servers left factories and workshops in 2005, according to IDC

Nokia remained the worldwide leader with 32.5 percent of all mobile phone sales in 2005 (see Table 2). It now has a market share that is more than double that of its nearest competitor in Europe and Asia, and more than three times its nearest competitor in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa - Gartner (table 2 will tell you that Nokia sold 265M phones last your - more than the combined PC market.

  With 250 Million phones sold annually nokia can afford to make a "flop" like selling "only" 1.5 Million n-gages every now and then. Howabout this for perspective: 1.5M n-gages was more than he amount of palmone treos sold during the same period.

I hope to God Office 12 steps up and kicks some ass.

Office 12 adoption is also more likely to happen when hardware turns over.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/07/08/_offic e_partners/Microsoft looks to partners to force Office upgrades

While Microsoft claims 600 million Office users analysts estimate 30% are still running Office 1997, having skipped Office 2000 and Office XP.

The prime reason is Office 97 is "good enough" for these users' needs.

That's a worrying fact for Microsoft which is now working on the successor to Office 2003, codenamed Office 12, which is due in the second half of 2006.

http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/gc/webletter/micr osoft4_enterprise/2005/article9/article9.htmlManag ement Update: Enterprisewide Open-Source Office Adoption Will Be Difficult

But with Office 2000 supported by Microsoft into 2009, most companies don't need to be in a hurry to migrate to anything, if their primary goal is to remain in a supported state.

By Anonymous, at 2:50 AM

So Oracle is losing business to open source alternatives because one part of one company is switching to EnterpriseDB and because of an anecdotal quote?

Wow. Spare me the spin.

Isn't it also possible that the far cheaper closed source alternatives are getting a little business as well?

Oracle has always been pricey, but for a long time their DB features were hard to beat. Competitors, both closed and open, and finally getting to the point where they are on all levels with Oracle.

Depends upon VC's vision about technology whether it is in phase A or phase C of the famous Hype Cycle

* Test all Office-based applications to ensure that they work with the new code, because newly purchased, repaired or reimaged PCs are affected. Pay particular attention to Access applications that interface with Excel.
* Consider deploying Office without Access to users with no specific need for its database functionality, as a quick and viable alternative to installing the new code.
* Recognize that installing the patches on new implementations without testing may be a quick alternative that minimizes legal risk, but risks breaking applications.
* Request that Microsoft issue a patch for Office 2003 SP1, as it has for Office XP SP3, so that an entire service pack does not need to be tested and deployed for Office 2003.
* If you anticipate significant difficulties in complying with the letter, try to get Microsoft to offer consulting assistance at little or no cost. Microsoft says that account managers will make arrangements to help organizations that have major problems complying.
* If you feel you cannot comply with the order, work with legal counsel to understand your risk and exposure.

See http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=1374 77 for details.

And for once, the more 'traditional' analysts (Gartner, in this case) actually agree with the security experts : " ... the range and seriousness of the vulnerabilities patched in this update cause us great concern. The database products alone include 37 vulnerabilities, many rated as easily exploitable and some potentially allowing remote database access See http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=1374 77 for details.

This is not the first Gartner article to pass idle, uninformed speculation for hard research these past few weeks:

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=1373 23

Are there morale issues at Gartner? Drug problems?

Gartner joins the party

OK I'll give on support cause I just don't know. But, I will go on to discredit this website.

First in the title "Linux is Doomed thanks to Microsoft"; "Linux" links to Information Week which has a whole section dedicated to Windows and calls itself a "Microsite". "Microsoft" links to an ad mentioned in the story (Live Meeting). The Link found in the story is "Server Software" which links to an HP Printer?

Google linux site:Gartner.com oh boy, this website is a flamethrower, fud factory, or whatever you want to call it. I would also like to add that CoolTechZone did not link directly, to this wonderful store of unbiased software evaluations.

I almost decided not to label gartner.com as biased then it hit me, why doesn't Gartner.com have a hype cycle for Windows report? Or, a single depiction of an effective deployment of Linux? Further research shows, there are one or two accurate assesments of Linux. Try IBM site:gartner.com and there you go. Don't do linux site:gartner.com cause it doesn't work very well. Confused?

Wouldn't work. Many submitters like to link both the specific page and the top level domain, like:

According to thinktank Gartner analysts Martin Reynolds and Mike McGuire, Sony's XCP technology is stymied by sticking a fingernail-size piece of opaque tape on the outer edge of the CD.

Wouldn't work. Many submitters like to link both the specific page and the top level domain, like:

According to thinktank Gartner analysts Martin Reynolds and Mike McGuire, Sony's XCP technology is stymied by sticking a fingernail-size piece of opaque tape on the outer edge of the CD.

Gartner predicts that 2003 will be a critical year for DRM when mainstream content providers begin to understand and identify the value propositions DRM systems can provide. Around this time full production systems will be launched and there will be some settling in technology and standards. This will take some of the 'chaos' and risk out of choosing a particular technology for each functionality area. More importantly, there is likely to be a higher availability of well-integrated and flexible systems from outsourcing services or Application Service Providers (ASP). This could dramatically lower the capital and technical investment required from content owners to implement and utilise a range of DRM, ecommerce, marketing and content techniques. In Gartner's view, it won't be until 2004, or more likely 2005, that revenue models start to mature and mainstream adoption of DRM becomes commonplace.

By 2006, Gartner sees the DRM market consolidating and a standard rights description language emerging. They identify the factors that will affect the success of the market as:

        * the acceptance by consumers of the regulation of e-content
        * the capability of the industry to establish a 'standard rights' language
        * the cost balance between developing a secure DRM solution and the potential revenue to be gained from DRM secured e-content management

These guys are like a washed out Hollywood star. They only seem to say and do things to get media attention.

Some exmaples:
Death to IDS! All hail IPS!
Well, duh...
Arrhh, there be Pirates here

To be fair, I guess they got one right The sad part is that I have worked for people who take these announcements as Gospel. "Gartner says..."
Whatever.

ID Number: G00125170, "Design Web Applications for Standards, Not for Browsers", (2 March 2005)

http://worldwithoutsecrets.gartner.com/section.php .id.49.s.1.jsp

China does have its own network named ChinaNet, and the government of China did a lot of domain blocking and hijacking. Here is an archive from gartner.

This post is crap. Pure crap. 1) The article never said that Apple was using TPM. It stated that "An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment for this story." Did the submitter OR poster ever even read the article?? 2) Why the hell would we want a link to an overly speculative article that just summarizes one possible scenario? Not to mention that the prediction is just about the same length as the article, and written by a reputable research firm. See the real "news analysis" at: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=1290 59

The x86 Mac OS will run only on Apple hardware, possibly with enforcement through Trusted Platform Module technology.

Apple clearly does not plan to try to compete against Windows, which - though it will run on Intel-based Macintoshes - will not be supported by Apple. Nonetheless, many design-conscious Windows users may be willing to pay premium prices for Apple hardware.

Though interesting as this info is, I can't find a reference anywhere in this analysis that validates Gartner's claims. I think this should be taken with a large grain of Sodium Nitrate.

From vnunet article "Apple could use the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to ensure that only Mac computers can run its OS X operating system" Take note that the Gartner analysis points out that Windows can run on the new Intel-Macs, could the use of the TPM chip mean that Apple trying to prevent Windows from running on it's hardware??

The first sentence in the linked article says "Apple COULD use the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to ensure that only Mac computers can run its OS X operating system, according to a news analysis from Gartner." emphasis mine.

While I do not doubt this will in fact be the case, I would appreciate more accurate reporting on the part of the Slashdot editors to ensure that submitters are not spreading misinformation. In fact, if you click on the Gartner new analysis linked in the vnunet article, you will find no mention of the "security chip" being quoted by this article so we have nested lousy reporting. Yeah, yeah, I must be new here. Ha ha

Seriously though, this is a reasonable move for Apple to ensure that the look, feel and reliability of the MacOS does not become corrupted for some users who may want to install OS X on "lower quality hardware". Apple prides itself on a quality user experience that approaches a luxury product. Everything from the appearance of the fonts to the way consumers interact with the interface needs to remain consistently "high quality" and I am sure Apple will make efforts to preserve this experience.

As well as providing for an OS "lock" on hardware, the implementation of such chips will also allow for stronger security as well as enabling one of the features that Hollywood has been demanding before Internet distribution of movies will be allowed by the studios.

According to this Gartner study (warning: PDF), the success rates for phishing are between 3-6%, similar to those for spam. It's a volume business.

You hack it, then you have to tell MS what you did, and keep quiet. This will give them time to quietly fix the bugs.

The box will get hacked with all current known exploits (lets say there are 2000 different exploits, just for arguments sake). MS will get told in great detail about each of them.

The cost to MS is (say) $200 (xbox) * 2000 (#hacks) = $400K. Chickenfeed.

The upside is credibility. They will be able to point to this box (eventually) and report how uncompromisable it is. Hackers can't break it.

You have to keep in mind whats at stake - the gartner report that recommended dumping IIS really hurt MS because Gartner has credibility in the corporate space. MS are trying to regain their cred, and you have to take your hat off to them for making this move.

Their "analysis" is like Microsofts' FUD: Throw enough shit at a wall and SOME of it is going to stick.

These are the people who recommended you pay SCO their $699.00 per linux license: here

Don't ignore the problem by hoping IBM will win or settle its lawsuit (that could take a year or more). An IBM win would not prevent SCO from pursuing individual claims, which, if successful, could cost far more in penalties than buying a SCO license would. If you find SCO's case compelling and you use few instances of v.2.4, pay the license fees.

... even though, by agreeing to pay the "license fees", you are now encumbering your copy of linux with additional requirements that go beyond the GPL, and the GPL doesn't allow anyone to do this, so, since you're in violation of your GLP license, you can't run linux.

It's not like there aren't real authorities, like the standards bodies (w3c, etc); also, anyone who hasn't heard of Windows/IEs security problems is living in a cave with Osama.

To put it in perspective:

If a Gartner Group "analyst" were drowning, would you:

1. finish reading your newspaper? 2. go for a walk? 3. slam the toilet seat lid down on their head?

If you want the hare-brained opinions of the analysts doing magic 8-ball predictions at Gartner you gotta buy their document. Wonderful. Who listens go Gartner anyway? It's opinion is no better than Slasdot's. I bet if you dressed up the average trolling Slashdotter in a suit and have him work for Gartner selling comments, PHB's would still believe it because it came from a guy in a suit.

If what you said was true then you would have to rethink every song and book and movie out there that talked about being "gay" since gay means happy and not the current definition.

Dont be a tool, even in the IT/CS world PC still means Personal Computer. Thats as bad as calling it a IBM/PC compatable when IBM doesnt even make a OS for the consumer models anymore.

Spyware costs businesses serious money to support, it's simply so common that even the best managed networks of any size get infected constantly.

When organisations like Gartner are selling reports on it then it's an issue businesses are looking, and this ad will raise awareness about Firefox being one part of the solution.

Howard Schmidt, another UoP grad, is widely respected in the computer security realm. He was an advisor to President Bush and is currently the CISO of eBay.
Read an interview at http://www4.gartner.com/research/fellows/asset_659 28_1176.jsp

http://www.gartner.com/
http://www.metagroup.com/
http://www.idc.com/
http://www.forrester.com/
http://www.idg.com/
http://www.jupiterresearch.com/
http://www.yankeegroup.com/
http://www.aberdeen.com/
http://www.amrresearch.com/

And yes, they all cost money. If you're an enterprise and you want input on how to spend you tens-of-thousands to multi-million-dollar IT budget, you can shell out a few more dollars to get some research.

From what I've seen, this tidbit's effect on overall Linux desktop usage (taking into account the other methods of acquisition that you've mentioned) is beyond the scope of the Gartner report. I'd love to find a link that has more details on their conclusion -- perhaps there is a point that I've missed. Can you provide a link?

In a perfect world, you would have asked this while I was still online yesterday. This looks similar to the link I followed in from Google yesterday, but now it asks for registration, and I'm not going to pay the $795 either. Either I'm missing the trail I followed previously, or Gartner plugged the hole. I can't prove it, but the tables I saw yesterday showed Linux usage remaining at a tiny percentage of the total (basically static) while sales of Linux PCs increased. Note the table of contents on the Gartner page - it's not beyond the scope of the report.

With a wealth of seemingly redundant stories on Linux's total cost of ownership (such as Linux on the Desktop: The Whole Story) you can learn to separate the cost of all other Microsoft software from the cost of the Microsoft operating system alone and other tricks that make Windows XP appear cheaper. This and other gems of wisdom await you. Although their motivations are different than mine, I agree with their point that you can save money by buying Star Office without change OSes. (I would have said Open Office and used the word free many times)

Don't be confused if you see they recommend Linux sometimes. They recommend Linux if you have little or no applications or for low-function workstations, such as data entry, call center or bank teller/platform automation. In other words, if you need a dumb terminal, then you might save money by using Linux - but watch out for those hidden costs! (FUD, FUD)

This is not a case of stupidity, they know damn well what type of analysis will keep them funded. My favorite article is a story called "There Is No ROI in Spite" [$95 per copy]. That they even consider this story necessary warms my heart. Other the other hand it may indicate that people need to get really pissed off before they'll switch.

I hope the seemly illegal barriers that protect MS from competition will continue to erode. Once companies are not artificially locked-in to Windows then I would expect every company will have to include in their business plan how they will use open source software to reduce operating costs. (kind of like how they have to say today that they are planning to outsource labor)

The zealot faithful are already foaming at the mouth at this report. But what's so surprising about it? All it really says is that of the PCs purchased with Linux pre-installed on them, 40% of them will be modified to run some variant of Windows (possibly in a dual boot configuration) without being within the terms of the EULA. This probably includes transferring OEM licenses to other computers (which, if memory serves, is against the terms of the EULA).

I can't find the report on Gartner's site and therefore can't say anything about its methodology. (And if the report isn't free, I ain't shelling out the bucks for it.) But it strikes me as telling that of the people rending their clothes and screaming here, very few of them are actually arguing with their numbers beyond saying that it's "justified," or "MSFT gets what's coming to them," or "this is offset by," etc.

Oh, and by the way: the headline is stupid and wrong.

Have you actually participated in FOSS development? It would appear not, as your conception of how things work is based purely on what the distro vendors would like you as a customer to believe. Comparatively few hackers work for Red Hat, Novell, IBM and other companies writing code for direct use by end-users. More are employed by companies selling appliances based around FOSS and sharing some of their original code. Yet more are working on internal projects or otherwise "scratching their own itches".

But, in the end, that is all irrelevant to the reality that software is written to be used and that users will judge the software they use. This is true regardless of the number of users: You will judge your software even if no one else uses it; anyone who heeds the exhortations to use Linux will judge it. And, as they judge it, they will expect that their criticisms and suggestions are taken into account.

Fine, they're just setting themselves up to end up in the Gartner 'Trough of disillusionment'

The assertion that no one is forced to use it suggest that a product can be criticized only if its use if forced. That's obviously wrong. Likewise, it makes no difference if the software costs nothing or costs a great deal. The price of a product does not determine the amount of freedom its users have to talk about it and their expectation that anyone who seeks broader use of a product will pay attention to its users.

You're repeating yourself. Look, I agreed with you on my second post that anyone's free to critcise anything. Just don't expect criticism to achieve much unless it's well-reasoned and/or comes with a patch or cash.

Source code availability is also irrelevant. That does me and the vast majority of Linux users no good. We are not going to modify code ourselves or pay someone to do that for us. If something is "free", why would I consider paying developers thousands of dollars to tweak it for me? It's more rational to simply move on to other software.

Wrong. Plenty of employers (mine included) are paying hackers to improve FOSS code for internal use because either there's nothing on the market that competes, or it costs way more than a salary or two to buy/license/rent.

Bottom line: Linux is a product. It is not a gift to the world made by beneficent developers.

Commercial Linux distributions are a product, sure - go rant at the distro vendor if you want improvements (again, I told you this earlier). The underlying packages that the distro vendors take and (sometimes) polish, though, are frequently gifts from people or organizations that aren't getting any recompense for giving it away (other than the hope that they'll get a warm email of appreciation, or some patches to improve it, or maybe a job).

Its users will determine its acceptance and its users expect their wishes to be heeded. Thinking of it as the plaything of developers will mean developers will be its only users.

And, now that I've got a job that doesn't force me to deal with broken-and-unfixable software, I don't care much whether FOSS becomes any more widely used or not. It's not like I've got investments in Linux Inc. and need its shareprice to go up so I've got a decent pension. About the only thing I do care about that is vaguely related to future FOSS takeup is that data that belongs to the people of a country should never be locked up in proprietary formats. That can still be done with closed software, but the implications of closed formats are rarely considered by users of closed software.

Everyone clicking on the PayPal button on eBay

tiny sellers of services/products on the Web without a credit card merchant account

And everyone sending money to their friend across the Net without needing to process credit cards.

as there are other marginal players

That's a huge market, and growing much more quickly than online credit card billing.

Hell, there's even a product called the Mail Firewall that pops up if you google for mail firewall.

Sarbanes-Oxley. Here's a blog about it at Gartner. Basically Sarbanes-Oxley makes CEOs liable for the actions of the company. Though this does not redefine the corporation as a citizen, it does hold someone criminally accountable for the actions of the corp. It was in response to Enron at all and severly weaked the coporation as an entity that can act wantonly.

-truth

Oh yes, offshore outsourcing is going to be huge! Oh and by the way, we do have our own offshore outsourcing consullting services!
Not saying they are wrong, but you just gotta wonder if they may have alterior motives....

I just don't see how 3G can survive as mesh networks spread across the U.S. and as WiMax improves on WiFi. Telcos are unnecessary, the writing is on the wall. Even Michael Powell alleged as much last month: They get mad at me, but I think they should be more scared. For all their size and success and revenue, their cards are not great. Places that 3G reaches but wireless networks don't are shrinking. Shriiiinking. The tons of money going to telcos will soon be going somewhere else, or staying in the typically savvy slashdotters pocket.

Of course, your argument falls apart when you're dealing with a competent network admin who locks down systems and installs AV software.

Competently-admined systems are not the problem, it's the millions of unsecured Windows boxes sitting on cable and DSL, whose owners can't even be bothered to run Windows Update once in a while much less renew their AV subscription when it expires or download, install and regularly use Spybot.

Also, backward compatibility isn't the real reason that MS is targeted, it's marketshare. I bet if Apple had more people using their OS, there'd be more people targeting OS X.

Please explain why Apache, which enjoys a significantly larger marketshare than IIS, also has signficantly fewer exploits for it. Now whose argument falls apart?

~Philly

TO to gartner, click on Media relations and the press release is there. The actual report will cost you money though.

There's a much more detailed summary of the Gartner report up at com.com. The overall numbers are thus:

Total WW Q1 server revenue: $11.81 billion, +9.3% quarter-on-quarter*

That breaks down into:
Windows: $4.13 billion, +19.5%
Proprietary Unix: $4.02 billion, -2%
Mainframe: $1.7 billion, +12%
Linux: $1.02 billion, +57.3%

That leaves $.94 billion unaccounted for; I was thinking this chunk could be VMS and NSK revenues, but that makes it difficult to fit HP's 32.5% share of x86 revenues into the $.94 billion left over when you subtract it plus HP's $1.17 billion in proprietary Unix sales from HP's $3.07 billion total sales. (And that's ignoring HP's Q1 IA64 sales, which were very substantial.)

Of course all these questions are surely answered in the report itself, but I'm not gonna pay 95 bucks to find out.

*How do I know the figures in the com.com article are QoQ and not YoY? Because the Gartner summary (linked above) puts overall YoY revenue growth at 24.1%, not the 9.3% reported in the article. Which makes both the 57.3% Linux growth and the 12.5% Sun decline even more stunning.

I have been keeping an eye this forum for quite some time now, as part of my daily intelligence gathering, I find the robust exchange of views, and technical arguments make an interesting diversion from some of the other corporate bullshit I have to deal with in my working day. I also read corporate intelligence reports from the Gartner group, Forrester, the Meta group, and Olsen Online Business Intelligence Services. Slashdot has often proved to be far more accurate when it comes to the technical details,and I am often amazed at the incredible levels of intelligence and insight shown by its readership, some of whom demonstrate a knowledge of Linux and Operating systems far in advance of anyone I have ever met, even in the IS department of major corporations. For this reason, I feel I should contribute my 2c to the debate about the future direction of Linux and the whole Open Source movement in general.

I feel I can do my bit for the Open Source community by offering (free of charge) some of my hard-earned knowledge straight from the bloody trenches at the front-line of tech-Marketing. Normally I would be paid over $4000/day for my perspective, but Slashdot - this one's on me. You people can think of it as my small and unworthy attempt to "give something back" to the Community.

Why Linux/Open Source has an image problem in major US Corporations and what the community can do about it. Like any movment, political or religious, Open Source/Linux has its Leaders, High priests and Gurus. These high profile individuals represent the public face of the organization. Like it or not, these people are associated with the product in the eyes of the buying public. One of the first things the Linux movement must do in order to gain acceptence by middle-America and Joe-and-Jean Sixpack and their 2.4 kids, is to develop what we in the Marketing profession call a "Happy Face".

When Joe Sixpack drives past a McDonald's, he associates it with the smiling face of Ronald McDonald the clown,and quality food served quickly. When he is choosing a collect-call company, the smiling face of Al Bundy (of TV's Married with Children) springs to mind, and when he thinks of fried chicken in large capacity bucket-like containers, it is the image of the happy-go-lucky avuncular Colonel with his associations of good old Southern hospitality that sticks in his memory. (In marketing terms this is known as a "positive association". Because the image puts the consumer into a "buying-receptive" mental state).

Linux/Open Source lacks any kind of "Happy Face". Now this in itself is not a problem, were it not for the fact that Linux has several extremely high-profile advocates who are the exact opposite of "Happy Faces" in that they invite negative associations into the consumers head and put him/her into a state known by Marketers as "passive-aggressive sales-message rejection" (In layman's terms they don't want to buy the product).

Now, I will not lower the tone of the debate by naming names. I will give a few brief profiles and community members will know who I am talking about.

In reverse order of harmfullness we have the laconic, dour nothern European. Not known for his sense of hunor, and with far too many nights spent coding when he should have been o

3/17/2004, Gartner Group estimated the number was more like 60-75% for their clients. Don't forget the mail sent to dead domains. We have an old domain we're now using to test spam solutions that's 98-100% spam (2% or so newsletters), and the volume is out of control.

IBM still makes a ton of money of their mainframes and their sales are still rising

I am not disagreeing about IBM's hardware sales, but IBM has become a services company, and they leverage services to sell the hardware.

According to this report of IBM revenues, services were $10.4B of total $21.5B for 2003Q3. Almost half the revenues are from services, and the profit margin on services is much higher than the margin on hardware.

This year-end report states that all hardware sales increased, including the mainframes (z-series). But it points out that services revenue grew 17%, while total revenue grew 10%. Do the math. That means the non-services business only grew around 3%. If that trend continues, then in 3 years, service will account for 3/4 of IBM's revenues. Aren't statistics wonderful? While the growth of services may not be maintained, selling hardware keeps becoming more difficult, so these numbers are possible. The first report states that hardware revenues declined 1%, so you guess if IBM's hardware business is actually growing.

---
Software is included on the non-services half. The report states that IBM's software sales have flat-lined. If hardware revenues declined, then software must have grown some to offset the hardware decline to reach the 3% non-services growth. Most of the increase is because IBM keeps (successfully) pushing WebSphere, which competes against free software.

New business model:
1. See Free Software succeeding.
2. Develop proprietary version.
3. Use marketing and support organization of very large company to sell it.
4. Profit.

(I dislike business plans that include "and then a miracle happens". My current startup is depending on several of them, and they will give me ulcers, especially since I am expected to provide the miracles.)

The one real advantage of pushing WebSphere is that development is so complicated that IBM sells more services. IBM stopped pushing Lotus Notes because development is so easy that your receptionist can do it, so it generates much less money from services.

IBM has not been pushing Lotus Notes recently. That may change soon. Lotus Notes dominates because it allows business people to create business applications easily and quickly. Notes 7 will allow the use of DB2 as the internal database structure. Then it can scale to almost any application's needs. It could also mean easy use of DB2 for mobile applications. If they can maintain the ease of development, Notes could take a significant portion of the application market from MS and Java. The issue is whether IBM will market it well. They spent most of the last 7 years positioning Lotus Notes as a competitor to MSExchange. Notes is a much better email system than MSExchange (try administering/supporting both for a while), but Notes shines as an application platform, and IBM buried that message in the competition with MS for number of email users.

-- Back to SUN
My first thought was that the deal with MS included unwritten conditions that SUN would stop selling hardware that could not run MS software. Then I realized I was being completely paranoid, because even if Scott has absolutely no idea what to do next, he would not give up the Sparc for just $2B. Right?

Try these, they cost money, but they provide the access you want.

Lexis Nexus
Factiva
Gartner

We get free access to these and a lot more at my university.

How about Gartner:

Quoting, so in case you don't want to follow that link and leave the comfort of slashdot:

• Keep a low profile and do not divulge details on Linux deployments.
• Until a judgment in a case would unequivocally warrant it, Linux users should not pay SCO the license fees it has asked for to settle its allegations of infringement of intellectual property rights.
• Do not permit SCO to audit your premises without legal authorization.

Admittedly, Garner does recommend delaying new high-performance deployments for a few months to see what happens with SCO.

Or how about IDC's August 2003 survey. Again, quoting:

Linux can survive the current dispute, but only on its own merits

Or perhaps you want to know what IDC really thinks rather than just a survey result. Well, quoting once more (though you could easily follow the link to see this same text):

"The Unix market continues to struggle with competitive pressures from both Windows and Linux operating environments. While the decline in 2002 was less severe than the decline we saw in 2001, Unix vendors are faced with challenging market conditions," said Al Gillen, research director for the System Software service at IDC. "Looking ahead, we don't see a significant recovery for the Unix operating environments market during our forecast period."

Notice that this was written only last month. Apparantly they don't think SCO's going to have much impact. Saddly, there any many other IDC documents where you have to pay to even find out their opinion... the abstracts are so generic you don't even get a hint until you pay. But I suppose that's how the stay in business.

For over two years now, my colleagues and I have contended that the Bizarre style of Open Source programming has produced a technically inferior product, Linux, that is only permeating the commercial market due to the industry's attempt to appease the cyber-political forces of GNU. Even the most outspoken, die-hard advocates of Linux concede that other Unix-based operating systems (i.e. FreeBSD, BeOS) are superior to Linux. Yet, unlike the concessions given when comparing Linux to other Unix-based operating systems, the zealots in the Windows vs. Linux Wars have made their positions quite clear, each believing in the superiority of their own operating system and each demonstrating that neither side is willing to budge on the issue. However, what if one side admitted that the other side's operating system was better? What if one side surrendered to the other? That's exactly what happened. On February 13, 2003, Red Hat conceded defeat to Microsoft in the category of operating system security.

Adversaries of Linux, including myself, have for years argued that Linux is not secure. Our strongest line of reasoning points to the Linux operating system's lack of adherence to TCSEC (Trusted Computer Security Evaluation Criteria) and CC (Common Criteria) standards. (Please note that I said adherence and not certification, because an operating system can still be secure by voluntarily adhering to TCSEC and CC standards without being officially certified.)

You may recall my article "Oh Linux, Where Art Thou?" where I cite John Pescatore, Director of Internet Security for Gartner. He and I see eye to eye on the issue of Linux security. In response to Microsoft's announcement that Windows 2000 SP3 became CC EAL 4 certified, he said that Linux simply couldn't meet this level of security. Now, the world's largest Linux distributor and source of Linux service and support is acknowledging that he's right.

In a press release issued on February 13, 2003, Red Hat announced that security in Microsoft Windows 2000 SP3 is provably and certifiably superior to security in Red Hat Linux. Well, ok, Red Hat didn't say that with words , but it most certainly said that with actions .

What Red Hat actually did say with words was that it is pursuing CC certification for Red Hat Linux Advanced Server at Evaluation Assurance Level 2 (EAL2). That's right, EAL2, the second lowest level of security assurance. Remember, higher numbers are better. Just to put this into perspective for you, Mac OS X is CC EAL3 certified, Sun Solaris is CC EAL4 certified, and Microsoft Windows 2000 SP3 is CC EAL4 certified.

Those are some pretty loud actions, and they're saying some pretty interesting things. They're saying that Linux is two levels of security behind Sun Solaris, a Unix-based operating system. They're saying Linux is two levels of security behind its arch nemesis, Microsoft Windows 2000. They're saying Linux is a full level of security behind Mac OS X, an Open Source operating system based not on Linux but on BSD. They're saying that Linux is the epitome of mediocrity, that Linux, in its current state, simply isn't up to par when it comes to operating system security, and here's the clincher: they're saying that all those Linux evangelists who have been preaching about the so-called "superior" security of Linux have been lying to you.

You don't have to take my word for it. This is straight from the mouth of the beast. Well, perhaps it would be better to say that this is straight from the actions of the beast. While the beast tries to put a positive spin on this blow to the credibility of Linux by saying that it hopes to be at EAL4 sometime in the far, distant, unforeseeable future, the beast's hazy vision does not negate the lack of security in the here and now.

The old axiom is right. Actions do speak louder than words, and they're saying, "Linux sucks."

Some pro-Microsoft stories for a change.