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Microsoft On Linux: Forecast Or Fantasy?
FarHat wrote to us about an article currently running on CNN regarding the long-term prospects of Microsoft and Linux. One of the launch points is the persistent rumors of Microsoft porting Office to Linux, as well as Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line. Fun read, overall.
It's nice as a student because I like linux for programming etc, but am make presentations / excel type stuff in Office - It's just easier to integrate with what professors etc. use.. Also, besides using html, powerpoint is available in all the rooms with projection systems.. I know that i can Export etc, but still need office to test, tweak etc.. just my thoughts
Myth: If I use Linux and encourage others to use it, I'm not hurting anyone.
Fact: Employees of microsoft depend on the sale of Windows to support their families. By not buying Windows you will force them to starve on the street with their families. You can help prevent this by spending your rent and food budget on Microsft products.
Myth: Using Linux will make me a super stud.
Fact: Linux causes severe erectile disfunction. In a recent study, 47 impotent men were given computers running Linux. All 47 reported an inability to maintain an erection after using Linux for several days.
Myth: Using Unix-like OS's will help me grow a thick bushy beard.
Fact: Almost 7% of professional Unix admins do not have thick bushy beards.
I hope this clears things up for y'all.
Thanks,
--Shoeboy
(full disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee.)
We recently had several clients start running Office 2000, and were amazed to note that it added several Unix-like features to the *OS*, mostly as services on known ports - like Quote of the day!
One theory is that these may form the beginnings of Microsoft's "3 great new anti-piracy features" licensing engine. We see these posters in Europe, and find them odd... anti-piracy isn't usually a marketing angle that works. But the posters are everywhere in the airports.
Anybody monitored traffic from a NT workstation or 98 box with Office 2000 on it? We dissuade clients from "sharing" software, but I'd love to know what our pals in Redmond are doing. I think they'll have a hard time convincing the judge that the Apps are part of the OS, yet it seems that Office is about to start integrating completely.
It does seem kind of bizare. If Linux had MS Office support, it would get Linux a lot of converts.
...Which makes it extremely interesting that there are rumors that microsoft might do exactly that. But hey, they put office on the Mac, so who knows.
I program for a small buisness, and just a month ago, the prez was looking into switching his (rather computer intensive) buisness over to Linux. He almost did, too. The only thing that stopped him was that there weren't enough good office tools for Linux yet, that he could trust the rest of the office staff with. (read as: the people who DON'T program[gasp!]) If Linux had MS Office, then he would probably make the switch in an instant. And I'm guessing that he's not the only small buisness president who looks longingly at Linux's impressive stability record. I think that if MS supported it, it would sort of "legitamize" linux for a lot of people who have heard of it, but dismiss it as "a passing fad", or "something that only true computer geeks can use".
If we were, however, to see a split up of Microsoft in which the portion that makes Office is independent of the OS, then I'd say the chances we'd see Office on Linux would increase.
Of course, I can't say what will really happen. Maybe MS will port Office to make a quick buck. Who knows?
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I'm not really anti-MS (or any other OS/Software Co. for that matter, as each has thier place), but at the same time am not looking forward to bigger companies coming into the Linux fold fullforce to sell thier costly wares. One can only wonder how long it will be until the primary pieces of Linux software excepted by business (and the masses) would consist of items that you have to pay exorbent prices for instead of using the collaborative freeware projects that have made Linux what is is: A great opsystem bulit by people who aren't in it for profit but for freedom, innovation, and to provide a free alternative to people who can't afford costly software such as MS. I mean if Office 2000 was available for Linux, would business expect MS Office or would they settle for something like AbiWord? Sure, freeware will always be around, but I could see a future in which if you use Linux you'd be expected to work with and exchange information with 'name brand' software and the like that you see with the Win32/Mac envirnoments. I think Linux is commercialized enough as it is, and the addition of MS could potentially be the final nail in the coffin. Hopefully the community will be aware of this and won't loose sight of the GPL, the FSF, and the very spirit of Linux: a collaborative and free opsystem made for the people by the people.
Because one of the predominant characteristic of OSS is that it's free. So it would make more sense that Microsoft, trying to explore its possibilities in the Linux arena, ported its applications that are already free.
I think it's obvious that the effort required to port Office would be much bigger than porting IE. So it would be better for them if they made some pilot projects.
Plus, there's Star Office (which it's free) so MS would probably be forced to give away Office for free. Do you really think they're going to do that when 2/3 of Microsoft profits come from Office?? A lot of people would move to Linux just to have Office for free. IMHO, it just doesn't match with their business model.
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
This is HUMOR. Not flamebait. I'm getting tired of moderators moderating even _funny_ anti-linux posts down. Don't moderate something down because you disagree with it. Moderate it down because it is of the hot grits or Natalie Portman variety.
My $2E-2
Jim
There is a really easy way to distinguish distributions of software for Linux (and Linux itself). Tux can be on every box, or as a readme.gif file along with a distribution.
The girth of the software or distribution defines how fat Tux is! See, for Embeddable Linux, you have a Tux that hasn't eaten in a few weeks. For RedHat, you have one that's been eating too much caviar instead of the regular fish. And for Office for Linux, you have a Tux that has had WAY too much Mackerel, and is really starting to look like he needs to pull his own weight around here....
And who in hell is going to want to buy a product that has a penguin that looks like Fat Bastard stamped on the box?
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
It ain't happening. No way in heaven or hell is MS porting Office to Linux until it has absolutely no choice (and even then, Gates would probably rather go down fighting).
It isn't the office suite monopoly that maintains MS' dominance. It's not even the OS monopoly. It's the combination of them that is so lethal. It's like that classic hack where you get two intruder processes running as root. Whenever the sysadmin kills one of them, the other immediately restarts it. The only way to kill them is to kill them both simultaneously (not as easy as it sounds) or reboot. The two together are orders of magnitude stronger than either alone.
In the same way, Windows and Office together are literally orders of magnitude stronger than either alone. Whenever Office is seriously threatened by a competitor, MS comes out with a new version of Windows with shiny new features, and a companion version of office using all those new features. By the time the competitor manages to catch up with the new OS, it's all over. Similarly, Office enforces the presence of Windows in literally every computer workplace in America- Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and Powerpoint presentations are the lingua franca of the modern business world, and no self-respecting business user can be without them if they want to communicate with anyone else. All those who have been asked for a resume in Word format raise your hands. I thought so.
The proof is Macintosh- MS Office for Mac, when MS decides to sell it (which is far from always), has always been at least one major version behind the Windows equivalent. This, probably more than any other factor, is what killed the Macintosh as a business product and what will sooner or later kill it entirely.
Mac once accounted for over 10% of the desktop market. Linux now accounts for about 4%. The only concievable reason for MS to sell Office for Linux would be for the revenue, which could hardly amount to more than a few tens of millions. Linux is the most credible threat to MS's dominance in the last 5 years at least. Let's think about this. Is MS going to shatter their iron triangle of software dominance in exchange for an additional 4% of a market they already completely dominate? If you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you for a really great price...
I'd love to see Office on Linux. I really would. But don't hold your breath.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
Actually, IE5 for HP-UX/Solaris *is* a decent port. Having used both IE4 for HP-UX and solaris and recently IE5 for same, I must say that IE5 is a much better port than IE4 was. It's more stable, faster, and doesn't eat nearly as much disk space as IE4 did (a big concern if you have a quota'd account you use it on). So it's not quite as fast as Netscape is on the same machine, but it renders html much better and actually supports stuff like DHTML.
If IE5 were ported to linux (it should actually be almost as simple as recompiling on a linux box), it would be a good, and would finally give us linux users a decent browser (yes, I know mozilla is getting better, but it's not quite usable yet for most people).
Even without the prospect of a breakup they might have been working on one at a low priority anyway. It would be stupid not to plan for future contingencies. But there's more reason at least for someone to want this to get done quickly.
When MS is broken up, Bill will probably leave with the applications division in his pocket. OS is looking less and less attractive. Win2K is being squeezed from below by Linux and from above by Sun. It will never be the goldmine that Dos/Windos has been. As for that former goldmine, Win9x is the product that's in legal trouble and under scrutiny: dealing with it is just going to get more and more tedious following the settlement/Court Order. Anyway, applications are where it's at profit wise --I thought almost everyone around here agreed that Office is really the basis of the monopoly. And keeping applications under his control keeps Bill mobile in a post-breakup world.
If he wants to remain the Grand Vizier in the future that he has been til now, Bill will abscond with applications and suddenly become Linux's best friend.
Then you will see Bill Gates magically produce "Office for Linux" as if plucked it from under Judge Jackson's robe. At which time, the most common Mac application will be his property, the most common Win32 apps will also be his, and the applications that give Linux the legitimacy to vie at last for world OS dominance will also belong to Bill Gates. During these feats of pretigitation he'll have never left the audience's gaze on center stage for a second, and he should easily find ways to become the biggest beneficiary of the world's "Great March To Linux".
Meanwhile, since that future route (breakup) is not yet necessary, he can slow the adoption of wouldbe competitors in the Linux field. Aren't we just around the corner from Corel's Office2000 for Linux announcement?
When you hear that Microsoft is working on a port of Office for Linux, you can file in it the memory hole--Microsoft may be working on a port, but Microsoft won't be a company anymore when or if this thing is ever released. IOW: it's a vapor announcemnt from a company that hasn't even been born yet. Pure BogeyMan, and nothing to lose sleep over.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
You're kidding right?
Linux users make up less than 3% of the home market, and less than 5% of the business market.
That's less than Macs!!!
MS doesn't need to, nor will they (I have a feeling) make products or port existing ones to Linux.
Now we are seeing that Linux itself is becoming a commodity - a component which can be plugged in to use in a multitude of purposes. If you are using Linux, you get a solid, clean base that you can build your things on (this applies to other free unices, too, in a lesser extent).
By using Linux, you gain competitive advantage over your rivals who haven't embraced the open source phenomenon. It's only lately that the Big Boys of the industry have begun to understand this. IBM certainly knows it; they are very clearly committed to Linux. SCO got the message. Intel realizes this - and let's not forget the recent announcement by Motorola.
And - you can be very certain of this - Microsoft knows it too. You can be sure that the top heads of the corporation have thought of what Linux may become and how they might counter it. In the end, they, too, might have to submit.
As many others have pointed out, Microsoft is in a difficult situation. By not releasing Office for Linux, they are losing. By releasing Office for Linux, they are losing. The key point is to make the release at the time when they lose the least - or even better - when they have the opportunity to make an advantage of it. The time is certainly not now - and I don't think it's because they are incapable of producing software for Linux; such claims are ignorant FUD from the unwashed Linux advocates. It's not a far-fetched idea that they could release Office for Linux tomorrow if they wanted to - it just doesn't make sense for them.
If the near future goes as I think it will go - if Linux is being made a standard which everyone must (should) conform to (World Domination anyone ? :), Microsoft will start supporting Linux. And they are going to do it the same way as with any other commodity - embrace and extend. They will do everything in their power to corrupt Linux, while making a profit from their Office package.
You can download a copy of In the Beginning Was the Command Line from Neal Stephenson's site http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning. html in plain text format, or read it nicely reformatted into HTML here.
---
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
(Disclaimer: I've never run Linux - so shoot me down. Tell me where I'm wrong - cause mostly I'm just making guesses when it comes to Linux and what it can and can't do.)
...). Where do you stop - there are a lot of things that "exist" on Windows that would probably take a lot of effort to implement in or port to Linux.
Microsoft does not really gain anything out of porting office to Linux.
They have to:
- develop a whole bunch of "services" that don't really exist under Linux in order to get office to play nicely. (Think OLE / ActiveX type stuff / ADO / OLEDB / ODBC / Unicode? and code pages / Internet Explorer integration
- shoot themselves in the revenue foot becuase now people don't have to buy Windows. I know - I know, but the Mac has never historically eaten into Windows sales - It was an extra revenue source. Linux will be detrimental to Windows sales.
- Train people to support linux? and the office on top of it? I don't think so.
Microsoft never wanted to be in the Unix business. A long long time ago Microsoft had one of the most popular *nix OSes for the intel platform (Microsoft Xenix). They sold it off becuase of the way Windows and OS2 were developing - I believe it was bought by SCO and Xenix either became SCO unix or a lot of it went into SCO unix. (long time ago - could be a bit wrong here...)
End result: They have to work incredibly hard for a very small return... It's not going to happen.
If you think Microsoft will ever release Office for Linux you need to take a stroll down monopoly lane. They may start rumours about porting Office to Linux and if the heat gets to them expect them to make a formal announcement of Office for Linux. Just don't expect to see it. They have provided several precedents. Company "X" gets all kind of glory by selling a product Microsoft doesn't have and they need to respond. They announce their intention to make a product that's 10x better, free, and is mere weeks from delivery. At this point they have already won the battle -- everyone waits quietly for the Microsoft solution (who gets fired for recommending Microsoft?) and no one invests in a competitor. Now their options are open. Either they can delay the project indefinitely or they can come out with crappy product that no one buys and blame the lack of sales on the fact that there was no market. Option #1 was used for NetPC, option #2 was used for SMS. Either way the competitor loses and the market is lost. So yes... expect to see Office for Linux announced some day but don't ever expect to see a viable product hit the shelves.
Uh, if you mean that it adds services and applications to the OS then yes, that's what software does. I'd hardly refer to it as "modifies NT OS" like that, sure you could think of it that way, but then it's nothing more than an addition.
Just cause Unix distributions generally come with QOTD, doesn't mean it's part of the OS. Anyone could write a service to add QOTD etc to Office. Gee hard. I mean look at VMWare, they managed to write VMWare for NT without any access to NT source code. It's extending the OS without source that windows is good at.
In HMO office is the best wordprocesser/spreadsheet package around, however I don't think that Lotus SmartSuite is to bad either.
Basically me and most other users would be happy with either one. Is there any chance of IBM doing a smartsuite port to Linux I wonder? They don't have any problems with OS's any more (OS2 is dead) and they would have the staff for it.
They have just finished porting Lotus Notes r5 to linux, which also shows they take Linux seriously.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
Sometimes I have met with outright hostility, and sometimes I am accused of being a "troll" (whatever that is) but since I am getting paid for this, I have to endure it.
Typical marketeer. Whinges about having to work for their money while expecting others to contribute to their projects, career and company's marketing strategy for free.
Indeed it seems such robust interaction is part-and-parcel of the whole "Open source" community. Us Marketers didn't grasp that before, we took our eye off the ball, but trust me, we will not be blindsided again, like we were by the Internet in 1994.
Well, the rest of your post seems to indicate that you're going to be deliberately covering your eyes this time. Just because you're in denial doesn't mean it wont happen.
Linux has no support for de-facto industry standards. DCOM, and DirectX are the main examples, but there are many others.
Sorry, directX is an evil Microsoft development. Not sure about dcom but be sure that if there were any real need for these things, Linux would have them.
Linux lacks the industry standard word processor - Microsoft Word, and spreadsheet - Microsoft Excel
I think most of us on here know why this is. But I don't think you're claiming it's the fault of Linux anyway. If companies want to be tied to MS, I guess that's there call but I really don't see this lasting forever. If and when Linux takes over the world, if these applications are still only available for windows, they will be forced out of the market an replaced with something else for better or worse.
We cannot produce a coherent marketing story for Linux. This is despite having one of the largest marketing budgets in the industry. We therefore cannot hope to sell our software on the Linux platform.
Did you ever consider the option that you just don't "get it"? Seriously? I suspect that for you, "failure is not an option" so when you can't work something out, it can't be your fault, it has to be the fault of the market right?
Our Marketing department was surprised to find that Linux, despite being written by a "communistic" process, actually had quite good security controls
And you wonder why you get labelled "troll"? Linux has some of the foremost people in the field working on it. Clearly your research is pretty shallow if you come up with statements like this.
even compared to the code some of our best (and by best I mean highest paid) hackers
And you guys wonder about being called "suits" when you refer to youe professional programming staff like that?
We spend $millions. Believe me, we would have found it if it existed.
Once again this comes back to the "suit" thing. If a geek can't grok something, he'll go back and readjust his perspective and try again and keep trying until he "gets it". A suit will just assume it's something wrong with the item in question and just dismiss it
The zealots are Linux's market. They are not lucrative. They dissuade naive user takeup of Linux. They talk down, condescend and patronise. They are arrogant. They scare people off. They mumble under their breath about "suits" and "clueless newbies".
And they're part of the thing that drives the success of Linux as well. Their message may be wrong but they bring Linux to the attention of others. Have you ever really used Linux? I mean really and seriously? From the perspective of an admin who's had to put up with all the Microsoft crap moving to Linux with it's power and configurability is enough to put a fanatical gleam in nearly anyone's eye. It's no wonder there are zealots out there. And yes, "clueless newbie" is a standard insult but it's there for a reason. Most of us had to go through all the reading of HOWTOS, misconfigurations and other joys that build our skills, we are not paid to babysit someone who got their redhat CD off the front of a magazine and now wants to know if they can run Linux in a dos window. I repeat, we are not paid but these users demand to know the answers, now, and in full.
Our software company has significant Market share in its chosen niche (some would say too much share). We do not need the incremental revenue that a Linux port of our products would produce.
MINDSHARE!
Therefore we have no plans to port our software to Linux now, or in the next two to three years.
Sure, close your eyes. That steam train is still going to hit you.
Alternatively, get someone on your team who "gets it". Not all of us Linux users out here are zealots. Most of us are too busy doing our jobs to answer your marketing questions. Of course you're going to mostly hear from the zealots. Go find one of your big marketing books and look up "self selection".
Rich
Microsoft have a policy of only supporting UNIX platforms that run on non-Intel architectures. It is Microsoft doctrine that its OSes are the only official OSes on Intel platforms (hence the way their OSes clobber the MBR without asking, and sabotaged OS/2 file attributes).
It would take a drastically changed environment for MS to support Linux.
As an end user, I don't give a damn about how they do their file format. It would be nice if it played well with other processors, but it's not the end of the world. Besides, it's not like Corel and Sun are writing books on how to read *their* formats.
No, I don't like all those buttons. Fortunately, it's customizable and I get rid of only the ones I don't use.
I don't buy software based on the hair, do you?
Turn the paperclip off -- it's not that hard.
Maybe we can do this ourselves... I don't see anything remotely approaching Office 2000's level of usefulness. KWord isn't that great. I'll give it some time, but I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.
Yeah, go back to the CD player... After all, we don't have enough of those on freshmeat, do we?
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
That's crap. Word, IE etc all start in new processes, the DLL memory sharing is done on ALL applications, so it doesn't explain why netscape is so slow at loading (as well as star office). also there's NO reason why netscape can't do any preloading either (hey they go around installing AOL IM and change your default hompage in IE etc without asking).
Netscape is BLOATED. eg. it's HUGE, SLOW, UNMAINTANABLE and doesn't do what it's supposed to do properly.
Why do you think the source for netscape was quickly 'disposed' of.
Your statement is not the case. Most "geeks" do not "grok" CAPITALISM but they make absolutely no effort to adjust their perspective.
Well, my own data point is that most of the coders I know are just about the most capitalistic bastards in existence. The reason they don't like marketing is that most of what they see of it is about 60% bullshit and only about 5% of the capability of the product. Most of us are extremely clear thinkers and would rather just have a datasheet of the facts rather than some salesdroid telling us unmeasurable opinions about how their product is "fantastic" and "the best" (often at the bottom of an advert where 9/10 of the page is taken up with some anorexic model)
They do not understand that fundamentally, they owe their living to the hard working guys and girls in their marketing departments
And I'm sure that they feel it's the other way around. The fact is that in this world, marketeers are needed so it's more of a symbiotic or team relationship. Again, coders can visualise a world where they can produce their product and people would buy it on their merits without the need for marketeers. A utopian view perhaps but somewhat more realistic than the other way around where marketeers would sell stuff that never needs to be produced.
who slave daily to persuade the software-buying public that the bug-ridden mess they have developed is worth spending $$$s on.
Im sure many programmers feel they would like to produce bug free code but don't have time to. Well, who's fault is that? The marketeers who sold the product for a fixed price and to a deadline. The reality is that bug free software isn't currently financially viable for most applications at the moment (Except for Open Source which has no deadlines or budget of course). Now, that is capitalism for you.
And I would like to talk more on this subject, but events have overtaken me, as I seem to have upset someone in our legal department with my previous posting. If you don't hear from me for a while, it will be because I am dealing a rather large amount of that "corporate BS" that you open source guys are lucky to be free from.
Oh, I'm not an "open source" guy, I code distinctly commercial software for a living, as I suspect, do many people who contribute to open source. So we all get to see some of that corporate BS. I'm fortunate enough to work for a company where we don't see much of that and that I'm happy to say, goes for honesty in its marketing rather than BS (But we can afford to because we're damn good)
I'm still not sure that you're not a troll (I can't see that you'd have been still posting on here if your legal dept had jumped on you) but if you're not, I hope you get through all the legal stuff. Far as I could see, there wasn't anything too commercially sensitive in there and I don't have a clue which company you're working for. Also, IMO, posting to this kind of forum is exactly the kind of reasearch you should have been doing.
Rich
Right now, Linux may be 3% of the business desktop market, but that is because MSOffice is not available for it. Were MS to release Office for Linux, that number would jump to about 25%, or much larger than the Mac.
The Mac market WRT business is saturated: you are unlikely to see a huge increase in the number of Macs being used in a business sense (by this I mean word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc., not graphics manipulation or page layout.) The Linux market is like a supersaturated solution: one disruption and the system will undergo a massive state change.
This is both why MS won't port Office in the near term (since it would "knife the baby") and why they must port it in the long run. Eventually, all that potential money just sitting there waiting for somebody else to grab it will be too much.
However, the day MS announces Office for Linux is the day MSWindows has a sheet pulled over its head and a toe-tag tied on.
www.eFax.com are spammers
"Oh, it has anti-piracy features. This means I won't have a chance to get a pirate copy, so I'll buy my own copy right now !"
The best solution for everybody: Linux users will get drivers for all their hardware, Microsoft users will get Linux system stability for their applications.
Only the Wine developers will have to find another hobby. (I need Vax emulation in Linux)
Of course MS will never do this, since it is the main reason that:
Things will only get worse if UCITA passes, because then it may be illegal for any company to reverse-engineer the MS Office file formats. Then we'll see the true power of mindshare.
An example:
While a port of Office would be fine, there's much work to be done before the typical Linux environment is as comfortable as Windows. I have to admit that while I love the stability of Linux, it still makes me feel like I'm living in the 1970s. That's how I felt almost ten years ago when I used UNIX workstations during the day, and the general consensus was "UNIX is a dying dinosaur."
I'm still unable to get sound working on my Dell machine running RedHat 5.2. I still get "pixel trash" using the latest Bashee driver for X that I can find. And I've started tiring of having to spend hours grabbing constanst updates for this part of the system and that. I would much prefer using Linux all the time, but it isn't there yet. I'd run a web site on a Linux server in a minute, but I sheepishly have to admit that it's still a clunker as an alternative to Windows for most everyday tasks.
the day Rush Limbaugh delivers the commencement speech at a liberal arts college....
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I'm usually a staunch MS hater.. but to be rational, they do make some good products.. they just go too far to corner the market.
LOTS of their products are both good and useful, their only drawback being an intnentional difficulty in using non-ms products with them.
So. why am I proud of them? With Windows 2000, MS decided NOT to ship a whole bunch of vendor drivers.
With windows, they would say 'we support lots of hwardware... more than our competitors. WIndows is great.' And from a marketing poitn of view, I guess this worked, but from a technical view, it's the manufacturers responsibility to make sure the drivers for their product exist. MS had them convinced that to make your product cool, windows had to support it, so you had to give your driver to MS.
Now they've backtracked. Win2k is great (I mean, it's still windows, and it sure doesn't replace unix, but it's the best thing MS has released yet.). Win2k by itself is very stable. Oops. I added the 3dfx drivers, and after a while, while watching some video, it crashed. From what I've seen, it really *IS* the third party drivers that are messing things up (and linux is no different).
If we had the full windows API, ported (OSS or not, though of course OSS is good) to Linux by MS, and the built the 'Lindows' or top of it, or whatever, and had all their apps recompiled... we'd get all the advantages of Windows as a desktop, and all the advantages of Linux as a backend. But this will only work if MS decides to use the power of linux, instead of trying to extend and extinguish it. The windows desktop has to be X compliant, and the control panel has to work on standard init scripts (at least, human readable ones)
But it is also known that 15% are dwarves. As the buring question, "are there no female dwarves, or do they have beards?" has yet to be answered, we still don't know whether the 7% are female, or whether they are follicularly challenged males while the 7% female are bearded dwarves . . .
That depends on the distribution you use. Slakware does in fact cause severe erectile disfunction however RedHat doesn't. And Debian actually makes your penis grow! Why, in the first 3 weeks that I used Debian, my penis grew 4 inches! Do the words "Foot long hot dog" bring anything to mind? There you go, then...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If I were them I'd develop it in (mostly) secret and if the snowball becomes an avalanche, release it then. If the snowball peters out, just throw the code out. If Linux goes away, MS won't mind throwing out the work of an entire development team (It's not like they can't afford to) and if Linux gets big, MS can jump on the bandwagon then after having milked 'doze for all it was worth.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I agree with you. I thought the same thing about "what if MS ports Office". But then I was thinking, "what can we do if they did." Now, I also sure that MS thought this, and thought about what might go wrong (well maybe). Say they did port Office for Linux, but a broken Office. Now RedHat refuses to install it, since it is not under GPL. Corel has their own suite so they don't install it. But maybe Caldera? or are they in with Applixware? So you have SuSE, Slackware, Mandrake. But they decide not to. Whose left? LinuxOne! They install it, but it's broken. Then it is discovered that they are not apart of the Linux Community, and all the bad things associated with Office just goes on top of LinuxOne.
That's not too bad of a scenario. How about this. Office is installed on most of the distributions. But it is broken. Then an e-mail is leaked that has one of the top guys at MS writing to Balmer about how to break Office on Linux. Here we go back to the DOJ.
Or what if we have a last ditch effort by Corel or Star Office to save themselves from MS. They open source their product completely. Now we have people trying Linux with the option of going to a fully open sourced Office suite.
The problem Microsoft has with Linux is that it will never go away. It's not like Netscape or Apple where you can destroy a company. But Linux is an OS that is free to the public and as long as someone is tinkering with it, it will always be a threat. MS has lots of resources, but it may be hard to fight against the rest of the world. As long as someone uses Linux, Linux will constantly show up as a competitor.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
According to the article:
That's pretty badly worded, though. Does that mean that 4% of the computers in the workplace are running Linux? That 4% of users run Linux? That they run Linux exclusively?
Sounds like fun.
I've been walking around looking at all the "Windows 2000: Comming Feb 17. As stable on the internet as off" posters, and now I think I'm going to sticker over "the internet" part of the poster. Then it will read more gramatically correct... of course who'd want a computer that acted like it was off when it was on anyway is beyond my comprehension.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
How about this:
1) Create a binary-only kernel module that must be licensed from Microsoft.
2) Push UCITA so that your clause about not reverse engineering it or how it works will hold up in court. Also your clause about only running the module with MS Linux.
3) Have MS office for Linux do something in that module and have it refuse to run unless it has the module loaded. It'd probably be something cryptographic.
Voila. Instant proprietary distribution, no violation of the GPL and well with in the kernel rules according to Linus.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
And I can put out PDFs or HTML with LaTeX. I've got everyone covered as far as distributing my documents goes. HTML is the lowest common denominator, of course. PDF's are just a hair above it (Alladin GhostScript can view PDFs, so Acrobat isn't your only choice.)
* Well, LaTeX anyway. Nothing puts out a better looking document. Nothing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
(They cannot port "Office", because Office aka StarOffice, ApplixOffice, WordPerfect Office,.. is already or will soon be available, and not by Microsoft.)
There will be one big binary setup chunk (no RPM or anything, because MS does not/cannot control the RPM format) called "MS Linux installer" that will scatter 1024 files around your /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/share, /var/lib, /home, and /etc directories, even if you select /usr/local/office as destination directory. The "MS Linux installer" will complain that it is incompatible with other package managers and that you might want to only download *.msl packages from linux.microsoft.com for optimum system performance.
There will be an uninstall option that needs a web connection to microsoft.com, and downloads an "uninstaller" (also binary only) that only runs as root. This uninstaller will not work on many systems until after the first "service pack".
Of course, Internet Explorer 5.5 will be included with MS Office 2000 for Linux. You will have to install it "to harvest the real power of Office and to experience all of the advanced features". Internet Explorer will automatically convert your KFM and Netscape bookmarks to IE format (which will be binary, i.e. not easily converted back) and unless you go after "Advanced Install" and uncheck "Options / Internet Explorer / Post-Install Options / Advanced / [x] Autoconvert older browser bookmarks", will delete the original bookmarks. (I witnessed this behaviour on some Netscape installations I've seen - so it's not entirely fiction...)
Internet Explorer will also complain on first start that it is running in an incompatible desktop environment/window manager and that you might want to download "MS Desktop for Linux" as a .msl package from microsoft.com. MS Desktop will (by default) automatically delete any other window manager executables it finds, converting the Gnome/KDE menus first (i.e. deleting the originals, of course).
By then, you will have three different uninstaller applications on your system (problably in /Program Files/Microsoft/Uninstall/), each of which requires that the other two are deinstalled first ... Of course, Microsoft realizes their mistake and announces a press release that they are already planning on thinking about starting to develop a concept for a possible upgrade.
If you actually try to run one of the office apps, it will crash the system hard the moment you start anything like strace, gdb, or anything. Of course, all MS Office applications need to run setuid root, because otherwise they would not be able to "offer all the advanced high-tech e-commerce network industry solution features" they provide. Oh yes, and because they run setuid root, you will have to purchase the "Office 2000 Network Install Update" if you want a network-capable installation, because otherwise everything MS Office saves will be in "/My Document" owned by root.root, no matter which user starts MS Office.
You will not be able to deactive active content in Internet Explorer for any Microsoft site (actually, that's how it is in Windows today, at least on some of the systems I saw), or rather, they will execute no matter what you configure. Internet Explorer will from time to time just forget your homepage and automatically load one of the Windows 2000, MS Office or Windows 98 homepages when you start it. Internet Explorer will also stop loading and crash hard if you start tcpdump or something in a terminal. You will notice frequent DNS requests to activex.microsoft.com, update.microsoft.com and such when running Word or Excel, if you configure your DNS server to log requests. Microsoft will tell people that Office is checking for new versions and upgrades that may be available, thus the DNS requests.
</black_future>
Actually, I myself don't think they will do it as obviously as that. But something in this direction is bound to happen, if Microsoft starts producing applications for Linux. They can only both "embrace and extend", they only start in markets where they can bully/cheat/kick the competition out.
Fortunately, Microsoft still does not seem to have realized the impact that Open Source software has worldwide. Two years ago, the EU would never have dreamed of requesting Windows 2000 source code to check for Diskeeper. Two years ago, France would never have dreamed of suggesting to BAN software in government where no source is available ("for security reasons").
The only way is forward. Choose the right path. Now please give me a good score on this one, I spend a lot of time for the satire and I don't post too often :)
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Buddy Microsoft guy here is so completely corporate he's almost a cartoon.
This is the old, out-dated style of business thinking clashing with the new style of business-think. I have this argument with my father all the time (an IT executive at a big corp) and I think even he is beginning to grok it. Maybe a bit of topic, but what the hell.
Microsoft (and most of the large IT players right now) are old-style business thinkers. Their product strategy is simple: devise product, patent product, sell product, defend product.
These companies exist only for profit. They never seek opinions or approval from their industry peers - why would they - they are trying to drive their peers out of the marketplace. They act nice to the customer not because they respect him, but because they need his loyalty. They act nice their hackers not because they like them, but because they don't want their competitors to have them. They contribute to the common good only in return for taxation benefits. Their only contributions to education and knowledge are certification programs designed to perpetuate the product and generate even more profit.
The easiest road to profit is control. Control of the product, control of the marketplace, control of the consumer. Monopolies an excellent way of maintaining this control. Microsoft is almost the ultimate corporation this way -- they maintain absolute control over their product, develop their own standards, and sell to a clientle that is not educated enough to know any better. Microsoft has acheived what most companies can only dream of -- total control of their market.
Without competition there is no challenge to the product. If the money is rolling in why on Earth would you invest more money in making the product better? From Microsoft's point of view, Windows is already the perfect product -- it generates profit. Subsequent versions of Windows do not have to be better or more stable, they just have to sell.
Successful old-style business thinkers to nothing to advance knowledge, because they don't have to and it isn't profitable. Windows 2000 is really nothing more then a nicer looking NT4. A server operating system with plug and play, a server operating system with Direct X, a server operating system that went to market with 60000 possible bugs, but I'll bet the shadow under the mousepointer works great. Style over substance, because the product is already 'perfect'.
The problem Microsoft faces now, and what all of the old style business thinkers face, is the unsustainability of this style of thinking. Growth can't go on forever, and neither can intellectual stagnation. One day, a group of people are going to come along, who can't be bought, who can't be sued, and who make things, not for profit, but because they can. Because it needs to be made. Because it advances knowledge. Because it is cool. They don't need to amass multi-billion dollar fortunes to pay for their computer bits and beer. They make their money helping others to use their product, something that should be done anyway. In the OS world, these new-style business thinkers are those "Linux Zealots". And one day, without ever launching a lawsuit, or a hostile take-over, they will topple these greedy, arrogant companies. Microsoft will either change, or it will die.
Microsoft guys, if you are still reading this thread, this is your fate. Start thinking like people rather than corporations before it is too late. Get off your asses, and tell your boss that you want to port Office over Linux, that you want to give it away free, and that you want to open source it. Then the rest of us can hack it, make it faster, and get rid of that damn talking paperclip.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
I have had to _scan_ _paper_ to get a graphic out of a Publisher document. Thankfully, I was able to get hold of a nicer version of the graphic I was trying to extract- still, it's a rather damning indictment. MS File Formats: once they check in they _don't_ check out! ;)
I had my doubts as to the authenticity of this whole thread, but the parent to this message just gave it all away...
Doesn't anyone think that $473/minute legal consultation fees are a tad high. Well, how about dropping the decimal places and text around his figures: $3133 7. Hmmm... looks like [hax0r|skript-kiddy]speak to me!
I will admit that this is one of the more clever trolls posted in quite a while. Kudos, dmg... whoever you are.
Eric
I take it you don't know ANYTHING about the Active desktop. That has nothing to do with it, Explorer starts whether or not you have an Active Desktop. But like I said, it's irrelevant, IE starts in a new process. And there's no reason why Netscape can't do any 'magical preloading'.
Please show me any undocumented features in windows dlls netscape can't. you mean MSHTML.DLL? oh wait, that _is_ IE and anyone can use it.
And that doesn't explain why other browsers (mozilla5 and opera are also many times faster than netscape at starting and rendering).
Ahh, being microsoft means being a 'troll'. I now know your intelligence, but I'll bite anyway.
1) There's no reason why other vendors can't "preload DLLs" (most DLLs are shared in memory and most apps use those DLLs anyway, like mscomctl). And besides, there's no such thing as 'preloading' DLLs, you can have apps that loads a library, and another app that needs to use it won't take as long to load it cause it's already in memory. And what's this "system" dlls thing? To me system dlls are things like gdi32.dll etc.
2) Windows 2000 boots faster than Redhat Linux on the same machine here.
3) Windows bloated? Uh, what's netscape/staroffice?