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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.
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.
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