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Will Linux Save Microsoft?
Chait writes "Check this article out looks interesting!
Will Linux Save Microsoft? " Its a fairly logical piece, and certainly not
saying anything that any of us haven't thought about. My opinion has always been that as long as the source stays open, I don't care, but it'll definitely be interesting to see what happens.
That's why, despite Mozilla, we still need a good browser that is GPL'ed
:) ;)
Guess what... Konqueror, like all KDE apps, IS fully GPL'ed!
That's funny, if you think that what has been the preferred target for free-software fanatics is now the only free-like-in-speech modern browser.
You have just disproved the existence of MacOS X.
Or could it be that Apple and Microsoft don't want any attention from geeks?
This is a known issue with some of the headers and templates and is expected to be fixed in the near future.
The reason this wasn't considered a priority in the past was that everyone was happy using Metrowerks Codewarrior on windows, in part because it has better ISO standard compliance and in part because you can share IDE project files between the Mac and Windows.
I was even cross-compiling in both directions at points, and when I got a new PC that was much faster than my old Mac, I did all my Mac builds under windows.
It will build with gcc (although there are parts of the API that aren't implemented under Linux yet), so it's not hardwired to a particular compiler.
If you have the cash, I encourage you to try out codewarrior, if you don't, work with the mailing list and we'll get you a visual C++ compatible version soon.
Also note that I accidentally wrote some code that compiled fine under windows but not mac on codewarrior:
class Foo{
public:
void Foo::MyMethod( int AnArg );
}
This is obviously illegal - under codewarrior for Mac, it complained that there was an illegal using qualifier or something like that.
When I brought this up with Metrowerks support, they said they had a "#pragma cpp_extensions on" on by default under the Windows compiler because otherwise a lot of Windows apps wouldn't compile.
And in fact when I tried to ensure the correctness of my own code by setting "#pragma cpp_extensions off" in my zconfig.h file it broke the compile in the Microsoft headers where they were included by ZooLib's windows platform implementation >:-/
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
All true, but if MS were to make a Linux distro they'd probably only keep the bare minimum of their code open-sourced. There's no way they'd keep everything wide open just to prevent people from cashing in on their code or improving on it. They'd be competing with themselves.
This is a fine example of how stories can spread on the Internet.
The original story was told by Rex Ballard sometime in '95 in comp.os.linux.advocacy, at least according to dejanews.com searches.
His claim was that as part of the agreement to sell all rights to Xenix to SCO, Microsoft agreed to never enter the Unix marketplace.
I asked Rex for proof of this story, where had he heard it, etc. He claimed it was in the SCO Annual report. Asking him to perhaps provide pictures of this on the Internet resulted in a claim that he only does research for others at $100/hour.
I've went and tried to find this in the Annual reports and was unable to locate it. I've also tried to locate the story in news articles, and have come up blank.
Unfortunately every time I went looking for something to corroborate this story in the real world I came up blank. When I went looking for something to corroborate the story on the Internet all leads pointed right back to Rex Ballard.
Whether this story is true or not depends on one question:
Do you Believe Rex Ballard?
I don't see why Microsoft would do this.
Before Microsoft would ever bother to sell a version of Linux they would first lower the price of the OS they now sell by a large margin, or perhaps even give it away for free.
They might release the source code to the OS.
But sell Linux? Doubtful, they already have a better OS in the way of Windows 2000 that they can do with as they please.
I'd pay a journalist to write a nice article in a sillicon valley magazine, saying:
"Bill is God and competition is futile. Shares dropped, but since we can "steal linux" anytime WE OWN YOU. We'll be the last player on the island. BUY OUR SHARES!".
Yeah right..
'nough doubt has been cast on the core of this argument... but hasn't there also been a lot of strutting in the Linux community about it really not being Unix? Something about it being a complete write from scratch, with nothing lifted directly? Unlike, say the BSD family... methinks M$'d have more than a bit of a case, assuming there was anything about which to make a case :p
What Microsoft can;t seem to understand is that in the server market tailoring the servers EXACTLY to your needs is very important. You can't do that with windows NT/2000 as much as you can with most UNIXes.
And once microsoft adds the features, the Open Source/Free Software communities can see how they did it (since the Linux kernel code is GPLed) and turn around and do it better.
-RickHunter
/*Which OS would you choose to install : a bare-bones MS/Linux hybrid OS, or a full-featured "classic" linux distro with hoardes of available software? */
Depends. If I'm installing in a business where all I want is Office and "IT Approved" software, I'll take a stripped down MS/Linux w/Office and maybe a couple choice applications (probably written by MS). Business wants conformity, easy of administration, etc.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Mozilla sucks all ass. Yes, OpenOffice and StarOffice are VERY good and VERY reliable alternatives. Yes, 3d chipset support is great under X (not just linux), but there was an article on slashdot not yesterday that highlighted the dismal level of linux gaming.
If you can tell me the "emulation tricks" to watch divx and asf movies under linux, I will consider you a God. XMPS and Xtheater, however, do not count as they can be considered alpha at best (the goal is to watch movies full screen over TV out).
The point I'm making here is that M$ can throw a ton of money at things. They also have industry contacts that no one in the Linux Community has (see above about my Neomagic TV out chipset). So if all these little cool features are ever going to get implemented in a timely fashion (eg, USB for linux is just getting stable), a big company is going to have to do it.
Personally, I would be thrilled if Redhat or another vendor was able to support all chipsets, code media players, etc. But Redhat seem too busy shipping CVS compilers and replacing inetd.conf with xinetd to do anything that would actually "bring Linux to the Desktop."
Call this flamebait if you want, but if you do, you are hiding from the truth. Truth is, people want to watch DVD's and divx on their desktops. This time of year, they want to be able to double-click on that elf-bowling2.exe file in their email and play it. And you can't do that with linux right now. For a while, people trashed the linux install process; now it is impeccable (Redhat and SuSE I have installed; much better than windows in my opinion).
95% of the time I use a computer, I am using it for "workstation" purposes: webserver admin, compiling code, creating and manipulating graphics. As a workstation, Linux (and the *BSD's) kick M$'s ass.
But now its time to actually think about Desktop things. KDE and Gnome need to work together. Tons of multimedia apps need to be written. Browsers need much improvement. And if a non-M$ company does it, I will be thrilled. If M$ does it, I wont be thrilled, but I know for sure that for that 5% of the time, I will be using it.
Many of the people posting to this story seem to be implying that MS is just plain evil and they will do anything in their power to close up open-source. That is plain and simply not true. MS in a large corporation that is in the business of making $$$$.
But M$ has had incredible success thus far with keeping their source intentionally closed. That is how that have made *all* of their $$$$ in the past. To do otherwise flies in the face of everything they've ever accomplished.
I'm not saying it'll never happen, I'm just saying that I highly doubt they would suddenly embrace OSS as quickly and with as much enthusiasm as you believe.
Does Perl, one of the first widespread VHLLs, count? Not run by a business, I suppose, but contributed to by businesses. Am I allowed to suggest X, the first widespread network-transparent window system, again contributed to by many businesses? How about Mozilla's XUL? Maybe (a bad idea | a good idea whose time has not yet come), but a fairly radical idea.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Why would they have to ditch X? Most Linux distros are flexible enough that they could offer a choice of graphics system to the person installing - which is exactly what I suspect will happen as soon as the Berlin Consrortium manages to get a usable release out the door. And if the alternate system had an X compatibility layer, so much the better. Or X could concievably be modified to allow for more user-friendly configuration - if I read your post right, this is one of the problems with it.
-RickHunter
Even if M$ would make their own distro, nobody would use it.
Don't be so sure. There are two groups who would consider adopting a Microsoft distribution:
1. Average users: aka Joe User
2. Corporate execs
I'll admit that the average user isn't about to switch to Linux right now, and I doubt that this will change any time soon. However, if Linux ease of use ever reaches the point that the masses start considering it, you can be absolutely sure that Microsoft will be out in the forefront of marketing. They'll strip their distribution down to the bare bones of functionality in order to keep folks from having too many things to tinker with and potentially screw things up, and they may even go so far as to release their own Windows emulation package (closed source and available only with the purchase of their distribution). Will this strategy cause Microsoft to steal the consumer Linux market? It really doesn't matter. All they have to do is get their product out there. If Joe User buys into their marketing hype, gets a copy, and hates it, he'll tell his buddies how awful this Linux thing is and that they should stick with Windows. Outcome: Windows holds its market share and Microsoft wins. The main challenge for Microsoft here is to get something in the stores before other distributions get too popular with consumers. At that point, it's too late.
As for corporate execs (the suits), anyone who's worked in a large company knows how these guys love to make themselves feel important by micromanaging what their departments use. If someone in the IT department says the company's mail servers ought to be running Linux, and if Microsoft has a distribution out there, what name is going to immediately pop into the exec's mind? He'll tell the IT guy, "We need Linux? OK, we'll go with Microsoft." If the IT guy protests that there are better distributions out there, the exec will reply, "Look, every PC we have in this building is running Microsoft software. We need to stick with a company that's reliable and will be around for the long haul. I have no idea who these Red Cap people are, and they could be out of business next week. Then what will we do? No, we're going with Microsoft." Granted, not everyone will think this way, but many will. Once again, this assumes Microsoft gets a product to market before Linux gets to be a well-known buzzword outside of the tech community.
All I'm saying here is that no one should underestimate blind brand loyalty. Ask yourself why so many people stick with AT&T as their long distance carrier simply because they've always used it. Ask yourself why Intel still is the CPU market leader, even after the Pentium floating-point bug, the Pentium III serial number, and its consistently higher prices.
The reason that they will not move in any way like they did against Netscape is two fold. One, it was much easier to just bring a browser to the desktop. Second, any move by the company that even suggests to be anti-competitive will pretty much secure there breakup a lot quicker than it is now. Cannot believe those major points seem to have been missed. Although the point about the execs waiting was a good one...
I would likely use it if IE and Quicken 2001 were ported to it. That's the only thing preventing me from using it as my base OS now... :-/
-- You have moved your mouse. Windows will now reboot.
my iMac already does run Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer =P
Actually the win32 does exist kind of. Ever tried programming in the Windoze enviroment? You're stuck using the MFC pretty much and that makes a lot of refrences to the win32 API.
Sure, the web server developer gets to host his web application with apache and linux using free software.
Usually, the end user can access the web application for free, or at worst have some banner ads or be tracked by cookies.
But the end user doesn't have the web server software on their computer - to the extent end-users are doing their daily work over the web, they are using software that is generally closed-source and proprietary.
You will feel this the worst when your favorite dot-com goes out of business, taking its source code with it.
So, what I'd like to suggest is that someone draft some kind of "server GPL", that says that releasing some software in such a way that the GPL would then take effect, would be to allow the software to accept communications from a different computer, or to transmit them.
That way people could write free web applications and if a company used your web application and modified it, they'd have to provide source if they allowed anyone to access it over the web at all.
As it stands, they'd only have to provide source if they provided binaries of the web applications to people outside their company, which is not what happens when there is only one copy of the application executable itself, kept on a central server.
Microsoft is not so stupid with their .NET. When people get used to just downloading their apps in an instant, they won't want to take the trouble to actually install software they'd posses themselves, even if that would ultimately benefit them.
Remember, if you possess the original media your executable came on, you can still run the program when the original publisher goes out of business. That's not the case with web applications.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
Really? Why would they ever have to OSS the whole thing? Just build a proprietary system on top of the Linux kerenel, like Mac OS X did w/ FreeBSD.
> movies players that support ASF, Divx;-),
These already exist. Goto Xtheater
> an "ultra-glitzy start menu" (which is exactly what Gnome and KDE have done, btw...)
Gee, you haven't seen the start menu for Whistler yet, have you?
There haven't been any new products that Micros~1 has been able to sell, since the advent of the internet.
Windows 2000 advanced server: $1199
Office 2000 professional: $599
MS Visual Studio 6.0 $1619
The look on an ignorant OS zealot's face when he realizes just how far into his mouth he stuck his foot: Priceless
0 1 - just my two bits
what a nightmare! it would be like relocating to another town to escape your relatives only for them to follow you and move in next door!
It should be -16 now.
Visit my website xpenguin.com -- A linux penguin website
so, uh...the code is still free. Who cares whose name is on the distro?
Steve Jobs, worked for Apple, Steve Jobs got fired by Apple, Steve Jobs created NeXT, Apple bought NeXT, Steve Jobs interim CEO of Apple, so effectively NeXT += Apple.. Nowthen, About OS X, you're right, they took someone elses kernel, but they rewrote Display Postscript completely and reverse engineered PDF by hand to created Display PDF, and the rest of the underpinnings to create Quartz, which is only similar to NeXT's gui framework in concept, but is an evolution from it. However, Carbon and Classic are both pure Apple granted Classic is an OS9 emulator similar to plex86 and VMWare.
cheese logs keep my wang warm at night.
Read this Tech note to find this link.
For QT5, the download link is on the main page.
Apple will even licence the standalone installer to you for free redistribution here.
Assuming that Microsoft does all of its work on linux or gnu code and contributes their enhancements back to the community, they could still greatly influence the direction of the linux community. Microsoft OSes have somehow managed to sell extremely well. A Microsoft-packaged linux distribution would probably outsell the other distros. this comment says (and i agree) that people will say "i heard about linux, but was afraid to try, but hey...ms is a name i know and all their software is pretty easy...why don't i buy this..." so it will go for too many people. once ms has a significant amount of marketshare, they will be able to influence the way linux works and other distros will have to implement their changes in order to maintain compatibility.
and that was just if m$ releases all their code. the more likely thing is that they will ship a linux kernel, with their proprietary libraries & APIs and slap the windows GUI on top of it. then they will sell it for 89.99, port office to it (still proprietary, of course) and sell it for the reasonable price $300+ and they are in business. Tons of uses who have no real idea about any of the reasoning or philosophy behind gnu and linux will buy the micros~1 version b/c it's a familiar name and they can run office. people don't realize that they don't need most of what office does, and that their storage space & memory would be better applied to other uses.
neither of these scenarios look very good to me...
-----
# cd /
I prefer the BSD license to the GPL. I do not think BSD is losing anything from this. All I'm saying is that a lot of BSD people think that a surge of new apps are going to arrive for BSD, and the truth of the matter is that it is not. As for the improvements to the BSD base code, I'm not terribly sure, but as far as I can see, no new technologies have been put into Darwin. The most BSD might get from Apple is the XML config stuff. As for BSDi, I wasn't aware that they had anything to do with the Apple deal. If they don't and you just think that I am a crazed Linux weenie pushing GPL over BSD-license because of freedom issues, rest easy that I don't think at all that BSDi is stealing from BSD, and I must give them congratulations for the work they are doing on FreeBSD.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
So, let me get this: If Microsoft made a OS with a kernel kinda like WinNT's and a Win32 server kinda like WinNT's, they would be making something exactly like MacOS X? ... Just checking.
>>>>>>
I said if MS made an OS with a kernel kinda like Linux, and a Win32 server kinda like NT's, then it would be similar to MacOS X. Let me break this down for you...
In this analogy, Linux is the OSS kernel. This is similar to BSD and Mach.
The Win32 server is the proprietory API and graphics layer for applications, this is analagous to Cocoa/Carbon and Quartz.
English's a bitch, aint it?
Everyone here is babbling about MS Office, but the real issue is things like Exchange and SQL Server which are also considerable profit centers for Microsoft. Any attempt to get these to run on a Unix-dervative would either require a considerable rewrite, or a emulation layer -
>>>>>>>>>>>
No it wouldn't. It would require a server layer, and it has already been done before. Its been done before with NT. NT doesn't run Win32 applications, it uses something called the NT Native API. Win32 is simply a server that provides Win32 services to Win32 apps. This is how they get OS/2 apps to run on NT without recompilation. Apple is doing the same thing with OS X, they have a set of libraries that provides MacOS-type services above the BSD-layer. Hell, even WINE and BSD do this to provide the Win32 and Linux (respectivly) APIs on non-native platforms. There was a big hubub over this 5 or 6 years ago over things called personalites.
which is exactly what MS FUDs Oracle and IBM about for their WinNT software. Furthermore performance would go into the toliet, leaving open the question whether Unix is really "better" >>>>>>>>>>
WINE (if coded by MS) doesn't lose any performance running Win32 apps, NT doesn't lose any performance running Win32 apps, so what's your point? NT looks nothing like Windows, it looks like VMS (did look like VMS at least) This is simply Win32 on top of UNIX instead of VMS.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
vote Katz for the dedicated write-up guy! He has good grammer!
(Trolling for JK)
Let's assume MS does release an MS Linux.
Back nigh twenty years ago, another company that dominated the computer industry released a platform that was open in specifications, except a small bit of proprietary code. The proprietary bit was cloned and others sold a nearly-identical product for less.
It was IBM, and the product was the PC, and we know how that turned out.
BTW, the browser wars were MS killing a potential alternate platform to their moneymaker with software that they *still* don't make any money from. So that analogy is useless, since MS in this case would theoretically want to continue to make money from OS sales. (Esp. if broken up...)
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
Huh? Again with the idealistic bullshit? Proof man! MacOS X is an example of an OS that manages to reconcile OSS software (BSD) and proprietory software (Quartz/Carbon/etc)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
WHAT?
Microsoft is stronger recently than it ever has been before, both in terms of stock price and liquidity. First of all, Gates always keeps enough liquidity on hand to run the company for a year with no revenues. Secondly, M$ products, like them or not, have spread to almost every corner of the software industry. Remember back when Apple was the big threat to MS? Remember back when Netscape was...
I feel sorry for Bill G. He is a typical autist, with a good intelligence but extremely poor social skills. And as a result, he is hated more than anyone on the internet, with the possible exception of Hitler.
However, the truth is that Microsoft knows the software business very well. Nobody understands the importance of controlling industry standards quite as well as gates, even when he rubs it in their noses.
As for linux, it will always survive, just as breadboards will always survive... because people love to do things their own way.
"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental." -Slashdot
This sucks when you've got DSL at work and a 28.8 modem at home. A while back I downloaded the quicktime 4 for windows to a PC at work, and what you got was a little downloader stub app. You'd make your selection for installation options and then it would download the real thing.
The cygwin installer works this way but what you get there are tar.gz files that you can share on a network or burn on a CD, and you can update individual packages at your convenience. You can then choose to install from a local archive of these downloaded files.
But the Quicktime installer downloads this 4 megabyte file that allows one installation - right when you download - and then it's useless. Much to my disappointment, I found this out after I took it home and tried to install it on my PC at home. I ended up download 4 MB at 28.8.
So be very wary even of downloadable software - be sure that the "network installer" allows an install from a local hard drive or the install archive burned onto a CD - or later, it won't be a matter of an annoying wait for a slow download, but when the package isn't available anymore online you won't be able to install at all.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Taken from a purely business perspective, it would make a lot of sense for Apple to sell Windows boxes [...] But this was never seriously considered for largely religious reasons.
I don't know if its a religious issue as much as that's just not what Apple's about. Apple's history is filled with instances where they could have just gone the safe route and made more cash, but instead chose to step outside of the lines and create something truly unique. Jobs (and many people in Apple, for that matter) really cares about making changing the landscape dramatically rather than being a grey box factory. It's maddening how so many large corporations can have so little imagination.
The PC industry really should thank their lucky stars for Apple's willness to continually redefine the rules. Otherwise, I have this sneaking suspicion we'd still being using 5 1/4" floppies, serial ports for everything, and possibly have nothing more advanced than TVWM for GUIs.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Anybody ever been on a poorly managed software team that's in trouble because one or two engineers have to do things a certain way, no matter how badly their plans fit in with the rest of the project? That's Microsoft. And that's why they abandoned OS/2 (couldn't collaborate with IBM) and Xenix (couldn't collaborate with the rest of of the Unix community). They Linux community would be even more obnoxious too them.
Come to think of it, the early history of commercial Unix kind of presages the current Open Source movement. It's true that you needed to buy a license to look at Unix source code -- but non-profit licenses were cheap, and most serious Universities had them. That's why so many important Unix features (virtual memory, for example) were developed outside Bell Labs.
Anyway, here's the second reason: companies just don't canibalize their existing business, even when it's in their long-term interest to do so. This is partly economics (Wall Street is not known for thinking more than 6 months ahead) and partly ego (we worked so hard on this thing, and you're just going to abandon it?). That's why the PC port of MacOS was never released. That's why SCO was so late into the Linux game, even as their Unixware sales plummeted. And that's why MS will never, ever, go into any OS that competes with NT. And especially not Linux.
Anybody notice what platforms the MS apps people code for? Primarily Windows, of course, but also for their three primary platform competitors: MacOS, Solaris, and HP-UX. You'd think Linux would be on that list -- surely there are more desktop Linux systems then either Sun or HP workstations. Maybe more than both together. But Linux is precisely where Microsoft just won't go.
__________________
Care to give some examples?
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Umm... ok, how about the unified internet browser/file manager? And then there's the start menu (which isn't even a very good idea, IMO). Then there's the taskbar in general, etc. Look, we all know that a good portion of the ideas in both KDE and GNOME were taken directly from Windows. And those of us who aren't zealots know that Microsoft didn't steal everything in Windows from Xerox and Apple. Just a large chunk of it.
------
Yeah, it's expecially likely because Apple Thought Of It First(tm)!
They couldn't do much to make binaries that run on MS Linux incompatible with ELF binaries without rewriting portions of the kernel. Any kernel changes are covered by the GPL and would be patched (and not accepted into the official tree, making it expensive for MS to keep their changes up to date).
Just thought i'd point out that:
A - cost isn't an object. They've got billions stashed aside.
B - Manhours aren't either. IF they switched to linux kernel based operating system, they could lay off half their Windows developement staff and dispatch a quarter of those remaining to keep track of kernel changes and merge their changes back into their copy of the source tree... They wouldn't need to be completely synced with each minor revision (2.2.8, 2.2.9, et al), just once in a while, when a new major kernel arrives (2.2, 2.4) they could merge their changes back into it...
They've got the least to lose from devoting major man power to the project, because in the end, if they wanted, they could have their distro preinstalled on all PC's and be guarenteed a nice sized return on investment, contrary to just about any other company out there....
Thre would be millions of people who would drop an X based linux in favor of a wingui based linux in a heartbeat especially if MS ported IE and office to it. 70% of slashdot would use it just to use IE.
X is great because it allows you to run remote apps. For simple desktop use though it's overkill and bloated. What the linux community needs to do is one of the following. Either actively promote thin X clients with apps running on a massive server or a new non distributed GUI toolkit.
The former is ideal for corporation seeing to lower TCO the latter is ideal for the home user.
If Apple can get screen PDF to run remotely they will have the best of both worlds. This may be something to look into. I also hear that QNX has done a tremendous job in a non distributed GUI for it's operating system.
War is necrophilia.
The point is that they don't need to pay a cent to co-opt the entire linux communities work... They just need to go to ftp.redhat.com for starters... It's not like they need to fork over a check in order to license or buy the source code... it's all their, ready for the taking....
> Mozilla sucks all ass. Yes, OpenOffice and StarOffice are VERY good and VERY reliable alternatives. Yes, 3d chipset support is great under X (not just linux), but there was an article on slashdot not yesterday that highlighted the dismal level of linux gaming.
Gaming is a problem of sales. There won't be a lot of good games for Linux until there is a large user base that buy it.
> If you can tell me the "emulation tricks" to watch divx and asf movies under linux, I will consider you a God. XMPS and Xtheater, however, do not count as they can be considered alpha at best (the goal is to watch movies full screen over TV out).
XMPS, Xtheater and Avifile use the windows codec dll's to display DivX movies in a similar way it does Wine. I use Avifile and I have seen many movies with it (in full screen!). I know all this programs have to improve but now they are usable. Some applications considered alpha are more stable than some products released as "final" by M$...
> Personally, I would be thrilled if Redhat or another vendor was able to support all chipsets, code media players, etc. But Redhat seem too busy shipping CVS compilers and replacing inetd.conf with xinetd to do anything that would actually "bring Linux to the Desktop."
There is something called Gnome Foundation to do something similar to what you are saying. The problem is time: M$ has a good desktop NOW but Linux will have in the future. There is a lot of work to do and there are many people working (not only in Gnome Foundation).
> But now its time to actually think about Desktop things. KDE and Gnome need to work together. Tons of multimedia apps need to be written. Browsers need much improvement. And if a non-M$ company does it, I will be thrilled. If M$ does it, I wont be thrilled, but I know for sure that for that 5% of the time, I will be using it.
There are tons of multimedia apps for Linux now but most of them are in alpha stage and have similar features. I agree with you, they should work together to do only one product better.
The opinions in this comment are subject to GPL, you can copy, modify and redistribute freely (as in speech).
One thing you're probably happy about is that if you run Office on a Mac you're probably launching the app the first time when you actually double-click an app icon.
But my understanding is that when a Windows box with Office installs boots, a lot of office components are loaded at boot time. This makes the applications start up faster - at the expense of slowing your boot process, loading up your application memory with data, and loading up your windows kernel with resources like file descriptors, loaded DLL's and the like.
Not that the equivalent things couldn't be done on the Mac but I'm sure that the windows versions can do more than the Mac versions.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I take it you haven't tried XFree86 4.
XF86 4 FLIES in comparison to 3.3.x. Civ:CTP is nearly unplayable once you get to a certain point on my system (Celly 366, G400 MAX, 128MB RAM) under 3.3.6, but it zips along under 4.0.x.
There's no problem whatsoever with speed under XF86 4. Anyone who says there is a problem is either lying or misguided.
TOAST by the postgres people. It enables unlimited row sizes in databases. Nobody has anything like it. I think it's revelutionary. In fact postgres has a ton of features no other database supports like loadable SP languages, user defined operators, a very nice RULE subsystem etc.
War is necrophilia.
MS creates the Win32 environment on Linux, then releases MS-Linux. It's not available for a download, but can be purchased for $149 and $499 respectively, and you get the source code. You have to have a license for each copy. All this is within the bouncds of the GPL.
The party's over
As open source grows in popularity the total cost of ownership for users will decrease. The effect of the growing open source community will have is to drive down the price on software or it will drive up the number of features on software. If Microsoft falls behind in either of these areas and open source catches up, Microsoft will have to either increase the number of features in their software to make them better (and justify their higher cost) or they will have to lower the price of their products. One of these options presents a problem for Microsoft and the future of the computer industry in general. If prices drop then profits must also drop. If profits drop, then Microsoft will have to cutback on the number of employees that it has and that means that their ability to develop new software will also decrease. As this happens the PC will become more and more like the calculator becuase the price of software and the hardware will decrease to the point where the margin will be so small that you can't afford to do hire any developers to make things at a profit. There are several ways to mitigate this problem: 1) Microsoft continues to add features, and there by continue to justify their higher prices. 2) Microsoft and other companies create a way to make money off of free software. This includs the idea that software is not a sting of 1's and 0's but a service or peace of mind. Microsoft for years has taken path 1. I suspect that the instant they Start their attempt to enter and absorb the open source movement we will be seeing their final steps in their transisition to a company that provides services instead of software/hardware. Granted they will continue to develop new versions of software and hardware (Mice, game controlers, and PDA's). All these efforts in Service, Software, and Hardware will be used to prop up a Research and Development team which will ever so often come up with a new feature which will allow them to fall back to the old Plan 1. This is the path that IBM has taken for years. They continue to develop truly unique pieces of R&D. But for years they have been taking the idea this approach and when they developed something cool in the hard drive arena they were able to leverage this to take a bit more market share in this arena for a couple of years before everyone else either licensed or caught up with them. Anyway, I could continue to ramble, but I need some sleep or caffene.... Just my 0.02
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
I appreciate the sentiment of your post and it "feels right", but I can't help think that this attitude allows the good-intentioned to get steamrolled time and again, because it's sort of blissfully ignoring the way things actually happen, i.e. with dispassionate legal onslaughts and unsentimental power grabs.
Any cause that tries to appeal to the public's sense of fairness/"right"ness/rationality is living a fantasy unless this cause can and intends to defend itself as vigorously and with the same language/tactics/methods/etc. as its attackers.
I'm not saying we all become hypervigilant and consumed by "legalese", but we sure as hell best be prepared to fight the fight to protect what we value and depend upon. This is no different than anything you might care about in your life.
What good does having a good attitude about it and "relax"ing do when its been ripped away from you?
English's a bitch, aint it?
So's reading comprehension apparently. I get the analogy and the tech details, just pointing out the fruitlessness of such an effort by Microsoft.
I also understand the 10,000 view of the relationship between the NT kernel and the Win32 subsystem.
WINE (if coded by MS) doesn't lose any performance running Win32 apps, NT doesn't lose any performance running Win32 apps, so what's your point?
My point is that you're wrong - there's important semantic differences between NT and Unix. The Wine project has proposed Linux kernel patches to work around this problem in a non-portable way. And, silly, Win32 was designed to run on the NT kernel, so of course that's what it was optimised for.
So here it is again, real slow like: Microsoft has made a huge investment in software which indirectly depends on features found in the NT kernel. It would be non-trivial to move that software base to a different infrastructure without losing speed and efficency. Stop pretending that the mountain is going to come to Mohammad, even if for Allah, all is possible.
Ok my anonymous microsoft employee I will tell you what the advantage is.
1) You need to buy an NT workstastaion/W2kPro license for every desktop that runs terminal edition.
2) You can buy massive unix servers that run rings around any intel based quad processor running a puny PCI bus.
3) You might not need those massive server because X is more efficient on server resources enabling more clients served per machine.
4) No need to reboot your server every night.
War is necrophilia.
I'm beginning to wonder what future the Open Source movement has, if there's not way to legally enforce some piece of code's open-ness. I mean, how do you take M$ to court? Cmon! Gates carries around more money in his WALLET as spending cash than most Linux-developing companies have as net worth. I'm starting to doubt the supposed MS breakup will ever happen. There needs to be a legally unshakeable means to protect Open Source from Micro$oft's usual hijack move. Or at least, in a perfect world there would be.
Probably you are right, but don't forget big blue, they could afford some suing of M$, even if it's just for the sake of it, or for helping great projects like apache, to get the source they use AFAIK to build the AIX webserver that's is IMHO based on apache...
I myself can't imagine M$ to shift to Linux, wouldn't they admit, that the SW a "bunch of GNU developer", in my mind the best SW-Designer this world has to offer, makes, is far superior than all the crap M$ has made...
Michael
>Idealistic bullshit. Its called MacOS X.
//) to the mainstream and later a mainstream computer (Macintosh) to the hackers.
Apple hasn't pulled that trick off yet...
On that note.. Apple pulled the trick of bringing a hackers computer (The Apple
So if anyone CAN mix open and closed source philosophys it's Apple.
Microsoft attempted to bring us a User Friendly hacker system and ended up delivering Windows... Even mimicing Apples GUI hasn't done the trick..
>You're not in hacker-land anymore. RedHat, Mandrake, Corel, etc are all trying to get into the mainstream.
Trying... not successful..
Keep in mind you just listed the most attacked distros..
RedHat (Most Buggy), Mandrake (Formerly Most buggy before RedHat 7), Corel...
>There are few people that would trade the Win32 GUI software base for the L*UNIX one. Most people would switch from the Linux software base to the Windows one in a heartbeat. Remember, Win32 has a whole lot of OSS ports.
I don't find this to be true at all..
Converting Windows users to Linux is usually just a matter of handing out CDs.. The only problem Linux has is the installation dosn't allways go smooth and that turns some people away.
On the other hand.. People bitch when a Unix system offers something other than X11..
I would like to add that X11 itself isn't a GUI it's just an interface you could conceavaly create Win32 under X11... X11/Win32 would just be annother widget set like GTK, QT, Motif and Athena.
I don't actually exist.
Well dependes on the release of Kylix by Borland/Inprise.
As a developer, creating a RAD tool for the Linux platform will enable the legions of windows programmers to unleash their skills onto the Linux OS. This should open up a slew of new applications availible to the Linux community enabling them with more "professional" applications.
Since Kylix applications can be cross-platform, meaning MS Windows and Linux, even if Microsoft were to open up the source for Window or even create their own Linux distro, they would still be at a disadvantage.
The author of this article seems to be under the impression that Microsoft is a software company. It's not. Microsoft's core business is what economists call 'rent seeking'; leveraging it's ubiquity to impose a 'Microsoft tax' every time a PC is purchased (or possibly every time an application is run, if .NET is successful), and 'double-dipping' by forcing upgrades (introducing incompatible file formats, APIs, etc) every couple of years.
It's hard to imagine how rolling their own Linux distro would help them to pursue this strategy. They would have to add something proprietary that was so compelling that they could reasonably persuade OEMs and IT managers that no device should be without it. What could that be? Some GUI middleware layer? Networking daemons for their own proprietary protocols?
Sure Microsoft could choose to work on a really beautiful distro, and apply their overwhelming resourses to compete with Red Hat or whoever, but when has Microsoft ever been interested in competing? It's just not going to secure them the money-for-nothing position they currently enjoy.
'Windows Everywhere' is not just an ego trip, it's the keystone of their business plan. Without it, they have nothing they can use to generate a practically zero-cost revenue stream. Supporting a platform that competes in the server space or on the desktop (in a way which it can be argued that BeOS and MacOS don't) can only jeopardise the ubiquity that is the Microsoft cash-cow.
Be more cautious of your statements. "but" roughly translates to, "here is where I start conning myself about something". At least in your statement above, you're talking yourself into "Microsoft will never fail!" again. That is not only a religious belief, it's not a particularly _interesting_ or _justifiable_ religious belief.
Microsoft will either be broken up and use the opportunity to build a business model not based on uncontrolled growth, or it will be a trainwreck. There is no third option, and there is no 'but'.
In the end, what is to prevent Microsoft from taking the source code for Linux, creating distribution binaries, and selling them as "Microsoft Unix"? They can claim that no GPL code was used, and if they only provide binaries, we can't prove them wrong. If Microsoft wants to, they can take away everything we've done - the GPL isn't strong enough to stop them.
I have been reading about the different licenses (GPL, BSD, etc) and they all look fine and dandy, but really... do they mean anything?
Basically... coding difficulties aside, if MS decides to use the entire tcp/ip stack from Linux (for example)... what is there to stop them? Since MS is closed source, there is no real way to determine that they have done this without some sort of legal action, and we know the budget problems in that. After all, the people down in Redmond are not stupid and they know what to change things around so that an examination of the binaries will not give away their "secret". So in that situation, what do you do?
I believe all this licencing (and Copyrights, and Patents) stem from the horrible human problem of dishonesty. The only reason we need something like the GPL is because we KNOW that someone else will grab that code and claim it as their own. Why would they do this? Same thing with books, music, art, etc. Sadly, I also have no solution for this problem, and I am very doubtfull that it will be resolved in my lifetime.
ZicoKnows (nothing about irony). Kinda metal ain't it boy?
The only thing Microsoft has to do is to release its own version of the Line OS.
Did I misread this, or did this article just refer to Linux as "The Line OS"?
-- Fester
-- Fester
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
NuBus worked fine for it's intended purpose -- workstations costing $5000+.
Don't forget that Mac's were pushing 21" monitors at 24-bit back when PC games had to ship in both a CGA and VGA versions. Wasn't cheap, wasn't supposed to be either.
Every Linux user won't migrate, but M$ will be the company that forks Linux into new versions. Businesses will evaluate M$ Linux as if it were the only Linux, the press will assume that any problems M$ Linus has will be problems for the rest of the Linux distros, because as we all know the media is pretty clueless about Linux and Operating Systems. All Linux coverage will mention Linux as being distributed by M$. Red HAt stories will mention that Linux is "An operating system distributed by Microsoft and several smaller vendors." MS-Linux will BE Linux to most users.
M$ will go after the clients that SuSe and Red Hat get now, and all the business supported Linux Distros will die when faced with such a direct threat from Uncle Bill. There will be Debian, Slaskware and MS-Linux. All the others will be consumed by M$.
We will keep the hobby market, but we will lose the business and desktop forever. Hardware support will become harder and harder as the Hardware companies make deals with M$ to give them the specs and not us.
Enjoy the Glory Days of Linux. Enjoy them while they last, for soon, Linux will be embraced and extended by Microsoft.
The doom of us all
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
> Again with the idealistic bullshit?
It's not bullshit.. There is a very good chance the Mac users won't accept a Unix system as a MacOs and there is equally a good chance Unix users won't accept a Mac as a Unix system..
So far the more rabid and informed Linux/Unix/Mac types are all for it. That dosn't mean the avrage Mac user will like it and some of the Unix grunts have allready expressed doupt..
In addition... the BSD liccens was made to make this sort of thing posable...
The GNU liccens however has proven to be not so flexable.. Remeber the KDE/QT mess...
I don't actually exist.
The hard part would be to not get the case thrown out. You'd have to show a reasonable likelihood that they really were using the source - statements from turncoat employees would help there.
But there's no mistaking reverse engineering. An ex-employee from a company I used to work for wrote a really buggy product that I was later hired to fix. His employment at that company ended. A couple years later, his new employer shipped a product with somewhat similar functions that turned out to have some of the exact same bugs as the product he'd originally written for us. The bugs were obscure enough and particular enough they couldn't possibly have been an accident
We opened it up in ResEdit (a programmers tool for the MacOS, usually used to edit UI elements) and found text strings that had no purpose in this new program but happened to be identical to ones from his old product, the one I later fixed.
This is when I learned about discovery. I asked my boss how we could ever prove they had our source code and he said the court would order them to give it to us.
No lawsuit turned out from this particular case but it could well have. They got their comeuppance in the end anyway - because they hired this miserable joke of a programmer their product failed in the market. He nearly put the company I worked for out of business with what he did to our product.
In the case of something like the linux kernel you could show that large chunks of the MS-Unix kernel were binary identical the the stock linux kernel if it was built with Microsoft Visual C, for example. Or you could look for the names of entry points, the interfaces of some data structures other than POSIX standards and so on.
Basically you reverse engineer it to the point where you can convince a judge that it could be stolen linux, but you don't have to prove it really was - that's what the lawsuit is for, and for that discovery gets you everything you need.
That's why the DOJ got to comb through Microsoft's email archives. You'd get to do that too.
Of course, you'll have a big legal bill during the process and you'd damn well better not lose or you'll have to pay Microsoft's legal bill - including their expenses for cooperating with your discovery. You can bet they don't hire cheap lawyer's and then there'd be the administrative expenses too.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Backwards compatibility? Yes, all those applications that run on win9x, but not NT, and some work on 2000...
Web standards are rapidly replacing the X architecture as an alternative for thin clients. As such X has little or no future. However, very few applications build on X directly these days. On linux, many of the GUI applications rely on either QT, GTK or some other highlevel GUI API. Most of these libraries are portable (see the recent story on Gnome on win32). Any future architecture that runs these libraries will have a huge amount of applications readily available. So X or Wingui is not so relevant anymore. What is more relevant is the API people are writing to. For windows this will likely be the .net thingy, for linux it will be gtk and qt, for Java it currently is Swing, for the web it will be XML and HTML combined with stylesheets.
X won't go away on linux because people like to use it because of the distributed nature. However, for application developers this will not be a big issue since they don't have to deal with the X API directly. Performance wise it will not be an issue either because of Moore's law and implementation improvements. Performance is already very acceptable if you are on a modern PC. Any perceived sluggishness is usually caused by poor application design rather that the X server.
Jilles
This reminds me that when I was at Apple someone remarked in a meeting that people from other companies often asked Apple employees why Apple never produced a PC clone that ran windows.
If their aim was to sell hardware, they could beat the hell out of any PC vendor selling windows boxes. Imagine something with the industrial design of an iMac or G4 cube running Microsoft software. It would be tremendously popular in the more image-conscious business environments.
Steve Jobs once said that his goal was to design a computer that he would sell to his brother. That's why they don't make it run Windows.
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You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Actually, while IANAL, does anyone know if the BSD license is actually legally binding? There's lots of things that strike me as required legalese (like those all caps disclaimer of warranty bits) that the BSD license lacks. Could you sue the developers if BSD-licensed code crashes your computer? Hmm, thanks but no thanks...
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I don't get it too. Why so many people are comfortable with the idea that every cpu on the planet in future would load a OS from a single company.
Dell/Intel/Win2k solution versus a Solaris solution typically comes up 25-50% cheaper on MS's end
Where in the article was solaris? This is about Linux, and Dell/Intel/Linux solution is the same price as a Dell/Intel/Win2k solution. And W2k has become so complex, that I would be carefull in claiming, that it would be easier to run than A Linux Box.
Handhelds and CE devices are continuing to make inroads, embedded solutions like the NT Embedded group makes are popular.
Another scene, with direct competition of Linux. Palm isn't going to disaeppear, and Mobile makers decided to go Epoc. They don't want to give their profit streams to Microsoft.
But dont underestimate MS. They can trhow a lot of money at problems, and a lot of very, very, very good engineers. Don't fool yourselves into thinking that MS will just stop improving products.
Yes, but how long can they do it, when they will have to drop prices to compete with free solutions, that do the same thing? For a while, but in long term they will run out of cash.
I've personally monitored cases, where Commercial Unixen, w2k, and Linux where in table. So far Linux has been always selected. I think a lot of people will be surprised, when MSFT gives their first unexpectedly low annual report.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
I'm surprised I didn't hear more of this type of stuff before. Of course, my question is, if they were to release their own "MS Linux" product, would they also support past Windows products? This could almost be like WINE built in bug free into Linux. Definitely an interesting idea.
First, it was Townes Van Zandt that coded the song "Pancho and Lefty", it being gpl'ed Willie Nelson(with Merle Haggard) sang it to popular appeal,(aka- their distro sold more). Second, M$ has Corel Linux in it's back pocket, seeing as it works and has a seamless(Corels propoganda!) integration into an M$ network, with M$ giving it a few protected tweaks they could make money from Linux without putting the M$ brand on it, even if it does mean dealing with kanucks.* *********
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A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Not only that, but AFAIK none of that software was originally released by Microsoft--merely bought & refurbished.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
It's about migration, pure and simple. Windows 3.1 ran DOS apps. Windows 95 ran Windows 3.1 apps. Windows NT runs all of them. Naturally, people aren't going to hold on to their old apps forever, but the option to run them has to be there. I'd wager a guess that when the WINE project gets to the point where it can reliably run Win32 software at least as reliably as OS/2 ran Win16 software, without the need to install Microsoft DLL's, you'll start to see a shift. And why not? With a price tag of $0.00, it's attractive to both OEM's and large corporate installations. Out-of-the-box working Windows emulation is what's necessary to begin the mass migration. Once that starts to happen in significant numbers, there won't be a single ISV foolish enough to remain only on Win32 and not produce Linux native versions of their apps. Slowly and steadily, Linux becomes the native environment for all apps.
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Funny you should say that. Robert X. Cringely once observed that whenever Microsoft announces that it is going after a particular market, whoever owns that market at the time gets nervous and starts doing things differently, in order to "get ready" for Microsoft. He further said that it is usually a mistake; if they already own the market they must be doing something right, and by suddenly doing things differently they often screw up a good thing.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
What is your definition of evil? Breaking a commandment? Telling a lie? What? Is all fair in Love, War, and Business? What makes you think that making money is not evil. Selling the gold from the mouths of holocaust victims is making $$$$ (Definition of evil--- no Godwin's thanks).
Just making money is not evil, granted, but making money at all costs (usually of others) is evil. Using unfair advantage to win is cowardly. When a person does this it is, but when a multi-billion dollar company does it, it pushes cowardly up to evil.
So what is your definition of evil? Just making $$$ isn't an excuse.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
. IF they switched to linux kernel based operating system, they could lay off half their Windows developement staff and dispatch a quarter of those remaining to keep track of kernel changes
And what advantage would that give them? You'll note that Microsoft is now shipping Win2000 on 64-CPU boxes, which is getting up there into Sun's territory. Meanwhile, Linus+crew are still optimising for the 4-8 CPU case, which is the sweet spot of the market sure, but not sweet enough for IBM, SGI, and HP. Oh yeah, I'm sure that those three would be more than happy to do Microsoft R+D for them...
BTW, they are a company, so cost is always an object. There's nothing so unfixable about NT/2000 that would make it cheaper to switch kernels. Hell, it would probably be cheaper to keep the NT kernel and rebuild the entire user space from scratch (say, making it more modular and using text base config files and scripting languages) than it would be to put a Unix kernel underneath the existing NT user space.
I burned my copy of S&W. ;-)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
And what kind of site do you run?
As for your other comments, we have better software, and it keeps improving every day. I consider the fortunes of the various open source companies to be somewhat irrelevant, although RedHat was profitable before they went IPO, and so was Cygnus.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Red Hat is a publicly traded corporation. Chances are Microsoft and its consituents have significant investment in them already, either directly or through pension plans, or mutual funds, or another form of third party investment. Microsoft isn't stupid - if there was money to be made on Red Hat then there is a good chance that Microsoft would have profited from it indirectly - up to trade laws or injunctions that prohibit such actions for Microsoft (which are weak, and difficult to enforce, respectively).
...for posting related stories together so readers can get the whole picture. The "Will Linux Save Microsoft?" article seems inexplicable until you read the preceding "Crack for Sale" headline, and realize what Hal Plotkin was smoking.
Sorry, couldn't help it, but doesn't that description apply to basically every good and bad tyrant history has ever seen?
- Kaatunut
Microsofts view of Linux is compleatly surreal and anything Microsoft offers for Linux would reflect this.
The Linux community at core wouldn't touch anything Microsoft if they had to.
Microsofts develupers wouldn't take it sereously and nither woule Linux develupers..
On the technical side...
It's a lot more posable than people may think...
Win32 dosn't need to replace X11... Win32 would replace QT/KDE and GTK/Gnome. Done right we could have Win32/KDE.. GTK/WinGUI etc...
As long as Microsoft respects the existing inferstructure it should work out ok...
Existing Unix apps would continue to run with the new layer and new software could have a fallback position for people who won't use Microsofts layor.
I think if Microsoft did this in say 1996 it would have been accepted.. But not today...
I don't actually exist.
> And the nice thing about the linux community is that it will be difficult (albeit not impossible) for microsoft to pay (and be
:-)
> willing to pay) for as many developer hours as there are volunteers willing to spend, simply to fork all the existing GPL code out there.
Umm, are we talking about the same Microsoft here? The one I'm thinking about is the one worth $1/2 trillion.
Microsoft can pay for all the hours that has ever been contributed to every single open source application (although it would put a big dent in there wallet).
No, Microsoft isn't pure evil. Neither is it simply in the business of making money.
Microsoft still looks up to Bill Gates like a personality cult. Until and unless they change that, consider them less of a mere all-for-profit corporate entity and more of a large and powerful expression of Bill Gates' will. He may be just the CTO now, but he still has the authority of a monarch there.
This is important because Bill Gates believes in central control--his central control. I believe that this central control is more important to Bill Gates, and thus to Microsoft policy, than even profits. This centralized control is impossible to achieve using Open Source software, and that is why Microsoft has not ventured there.
My understanding is that Gates has a vision for user-friendly computing, and belives that he must control the entire show in order to provide that vision for the people. He's not evil, he's doing it for us, the users. I just think that his vision is sadly mistaken.
Open Source Software threatens Microsoft's corporate profits. It also threatens Bill Gates' world-view, personally. If and when Microsoft enters the Linux or Open Source arenas, it will be for one purpose only--to destroy it.
--The basis of all love is respect
Yes, again, this is just a rumor, take it with a grain of salt, but it makes sense to me. Perhaps it will occur.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I'm intrigued by ZooLib. I even downloaded the source code and I'm browsing it now. As a Windows developer, cross-platform compatibility is not my highest priority. However, I'm always looking for a way to simplify my code, to insert a well-architected layer between my C++ code and the grungy Win32 APIs.
The ZooLib approach looks promising because it creates idealized API. Unfortunately, it is a lot of code and there are few examples and no API docs! Where should I begin?
cpeterso
If anything is a threat to Linux, it is Linux! I used to use Linux until I got tired of trying to do things (such as set up a printer) and reading two year old FAQ's that discuss items that had no bearing on setting up a printer! Linux has to compete on two fronts successfully in order for Microsoft to stomp them, one is the Enterprise and the other is the Desktop. At the Enterprise level Linux is not making much headway against Sun or HP (at least the 6 Sun Enterprise servers and 1 HP server at work are still running Solaris and HP-UX the last time I looked). This requires specific hardware support that with the possible exception of IBM just isn't happening. As far as the Desktop is concerned, look at the earlier Slashdot post concerning Quake for Linux. Software developers are not going to jump into writing software for an operating system that changes almost on a daily basis (depending on distribution), let alone the differences in GUI's. Linux will fail simply because of the lack of standards (remember commercial Unix of the 80's and early 90's). This is not cost effective for companies to employ programmers for GNOME, KDE, AfterStep, Enlightenment, and CDE just to support Linux. And the vast majority of people who want an alternative to Microsoft will not look to Linux (just as they have not looked to OS/2, BeOS, MacOS or anything not Microsoft). Why, because of "ease of use" and plenty of programs readily available on store shelves or conveinent downloads! Mom and Pop are not going to attempt to figure out the arcane command line options for Linux (if they even get to a shell prompt) bad enough deal with compiling software! To a person who has no problem using GCC and a term window this is fine. And for those of you who prefer free (as in beer) software and don't mind spending hours finding solutions to hardware and software problems, that is fine. But at both the Enterpise and Desktop levels, the vast majority of people do not have that kind of time (or patience). They will go with the industry standard because of support and standards. Microsoft is safe, I am not so sure about Linux. When Linux encroaches the "all mighty" desktops of 75,000,000+ users, then Microsoft will promptly bury Linux, just as they would if Linux servers were walking out of VAR's like candy over machines using Windows 2000 Server!
If they come out with a mix of proprietary code, GNU command line utilities, and a Linux kernel (similar to what Apple did), that's good, too: no matter what, the end result will be closer to Linux than their current offerings.
In fact, I see Microsoft's market dominance through proprietary standards diminishing anyway. While the Windows 3.x series (including 98 and ME) was such a mess that nobody could hope to clone all of it, Windows NT is sufficiently well modularized that people will be able to implement it well as a "personality" on top of all sorts of kernels. And C#/.NET drives the abstraction even higher, making it even easier for others to clone. The irony is that the complexity of software development forces Microsoft to clean up their act, but the same thing also means that they lose their market position.
Even if Microsoft were to make their own linux distro, the *required* stuff would be open source, but all the Microsoft-contributed code would be closed. You better believe it. They will probably port over their Windows toolkit, and any versions of Office/IE/whatever that they make for linux will be dependent on their toolkit and ultimately their linux distro. If they're smart, they'll probably even make the underlying stuff freely downloadable and charge for the fancy windowing and UI (a la Mac OS X). They probably won't even use X.
That article brings up good points... they'll just capitalize on all the R&D that the linux companies have done. Typical tactics. Heh... MS execs are probably even reading this right now saying "hmm, that's a good idea, maybe we should look into this!"
We have already have a good browser that is GPL'ed.... it's called Konqueror.
-- We should kill all the intolerant people in the world.
Couldn't keep this flamewar on a technical level, eh?
One thing to note is that Sun's SunRay thing uses the exact same 'remote framebuffer' idea that WTS uses. Even though this requires more network bandwidth and more server oomph, it has an appeal because it's much simpler and easy to implement compared to X11's complex and kludgy 'remote drawing' protocol.
Of course, until MS gets Win2000 terminal services stable, the argument is mooot anyway. (#4 isn't a joke above in our office...)
I didn't mean to pick on X so much, actually. I don't hate X. I don't think X is necesarily the biggest barrier to Linux on the desktop. It was just an example.
If you want another example, just look around. I think that Windows is going to remain king for a long time simply because of the uniformity of the programs available. Not that this has anything to do with the OS design of Linux or Windows. Nonstandard interfaces, like Quicktime, Winamp, Napster, are *not* the norm on Windows. In Linux, even on the CLI, very few apps work alike. If you want to use *only* gnome apps, or *only* KDE apps, then they look alike. Otherwise, there is very little conformity in Linux apps. Even in command line argument input.
Is some distro going to change *every* program so that they're a little more alike? And then modify *every* script in the system? I hope so. I also don't think many old-school unix users will appreciate the change.
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There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
...because, after all, the more OSS programmers the better, right?
Actually, I think that holds some water:
End result? Maybe better software out of Redmond. Also, people may decide to get the binaries from MSFT and tack on their own features. Innovation improves. MSFT sees the innovations, and since they're in the public domain, they package it and sell it to the PHB and Grandma.
Not that it's likely to happen, mind you: it's not a matter of business sense. Were Microsoft seeking to profit from Linux, they'd get enough expertise under their belts and be the mother of all enterprise-level support companies. But releasing their code is something seemingly antithetical to MSFT. But I honestly think it might be the best thing for them.
Would that mean the revolution was won? =)
--
-- Geof F. Morris
Wouldn't it make much more sense for Microsoft to use one of the BSDs?
... because the media doesn't really care about BSD.
That way they don't have to worry about legal issues, and they have less to worry about the media making them look evil for destroying Linux
What's the point of flaming? You get no where with it, I see that you gave up on Linux. It's funny because I use Mandrake 7.2 and I am not having a hard time at all. Everything I see is in a GUI and updating is simple as 1,2,3.I guess that's just you on the other hand... =) Have fun and enjoy your stay in MS Windows.
P.S: Man you just don't know what you are missing. If you Like Windows then use it, just don't tell people what's going to happen when it comes to Linux...
From Zero to Hero... Starbuck Zero
> Microsoft is stronger recently than it ever has been before, both in terms of stock price and liquidity.
.NET may or may not be a technological failure, but as long as the 900-lb gorilla pushes it, it will acheieve something... even if it is only the same level of functionality we have today.
Stock: Hovering around 70 most of the year, as low as 55 a couple of months ago... vs what a year ago? "Stronger than ever before" ?
Liquidity: Strong rumors going around that they would have reported losses several times over the last couple of years if not for a (probably illegal) "cookie jar" scheme. Additional rumors going around that in the most recent quarter they made more money off selling subsidiaries than off selling software.
Failure papered over with cash in the bank is not a substitute for success.
Every quarter they go through a ritual of announcing, loudly and repeatedly, that times have been tough and people shouldn't expect too much of their stocks. They keep it up until the stock analysts lower their predictions to a point just below what MS can actually report. Then MS does report, pats itself on the back for meeting the manufactured expectations, and tells everyone what a glorious quarter they're looking for next time. Repeat until failure.
Then there's the myth that MS succeeds everywhere it throws its money. Did MSN kill AOL and the internet? Did NT kill Unix? Is W2K taking over the server market? (The high end server market? The low end server market?)
>
That's a pretty low standard for "success", especially for a project that you throw billions of dollars at.
MS really only has two product successes that it can brag about: Win9x and Office. And the continued success of those appears to depend on having monopolies in both markets, and exploiting the two monopolies for mutual support.
They have repeatedly tried to exploit those monopolies to establish monopolies in other, slightly less inbred, arenas. It has resulted in expanded markets (e.g., server space), but no additional monopolies. And it is questionable whether they could have even expanded those markets without leveraging the existing monopolies.
No, I don't think you can portray MS as a company destined to succeed at everything it does. Billg got lucky once, and has milked a trillion dollars out of it, but he doesn't seem to be the sort of genius that can generate noteworthy success in circumstances where he doesn't have either luck or a stacked deck working in his favor.
Indeed, his myth may be working against him by keeping him and his advisors from evaluating his ideas critically. "Unbeatable" only works so long as you actually win; ask Napoleon about that one.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's called "extend and escape". Alternately, it's called "extend, escape, and extinguish".
--The basis of all love is respect
Most of that is paper revenue- Microsoft is mostly an investment engine at this point, most notably issuing buttloads of their own stock. Office revenue is actually down over last year. MS has been publically recognised as running a stock pyramid like Cisco: this is bound to fail. They do need saving. (deserve, on the other hand..)
I'm beginning to wonder what future the Open Source movement has, if there's not way to legally enforce some piece of code's open-ness. I mean, how do you take M$ to court? Cmon! Gates carries around more money in his WALLET as spending cash than most Linux-developing companies have as net worth. I'm starting to doubt the supposed MS breakup will ever happen. There needs to be a legally unshakeable means to protect Open Source from Micro$oft's usual hijack move. Or at least, in a perfect world there would be.
-Kasreyn.
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
MainSoft MainWin, a Win32 layer for Linux based on Microsofts source code and developed by both MainSoft and Microsoft [who own and control a large chun of Mainsoft] already exists for Linux. Historically it was used to port IE to Solaris and HPUX.
Get a 30 day trial of Mainwin here. You can also download Microsoft Freecell for Linux on the same site.
Frankly, I suspect MS is getting out of the software market, or at least sidelining it away from their core business.
They've saturated the market. They're resorting to various types of coercion to squeeze more money out of a market that isn't growing very fast anymore; but surely they realize that that won't work as a long-term solution (even without Linux around -- let alone with "help" from Linux).
Actually, the server market is growing at breakneck pace, but it looks like Linux' untimely appearence has elbowed MS out of any chance of 0wning that particular market the way it 0wns the desktop. So sure, MS is raking in a lot of cash from bundling W2K on x86-grade server hardware, but they seem to be losing market share instead of gaining it, and a small slice of the pie isn't going to solve their bigger economic challenge.
For years they've been boasting their software business by also selling computer hardware and buying up media companies. Linux won't offer much salvation there, either.
Rumor going around says that they turned more "profit" in recent quarters by selling off assets (e.g., as ersatz investment bankers) than from selling software. Linux won't offer much salvation there, either.
I suspect the X-box is seen by BG as his entry into the next world to conquer. Conquerers are never content; neither Napoleon nor Alexander were content to sit on the throne and enjoy their vast holdings. Better to gamble it all on yet another venture, than to fall into stagnation or -- worse -- decay.
Stagnation may not even be an option, since MS is actually more about stocks than about software. And stocks, as you know, are variety of pyramid scheme, where stagnation is unsellable.
BTW, that's just my armchair assessement; I never met Gates, Napoleon, nor Alexander in person. They might be nice people, for all I know.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They also cannot derive revenue from product sectors they've integrated such as IE, and are trapped maintaining those without hope of being paid for it.
They are in very bad trouble. Their only hope of avoiding a bloodbath over their stock pyramiding is for people to continue to believe, as you believe, 'it's MS, so it can't possibly fail'. However, the reality of the situation is so ugly that blind faith only buys them some time. Technically, what's happening is that while they spend more and more on upcoming projects (much like Apple at its worst, flushing money away), they rely more and more heavily on the stock side of their balance sheet. Unfortunately, that is the side that will collapse because it has nothing backing it but collective belief.
It is very possible that Microsoft will see the antitrust case totally (and illegally) abandoned, be cleared of all wrongdoing and _then_ collapse completely. At this point winning in court cannot save them, because they are just spending too much and earning too little- the earning is all paper, all stock, and revenues from actual products are both declining and insufficient to support the projects MS is undertaking.
Result: splat.
The bottom line is that they can easily steal the hype from Linux, leaving only the smart people running "real linux". They can't stop the development of "real linux" but they can hope to shift the hardware manufacturers and the IBM's and SGI's into their camp. If they're smart, and they are, they won't tighten all the above-mentioned screws at once. Rather they'll come out with a distro that's barely palatable to geeks, then tighten the thumbscrews over the next several releases and watch users struggle in vain to escape.
And we will do nothing to prevent it because we don't have the vision or imagination to see what's possible.
this all comes back to the Jobs' phrase "the whole widget."
the idea is that Apple controls the hardware, so the software will work better and vice versa. it's all about adding value to their hardware.
but to address your specific point, the relevant detail here is that when you control "the whole widget" you can make changes (hopefully for the better) much faster. a great example of this is USB. as you probably know, USB is an Intel standard, but in the PC world, it just couldn't catch on. Intel wanted to replace ancient serial and parallel port, but they ran into a lot of resistance. Microsoft didn't want to make the software widely available, and peripheral and PC manufacturers had non interest in making the hardware if Microsoft wasn't going to add full support.
we all know the eventual outcome. Apple releases the iMac, completely doing away with the ancient peripherals in favour of USB.Apple, in control of both hardware and software, made the necessary changes to support this much-needed movement and made the switch. they were hammered for this by the press because there were almost no USB devices at the time, but in the end it turned out to be a pretty good idea. note that none of this would have been possible if Apple had relied on Microsoft for their operating system.
now this method doesn't always work for the best. some Apple-only technologies didn't fly (NuBus come to mind), but when they get it right, it really works. now if only PC manufacturers would get the hint and start offering better support for Firewire we'd all be better off ;)
at any rate, i hope i've made my point. Apple's idea is that by controlling both hardware and software, they can make a better product, and provide value-added features in their software to better sell their hardware. this also allows them to charge a premium on thier machines: as a PC manufacturer they'd have a very difficult time justifying their profit margins.
in the end, it's an intersting model, and it may pay off for them. it works very nicely when Apple does their research and makes the right decisions (which they've been doing for the past few years). it fails miserably if they don't offer target the market effectively, for instance with the Cube and the lack of CD-Rs in their machines. i still think the model works for them however, and i own a couple of Macs myself for just this reason.
now, a model that may work for Apple in the future is to move to Intel chips (for dirt-cheap hardware and to finally break free of Motorolla who's more interested in the embedded market), but to keep an Apple-only OS. they could offer their machines, but still only run Mac OS X on them (albeit on Intel), and emulate classic applications. but that's a whole new argument all together, and involves a lot of creative workarounds ;)
- j
There's no "d" in "refrigerators", whether or not they run on Windows.
/. for over 3 minutes.
- Mocking arrogant sigs on
One comment regarding the forecasts of Microsoft's earnings made in the article. Analyst ability to forecast with any hope of accuracy has been greatly hindered by recent SEC regs. Companies are now not allowed to talk to analysts on background (i.e. no members of the public at large included) in order to 'guide' their estimates. Analysts are having a great deal of difficulty replacing this sub-rosa 'guidance' with other sources, so I'd take that into account when looking at any analyst estimates, particularly more than one quarter out. (IMO, the new regs are a contributing factor for the market's high volatility lately. It's leading to lots of 'surprises' in earnings announcements.)
> I worked for MS for sometime last year, writing code in several groups. What I dont get is why everyone thinks Linux poses a threat to MS.
... Its the first Microsoft product that is fundamentally able to made stable
Well, MS seems to think so. You did hear about the Halloween documents, didn't you? You did see the silly anti-Linux ad in the German magazine, didn't you? MS isn't behaving like a company that has nothing to fear.
> First off, a little over half of the software MS sells goes towards the consumer end, and small business end desktops. Linux isnt a threat here people.
Visit download.com and look at the number of Linuces downloaded last week. Add in the fact that download.com isn't the only, or even the most obvious place to download Linux.
Look at how many stores are carrying Linux boxes. (Recently, even bastions of the status quo such as Office Max have caved in.) Add in the fact that a brick & mortar store isn't the only, or even the most obvious place to buy Linux.
With the PC market almost saturated, and MS having to resort to squeeze tactics to keep their cash flow up to the levels expected by their share holders, any competition, even at the 5% level, is dangerous competition.
> If they can hire 5-7 MSCE types for 50k a year, as opposed to 3 or 4 UNIX gurus who make six figures, they will.
I'm not so sure about this. What scares companies about payroll is headcount, not wages. More headcount means people to manage. More benefits packages. More shellouts for perks to keep the geeks from migrating. More years of retirement pay for employees no longer contributing to the bottom line. More building space. More workstations. More staff to maintain those workstations. More liability insurance. More lawsuits. More paperwork to maintain.
Companies don't like headcount.
> But dont underestimate MS. They can trhow a lot of money at problems, and a lot of very, very, very good engineers. Don't fool yourselves into thinking that MS will just stop improving products.
MS isn't improving products now, and haven't been for a long time. Almost all their "improvements" are driven by marketing decisions. The changes are usually gratuitous, and sometimes positively harmful.
The best engineers in the world aren't any good when they're yoked together to drag along billg's delusions of grandeur.
> Win2k is a very good product.
Yeah, sure. We know people who use it. Most of them still reboot it every night. And even if it ever does become stable, all that means is that MS has finally met the entry-level requirement for an operating system product. What's to recommend about an expensive product that merely meets the entry-level requirements?
> (belive me, i have a copy of internal report from MS that would make you crap your pants - results of kernel stress tests and analysis)
If you'll send it to me, I'll send you the postcard Elvis sent me last week.
Even is such a report existed, and was more honest than most MS fare, and showed W2K to be stable, why should we crap our pants over it? I've had a stable box for years. MS will still have lots of other areas to play catch-up in. Such as price.
ps - Certain keywords in your post make me think you were trolling, but you still provided a nice context for saying some things that some lurkers might need to know. Thanks.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Microsoft's applications business could easily make Linux versions of applications such as Word and Excel available with scant development costs. That would open up an entirely new market for an existing product line.
Plotkin isn't the first person to make this sort of statement, nearly everyone who comments on the MSFT break-up jumps right to the Office folks being free to port to Linux.
Office is big, complex and dependant on Windows APIs. Getting it to work well on another platform would be a huge undertaking. Getting Windows Word 2.0 to compile and sort of run on the Macintosh was quick work (after the compatibility libraries were built), but getting it into shrink-wrap took a huge team of developers, testers and program managers several years and the result was the poorly-received Mac Word 6.0.
The Mac version had a lot going for it that a Linux port would not. Word had been on the Mac for years, with varying amounts of shared code in existence prior to the switch to full shared source for Word 6.0. Also the Mac is a pretty simple platform to support - there's basically only one hardware vendor. There are far fewer print drivers to work with and video driver problems don't exist. This boils down to it's a lot less work to build and test for compatibility on the Mac than it is on Windows.
The opposite is true for Linux. In addition to the usual print driver nightmares, the hardware, the OS, everything comes in n! flavors. Getting Office to work well on all Linux distributions is unthinkable.
If Microsoft picked one Linux distro, or even rolled their own *BSD, then dictated platform standards and created a certification program for third-party hardware and drivers so rank and file Office users could have some slim hope of getting everything to work well with Office, how would that be different from Windows? Most Windows users wouldn't care because they'd be terrified of switching to another OS. Linux users wouldn't care because it wouldn't be their preferred Linux. In short, it would be an extremely expensive gamble with little chance of commercial success.
Despite all of the above, Microsoft has already announced that they are going to release a version of Office written specifically to run on a BSD Unix distribution - Mac OS X. Strangely, this gets remarkably little attention. Much the same would happen if Microsoft were to port Office to run on *their* Linux.
Honestly, has anyone noticed the sheer madness of this suggestion? For one, it totally ignores W2K- for the idea to make sense it almost accepts that W2K will be a total wreck. It ignores the very real issue that a lot of Linux (or Mac for that matter) is 'not Microsoft' by choice. It ignores the serious risk MS runs in their stock strategy (you'd think a stock reporter would be paying attention to this) and the uncontrolled spending MS is doing. All to prop up the following syllogism:
- Microsoft will never fail!
- Here are some ways they might not fail.
- (insert speculation here)
The fact is, companies fail. They fail when they overspend, like Apple- when they build stock valuation bubbles that burst, like dotcoms- when they try to sell crappy ideas, like other dotcoms. Microsoft has risk for _all_ those reasons- in fact at this point I find it hard to worry about them anymore. Years ago I was desperately worried about them, because I thought they'd seize all the mindshare in the world and refuse to let anyone else into the market. Sure enough, they did, but I had no way of knowing they'd be quite _this_ overextended, dumping their entire fortune into dippy ideas likeSome people are going to be _very_ surprised when MS crashes and burns- might take some IRS audits or investigation of their financial practices because they _will_ lie as a last resort and may already be lying like rugs. However, at this point I wouldn't be surprised.
The DoJ is not needed to destroy the monopoly- that would just be nice, as a matter of procedure and law enforcement. The monopoly has destroyed itself in the traditional way- complacency, just as Gates has always desperately feared. It now presides over flagship products that are losing money, and wild new experiments that will never congeal into products. Microsoft's heart has stopped, and it has only a few steps remaining before it falls, DoJ or no DoJ. It might fall harder if there is NO DoJ or breakup, because that action could have provided vitally needed 'surgery'. A breakup is the only thing that can save MS because it's an outside action that could serve as an excuse for serious re-organisation and re-valuation. Without it- they are compelled to keep bluffing until it all collapses.
The reason I don't think they'll come out with a disto based on Linux is because, as a LinuxCare exec said in an LJ article about a year ago, even if they throw in some closed libs/APIs, its a hell of a lot easier to reverse engineer them when you see how they interact with userland programs on the top and the kernel on the bottom.
Nathan
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
The closing paragraph of the article shows that this guy doesn't actually know what he's talking about:
What he seems to have missed is that there will never be only one player on the island, or if there will be, it'll be a long, long time from now. I suspect that rather than all OSes being the same, all binaries will be the same at some convergent point in the far future.
Even in the insanely competitive (more competitive than the OS market, IMO) Console Games market, there is room for number one and number two, and enough room for number three if they don't get grabby. What with all the different hardware we have on this planet, and all the different possible uses, and the different levels of sanity, there's room for a whole grip of OSes which fill the same basic purpose as Windows, MacOS, or Linux. Well, maybe MacOS doesn't belong in there so much, though there ARE in fact people who have nothing on their network but Macs, and some turnkey internet appliances.
Just because I like to take posts on longer than is really necessary:
We all know that these operating systems are perfectly capable of serving as both workstation and server, as well as embedded system and everything else. They're not going to go away (Well, maybe one or two of them, eventually. But it seems unlikely any time soon. Mostly I'd like to see OpenBSD and NetBSD re-converge; I know this will probably never happen barring Theo getting hit by a truck - Which is definitely not something I want to see happen.) A lot of people have invested a lot of time and brainpower in them, and that weight will carry them a ways.
I don't know what I've left out that I really should have examined here. Certainly not Novell. If you want to get into the other reasons Microsoft will never rule the world, you could mention things like the fact that IBM, HP, Sun, Tandem, SGI (tee hee) and others all have hardware+software combinations that blow the combination of any Microsoft OS and anything Microsoft can run on out of the water without even thinking about it. If a Sun Enterprise 10,000 server is a PC, then the most beefy NT-based server is a calculator. Oh, admittedly, it's a nice graphing calculator with IRdA and a Type II PCMCIA slot, but it's still a calculator. And the E10K isn't even all that near the state of the art. Look at some of the stuff coming out of Big Blue these days.
So will microsoft achieve world dominance? Not without raising an army. And last I checked, you need Trillions of dollars in liquid assets, and people to buy them from, and for the US (And other nations, I suppose) to not exist to pull something like that off. I just don't see it happening. Hitler might have managed it, but Gates has all the charisma of an Eclair with Snot Custard Filling and leather replacing the chocolate. At a real extreme distance it might seem appealing, but when you get closer... well. You know how this goes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I understand your point: in the end it may not really be up to the user. But the choice of which software to use is up to me, expecially when I pay hard cash for it. QuickTime and Netscape are both free, so it's not like I have a lot of clout there. However, if "paying customers" are subjected to this same abuse, I'd expect them to protest loudly to the vendor; I know I certainly will.
While I sometimes purchase downloaded software, whenever I can I also get an installable CD as part of the deal -- even if I have to pay a few dollars for it. And if I can't get that, I make a backup copy before I do the installation. I haven't seen a EULA yet that forbids me to make a backup copy for my own use. But you're right about QT4 -- it doesn't give you any of those options...
---
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Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
The irony here is that Microsoft can wait until the money-losing Linux companies finally perfect their upstart open-source operating system. That would let Microsoft leverage -- some would say hijack -- every bit of the costly research and development done to date by the open-source software movement. Most Linux developers would probably be aghast at the notion that Microsoft will eventually be selling what they created. But the company has left more than a few would-be competitors aghast in the past.
oh, it is so obvious that all they would have to do is release a distro and all the would-be linux users will flock to it. Oh yeh. And sell? what are they talking about. Linux is free, and microsoft couldn't make a single cent off of the OS unless they only allow for it to be marketed with a really really expensive book and don't allow it to be d/led. Which is absurd only because since it would be based off of linux, it would be perfectly legal to d/led it. Something about the thoughts in this article just does't add up.
I think the author misunderstands what Linux and the open source movement is all about. I can't articulate it as well as Eric Raymond can, but I can approximate...
Microsoft won't be stealing from Linux by embracing it, no more than IBM, Oracle or even RedHat is. The point of the Open Source movement and the motivation of the Linux community isn't to beat Microsoft, it's to make good software. People may bash Microsoft because they abuse monopoly power, and because they do some pretty ruthless stuff (which, apparently, the author seems to laud them for); but the main reason people use Linux is because it's just better. Technically better, better security, better stability, better support, better foundation and it's part of a better community. Linux represents what's best in technology and what's best in society. Imagine an operating system put together by individuals from around the world; each working in collaboration without profit incentive or military incentive, but just because they wanted to make computers work better. So if Microsoft pitches in; or even if they just absorb other people's work, we'll all be the better for it because it will bring about total Linux domination which really means no domination at all. We can use the programs we like, we can drop the ones we don't; because WE'LL have the power to decide. That's what Linux represents: choice.
There was a time when, out of curiosity, I installed Corel Linux. I was curious to see what a Windows app. company did with the folk's own OS. What they did was a joke. They dumbed it down until it was boring boring boring and important parts of it didn't work. Service was a farce and most of the folks in the user groups seemed to be Corel shills. About all it did was allow us to run a few windows apps. Theirs. I struggled with it for a while but in essence it was a leaden distro. None of the flash and dash of Mandrake or Suse or any of the rest of OUR distros, no adventure and not many choices... but I'm sure that the Corel release turned some people on to Linux and those people went on to better distros after they'd gotten their feet wet. Microsoft will introduce even more folks to the creme de la creme of OSs and you can bet your boots that all they will do is add to our user base. I also have profound confidence in the several million folks that make up our sometimes fractious community and am certain that we have a rock solid foundation. Microsoft, on the other hand, is made up of hired hands, lawyers and hustlers, led by meglomaniacs powered by greed. They don't have a chance. There's no way they can co-opt us against our will. They may own the suits but we are the techs and the users allied with the techs. Their people work for money and our community works for the pleasure that comes from sharing, the satisfaction of doing a brilliant job, and the excersising of rebellious natures. True adventurers all. What we have going here folks, is a techno/spiritual revolution and Messers Gates and Balmer are pretty small potatoes to be standing in the path of revolution. One more thing... Gates and Balmer have been incredibly lucky, not brilliant, and their kingdom is built on legal manipulation and hype, not great software. I've got a feeling that their string is about to run out and I'm confident that they'll inadvertantly do us some good on their way out through that door to oblivion. Buck up. The best is yet to come. Freedom always wins out in the end and that's what we're all about. Keep the faith for crissake.
I read this article earlier and while the author has some good points I really don't see his scenario coming to take place. The faults in his argument are: 1) That MS would give up it's windows source base and move to Linux. For this to happen there would have to be some serious changes in the market in the next 5 - 10 years. MS has a strong windows install base, it has a code base that's at least decent in terms of stability/security in win2k (not to the level of linux/bsd but it has good potential I think if MS would put more effort into it). In short, there's just no reason right now for MS to make such a drastic move. 2) That MS Linux would be able to differentiate itself enough in the market as to become more popular than Redhat, Caldera, etc. MS has no experience with Linux dev. Look at what happened when Corel, a company with no Linux OS experience tried to market a distro. Microsoft's only hope in making MS Linux more popular would be in porting the Win32 API to the Linux kernel and making that proprietary along with Office. In short I just don't see how any of this could happen. It's going to be Linux vs. Windows for years to come. MS can't use it's normal business strategies against Linux, they just won't work. They're only hope is to make Windows a better (or at least good enough that SysAdmins won't weigh the benefits of switching greater than the difficulty in switching to Linux).
Remember what MS officially said?
"We'll not sell unix. Period" or something to that effect.
We have to bring this up from time to time, so people will not forget what they've said so firmly. Then, they'll stick to their vow, in order to save face (face ~ stock price)
So, if Linux takes over say 3 years from now, and everyone still remember what they say, they'll not make the move.
Then they'll die slowly.
You forget that once Microsoft releases 'Mirosoft Linux', they *HAVE* to release the source code. If they refuse to release the source, they cannot call it Linux or anything related to Linux. They can all it MSUX.
...
Whatever they create may be another Unix / Linux clone but as long as they use GPL software, they have to release the source.
If it isnt compatible, then no one will get MS Linux.
The number of the beast
I'm using a fresh Mandrake 7.2 on one box with built-in crappy SIS5597 video on the mainboard (4MB shareable v-ram, 64MB total, ouch).
Changing rez is still a no-brainer.
Some Linux GUIs - like KDE - are very Win32-like (including USB) for mainstream users (aside from some hardware issues...;-)
You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much bandwidth...
Mac users will accept anything Apple throws at them, you know that. Hell, it's got a big X in the name, how could they resist?
Did I miss something from this article, or does it not say how Linux is going to save MS?
.NET product before making it obvious to newcomers that it is in fact Linux underneath.
.NET Server, or something like that, would be a likely name.
Sure, MS may lose market share, but that surely does not mean they are going to die off or something.
Looks like another fancy, but irrelevant headline to me.
Also, if there is a MS Linux, they will likely try to mask it as another
Microsoft
EverCode
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There haven't been any new products that Micros~1 has been able to sell, since the advent of the internet. They have had to give it all away to stay in the game!
.NET bring for you, that you couldn't do before? And how will it be able to compete with the alternatives (GNU/Linux/Java) that are beer-free or even speech-free?
What will, for example,
As a matter of fact, no proprietary software vendor has been able to create a new massive product line, selling millions of copies, like Windows, or Office, or Autocad, or Photoshop since the advent of the internet.
Whatever Micros~1 has done over the past 5 years, it was focused on defending their Windows/Office/Studio franchises against the inevitable.
Their tactics have yielded a time window, that they can use to pump up some more cash; they will not, however, be able to fend off the inevitable.
I dare to bet money on the prediction that their revenue forecasts are rather conservative and that their stock price will never recover to their December '99 level.
Yeah, the Church eventually adapted, but how many
were burned at the stake, tortured, nearly guilted
to death, excommunicated, etc. before they
finally decided that yes, maybe a bible isn't a
bad thing.
By Church, I assume you mean Roman Catholic. Let's
not forget that while they may have accepted the
bible, the services (in the US, anyway) were in Latin
until just the past... 35 years?
Change is not something that is liked by big,
monolithic operations. That's why M$ should embrace
the DOJ breakup: their corporate ship is now like
the Titanic: too big to turn around, and not as
indestructible as the captain thinks.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I just want to know where you found that? it's not intuitive if you don't know it. Putting the resolution stuff with the rest of the screen stuff is pretty intuitive.
Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
Let's say that 5 years down the line, there exists an "M$ Linux." Finally, someone will be able to throw a ton of money at Linux. It will still be open-source, so we will still be able to fix all the bugs that M$ will no doubt generate in their "we release on a marketing schedule not a quality schedule" craze. On the good side, you and I will have a browser that doesn't suck, an Office Suite compatible with the rest of the world, movies players that support ASF, Divx;-), etc., and with any luck, decent game support under linux. FreeBSD, Redhat (I guess), SuSE, etc will still be available to all of us 133t h4x0rs (I hope you see the sarcasm in this). But now they would (in theory) have much better support for new and upcoming technologies (eg, USB, Firewire, Divx, etc). With the upfront statement that all this will suck if M$ close-sources everything and just makes some sort of "Reverse-Wine," I actually look forward to M$ jumping into this. No, I would never run an M$ version of anything, but it would be nice if SuSE and FreeBSD (and others) had some M$ source code on which to implement DVD, USB, ASF, and all the other trimmings.
I think the fear is of the opposite scenario: MS Linux runs anything written for Linux, but all MS software for Linux fails to work on anything other than MS Linux.
Teeeee.... V whfg unq gb tb naq uvg gur 'Fhozvg Pbzzrag' ohggba ol zvfgnxr orsber V jnf npghnyyl qbar
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This post has been rot13'd for your protection
Another thing is just the fact that somthing as simple as changing your resloution is a bitch to do, or just find out, It may be somthing really simple but I've spent the past 3 days trying to figure it out.
Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
Microsoft can use the same tactics that it used to beat out the other compeditors, back in the early Windows 3.1 days. I can just see this meaningless error message if you have the gaul to run the wrong distro.
You are using an unsupported version of Linux.
Run Windows in a XWindow, where it belongs.
There are several applications that allow you to do this. Using OSR2 cuts down on the bloat even more, so running OSR2 in a window is probably faster than running WinME or Win2k natively.
A clean start may be the only thing they have left. Will it save them? I donno. Never underestimate the power of PHB.
But let's not lose sight of things here:
MS holds an enourmous market share in the server and desktop industries. this is certainly no case of "If you cant beat em join em". Whatever war may exist is fFar fFrom over!
Also, dont think fFor a minute that windows 2005 is gonna look anything like your NetBSD! Even if THEY do start using X components, you wont be able to recognize it, and you wont be able to touch it, and you wont be able to modify it like you're thinking.
I mean, when has MS ever taken up some new project and NOT written their own standards?
I remember something like this five years ago. I'll paraphrase you so it looks more familiar.
Win95 is a very good product. It has lots of future potential. Win3.1 crashed so much its a joke. Win95 and its siblings are proving to be a decent platform for a lot of things. Its the first Microsoft product that is fundamentally able to made stable (belive me, i have a copy of internal report from MS that would make you crap your pants - results of kernel stress tests and analysis).
Or another way.
That last OS we sold you was crap. This new one is so much better.
Rrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I no longer have 50 karma points! Now there's incentive for me to write something worthwhile. (Moderate this down too, please.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
no. it is that simple. why bother?
http://dtum.livejournal.com
This is exactly what happened when the gnome project was formed to compete against KDE because of QT's awkward licencing restrictions. Gnome is a successful project. Many happy users, myself included, use gnome instead of KDE on principal. So put that in your microPipe and smoke it.
I realize I'm posting too late to be moderated, much less positively, but oh well.
Let's consider what a MS distro of Linux would actually mean. First of all, you can quit worrying about them hijacking the source and making it closed. The GPL prevents that for a reason. If you have a lack of faith in the ability of the GPL to protect against this, that's a topic for another time.
If Microsoft ever tried to make a Linux distro, it would have to be good. Don't forget that in order to kill Netscape, Internet Explorer had to be that good. And, for the most part, it still is, although it seems to be on the decline. A crack quality Linux distro - how exactly would that be a bad thing? A world running an open-source OS - how would that be a bad thing?
Secondly, an embrace of Linux would essentially mean a retreat from the Windows OS and a focus on applications. I see this as an improvement on what we have now. MS can't program anticompetitive "enhancements" into Linux itself without a serious GPL violation. And by this time, MS applications will likely have to face open-source equivalents. All of this means that if MS is creating a distro in our hypothetical future, they're actually innovating. I also use this to counter the argument that MS will use the kernel but write a proprietary window manager/desktop environment. For Linux to be successful to the point where MS feels threatened, we have to have some seriously good desktops. (insert call for the KDE folks and the GNOME folks to start cooperation)
Gates is too smart to let his company die from competition. But it can be changed. And isn't that the point?
-Merlyn42
The audience doesn't care if it's hard.
blah. you all suck
The article ignores the fact that there is no market for Microsoft Linux.
People choosing Linux are choosing it AHEAD OF Microsoft, usually because they've had more than enough...
Also, we shouldn't underestimate M$'s ego. And the drop in public perception when (if) M$ admit that Linux is the proper path for them do be pursuing. Personally I think hell would freeze over before we had that kind of admittion. And by that time, other distros will have developed plenty of brand awareness. M$ will be the new player - the one to stay clear of until they've proven themselves. Only a fool would buy into M$'s 1st Linux distro.
And then there's the support issue. Maybe M$ will provide similar support to what they do now. If so, they'll be doomed. And what would you say to someone who came asking questions in alt.os.linux about how to make M$ Linux work. I know what my answer will be - whether other people think that's fair or not...
They probably will try it some time in the next 5 years. I doubt whether it will work.
Dan
Microsoft doesn't need saving, and someone should tell Mr. Plotkin that Willie Nelson didn't write "Poncho and Lefty".
Microsoft executives have admitted, under oath, that they use an "embrace, extend, and extinguish" attack on any software that doesn't let M$ muscle in and claim a cut of the profit.
Let's predict how it'll go:
Yeah, that sounds about right. Look for "LINUX" to be heavily trumpeted just before the next "release" of Winblows 200x/NT/whatever.
Bellhead
I can answer this one for you. FWIW, I owned MS when it was 16/share and Intel at 20/share. This was a number of years ago however and I sold my shares earlier this year.
I am not putting any more money into the tech stocks. I'm sticking with the old money on the NYSE. There's something to be said for the tried and true and now that demand is for PCs is slumping (with the home market only about 55% saturated) all the techs are going to take a hit. All the OSS companies have taken hits too, because they're tech stocks. I have to admit, Red Hat is a tempting buy at 6/share but I'm not going to do it, not becuase I think Red Hat won't recover- I think that they'll do just fine, but because I simply think there are better places to put my money right now. The minute I think Red Hat would be the right addition to my portfolio, I'll add it and until then, I'm going to hold off.
--- Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
I think it's about time to look into the legality of blocking all Redmont, WA IPs on all mirror ftps of linux.
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the licenses which prohibit taking open source software and selling it as part of a commercial
product.
You mean closed source product. The Open Source product may be commercial already, but whether it is or it isn't has no bearing on the GPL.
The two software paradigms of open source and proprietary closed source are fundamentally irreconcilable. The whole power of the open source movement is to build massive endeavors based on the contributions of many, many developers. It is crucial to note that these armies of developers are often motivated by non-tangible reasons -- often the primary motivation is the challenge of the task, which will benefit a wide community of like-minded individuals. In Eric Raymond's terminology -- the open source community is fundamentally based on "gift-giving". I would doubt that these same developers would suddenly leap onto a MS toolkit ported to Linux if it were proprietary, which it will be in all likelihood.
Moreover, the less that MS complies with the open source philosophy, the fewer applications and utilities will be available for the hypothetical MS/Linux hybrid OS. Throwing away X, for instance, would throw away an enormous volume of X applications, which MS could never afford to replace. Which OS would you choose to install : a bare-bones MS/Linux hybrid OS, or a full-featured "classic" linux distro with hoardes of available software?
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Now LaTeX 2002 Premium Edition is going to have a talking penguin in the bottom corner.
I don't think things will happen that way. After the venom spit between MS and the linux community, I think that if MS co-opted linux, the community would spit in their collective eye.
The comparison to Netscape, although convienient, is not good. Netscape had to make money. Although some linux vendors also have to make money, others do not. If MS were to jump into the linux game, who would pay for their OS? No one. They may charge for the GUI, but what good is a Microsoft OS without the GUI?
I think that MS is more likely to steal GPL'd code, integrate it into Windows, put an ultra-glitzy start menu on it. Then they can continue their "naked PC" campaign and continue asking corporate IT departments, "Who are you gonna sue when it all comes crashing down?"
Why is Gnome pronounced with a hard G?
Gah
Some time ago, MS used to diss the idea that 'the network is the computer'. Now that the web is everywhere, we have .NET. ("Embrace and extend", all over again...) Make no mistakes folks, this company will do anything to stay on top of the software biz (as of course they have an obligation to their shareholders to). If tomorrow Linux makes it big, Red Hat will suddenly find Redmond pushing for the biggest slice of the pie. Remember the rumor about Mainsoft porting Office to Linux?
>Microsoft's applications business could
>easily make Linux versions of applications
>such as Word and Excel available with scant
>development costs.
Um, had a teeny doubt: the generally held wisdom is that the Word/Excel codebases are impossibly crufty and arcane... anybody here with who can comment on how XP they might be?
The irony here is that Microsoft can wait until the money-losing Linux companies finally perfect their upstart open-source operating system.
He also misses the point that the "money losing Linux companies" are not, in general, focused on perfecting the OS.
Foolish zealot.
.NET initiative. I'm concerned because people are using Windows in places where it is less than appropriate. For the desktop, Windows is fine, in the machine room, I'd rather see Solaris or Linux (or even Irix). I see MS hijacking XML (How? It is not my place to ask how, but I'm sure some legal eagles here could help me on this) and SOAP, and locking the rest of the world out.
Not quite. You're probably right. I'm only spitting out what first came to me. As for zealotry, I'm posting from IE 5 running under Win2k. A zealot I am not. When I refer to grabbing GPL'd code, I'm not thinking of second rate GUIs like Gnome or KDE, I'm thinking of the kernel code which, IMHO, is not mediocre in any way.
You are correct about the office software bit. Anyone (well, any zealot) who tells me I'd be better off running StarOffice (which I've done, btw) than MS Office is probably smoking crack. However, I am afraid of what will happen with this
Enough rambling. This comes down to problems more complex than who has the best office software. The real battle isn't for the desktop. The real battle is for the back end.
Anyway, I stand by my original assertion. MS is not going to come up with a successful linux distro anytime soon.
Why is Gnome pronounced with a hard G?
Gah
And who would buy it? Even moronic windows lusers are not stupid enough to buy a 199$ linux CD from microsoft, when they can get the exact same thing from lsl or cheapbytes for 1 stinking dollar, (plus shipping)!
How can they leverage the work of others? If they wait until the linux desktop is appropriate for the typical win98/ME endluser, then exactly what do they to entice people to buy it from them? Their brandname? By then the Microsoft name would then stand for a company who swindled billions from people for poorly designed software, that they eventually abandoned.
If they add somekind of windows "layer" to run windows apps, then who cares, it would be the same as now, where the stupid pay for the "comfort" of microsoft. Businesses, power users, etc) would use the real linux and have little or no need for any of the services microsoft could provide. I mean they have the worst customer support infrastructure ever, and somehow they're supposed to transform that into a linux services/support organization I would be willing to pay for?
It would just make the final move to pure linux just that much easier, as people using it can't help being exposed to to the linux underneath the hood. So microsft is left in a ghetto of home pc lusers.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Again so what, that would be exactly the same situation as now, except they would have to piss away billions on converting the whole company from their crap to linux. The real, free linux would continue to grow, while microsoft slowly dies.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Ok, please learn to use the concept of numbers. Microsoft has an enormous share of the desktop/workstation computers in the country. Linux is lucky if it gets a single percentile. Linux in its current form is not fucking viable for consumers or in some cases even for professionals. Professional need to get work done, non-professional users want to get stuff done. Neither of these wants to spend hours fucking with the maze of often cryptic and obfuscated commands. Fuck the command line and fuck piping. If you want to bring Unix to the world of home-office computing follow Apple's lead. Candy coat the fucking thing; be adventuresome and go the next step by replacing non-intuitive shell commands with something that people might think of to use to open a file or move something. Distrobutions repackage the same Unix commands that have been in use for centuries. KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF! Cars have power steering because the rack and pinion shit was giving people problems. When everyone can interface with a Unix system with relative ease and as little training as possible, Unix will become popular in people's home. Microsoft doesn't have a single worry about Linux because Windows' interface is pretty recognized and worry free for the most part; installing programs and getting hardware working is easy enough that most people now do it themselves rather than paying someone to. Linux has a long fucking way to go.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
So far there have been quite a few cases where the GPL has come close to being tested in court. In every case the alleged GPL-offender has chosen to settle in some way.
It seems to me that the reason for those settlements is not just the fear of losing a court battle, but instead the fear of bad publicity. It is easy to do the whole "Giant corporation against small idealist entrepreneur" thing.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
As far as i knew, Microsoft doesn't need saving... Even with the stock market hoopla of the past few months, they've been hit much less hard than many other companies out there (AOL, Apple, Dell, Gateway, Intel, Redhat, VA Linux). Well, not really, but they took their drubbing right after the anti-trust case and since then have lost very little ground in comparisson to the rest of the industry that began their plummet around the time of the anti-trust case and have continued to fall through the floor ever since then.
Plus, they're still sitting on piles upon piles of cash and investments...
They're sure to be here for a while...
aw pshoo, I misspelled "Crichton".
The article said that Microsoft could hijack all the work that has gone into linux, but it failed to mention that whatever they do, anyone could just hijack back, especially other experienced linux comanies. I think the guy who wrote the article probably has alot of stock in Microsoft and thought this might be a good way to use his influence to raise it up a few points.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Internet Explorer illustrates my point I think. Sure, Microsoft won the ~third generation browser war and will probably win the ~fourth generation (0=www 1=mosaic 2=navigator/older IE 3=communicator/newer IE, 4=XML aware browsers). How much profit has this generated for Microsoft? Hard to quantify, but certainly nothing of the sort Microsoft gets from Windows and Office. The browser is free, and AFAIK Microsoft has always lost money on its web sites.
Oh yeah, and how exactly will micrsoft be saved by linux? It didn't give any mention as to what positive effects linux will have on them.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
The GPL doesn't really prevent MS from taking Linux over. Think about it, the GPL only prevents linking, not message passing. MS could simply use Linux as a "microkernel," put some fast messeging support in there, and then layer WIn32 services on top (like it did with NT) It would be required to OSS the changes to the kernel, but everything else remains MS. Linux gets a kernel with hooks for the GDI and all that, MS gets a more stable OS core, and users get a stable OS with all the MS goodies like fast OpenGL and sweet multimedia. In short, everyone is happy except the OSS community.
Either way, I doubt that they would do that. Its not like Linux has anything that BSD doesn't, and if MS wanted a UNIX-cored OS, they would have just stolen code from FreeBSD.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
If they do their distro, it would probably be based on Debian (6000 packages), have a windows emulator and make Linux accept windows drivers.
:)
Hm... I still prefer Debian
So, let's say he's convinced me that Microsoft can always retain a near-100% market share. But does that mean they actually keep making as much money? Redhat may have convinced us that you can make money on free software, but it doesn't look to me like you can make quite as much money selling free software as you can selling the proprietary stuff. Couldn't Micrsoft gain market share and still end up losing profits?
Part of the reason free software is good, I figure, is that it eliminates some redundant effort, and makes the software industry a bit more efficient. But seems to me that this means that in an open-source world, 100% of the software pie might just not be worth as much.
So, someone tell me now that I'm totally confused.
---Bruce Fields
personally, the prospect of M$ getting into linux scares me. If they make a linux distro, they will probably either modify the source in a way that changes the direction of the entire project (then release office for it, so all consumers will buy it--what's the deal w/office anyway? I am so happy w/AbiWord and Gnumeric...). If they release office for their "version" of linux which is incompatible with other distros, the rest of the gnu/linux market will have to conform to their standards. A company with such influence over mindless consumers can have a dramatic and damaging effect on the market. Very scary.
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# cd /
I thought one of the conditions of their first antitrust trial was that they agreed to never directly release a version of Unix that would compete with offerings from SCO, Solaris, et al, and it wouldn't be too far a reach to argue that linux could be included in there, too. Of course, as we all know.. Gnu's Not Unix.. (oh, the irony if GNU/Linux came back to bite RMS in a legal battle with Microsoft over this issue..
Maybe someone who knows more can comment - has the recent trials or breakup of the company changed this ruling from way back when (I feel old now)..
..don't panic
M$ has the worst "evil empire" rep in the world right now, and they're doing pretty well. They still have the vast majority convinced that they're the best thing since sliced bread, in terms of computing. Do you realize what salary you can start at if you have a slip of paper saying you're an MCSE? Their public image is only now beginning to come into *mild* doubt. It's another example of Hitler's "If you tell a lie loud enough and long enough..." concept.
If you mean the publicity of crushing a smaller company like a bug under foot would hurt them, you're mistaken. Microsoft has crushed many a company and most simply regard it as the dog-eat-dog world of business. There's less romanticism in the public opinion than you think, unfortunately. I think if Microsoft made a determined effort to buck the GPL, it could, and that scares me. And in any case, the media know which side their bread is buttered on, so it's not too likely there'll be much open criticism of Microsoft if they decide to chew Linux up and spit it out.
It's a damned shame I know, but I think it's best to be realistic about things and try to find a solution...
-Kasreyn.
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Which Linux developers would sell out to Microsoft?
Any of them that are publicly traded, if the price is right. They won't have a choice.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
If Microsoft went the Open-source route, they would release the Windows source-code, not adopt Linux. This way, they still maintain some bit of control over the way the license would work.
:)
I would bet that if they did release the source, it would be to the desktop edition (ex: Windows 2000 Pro or Whistler Personal), and keep the Server OSes for sale.
Either way, I think the author is correct about one thing: Microsoft will always be the last one standing as long as Gates & co are there. Now when he and all the big original co are gone and the effects of corporate beuracracy (sp) really takes its toll, Microsoft will eventually falter and fail.
Until then, Gate's vision will will keep the company on top. Whether you like the man or not, he's a genius; at marketing, management, or innovation is a judgement I'll leave up to the reader
-- russ
-- Senior Forum Admin, Ihateapple.com
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Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Btw, I honestly did think that article was bull. Consider the end of the article. He jumps from the decimation of Microsoft with the rapid acceptance of Linux... then suddenly states that MS are the only ones likely to be standing in the end. I think his logic is flawed and he needs to get a clue... I guess nobody agreed with me. ;-)
Exactly who said Microsoft needs to be saved?
I'm looking at their 1st quarter results and,
"$2.19 billion in earnings, revenue $5.38 billion, a 28% increase over last year".
Doesn't sound like they need a lifeline to me.
--
Kiro
Everyone knows that as soon as Linux becomes a threat, Microsoft will release their own distro. It will NOT be compatible with existing distros, but it will become the "Standard" for Linux because it's a Microsoft product. They might trample the GPL. they might now, but you can be certain your Linux Apps won't run on MS-Linux. If we're lucky it will have .NET.
Remember what they did to Stacker? To PC DOS? Face facts, M$ will eat Linux for lunch as soon as they feel the need to do so. Perhaps they'll just steal Linux code and use it in Windows (Like they did with Stacker), or their version of Windows will ONLY run applications compiled with "Blessed" compilers, causing mysterious crashes when a program compiled with the GNU compiler is launched (Like they did to PC-DOS when Windows was first released)
As a matter of fact, I have proof of what I say. Here's a link to the new M$ Linus distro to be released soon.
www.matthewmiller.net"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
You should only choose another license if you specifically intend to allow anyone to make closed-source, commercial use of your code.
That's why it's pointed out in an earlier comment that Microsoft wouldn't base an offerring on Linux, but on BSD - as Apple is doing, with Mac OS X.
The Free Software Foundation recommends against the general use of the LGPL - formerly called the GNU Library Public License but now called the lesser public license.
Generally, you'd only want to use the LGPL if there is already an existing high-quality library that is available in closed-source form and you want yours to be adopted by people who want to keep the source to their applications closed. This was done, for example, with glibc, to make a replacement for the proprietary libc popular.
But if you're writing a totally new library, or if you feel that your library is a significant improvement on an existing closed-source library, using the GPL rather than the LGPL will draw new free software into the world, and although it won't prevent people from selling your work, it will prevent them from holding the source closed.
Licenses that would be inappropriate for competing with Microsoft would be the BSD License or the MIT License, the Apache License or the Mozilla Public License.
That's why, despite Mozilla, we still need a good browser that is GPL'ed.
For lists of a lot of licenses, see the opensource.org approved licenses and GPL Compatible Licenses - these last basically can be combined in software with GPL'ed code. Also note License that are incompatible with the GPL.
Upon further examination, I see that if you are not going to use the GPL, you should at least use a license that would allow your code to be used in the same project with GPL'ed code. This is the case with the revised BSD license (without the advertising class) and the MIT license but not the Mozilla license, or, significantly, the Python license - in some cases the incompatibility is not caused by restrictions by what you can do with the code but in the case of Python it's because the licensed is governed by the laws of the state of Virginia in the U.S.A.
Sometimes people do specifically choose to use things like the MIT License because they intend for it to be used for commercial use. My friend Andy Green who wrote the ZooLib cross-platform application framework is an independent consultant, and he had it in mind to make things easier for other consultants and small commercial developers, as well as free software developers. It was a complex decision but they people with an interest in the code ultimately agreed on the MIT license.
On the one hand, this allows people like Microsoft to write cross-platform closed-source products that would compete with free software - so MS could port their products to ZooLib and have source compatibility with Linux, Windows and Mac (and BeOS too), and this source would be closed, which could be a problem.
On the other hand, the ready availability of an open source but commercially-compatible crossplatform library gives power to the third-party developer at the expense of all OS vendors whether closed or open source, which I feel is arguably a good thing.
So it is a complex decision, really. But I think that, when in doubt, use the GPL. If you hold the copyright yourself, you can always supply a separately licensed version to people who pay you for it. For example, while the CygWin library (a POSIX API for Windows, part of a GNU programming environment that is largely source-code compatible with Linux) is under the GPL, you can purchase a proprietary license for it from Redhat which is actually pretty expensive from the terms they used to have on their page.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Just a few thoughts...
The idea of Microsoft buying RedHat is equally silly. If they did then ALL the key technical RedHat employees would resign. They would take their money and do something else (or maybe the same thing).
Also, it would be to MS's benefit to fork as soon as possible, so no-one has a chance to change their license from GPL to "GPL minus MS" or "GPL with a fully Open Source disto."
Who said anything about free software? MSFT is more open than, say, Nintendo or Sony, but it doesn't see free software adding much value to the platform. MSFT may be weakened by the anti-trust trial but the X-Box's developer support demonstrates that it can still build a platform. (Customer acceptance, of course, remains to be seen.)
If MSFT couldn't pull off a proprietary Linux toolkit, it wouldn't be for lack of apps.
But they can't possibly port the ``Win32 API'' (if there is such a thing, which is highly theoretical, IMHO) to Linux. They will have some sort of Wine-like interface, or maybe even have a Win32 layer that runs the Linux stuff.
Also, Microsoft would have a hard time not getting their own software polluted with GPL'ed sources.
This would not work. Microsoft is a license-selling company. They sell middle of the road software to John Doe. Office did not change much since version 6.0. Neither did the 16-bit Windos since version 95. Basically it's all the same stuff with new marketing. They only get away with it because they do marketing.
Now suppose IBM starts marketing for the Open Source. (They will, some time).
What would MS Linux add? That it can run Office, the great proprietary Office Suite that costs $400? That you can run the proprietary IIS on Linux now? That you get Linux with Innovation?
Proprietary software is hard to maintain, hard to interface to and hard to manage. ''MS Linux'' will not change that.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
I think they will do something similar to IBM. IBM is supporting their core business- hardware.
Microsoft's core business is, on the face of it, their operating system. But in actual fact, it isn't- its the applications like Office that run on it. They make more money from that than Windows in fact.
When/if Linux grows enough market share on the desktop, Microsoft will get less money back from their OS than they spend on it. At that point they might as well port Office to Linux and carry on making money from Linux.
It makes very little difference to Microsoft- they can still deliver OS and Office together, it's just that they won't charge for the OS. They'll still have a huge monopoly on Office to milk for atleast the next decade.
They will probably give up being an OS company- Linux is probably going to outcompete them- and its development is free for Microsoft whereas it would COST Microsoft money to do OS development...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Thus see my other comment in this discussion, That's why it's important to choose GPL and I think that it's particularly important that every function of any significance that's used on linux should ultimately get written by someone under a GPL license
It's really not enough to just use open-source software if the license allows the source to be closed, if your aim is World Domination. Many of those who participate in Open Source, as distinct from Free Software, do so for their mutual benefit as closed-source commercial proprietary developers.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
If their aim was to sell hardware, they could beat the hell out of any PC vendor selling windows boxes. Imagine something with the industrial design of an iMac or G4 cube running Microsoft software. It would be tremendously popular in the more image-conscious business environments.
Taken from a purely business perspective, it would make a lot of sense for Apple to sell Windows boxes - they could come bundled with a lot of software to integrate them with Macs, for example, like AppleTalk networking.
But this was never seriously considered for largely religious reasons. It was clear it would have caused an employee revolt.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
If Microsoft decided to create its own distribution, Microsoft Linux, it would be forced to release it under the same license agreement that the Linux kernel is released under.
Where they could start charging more is with their own applications and extensions that do not rely on open source code. In this case, they'd become just an application development house, not an OS vendor any more, at least from a financial point of view.
That's fine, but that defeats the whole idea of the article. The point was that Microsoft could dominate the OS field by putting out their own distribution - simply not dominance that can happen.
You, my dear friend, are a karma whore.
Execute? [Y/N] _
Hal's MS Linux scenario is absurd, so I won't spend time punching the straw man. Office, on the other hand, is an interesting scenario. With OLE/COM and VBA, Office integration has become a coveted logo for business apps. Red Hat's dominance, as demonstrated by proprietary applications supporting only Red Hat Linux, raises fears of one official Linux distribution. Likewise, KDE's adoption of the pseudo-free Qt raised fears that TrollTech would establish a toll booth on the Linux desktop (no flames please, I'm speaking in the past tense). Far more imposing would be a blitz by Office and supporting apps. like Visio to a proprietary Windows-on-Linux layer. Such a layer could quickly become popular by emphasizing performance at the expense of X's flexibility.
The longer MSFT stalls, the less likely the scenario becomes. Reading about Bonobo and lightweight CORBA is just like reading about OLE five to ten years ago. Eventually, Linux will have a solid component architecture. In the meantime, MSFT has an opportunity to hedge its bets.
>they'll just capitalize on all the R&D that the linux companies have done
Honestly, what kind of R&D are you talking about? Development, maybe. A lot of code is written. But is anything more (i.e., ideas, concepts) in Linux software that was not previously in some Windows, Apple or Unix application?
Can you tell me of a single revolutionary idea introduced by a "Linux"&open-source oriented company? I am open to suggestions. But the main point that the article is missing is that 99% of the open-source _Linux_ apps are implementing some kind of idea from some other software, introduced by some comercial company. And it's often Microsoft who promoted that idea.
"Importing" development, yes. Importing research? Hardly.
I know I'd be distrustful of any release that comes from a major software company. People advised me to stay away from Corel Linux.
I made a sorry mistake by installing it onto my HD. Apparently, if you don't get the 'Deluxe' version from Corel, you can't install something as basic as Licq (without a lot of hassle, anyways) I was limited to the basics (Netscape, KVirc, etc.)
Sure, it's easy to use, but it's extremely limited.
I would have to agree with the above posts - the Linux community would spit in M$'s face. People could even go so far as to make sure their program doesn't work with Microsoft Linux.
ok, I'm done posting this +1 topic.
There's very little traffic on the list yet because almost all of the people on it have been using ZooLib for a long time and don't need to ask questions (or they mail each other directly) - it's only recently been released as open source but it was a proprietary API for a long time.
But many of us are happy to answer questions, I know I am, and ZooLib author Andy Green is very helpful too. I try to field the questions as much as I can so he can concentrate on development of the library itself.
API docs are coming, they will start as guides to the sample code, and additional sample code with Howto's on the various features. A proper detailed API reference will probably be a while in coming but it's pretty easy to get around the source code in an IDE or class browser or maybe you can run doxygen on it - one thing I mean to do is process it with doxygen and upload the pages and a tarball to the ZooLib website.
And even if you don't plan to go cross-platform, it is in fact a nice API. I find it lovely to use. It makes multithreading your apps much easier for example, gives you nice high-level C++ class interfaces to TCP networking. If you don't plan to be cross-platform at all, you can use ZooLib without any proprocessor guards and freely intermix windows and ZooLib code.
Probably the hardest thing to figure out is the widget layout - the use of the ZPaneLocators. Widgets don't store their location in a member variable, whenever they need it they ask their pane locator where they are. Similarly buttons ask their pane locator for their highlight state.
You're free to store these things in member variables of the pane locator but you can also calculate it at runtime, and a common thing to do is to say "He's just below this pane" or "He's to the right of that pane" and recurse until you hit the top-left corner.
This makes adjustment for different text widths in localization or changing font size as a user preference automatic. If you change the width of the text in a button, just invalidate the window and everything will lay themselves out again.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
When I think about this issue, all the stuff about what is or isn't possible with various licensing goes right over my head. To me, it seems that Microsoft could make very short work of the entire Linux movement simply with its name recognition. All they would have to do is release MS Linux. The details of the distribution are inconsequential; people would buy it simply because they've heard so much "good" about Linux, and now Microsoft has a version. People don't know much or care much about what the OS really is or does, they just want it to work. And they also happen to be very familiar and comfortable, for better or for worse, with the Microsoft name. So MS Linux could become instantly popular, and Microsoft could kill Red Hat's and everyone else's market share and do who know what with the funding for Linux projects. Only things MS wants to get done would get done. No, Microsoft couldn't stop individuals from doing whatever they wanted, but it would be completely irrelevant to any market that MS controls. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying. I hope so. Because this scenario seems very easy, though perhaps not likely. But who knows what the hell MS execs are thinking behind closed doors.
That said, Linux has proved that M$ is vulnerable to the same stunt M$ pulled on NetScape to starve them of revenue.
.NET "per use" charges for app use into their revenue stream. Windows as an OS will never get off the x86 platform but M$ will try to leverage off the winners of the next generations of platforms.
DOJ not withstanding, look for M$ to try to shift their apps to the web and turn
You can also forget about innovation (a.k.a. bloatware,) and that expensive crap for M$. Its about to become about maximising return on investment. That's why IBM was still selling 360 mainframe DOS well into the nineties. Puire gravy dude. Pure gravy.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I checked out that story and it had a banner add for a DELL server. If you try to customize the server, you'll notice the default configuration is missing an OS!
/. story in which M$ was calling companies who sell PCs without an OS practically criminal. I find it strange how MSNBC and DELL are promoting a config that M$ is publically against.
I seem to remember a
And another thing, the article talks about slumping OS sales causing slumpling revenues...
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
As long as they bring back BOB for Linux.
Apart from the fact that CNBC don't acually bring any evidence to back up their theory, it defies logic. I mean, for Microsoft to suddenly to back Linux and try to distribute it would be to say they were wrong all along. They have continuously through press statements and articles belittled Linux to try to make it look like a hobbiest OS. Not something that people should take seriously. They would have to do a complete u-turn and try to convince the same public that they have tried to brain wash against Linux, that in fact Linux does rock after all.
I just don't see that this sort of approach at all fits in with Microsoft's past or their character. They will never open up their source code. They can not stand the idea of someone else making money out of things that they develop. For us its different. Whether its Red Hat, Suse or individuals. We don't mind if someone else makes a buck out of our work. As long as what we make stays free. We don't want to horde everything for ourselves in some self-centered greedy way. And that is exactly Microsoft's attitude. Not only do they want to be top in everything; they also want to keep all the money making for themselves.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
The only really funny thing about this post is that it is so true that nobody can really comment on it. /. mindshare than other garbage posts do. Ah well, that's the way of /.
...
And since they can't comment on it it will get much less
Every Linux user seems to think MS would use Linux, but they don't need to even deal with the GPL if they use code from the BSD's. Most would say that they already have borrowed from at least the Berkely TCP stack (finally)
Is this the end of the world? No. If MS code is better we all benefit a little. Just think how much better at least US productivity would be if MS code wasn't so freeking buggy. If business apps didn't crash 10 times a day
Tim
Linux does not have the capability to replace Windows in it's current incarnation, and I can't imagine a way that it could change in the necesary direction.
Any Linux distribution needs to have the proper geek toolset if they want any help from developers. That geek toolset is exactly what a consumer OS cannot abide. X Windows, for example. I wouldn't run Linux if I couldn't do remote windowing (overlapping, not like VNC), but I can't imagine any non geek would prefer that to the GDI accelerated Windows interface. No matter what pretty interface you put on top of it, it will be too unresponsive.
So. If a Linux distro wants to slay Windows on the desktop, they might need to do something drastic like ditch X. And then they wouldn't get enough attention from the geeks they need to survive in the interim.
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
There's something that I find (all be it intuitively), odd about this line of reasoning. It's as if whatever MS does, they will succeed. If MS started selling cheese tomorrow, every other cheese maker on the planet is supposed to ceremoniously drown themselves in big vats of milk?
No. Linux is a platform. Windows is a platform. Be is a... you get my drift. MS is not going to drop Windows and port everything to Linux. MS is Windows. MS is Office. MS has built a whole ecosystem of OS's & Apps and user base and image and market share and user attitude ("do it all the MS way"), that they cannot simply cut off a large part of their anatomy. Simply announcing a MS Linux distro would weaken their position.
Witness the traditional way MS deals with competition, namely, 'Duplication': VBScript v. JavaScript, Direct3D v. OpenGL, Cool v. Java. etc. They don't challenge you on the playing field; they go off and build their own playing field, and charge you (the competitor) to get in!
MS would not simply 'adopt' Linux, like some long lost child, who turns up on your door step a teenager, saying "hello daddy". MS could not be seen to be supporting and validating Linux. They would have to develop their own open source OS, and it wouldn't be called "linux", but "SourceX" or some such. They would start a big 'open' research project into the next generation global knowledge network or something. In short, they would try to take over the idea.
Oh, but wait. A big company starts an open source project... that's like, Darwin, or Mozilla ... and Darwin's innards were mostly open before Apple got it's hands on it anyway...
I think what we're seeing is that this idea of openness, propagation by usefulness, freedom to adapt, is more integrative and encompassing than what a single company could "suck up" and decimate in it's corporate vacuum cleaner. But I don't think we're going to see 'human freedom' transformed or anything like that,* but I do think that those who sought power and control via software, are going to have to go elsewhere for their kicks.
* IIRC, the Church was real upset when the Bible became something that could be printed and widely circulated. The 'Word of God' was now something people could read for themselves, rather than have to ask a priest. Anyhow, the Church adapted and kept some power by other means