Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
> It does seem kind of bizare. If Linux had MS Office support, it would get Linux a lot of converts.
Microsoft is stuck between the proverbial "rock and a hard place" on this one. If they port their apps, they make it easier for their desktop customers to ditch Windows (and more generally, they give Linux credit as being more than a student's toy).
But if they don't port their apps, they let the application competition grow and strengthen unhindered. How can they crush WP, SO, KO, Abi, etc., if they don't challenge them on their own turf? It's a true dilemma, and I'd sure like to have been a fly on the wall at some of their executive meetings where they must surely have debated the pros and cons of porting by now.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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.
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.
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
These kinds of arguments hold no merit to me. Before i get moderated down as a troll or flaimbait or a linuz zelot let me explain.
The arguments that certain hardware support is weak under linux is, indeed, valid. I will concede that point. But hardware support under NT is sometimes no better. It reminds me of the microsoft FUD article that says linux doesn't support USB. Well neither does NT 4.0 but of course that does not get mentioned. Linux has a reputation of being well handled on older hardware but as with NT, you get better results with better hardware.
I've been using linux exclusivly at home for the past 4 years. At work for the past 2 years. Admittedly i am a geek and do not mind playing with my OS.
The issue as I see it is not hardware support and what not but the user. Not everyone should own a computer. It's that simple. Some people can't drive. I don't want these people using a computer. Give them a limited function internet appliance and let them be on their way. In those cases, the hardware is tuned to work explicitly before it goes out the door of the factory. I think it's wonderful that computers have been pushed into the mainstream and that people WANT to use them but as much as apple or microsoft or even the eazel people would have you believe, a better interface isn't the answer. The desktop interface paradigm may change and SHOULD change but we need better educated users. Sometimes I feel that maybe we should have Internet Usage License afterall.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
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?
The issue as I see it is not hardware support and what not but the user. Not everyone should own a computer. It's that simple. Some people can't drive. I don't want these people using a computer. Give them a limited function internet appliance and let them be on their way. In those cases, the hardware is tuned to work explicitly before it goes out the door of the factory. I think it's wonderful that computers have been pushed into the mainstream and that people WANT to use them but as much as apple or microsoft or even the eazel people would have you believe, a better interface isn't the answer. The desktop interface paradigm may change and SHOULD change but we need better educated users.
This is completely off base. On a superficial level, your analogy is wrong. Most anyone can drive, but it isn't necessary to know how to replace a fuel injector or a muffler in order to do so. Some people can, but does that mean that other people are stupid and shouldn't drive?
More fundamentally, you're dividing the world into techies and grandmas and are focused on the different ways each of those groups uses computers. That's not the issue. The point is that Linux is still too much hassle for the techies who don't want to waste their time in that way. Car enthusiasts may like to fiddle, but that doesn't mean they want to own cars that are more difficult to maintain than everyone else, just to show how cool they are. And yet that's the Linux philosophy.
Look, there's a *reason* that in any group of knowledgable tech-heads that most of them would rather just work with Windows--and this is even though they don't like Windows. It's because all the sysadmin headaches of Linux, all the do-it-yourself issues, all the compatibility problems, they just don't seem worth it for a lot of people. These people are not stupid; they're quite often brilliant. It Linux *were* clearly superior to Windows then the techies would be switching over just for the sheer joy of it, and you'd never find a hardcore programming shop using anything but Linux. But this isn't the case. Linux is only worth it if you want to make a hobby of twiddling and downloading and configuring instead of writing code. That's something that you can do if you're a student, or if you just like the twiddling, but it's a deterrent otherwise. Let me clarify that this isn't the "keep away the computer newbies" barrier everyone seems so fond of, but something that's keeping away great technical minds. That's the hurdle Linux can't get over; that's why it isn't taking over the desktop. It's a weird philisophical issue that's at fault, not the underlying technology.
(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 :)
Home Page