Windows Exec Doug Miller Responds

Doug Miller (no relation) is an amazingly affable and unflappable man. This interview came about because I asked Doug face-to-face if he'd do it when we met after a panel discussion he was part of in Washington DC a few weeks ago. He said "sure" without even a second's hesitation, let alone checking with PR people. His answers to the 10 selected questions we sent him are 100% straight-up. You may not like everything he says (devout Free Software people probably won't like any of it), but Doug Miller deserves your respect (and courtesy) for telling it like it is -- at least from Microsoft's point of view -- without a hint of weaseling.

1) Impact of DOJ case
by skoda

In what ways, if any, has the DOJ anti-trust case affected Microsoft's "competitive strategies", as well as the work Towards "interoperability"?

Doug:

Microsoft has always been a customer focused company and to satisfy customers, you need to build solutions that are competitive. I can't really say if anything has changed over the years, but I can tell you that today we are in a very competitive market - for all the technologies we are involved in. There is nothing like good competitors to help a company focused on building even more value in their offerings. As a result, we need to be even more diligent about building solutions that customers want. For example, in the server space we need to compete with Linux - a pretty good server operating system that is promoted as being free and has a solid following in the technical community. Our products need to show long term value that goes beyond the initial purchase price so the argument becomes not how much does your operating system cost up front but more importantly, how much will your operating system save you over the years that you use it.

Ultimately we believe some of the enhancements we have added to our Windows 2000 server operating system will save companies many times the cost of the operating system in productivity gains in areas such as of ease of use, management, applications choice and support and robustness. Regarding interoperability, we strongly believe the company that interoperates best, is the company that will win the business.

Interoperability is a key competitive strength. We clearly accept that customers will choose multiple operating systems depending on how they need to solve their business problems. Providing ways to plug into those other operating systems - both at a system level (e.g. files, user directories etc.) and at an application level (e.g. data formats) is essential. Microsoft has received unwarranted criticism by some for its ability to interoperate with other operating systems. I actually believe we have better interoperability today than any other OS out there. We fully support data, directory and system interop with UNIX, Linux, Novell, Mac, IBM mainframes through our base OS protocol support as well as through products like Services for UNIX, Interix, Services for NetWare, MetaDirectory and Host Integration Server.

2) OS X
by neutrino

With the recent release of MacOS X what are your reactions to it and what plans do you have to compete with a truly user-friendly desktop OS combined with the stability of a UNIX backend?

Doug:

I'm not sure much will change with the release of the new Mac OS X, as a result of the new UNIX-like features. The Mac crowd has always been a special group that has been very dedicated to the Mac platform. We actually see this as a great market for us to sell some of our products into; of course Office for the Mac is a very successful product.

Ultimately application support will be the most important factor for OS X or as it is for any operating system. BeOS is a great operating system technically but hasn't offered the features to obtain the broad ISV support you need to catch on in the mainstream market. You could ask the same question for Linux with the GNOME or KDE desktop or any of the window managers that look like Mac or Windows desktops. In the end, the OS has to do something useful. The Mac platform has been very viable in the past and I'm sure it will continue to thrive in the future.

Reliability or stability has been a major focus for us as well. We are hearing very good reports from customers who are now using Windows 2000 - both on the desktop and the server. Of course, being user-friendly is also important to us. If you haven't seen the beta of Windows XP, check it out - it is VERY cool.

3) Explain this piece of competetive strategy to me
by RareHeintz

Why does it seem that Microsoft routinely ignores glaringly obvious security concerns in favor of "convenience"-related features? Is this a false impression, and if so, why is that the impression so many security professionals form when confronted with the history of security in Microsoft products?

As an example, I'd single out (though it is by no means the only example) Microsoft Outlook. The inclusion of active code (scripts, ActiveX controls) in what was formerly static data (SMTP email) combined with defaulting to the least secure configuration (opening and running emails without user intervention) left the door wide open for the Melissa virus and its desendants. What happened here?

Doug:

You raise a good point - which is how to you balance ease of use and functionality with security and exposure to hostile attacks from the outside. We have always made an effort to provide highly functional software that makes the user experience as intuitive as possible. At the same time, we are sensitive to the growing security threats to our customers, and providing enhanced security has been and continues to be one of our top priorities. In the case of Outlook, we've taken several steps to provide improved security for users. For example, after the "I Love You" virus of last spring, we took the initiative to change the balance between security and functionality by releasing the Outlook E-Mail Security Update. The Update prevents executable attachments from being delivered to an Outlook user, and also prevents code from sending mail on the user's behalf without the user's permission. No user who's installed the Update has been harmed by any of the e-mail viruses that have been seen since "I Love You". The Update was made available as a standalone offering last spring, and has been included by default in Office 2000 SP2 and in Office XP.

We continue to enhance our offerings in this area - in fact next week, we will be showing some new technology at the RSA show to further protect users.

4) Lay it out for us
by FWMiller

Can you ever see Microsoft applications like Office, Visio, and Project being ported to Linux, and why or why not?

Doug:

"Never say never." Microsoft is continually looking at market opportunities for its products - on both our own platforms as well as on other platforms. As mentioned above we saw a great opportunity for selling our Office products on the Mac platform and have licensed a lot of our technology for use on other platforms. In order to consider porting our desktop products to Linux I think two things would need to happen.

First, there would need to be significant consumer demand from Linux users that actually use Linux as a desktop operating system and were all using the same desktop environment. Today we do not see a large installed base of Linux desktop users that use a single standard for desktop computing with Linux. Would we port to KDE or GNOME or would we try and make the products look exactly as they look today on the Windows platform? It is not obvious which way would be the right way and it would be a huge task to do this at all.

The second thing that would need to happen is Linux users would need to be willing to buy our products if we ported them. Today, there is an almost violent dislike for anything Microsoft in the Linux community - just look at some of the postings on slashdot! My sense is that a lot of people would not buy our products if they were available. But in some ways I think this really goes beyond Microsoft. We have spoken to a lot of Linux users and one of the things that they like is that they can get free Open Source applications on top of their free Open Source OS. I have yet to see any company using the traditional commercial software model become hugely successful selling their products into the Linux market. Take Corel for example. Their Linux product and the suite of applications they sold along side their Linux OS were really quite impressive. Despite this, they did not seem to end up selling very much.

I personally feel that there is little opportunity to make money selling software in the Linux marketplace - buying software goes against they whole Linux / Open Source culture.

That said, there are solutions out there that allow Linux users to run Windows applications today.

5) The "services" model
by Animats

When I see Gates saying "all Microsoft software will be rented in ten years", I see IT managers scheduling exit strategies from Microsoft products. Clearly, a services model benefits Microsoft, but do you really think corporate America will go for it?

Doug:

I personally think that we will see a mixed model for the foreseeable future. Some companies will sell, some will rent, some will provide hosted applications for a fee and some will do combination. We have been using our Enterprise Agreement system for providing our software to large corporations for some time and it seems to work well for both the customer and Microsoft. The customer pays a single fee for the use of Microsoft products for a period of time and they can then deploy the software as needed without having to purchase individual copies. They also get upgrades to the software automatically during the contract period. Microsoft has a predictable revenue stream for the period and can afford to support the customer and fund research and development to enhance the products going forward. In a sense, much of corporate America and corporations around the world are already using this system today.

The interesting challenge will be to see if we can provide a similar program for smaller companies and home users that offers the same customer benefits of license simplicity and paying for the services that you use. In some ways it is much like the system most phone or cable companies use today. Pay a monthly fee to subscribe to a set number of features. There is no reason why you can't do this with software and associated services.

6) Loosing the Golden Ring from Microsoft's fist?
by cworley

When Compaq (later followed by others) loosened the Golden Ring from IBM's grasp by reverse engineering their proprietary bios, the Open Hardware PC platform revolution was ignited. Motherboards, memory, adapter cards, etc... could be made by anybody; hardware innovation increased at a rapid pace, and prices plummeted.

That left only two proprietary pieces atop the Open Hardware PC: the Intel CPU and the Microsoft OS.

Intel's been losing ground, especially with clone maker AMD (but, AMD still has to pay Intel royalties for every clone processor).

The OS, though, has proven tough to emulate. Not only does it reach the pinnacle of complexity (where chaos kicks in), but any emulator must chase Microsoft's tail: the emulation will be worthless come Microsoft's next OS patch (i.e. the DRDOS settlement).

Ballmer has recently stated that he thinks Linux is Microsoft's biggest potential competitor.

Could Open Source be a revolution similar to the PC Open Hardware revolution of the early 80's, bringing true competition and innovation to PC software, or is Ballmer's statement just a ruse?

Doug:

We definitely take Linux very seriously.

First of all, Linux is a pretty good collection of technology and is able to do many things as well as UNIX, Windows or other operating systems. It is hard to call it an operating system when in fact "Linux" typically refers to a distribution that includes contributions from hundreds of projects. This is one of the most interesting aspects of Linux but also one of the biggest challenges for Linux users. Lots of technology but little in the way of integration for things like management, internationalization, documentation, installation, data sharing etc. But looking at Linux technically, there is no real revolution here. Linux looks and feels like UNIX and isn't any better than a commercial version of UNIX.

Secondly, the area that gets the most attention in the press is the fact that Linux is "free" and you can get the source. Again, I don't see a major revolution here. The BSD operating system has been free for more than 20 years and you have always been able to get the source as well. Other companies make their source freely available and give away their binaries as well (e.g. Sun). Even free has its costs in the end in the form of user training, support, applications etc. so the fact that the OS is "free" really has little bearing on the fully loaded costs of deploying and using a computing platform.

In the end, it all comes down to solving customers' problems and there is nothing revolutionary about that. Linux will only be hugely successful if it can solve customer problems better than UNIX, Windows and other OS platforms. I know there is a lot going on to enhance Linux but be assured Microsoft is not sitting still - we continue to proactively innovate and continue to be totally customer driven.

7) Copy protection at the hardware level
by iamsure

What are the current, and future opinions at Microsoft about Copy Protection at the hardware level?

If a spec is developed that has TRUE hardware-industry support, would Microsoft utilize it in its software, would it ignore such abilities, or would it give consumers the right to check a box to turn it on or off?

(And if you choose the check option, what would the default be) :

Doug:

There are others at Microsoft who are better equipped to answer this question than me. I know we are continually looking at ways to protect our software but balance it with an acceptable user experience. Software piracy for all commercial software companies around the world is a huge problem. For companies that choose to charge money for their software, there should be ways to ensure they are paid appropriately. I know a lot of Open Source supporters seem to think that all software should be free and unprotected. I think it should be up to the software company or developer. If you want create a product and give it away, it's a free world - that's your choice. But you should also respect that if a developer wants to charge money for their software, they should be allowed to do that and have some legal or technical assistance to protect their property.

8) Licensing
by Phoenix_SEC

Doug, I was reading a review of Windows XP today, and came across some interesting information on the new licensing scheme. From what I read, the XP will use the current hardware configuration to generate an id string (I believe they called it a fingerprint), which you then tell Microsoft, over the phone, to get the license key for your machine. In an end-user environment (especially laptops), configurations change constantly, and thus the user would be calling in regularly to get a new key.

At the same time, several OS developers (e.g., Apple, various Linux distributions) are moving in a very different direction by open-sourcing their operating systems.

How do you feel this difference in policy will affect Microsoft in terms of new computer purchases (e.g., choosing a different OS - even a previous version of Windows) and upgrades to existing systems?

Doug:

Microsoft is a commercial operating system company that makes most of its revenue from selling its software. We charge money for our software. That is how we pay our developers, our support people and others to provide for the ongoing existence of our company. Other operating system companies like Sun, Apple and IBM make most of their money selling hardware or services. These folks can afford to "give away" their software since they use it as a hook for selling more hardware or services. In the end, the customer pays something towards the cost of producing the operating system - either separately or embedded in the cost of the hardware.

The model around Linux is truly bizarre. How much do RedHat or Caldera really make from selling their distributions? It seems not very much. So in order for them to survive they rely on selling proprietary software, support, services, books, tee shirts, penguins etc. Not a very revolutionary business, but in the end they must sell something if they want to survive.

For Microsoft, we simply want to have a fair system to be compensated for the use of our software - much the same way other companies are compensated for the use of their products or services. It is sad that we have seen so much talk in the industry about devaluing the worth of software. Software is core to the computer experience. People create software and it is essential that we pay people for their valuable and creative work.

9) Interoperability
by moonboy

Microsoft representatives are often talking about innovation and it is well known in the developer communities that Microsoft often seeks to "embrace and extend" certain technologies. Examples include Kerberos and Java (although I'm sure there are others.)

Many readers/posters on Slashdot like to joke about this philosophy calling it instead "embrace and extinguish" because it seems that Microsoft, in their "extending" a particular technology, also make it incompatible with the originating technology. This "extending", coupled with Microsofts huge (some would say monopolistic) presence in the marketplace, places the original technology in jeopardy.

In another interoperability area, the SAMBA software suite has encountered more than a bit of difficulty in making it easier for Unix and Unix-like OS's to interoperate with Windows.

My question:

Since your focus at Microsoft seems to be the interoperability of your products with others, could you explain Microsoft's reluctance to "play fair" and adhere to existing standards?

Doug:

First of all, I think it is worth pointing out that standards, on their own, are not substantial enough to fully solve customer requirements. If you look at the UNIX world, the POSIX standards were only a subset of what you needed in an OS. The attempt by the Open Group to define the UNIX 95 and UNIX 98 standards still fell short of what it would take to build a fully functional UNIX operating system. As a result, the UNIX OS vendors took the standards and extended them to add the appropriate functionality they felt they needed to meet their customers' needs. Some of these enhancements were based on other standards but often these features were proprietary code that they did not share with the rest of the world. Why? Because they wanted to have features that they felt were compelling to customers and gave them an edge over their competitors. Extending standards beyond a given specification is a way of life for all software vendors. Show me one product that is built exclusively on a standard specification that does not include code beyond the standard. It doesn't exist.

Microsoft is very standards driven. We are an active participant in many of the standards bodies and have been leading the charge in promoting the use of XML, SOAP and other standards for our .NET initiative. We have not only "embraced" many of the computing platform dejure standards but we have also built products to embrace defacto standards from other operating system platforms. For example, we fully support NFS and NIS in our Services for UNIX product to allow full file sharing and user directory interoperability between our platform and UNIX or Linux platforms.

We should be very clear in defining the difference between standards and proprietary intellectual property as the above question seems to arbitrarily mix the two. When it comes to implementing standards-based software, we respect the standard and expect that our software will fully interoperate with other products that have also implemented the standard. We also develop software that is not based on an established standard - either no standard exists or the standard that exists does not meet our customer requirements. Should we be required to publish the source code or underlying designs of all our software so that anyone can copy it? I would hope not - much the same that companies in other industries have the right to build products and retain the intellectual property rights associated with those products.

10) Microsoft and KDE vs GNOME
by Karma Sucks

Has Microsoft evaluated the latest Linux desktop technologies such as KDE2.1.1/Qt2.3.0 and Ximian GNOME 1.2? Well, we know you probably did because you mentioned KDE/KFM extensively in your anti-trust trial.

The advances that these projects have been making is incredible. And at the same time differences between these projects is amazing. So what is Microsoft's evaluation of the situation. What does Microsoft think of KDE vs GNOME, in terms of the consequences for Microsoft and Linux?

Doug:

We have looked at both KDE and GNOME. There is some interesting work going on there. I personally feel it is too bad that the Linux community can't agree to build on one graphical environment. I had this debate with Bob Young once where he stated it was great that so many desktop options exist for the Linux user. I don't see it. Lots of choices of desktops in the academic community might be good for stimulating many different approaches but having too many choices in a commercial platform environment in the end, confuses developers and users. If the Linux community could take the best thinking from both the KDE and GNOME projects and join forces, they would have the best chance for success. ISVs would have one platform to write applications to and users would have one user experience to learn. However, that is only half the battle. Having a great graphical environment is a good start but commercial application developers need to be convinced that the platform can pay them dividends in future profits. As mentioned in a previous question, if the Linux community wants to attract great applications, then they need to be willing to compensate developers and that means paying for software.

Comments

HOLD IT DOUG!

[HeUnique]

I would like to respond to your comments about buying software, and selling the office to Linux.

Lets start at the end of your comment (I'm reffering to question 4)

You've mentioned Corel Linux. I happend to be one of their beta testers and used Corel Linux for a couple of weeks.

IMHO, the Corel Linux is something like "proof of consept" - yes, they did a nice job of packaging and making it easy for end user - but what a disribution is worth if there is only 1 security fix in 6 months? (go ahead, count the security fixes that debian had in that same branch they made the Corel Linux). Also, what about compatibility? they changed the QT libraries that they were practically useless for avrage programs to be compiled? haven't they heard about compatibility libraries? even RedHat puts compatibility libraries with a new major version of their distributions.
And updates? I didn't see any update besides the 1 security fix there.

So lets summorize this point: people don't just buy or use a product unless they read reviews about it and maybe following it along the way. With Corel Linux track so far - I wouldn't bother to use it.

Now - the porting to GNOME or KDE - come on Doug, you can do better then that! you're using Motif with applications that you port to Unix (or Linux), so whats GNOME or KDE got to do with it? you can use the XDND protocol (along with some others RPC like Sun RPC's) to do OLE. Go ahead - ask the guys at Mainsoft how they're doing it. Besides - all the distributions today are installing BY DEFAULT all the libraries that are necessary to run both GNOME and KDE applications.

As for your point of buying commercial software - You are more then welcome to call VMWare and ask them how they're VMWare for Linux is selling and why they make they're product first to Linux and then to Windows - they sell pretty well. In fact - they have been profitable since they started to sell their product.

So yes, an avrage Linux user doesn't buy lots of commercial software since most of them are free - but do a survey and you'll find that for a good commercial products with a good price - they'll be lots of people and companies who will buy commercial applications.

And another thing - MS attitude to Linux in terms of porting applications to Linux: Microsoft is porting their MSIE and Windows media player to Solaris and HP/UX - why not to Linux? We both know that by any count you have more Linux workstations then there are Sun's and HP Unix workstations COMBINED! so why not port your MSIE and Windows media player to Linux? if you already ported it to other unices - it wouldn't be that hard to move it further along to Linux. Even the GUI stuff can be ported with QT Libraries

my email address on this post is real, please - feel free to correct me or to respond me.

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[Alan]

What if you don't have an ethernet card? I know it's silly to some of us (I have at least two home networks, plus a vpn to the office, and have been modem free for about 2+ years), but there are people that simply don't have a network card. What happens when one of these people buys XP and doesn't have a modem, much less an internet account, how is that going to work for registration?

Re:He doesn't get it.

[Chris Johnson]

Very good point, and very revealing, too: sometimes you forget that to some people, the idea of cooperating and behaving socially is not only bizarre but frightening and possibly dangerous. I think the accepted term for this is 'sociopathic'.

Rather than have open source outlawed as being anti-American *g*, maybe it would be good to question everybody in the country, 'why would people do this?'. Anybody who literally did not understand why people cooperate and behave socially would be locked up as a sociopath, on the assumption that normal people can choose to behave socially or not, but people who don't even understand the concept are a danger to others :)

Same OS on all platforms

[Eric Green]

I know that my own employer's job would be a lot easier if the same OS ran on every platform. There are tons of stupid differences in non-standard areas such as tape drivers that make porting any software that deals with tape drives a pain in the %$@!@. One way we got around that on some platforms was to write our own tape driver, but that adds its own compatibility problems. E.g., on Solaris, we must compile it for: Solaris 8 64 bit SPARC, Solaris 8 32 bit SPARC, Solaris 7 64 bit SPARC, Solaris 7 32 bit SPARC, Solaris 2.6 64 bit SPARC, .....

It would also help if there was a such operating system as "Linux", but that's another issue (grumble grumble).

-E

Interop? Prove it: port backoffice to Solaris

[emil]

Until then, stop wasting the oxygen.

Open Standards, hmm?

[Holgate]

We are an active participant in many of the standards bodies and have been leading the charge in promoting the use of XML, SOAP and other standards for our .NET initiative.</i>

Well, a cursory glance at Dave Winer's <A href="http://www.scripting.com">Scripting News</a> might suggest otherwise. One of the leading exponents of SOAP, and of cross-platform interoperablity, talking fairly frankly about how he's had his fingers burned by "embrace, extend, exclude".

Re:Open Standards, hmm?

[unitron]

Here's the way the above post would have looked if the letters in the tags had been capitalized

We are an active participant in many of the standards bodies and have been leading the charge in promoting the use of XML, SOAP and other standards for our .NET initiative.

Well, a cursory glance at Dave Winer's Scripting News might suggest otherwise. One of the leading exponents of SOAP, and of cross-platform interoperablity, talking fairly frankly about how he's had his fingers burned by "embrace, extend, exclude".

I guess it's just a Slashdot thing.

Re:Microsoft Blinkers (TM)

[Brian Knotts]

But the basic point - that licensing costs mean NOTHING in terms of owning a server is compeltely true.

This is utter, utter horseshit, designed to deflect from the truth of the matter.

I work for a small company (15 employees). I built our web/email/etc. server, and it runs Debian Linux with Interbase.

The machine would need a sysadmin regardless. If it were not me, and the machine ran Windows, an NT monkey would cost at least 75-80% of my salary. A good one would cost just as much as me.

I handle all the "support" for the machine. If you have a bit of knowledge, it's not all that hard. What I can't answer myself, I do through mailing lists.

If we used Microsoft solutions, instead of Free or Open Source Software, let's see what we'd have to pay: Win2K w/ Internet license - $2,000; SQL Server - $40,000 (it's a dual proc system); Exchange - roughly $3,600 for 15 CALs...more when we get more employees

That's nearly $50,000, not counting various development tools that we would probably have to pay for as well.

That is not an inconsequential amount of money, and it is disingenuous to pretend that it is.

Microsoft Blinkers (TM)

[DG]

You know, I don't think they're _ever_ going to Get It.

- He's barely even started when the first FUD hits "Linux is advertised as free", hinting at vague hidden costs lurking out there to bite the unwary (Gee, like MS Tech Support doesn't soak you per incident)

But he misses that it's Free; that universal access to source code that you are *encouraged* to use elsewhere results in an ever-growing knowledge base - which not only lowers the barriers to (development) entry for those so inclined, but also results in ever-growing numbers of people qualified to provide ad-hoc support - which in turn works against the never-quite-voiced "support costs will kill you" FUDbit.

- He complains about competing desktop standards as being "confusing", but he totally misses that being able to pick, choose, and configure my desktop experience is something I WANT - it makes me more productive. And he also doesn't seem to grasp that this can be done per-user, so that the complexity of the desktop can be adapted to whoever logs in to the machine without disrupting the others.

"Any color you want, as long as it's black" went out with the Model T. Why is MS so intent on reviving it?

- He goes on at length about Linux's lack of a "revenue model", but is completely oblivious that Linux doesn't NEED a revenue model. Linux is NOT about selling software, it's about solving problems.

"Linux is one of our primary competitors" - no, it's NOT! "Competitor" assumes that both parties are struggling over some territory in a shared space. MS is about making money by selling software; Linux is about solving computing problems. If people can use Linux to make money along the way, fine, but the success or failure of Linux is not measured on financial scales.

MS has some very smart people working for it, no question about it. If they were totally incompetant, they wouldn't be where they are today. But the more interviews I see with MS personages, the more I realize that they don't understand the nature of of the beast they're facing. They cannot attack the problem, because they don't comprehend it.

Want to know what the dinosaurs said when they saw the first mammal? Ask a MS rep about Linux.

Re:Microsoft Blinkers (TM)

[DG]

Thank you - and your comments are well taken.

It will not be lost on you, however, that the dinosaurs were very successful as long as a certain set of environmental conditions held. Once those conditions were no longer in place, they failed to adapt and died out almost instantly (in evolutionary timescales)

Mammals, while they've been around for less raw time, have demonstrated greater adaptibility - noteably, surviving a few ice ages.

Of course, we have those pesky insects and microbes all over the place that tamper with our Darwinian analogy, but that's niether here nor there. :)

I see it like this: the combination of widespread, high-speed access to the Internet and the return of the concept of software as shared knowledge (instead of for-sale product) is to MS as the asteroid smacking the Yucutan is to the dinosaurs.

The old conditions that encouraged their past success are rapidly disappearing - can they evolve and survive?

We've got ringside seats at least. :)

Re:Microsoft Blinkers (TM)

[nitehorse]

But the basic point - that licensing costs mean NOTHING in terms of owning a server is compeltely true.

Actually, you're wrong. I work as a web designer/programmer/sysadmin for a small web company (100+ clients, though) and it's a fact that we chose FreeBSD for these reasons (in no particular order):

1 - It's Free, dammit! You just can't beat free.
2 - It's OpenSource(tm). I don't hack the kernel, and I'm not skilled enough to try, but if somebody else does, I get the benefits.
3 - It's stable, fast, and powerful. FreeBSD will beat WindowsNT on the same hardware for *anything* that we, as a web design (and now hosting) company can do. [This means web page serving - apache; databases for our clients pages - mysql; scripting languages for dynamic code - perl, php; file serving - ftp... the list goes on)

Now, if NT had been free, I would have been more inclined to consider it; but I'll be damned if I'm going to try to convince my boss to pay $1500+ for an OS that I *know* isn't as stable, reliable, or fast as a FREE one. So cost doesn't have *much* to do with it, but it does (from time to time) have something to do with these kinds of decisions.

Re:Microsoft Blinkers (TM)

[Nailer]

He's barely even started when the first FUD hits "Linux is advertised as free", hinting at vague hidden costs lurking out there to bite the unwary.

Not hidden costs, but certainly a stack of other coists beyond licensing. Eg, quality documentation (sorry, the LDP doesn't fit imnto that category - try getting your parents to use the modem-HOWTO some time costs money. So does support you can have on site at 4:20 AM, who will respond within a half hour. Yes, there's hidden costs to Windows too - its more expensive to own as a server IMO becuase its less reliable, and downtime wates money. But the basic point - that licensing costs mean NOTHING in terms of owning a server is compeltely true.

But he misses that it's Free; that universal access to source code that you are *encouraged* to use elsewhere results in an ever-growing knowledge base - which not only lowers the barriers to (development) entry for those so inclined, but also results in ever-growing numbers of people qualified to provide ad-hoc support - which in turn works against the never-quite-voiced "support costs will kill you" FUDbit.

The quality of free support is limited. It always will be, simply because one cannot wake up a mate on the net at get them on site when the routers down.

He complains about competing desktop standards as being "confusing", but he totally misses that being able to pick, choose, and configure my desktop experience is something I WANT - it makes me more productive.

Yes, but the fact that KDE and GNOME apps aren't compatible (in the sense that drag and drop, menus, panel apps, themes, all common dialoge boxes, and other aspects aren't consistent) means a user must learn the basic of a Linux desktop twice. Competiton doesn't have to mean incompatibility, but riught now, it does.

And he also doesn't seem to grasp that this can be done per-user, so that the complexity of the desktop can be adapted to whoever logs in to the machine without disrupting the others.

You can't eliminate the complexity of File -> Open in Gimp looking and working completely differently from File _> Open on Konqueror.

"Any color you want, as long as it's black" went out with the Model T. Why is MS so intent on reviving it?

Windows has more than one toolkit - MSs MFC, Borlands VCL, and others. They just wrap[ around a common base layer called Win32. This is exactly what Linux should do.

He goes on at length about Linux's lack of a "revenue model", but is completely oblivious that Linux doesn't NEED a revenue model.

But damn stright it *wants* one. A huge reason for the explosion in Linux popularity since 98 was the formation of the Open Source Initiative and its more business friendly message. It doesn't need a softare licensing model beyind the GPL, but it does need a revenue model. X development is being funded by SuSE and VA, GNOME by Eazel and Ximian, KDE by SuSE, Webmin buy Caldera, and more. IF funding for these projects dissappeared the would continue, but at a snails pace. Most larger Open Source projects are commercial in nature.

Linux is NOT about selling software, it's about solving problems.

For Linux companies (and most businesses want commerical support arrangements), it about making money by solving support needs. You're right in that it not about selling software,

"Linux is one of our primary competitors" - no, it's NOT! "Competitor" assumes that both parties are struggling over some territory in a shared space.

The shared space is the server and to a lesser degree the desktop. Just because Linux companies and Microsft have different business models doesn't mean they're not competing.

the success or failure of Linux is not measured on financial scales.

Depends on who you speak to - IMO, its measured by market share.

MS has some very smart people working for it, no question about it. If they were totally incompetant, they wouldn't be where they are today. But the more interviews I see with MS personages, the more I realize that they don't understand the nature of of the beast they're facing. They cannot attack the problem, because they don't comprehend it.

You don't see Windows and Linux competing. IMO, I don't think you comprehend it. IYO, I guess I'm wrong.

Want to know what the dinosaurs said when they saw the first mammal? Ask a MS rep about Linux.

The dinosaurs never asked Mammals to help develop the next versions of dinosaurs (MS tried recruiting via LUGs in Australia recently_. NEither did they hire a team to study mammals in anticipation of the threat.

You're missing the point...

[DG]

Railing against "the Linux public representatives" - true or not - is to miss the point. Linux _does not care_ what its public representatives do. I'll grant that if some of our more visible figures were more... marketable... the process might be sped up in certain circles, but that's just a matter of speed. One year or ten years, it really doesn't matter.

Every line of code written for "Linux" is publically available. Every line of code, no matter what the root justification at the time of writing (be it a personal itch scratched, or a problem solved, or a feature added to improve someone's bottom line) becomes part of the common, freely available whole.

As long as there is still one lone hacker coding and publishing, Linux will continue to advance. The rate of advance may ebb and flow, but the net advancement is unstoppable.

MS's past history with competitors that have mounted challenges to their hegemony have either been to tamper with the core product, (to make it either incompatible or irrelevant) or to purchase the competitor outright (and either co-opt the product or bury it) Niether strategy can work against Linux - Linux does not need MS compatibility for the large part, and can react much faster than MS to API changes in the small part. And as for outright purchase... they can join the party, but they cannot extinguish it.

You simply cannot "fight" Linux using the language and tactics of business. It's like trying to drill an oil well with a chicken - it just doesn't work that way.

Dismissing Linux as "the Anti-Microsoft", as if it were just some sort of form of protest or backlash (of which there is undoubtedly a large amount) is also to miss the point. Around here, (Fortune 100 company) Linux is being installed anywhere and everywhere it can. Why? Because it works. It's good enough for the job, and it marks the freedom from reliance on vendors and proprietary code. The fact that there's no license fees to pay is just gravy (nice gravy, but gravy)

IT departments solve problems. They provide services. They don't care about politics, marketing, market share, or whatever. But every single one of them has (many, many times over) seen a key vendor go under, stop support of a key product, or discovered problems that cannot get fixed (for whatever reason) With Linux, you get source - for EVERYTHING. Having the source means never getting caught with your pants down.

Here's a harsh fact - the VAST MAJORITY of coders, admins, and other computer professionals do not write code for sale. Instead, they are employed by other businesses as support personel. They are problem-solvers. And they are adopting Linux like manna from heaven. I see it all around me. Projects that 5 years ago would have had MS as a direct partner are now being developed on Linux without MS ever being told about their missed opportunity for a sale - and if it wasn't for the enormous amount of legacy data (Spreadsheets and documents) produced on MS tools that only work on MS tools, Linux would be all over the desktops here.

Never be a 10% player? Brother, we passed 10% a long time ago. The "idiotic business ideal" is that we EVER paid money for software. Software is a SERVICE, not a "product" - and Linux is a long overdue correction.

Great interview, plus some of my self promotion..

[defile]

It's nice to see the world from Microsoft's point of view for a change. This interview helped clarify a lot of how I already felt about them. :)

That said, Microsoft seems to be attacking Linux on the grounds that while Microsoft products cost and arm and a leg up front, it will lower your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in the future compared to Linux which costs nothing but takes a "genius" to run.

For example, if you deploy Windows NT, you pay however much for the software licenses to have it installed and you hire an MCSE to run it. The MCSE follows the instructions, point, click, configure. Etc. Not to dimish their work, because some MCSE's actually know a lot about NT, but the checklist goes something like: Restart the application. Restart the computer. If it still doesn't work, install service packs. Reinstall the system or call Microsoft support.

If the admin sucks, fire him and hire a new MCSE. My impression (from dealing with NT when I have to) is that most MCSEs really can't do a unique thing with NT. Non-standard problems are real, major problems simply because the system is so closed and the MCSE isn't knowledgable enough to get into it's guts. While your TCO is lowered because the MCSE's salary is less, he is incapable of solving atypical problems. Thusly, you call Microsoft support. Hopefully, you can make the calls to Microsoft support infrequently enough that it doesn't raise your TCO by any significant factor.

With something like Linux, you tend to need to employ people with greater skillsets, and thusly at a higher salary to get any work done with it. The fact that you can't just fire the admin and look for Linux Certified Systems Engineers means that hiring a new admin will be more difficult. The benefits here are that the Linux admin has greater control over your system, and can probably get more done in less time, and have the solution be a better fit.

It seems that people who need an information infrastructure choose commercial NT oriented stuff. People that are in the actual business of selling technology tend to veer towards Linux because they are developing NEW technology, advancing the state of the art, etc. Linux helps them to do this by being powerful.

I am of the belief that the CIO's segment of computing (as opposed to the CTO's segment) which deploys Windows has a higher TCO because their systems aren't an exact fit for their needs. It's sort of there, but the tiny nuisances in dealing with a solution that isn't an exact fit adds up to significant costs that raise your overall TCO. Hopefully this is where I come in and deliver a kickass Linux solution AND support it, cutting your TCO dramatically. Tired of the blue screen? Give me a call :)

Amendment

[On Lawn]

I have read many very articulate oppositions to the MS man. I suggest reading them to see how to do it. (but I bet I'm preaching to the choir here).


~^~~^~^^~~^

Choice and competition is *bad*

[Per Abrahamsen]

> This seems to be the pervailing attitude among
> those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are
> stupid, so stupid that we must make all their
> decisions for them.

Maybe, but that is not what Doug Miller say.

Smart users want a desktop with a uniform interface, because a uniform interface make you spend less time getting adusted to the quirks of each application, and more time doin actual work.

Currently, if you want a Linux desktop with the best graphical applications, you get a few KDE applications, a few Gnome applications, a Motif application or two, an OPEN LOOK application, a number of Athena applications, a lot of Xlib applications, and maybe some TCL/TK, InterViews and GNUStep tools.

This is bad for users, and also bad for developers who will not know what desktop to target their software for.

Doug is correct, lots of different approaches is good from an academic point of view, but it gets in the way of actually getting work done.

Re:Whatever...

[jafac]

fuck, there's a lot of very GOOD reasons to have the same OS on every platform.

Scalability, being one.
Sure, you want an OS that runs on high-end server platforms, midrange desktops (that doesn't force you into a yearly hardware upgrade due to software bloat), and perhaps even handheld devices. Then you can write your apps more easily to port across the various devices in your enterprise, your support people don't have to learn different tools and standards and document formats and protocol implementations.

It's a dream. Why can't it be a reality? Because of capitalism. The vendors can't screw down the standards and suck optimal profits out of their IP monopoly if systems were that open. Only the customer would benefit from a system like that. The customer, and their customers.

Re:Pathetic Answers

[jafac]

"We also develop software that is not based on an established standard - either no standard exists or the standard that exists does not meet our customer requirements. Should we be required to publish the source code or underlying designs of all our software so that anyone can copy it? I would hope not - much the same that companies in other industries have the right to build products and retain the intellectual property rights associated with those products."

In response to his answer, NO, you shouldn't be REQUIRED (by law) to publish the source code or underlying designs of all your software (so that anyone can copy it). You should be REQUIRED by a strong sense of wanting to fulfill customer desires, to publish source code and underlying designs of all of your software. Not "so anyone can copy it" but so anyone can fix it, extend it, understand and trust it. Hard-coded binary-only software is useful in the limited set of features and functions that were designed into it. But if it's broken, doesn't perform as advertised, or cannot be extended or ported, to fulfil customer requirements, how is that good? It's not! It's shit! All because you're terrified of people freely copying and pirating your software, you can't accept the FACT that most legitimate businesses WILL pay for software, even if it's freely available. You thow chains on the advance of the software, it advances at the pace YOUR dev budget says it can, bugs get fixed at the pace set by Marketing's drive for shiny new features of questionalbe technical merit. Security is an afterthought.
You should be REQUIRED by a sense of honesty, and commitment to the customer to open your software. Keeping it closed leads to no accountability, and skewed requirements based on internal corporate politics, rather than what the user truly needs.

If you close your source, your customers lose a great deal of flexibility, and only the gullible ones feel truly secure. I guess that's taking advantage of the PT Barnum business ethic "sucker born every minute". What a proud corporate legacy.

Re:Typical M$

[jafac]

Really, let's say Microsoft DOES want to do an Office for Linux. How hard would it be to parallel-develop one for GNOME and KDE? Really.

They can USE the fact that there are a lot of very vocal opponents to Microsoft on slashdot as a means of justification for NOT writing a Linux port. We all know the REAL reasons.

We also all know that there are at least as many, if not more, Linux users who still require the use of MS Office, and would glady pay for and buy a Linux version. In fact, I would say that they could probably ignore GNOME, for philosophical reasons that people running GNOME are probably doing so because they are rabidly anti-closed-source, and therefore less likely to pay for a close-source MS Office.

How hard would it be?
Has Microsoft done any marketing research to find out whether they could make any money off of a KDE LInux port?
I'm sure they haven't bothered, because would just weaken their OS monopoly. What's the point?

Well, the point would be, if they DID do a Linux port, they could also support an implementation on Solaris, and Mac OS 10, and BSD. Stuff in the Unix world ports around VERY easily. Sure, they may have to hack it in as an XFree86 interface on Mac OS, but obscene hacks have never stopped them on the Mac side before. . . (or Solaris, for that matter, as anyone who has used the abomination called IE for Solaris knows.)

Re:Blah blah blah

[jafac]

no. it takes 5 minutes to figure out how to drive a car. The long training and practice comes with learning to drive a car IN TRAFFIC.

Re:Blah blah blah

[jafac]

TiVo *is* kind of hard to use.

Re:Why did we ASK the questions?

[jafac]

I'm not biased anti-microsoft. They really do, empirically suck.

Re:About Microsoft

[jafac]

lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Re:Pathetic Answers

[jafac]

My company has a software package that was marketed at Enterprise accounts for $450. Our marketing research indicated that IT managers did not take us seriously, because of the low "commodity market" price, and determined a lower threshold of $2000. The price was raised to $1995, and I'm not shitting you, sales skyrocketed.

Of course, take this all with a grain of salt, because I'm not revealing my employer's name for obvious reasons.

Why would they pay for Open Source? Because Microsoft asks for legitimate $$$ for a legitimate license to use the software. Open Source has nothing to do with it. Today, nobody's stoping companies from borrowing someone's Win2k CD and installing it on their machine and entering in a SN they got from Hotline. Microsoft still gets their money, because businesses want to be legitimate. No accountant says, "say, why did we pay for solution B here? We didn't HAVE to." Just because some software's source code is open doesn't mean it's legal for a customer to just violate licensing. That may be possible for the GPL, and I don't care. I'm not saying MS should go GPL, I'm saying that MS should open it's source code, for the obvious benefits it can provide to it's customers.

My point is, if MS truly was oriented to customer needs, they'd do this.

Some points ...

[Helmholtz]

First of all, many thanks to Doug for his candid and non-obscenely-lawyerized comments/answers.

Something I would like to point out, however is the interesting non-mention of the GPL. "free Open Source software" is often mentioned, but never is the fact that the power of the "Linux movement" if I can use that term is pretty firmly rooted in the GPL. While I agree that RMS can come off as very strong most of the time, I do think it is significant that most software designed for Linux is not only available free of charge, and with the source code, but that it is protected by the GPL. This is the major difference, in my mind between the BSDs and Linux. Anyone can use BSD code (stuff like, oh I don't know ... a TCP/IP stack for instance), incorporate it into their code, and then hide it.

Microsoft has been in the profitable licenscing business for a long time now, and I think that while they say that Linux is their number one "target" right now, what they really mean is that the GPL and all its implications is their target, for it effectively competes on the philosophical level with Microsoft's licenscing stategies ... or at least I think it does. Many peole don't care about any of this, but they will in future. When the US Consitution was drafted up the Bill of Rights as we know it wasn't seen as something that was needed ... but some of the more extremeist of the drafters foresaw that it would become important in the future. I think the GPL should be looked at in the same light. Many think it's try to defend something that isn't that important right now ... and that may be true, but far in the future it is going to be extremely important. And the general public has shown time and time again that they often don't think about the far reaching consequences until it is way too late. IMO, the Microsoft licensing philosophy exploits this.

Also, when it comes to a single desktop environment, I think that compatibility would be nice, but that GNOME or KDE or any of the hundreds of individual window managers should not "concede" and merge together into a "unified linux desktop". That is the purpose of the distribution in my mind ... already some distributions, like Mandrake, default to a specific environment. If you are saavy enough to change it, hooray, if you don't want to futz with it, hooray.

In Brave New World stability was chosen at the cost of choice. Having a wide degree of choice does cause problems, does make some people feel bad emotions (anxiety, frustration, powerlessness), but I see the alternative of having the maddening hordes take the easy road of numbing happiness as a danger, not a boon.

Well, I guess that's about all I have to say about it. Thanks for reading.

Re:Some points ...

[Spyky]

My response to the subject: (feel free to flame, correct, mod me down for being a karma whore, whatever)

1) I think many people who are familiar with both Microsoft Windows and various versions of Unix from an IT perspective will disagree with his statement that Windows has "better interoperability today than any other OS out there." Interoperability requires two-ways of information exchange. Windows products do allow you to connect them to nearly any type of server, Unix, Netware or otherwise, however, using a Windows server in an environment with Unix workstations is quite a bit more difficult. The Samba development team has had to reverse engineer with little or no help provided from Microsoft. Is that interoperability? It is if you have a one sided definition of interoperability.

2) Linux has been very viable in the past and I'm sure it will continue to thrive in the future.

3) Security: One of the largest drawbacks of a commercial software enterprise is that they are only accountable to their customers if a product is found to have a security flaw. In a sense, there is a certain amount of "security through obscurity" in any closed source product. When a security flaw is discovered, the closed source commercial software enterprise reacts in two distinct and simultaneous ways: assure the users that the problem is not serious, two issue a fix as quickly as possible. Damage control. There is also the ongoing effort to ensure that any security flaws are fixed (silently, if possible) but real effort to fix flaws in a timely fashion isn't made unless the flaw is publicly known about. This begs the question, what security flaws are present in the software, and also known to the company but information about such flaws is certainly not released to the public? Only if the flaw is found and exploited does the company have any reason to acknowledge it. Compare this to the open source software security model. Since the code is open, anyone interested can observe the code for security flaws, any flaws discovered are found much more quickly, and fixed much more quickly then any closed source product can be. This is a result of the sheer number of developers ("eyes") working on open source products. This practice has been shown to be incredibly sucessful in OpenBSD.

4) I agree that there is likely little economic incentive to release Microsoft software for Linux, and likely other Unices. It would be nice if the DOC standard were made publicly available in full, because developers in the Unix world would be able to create a product which could "interoperate" with documents and spreadsheets created on the latest versions of Office. Instead, developers are constantly playing "catch up" by reverse engineering their specifications, which as features, some of dubious value, are added, becomes significantly more difficult. Microsoft understandably has no incentive to do any such thing. Unfortunately, as I feel productivity applications like office have generally shown the least amount of sophistication when created under the open source development model. We'll see...

5) I think the services model is very interesting and I certainly wonder were it will take commercial software enterprises. Open source software doesn't fit very well in this model. Why would you pay to "use" software if you have access to the source? I see Microsofts strategy as a possible way for them to gain significantly more control over the software and ensure their revenue stream. What commensurate benefit there is for customers remains to be demonstrated. Interestingly, the idea of distributed applications (one install, used on many networked machines) is hardly a new one. It dates well back to the era of timesharing mainframe computers. Any Unix system using the X Windows system has this capability natively. Since all display information received by the X Windows Server can come from any source, the actual machine, or a server across the country, the only limitation is bandwidth and the computing power of the server. Microsoft is attempting to leverage this model (as have companies like Citrix already) to use this feature with Windows based servers and windows based desktop machines. I will be incredibly impressed and pleased if Microsofts software will allow it to operate on *any* desktop (Unix, mac or otherwise). Since the software is essentially abstracted from the hardware, this step is technically quite feasable, much more possible then porting an application like Office to Unix. Likely, Microsoft will choose to protect their control of desktop operating systems by not developing this software to interoperate with Unix based systems. But of course, I may be wrong.

6) I think he is downplaying the advantages of Linux over other Unices in this response. In addition to being open source (which has many associated advantages, not least of which is that it is free) it also has a *very* large amount of applications available, albeit few good productivity (Office-type) applications. This is partly because the core of Linux users are developers, and there is less demand for comprehensive productivity apps. The fact that Linux development (the development of the kernel, and associated software/tools) as a whole has no economic stimulus (its done for free, and provided for free) and that it is open source has a significant advantage in just how much developers are able "innovate". It is not possible, or at least technically difficult, to change closed source products without "breaking" many other closed source products that rely on it. In the case of an operating system like Microsoft Windows, or a chipset like Intels x86 platform, it has taken many many years to make small evolutionary change. Witness the change from Windows 9x to Windows NT. Its taken years. Changes in chipsets are even more difficult, as Intel has found. Hopefully before too much longer, more then 20 years after it was outdated, the x86 will finally be replaced. Open source products like Linux are significantly more capable of "rolling" with the punches and adapting to technological innovations. An open source product is able to take advantage of it far quicker then the lumbering behemoth of closed source applications. Witness the fact that Unices are available on nearly ever chipset known to man (Sega Dreamcast included).

7) I'm dissapointed to hear that Microsoft was one of the supporters of hardware implemented copy protection in the new ATA standard. This seems to be self serving rather than customer oriented

8) Software protection schemes have been tried over and over again. Workable models are few and far between, and many of them a nusiance to the customer. The need for such schemes on closed source products is an advantage for open source software, since such protection schemes are unecessary. If Redhat were in Microsofts position (installed on 85% of desktop computers) Linus Torvalds wouldn't be a penny richer (at least not directly) and there probably wouldn't be any billionares at Redhat (which sells services and support, not penguins), but software developers can and do still get paid under this model. Just not in billions. Open source and closed source development models can and should coexist. But utter domination of the software world by a private software enterprise is not possible.

9) I have no problem with extending a publicly available specification, provided: other companies/individual software developers are allowed their say in the extensions of the specification, and any such specification is also released in a public manner. Closed source companies that throw temper tantrums (I'm not in any way suggesting that such behavior is even typical and certainly not confined to Microsoft alone) and go off and develop their own standard without the support or input of the community do not get my respect. When software that does not adhere to existing standards (that are available) for whatever reason, is created by a company that dominates the market, issues of anti-trust inevitably come into play. At the very least it is unethical to be in such a position and release software that reduces consumer choice in such a manner. If the goal is truly interoperability and to be "customer driven" then such a goal should outweigh the economic drawbacks such an action would cause.

10) Agreed. Whether or not the goal of the Linux community is to attract great software applications that are also commercial software applications is a subject of some debate.

Spyky

Really now...

[Svartalf]

I'd think that it was a close call with that- pretty much a push in my opinion.

While they're on "more" machines, it seems that a LOT of those machines are not really in use (As in extant machines- not really pertinent to this discussion) and that there's a lot of "requested" ports for architechtures that Linux seems to be stably running on already or there's ports already in beta stages...

Machines like the s390. There's no completed version for the s390 per the netBSD pages.

Machines like the AS400. There's no mention of that on the netBSD pages.

Embedded machines like the Versalogic VSBC-6 (x86, EBX form-factor, specialized hardware)- *BSD doesn't, to the best of my knowlege have device support for the on-board industrial I/O on the VSBC-6. Any distribution using the 2.2.X Linux kernels does- I know, I wrote a driver for it and officially maintain it.

I think you'll find that the original poster referred taking a source of an app from an x86 Linux box and compiling it for execution under Linux s390 and IBM's experimental wrist computer- and expect to have the app run largely as it's supposed to. You can't do that with netBSD- at least not right now.

Yes, netBSD sits on "more" platforms. More doesn't equate to better in all cases.

Re:Typical M$

[juri]

Can isn't the same as actually doing it. Yes, the code is out there, but there isn't very much cross-pollination, AFAIK, at least not from KDE to Gnome. Much of the code isn't directly transferrable and I think there's a bit of NIH working against it too. Of course you can run KDE and Gnome programs at the same time, but I don't really know how often that happens.

As for narrow-mindedness: Yes, it's nice to have a choice and competition is good as he himself pointed out in another part of the interview. However, he was mainly talking from the POV of a commercial developer who has to decide which environment to support when creating/porting a product. And it can be a problem: how can you be sure that when you choose KDE libs, the Gnome users won't shun your product, or the other way around? Besides, you can't be nowhere near sure that a user actually has the needed desktop environment on her Linux box.

Don't be blinded by the fact that he works for Microsoft. He does have a valid viewpoint and things aren't perfect in the Linux community. The current situation does have it good points, but there's the flipside, too.

Re:About Microsoft

[Dr. Evil]

I agree with your sentiment, but you're not right about IIS... per-seat agreements do not apply to anonymous web connections.

I'm fairly certian if you gave all those people logins and authenticated them through SSL, then you would be in trouble. I've never done it so I've only read that part of the EULA in enough detail to know it does not apply to me.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[Keith Russell]

This seems to be the pervailing attitude among those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are stupid, so stupid that we must make all their decisions for them.

This seems to be the prevailing attitude among those "at" Linux and elsewhere: users are smart, so smart that they can figure out what ever we throw at them.

See how extremist everyone can get when Microsoft and Linux get mentioned in the same room? Doug makes a perfectly valid point about the usability and out-of-box experience of the typical Linux distro, and the knee-jerk reaction is to act like he's banging his shoe on the table, shouting "We will bury you."*

I'll take the typical developers' cop-out and say that it's a training issue. Too much of what people need to get the job done, and not enough of the overall metaphor. Here's a desktop, here's the icons, here's the menu, here's a folder tree. It doesn't matter if you use GNOME, KDE, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Win95, Win2K, WinXP, or WinPDQ. User interface design has only been moving in drips and drabs over the past five years or so. The biggest culture shock involves the mouse button count. :-)

I agree with Doug that too many choices, too soon, will confuse the average user. I also agree with Bob Young that, for the experienced user, choice is good. Either way, as long as there's competition, there won't be a monoculture.

Please, the world isn't that stupid.

I don't mean to be so nihilistic, but the world isn't as smart as you think. At the very least, it's far too impatient to frell around with downloading ALSA packages for their laptop's sound system, when Windows 2000 "just works."

"User-friendly" and "powerful" are not mutually exclusive. They just take more work.

*: ObAYB: All your desktop are belong to us.

We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead

Re:Some comments

[PCM2]

>Finally, Microsoft may port a few programs to Linux. The most likely thing: Internet Explorer.

And if it's a robust, stable browser that lets me view 90% of the Web sites out there, complete with all their JavaScript, ECMAscript, and (what?!) VBScript gee-gaws on the Linux platform, then I will use it.

The greater glory of Konqueror/Nautilus/Mozilla/Galeon/whatever be damned, I just want to surf the Web.

Think they'll port it to LinuxPPC?
--

Re:Pathetic Answers

[PCM2]

Java (using one of those two refered to) was VERY well defined, and there are many good implimentations. What was 'incomplete' about this standard which forced them to break it. And not only do they modify the standard, but they can't even impliment it correctly without a discusting number of bugs.

I just don't buy this line of reasoning.

Java being a "standard" is just as much a figment of Sun Microsystems's marketing hype as the preceding interview is representative of Microsoft's marketing hype. Java isn't a "standard"! It's a product of Sun Microsystems! Just because they let other people play in their sandbox doesn't mean they have a purpose any higher than gaining market share.

So Microsoft foiled their market share bid, eh? Well,boo hoo. Looks like Sun's got that situation remedied now, though. So I suppose you're all going back to writing 100% Pure Java apps now?

Last time I was involved with a Java project for the desktop, it went from being 100% Pure Java, to being mostly-portable Java, then finally to being an application that could run only on the MS Java VM (meaning that in order to run it, you needed IE installed). The reason? The "pure" Java solution wasn't up to snuff.

Fair enough -- you can say that the people who spec'ed out this application should have known better. They should have understood Java engineering better to either have picked a different language, or else to design it in such a way that it didn't need Microsoft-specific Java extensions. That may be true, that may not -- I wasn't there for that part of it, and I'm not enough of a Java guru myself to make that call.

What I do know is that, using the Microsoft JVM, they could make it work. It would do what they wanted it to do, and it would do it fast enough that perofrmance was acceptable for the intended user base.

So ... "embrace and extend" is evil? How so? Microsoft took the Sun Java specification and further developed it so that Java applications could run more efficiently in more real-world application situations. Sure, they only did it for Windows. But what the hell did you expect?

If you wanted Java to run more efficiently in more real-world application situations on all platforms -- well, isn't that Sun's job? They're the ones waving the flag for portability, aren't they? "Write once, run anywhere," right? Well, then they should deliver it, already!!

I do think Microsoft has carried on with some fairly nasty business practices. But sorry, I just don't think you can hold up Java as the best example.
--

Re:Pathetic Answers

[johnnyb]

Actually, the main problem of MS's Java was that they had added methods to some interfaces. This might seem like it's not a problem, except that if you had a class that implemented an interface, but Microsoft added a function, then your code no longer works. I don't remember which ones they extended, but they were fairly out-of-the way and little used. However, the concept was quite alarming. In addition, their Visual J++ program would spit out non-Java code by default, unless the user specifically enabled pure Java output. This means that there wasn't any particular reason to not spit out Java code (since it was just a switch to turn it back on), but they decided to do it just the same.

As for JNI, that is very, _very_ important, especially if you develop Java extensions. Without a standard JNI, a software developer would have to develop extensions for multiple VMs on the _same_ platform. Blech.

RMI was also important to anyone wanting to do distributed development.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[johnnyb]

As for compiling programs, this is not a requirement for Linux users. I know a lot of Linux users who have no idea how to do this. If you are compiling from source, that probably means you are wanting a development version of some code, and thus classifies you as a techie. If you aren't a techie, just do what you would do for every other operating system - wait for the release.

You don't have to be a specialist to use Linux. Mandrake makes it fairly simple. The only confusing thing about Linux is where you should store your files. And that takes about 15 minutes to learn.

Re:About Microsoft

[johnnyb]

This is called "Trickle Down" economics, and as was seen during the Reagan era, it doesn't work. The truth is, the rich will keep getting richer, and the poor will keep getting poorer.

I don't know whose numbers you were using, but during the Reagan era, there was far more "class mobility" (people moving up the economic ladder) than ever before him. Trickle-down actually did work.

Re:KDE and GNOME

[johnnyb]

I think this speaks to the whole idea of "Linux" being one thing. "Linux" is a technology, not an operating system. RedHat is an operating system. To say "Linux" is an operating system that should be compatible with every other "Linux" system is like saying "BSD" is an operating system that should be compatible with every other "BSD" system. When in fact this is not correct. There is no reason why Mac OS X should be compatible with FreeBSD even though they use the same Kernel. "BSD" is a technology used in OS X, but that doesn't mean that it should retain compatibility with anything else.

RedHat is an operating system. Mandrake is an operating system. SuSE is an operating system. Linux is not. The fact that you _can_ make an application run on all of these systems is an interesting side-effect of the fact that they use the same kernel. However, to think that this is absolutely necessary is silly.

Re:Good point but...

[johnnyb]

THAT IS THE ENTIRE POINT. You can't make a software package that is good for everyone and still easy to use. That's like trying to make a single kitchen appliance that does everything a kitchen should do. Last I looked, real kitchens had a lot of disparate devices.

The problem is, current industry practices aren't quite compatible. For example, doing so, as you have pointed out, segments the market into a bunch of niche markets. However, that's not a real problem. In fact, it's more of an opportunity for new markets than anything else. Think about it, a _lot_ of people buy game consoles, even though they have computers. And there's not a lot of difference. The main difference is that the game consoles are geared to their users. It's much easier to just sit back and play a console game than to get one working on your computer.

For techies who want to do everything, there will always be a PC. However, I think people are finding out that a PC is just way too much computer for the average person. The key to reducing complexity is not having a giant operating system that takes care of it for you (and thus usually does a poor job), but to actually reduce complexity in the total system. I say this about both Windows and Linux. Having an "easy-to-use" Linux system will still be difficult to use for most people. Not because its Linux, but because PCs are too general to be simple.

Re:Blah blah blah

[johnnyb]

An operating system is substantially different than a car or a toaster. Can you make your toaster do arbitrarily many things, or interact with arbitrary components? I don't think so. And, actually, in "appliance" settings, Linux does extremely well. Take the Tivo, for instance. Noone says the Tivo is hard to use. That's because, like a car or a toaster, it has only one use.

When you come to something inherently complex, trying to act as if it were simple causes more problems than it solves. Granted, Linux swings farther in the other direction than it should. However, when the OS starts doing things "for you", without telling you, it complicates the issues, and confuses the user even more. Users are very able to follow instructions. Surprisingly so. The problem is that when a system tries to out-guess you, you can't just hand someone instructions - they end up fighting the system.

What needs to happen, both in Windows and Linux, is to have a more "appliance-oriented" attitude. The OS, as it is currently conceived, is a total waste of time for the average consumer. What needs to happen is for many more specialized "appliance-type" computers/OSs to spring forth. Linux is the optimal system for this, because of its componentization and customizibility.

This is the concept of the iMac, and it is truly the best way to go. For example, you need a "Grandma" machine, that doesn't allow you to add any devices or software, and just incorporates the functionality a "grandma" would want. Also, it should be organized based on the use patterns of the average "grandma". The "grandma" should have no conception of a separation of software and hardware, it should just be a complete package.

The same can be done for business terminals, graphic artists, and so forth. If you insist on having a more "general", "pluggable" interface, well, that's for techies. Any attempt to dumb that down to the "idiot" level will cause more problems than it solves. That doesn't mean that we should make them as complex as possible, but "dumbing them down" isn't the solution either. Consumers just want to get things done. They don't want to mess around endlessly with their systems.

Window's one graphical environment

[ChaosDiscord]

I personally feel it is too bad that the Linux community can't agree to build on one graphical environment.

Yes, Linux needs to grow up and have a single, consistant interface, just like Windows. Look at the many products which accept the need for conformance under Windows. Products like Softimage (example) (though they may have an advantage, being owned by Microsoft for a while), LightWave [6] (example, check out the conforming buttons and tabs), and Kai's Power Tools (example)

Media players naturally conform to the standard Windows look and feel. Winamp led the way. Soon there were competitors like K-Jofol and Sonique which felt that they could make their mp3 players conform even better to Windows GUI standards. RealPlayer quickly followed. Apple realized they couldn't rehash the Macintosh interface for QuickTime, and delivered a version that perfectly matched the Windows standard. Not to be out done, Microsoft released a new version of the Windows Media Player which perfectly complied with the Windows standards for interfaces.

Even the next version of Windows, Windows XP, has been carefully crafted to conform to existing standards. With such strong and unwavering leadership, no one would even think of using an alternate shell or replacing the entire widget set.

Thank you, Microsoft, for getting the world to agree on one graphical environment. Thanks to your efforts to end competition, there is no risk of the Windows platform fragmenting into a pile of inconsistent applications, each making their own rules.

Re:Window's one graphical environment

[MeNeXT]

Has this ever happened to you?

The sytem is running no problemo....oups... while you were not wathcing something happens, dont know what but something must have happened...since everything seems to be OK. the settings are fine but .... you are unsable to do thing A. So you spend a couple of hours looking over your settings everything is fine..then you start asking yourself if you changed something. NO you didn't touch it. So after reinstalling Thing A and it still doesn't work you decide to backup, format, and reinstall. You enter the same info as before and everything works again...but you just lost 5 hours.

OR

You buy this new do hicky of a thing, doesn't matter what you install it on your system then you boot...so the OS finds it but it selects the wrong driver...you put in the Hardware driver that the manufacturer included with the thing and it can't find the driver for your thing...so you waste a coulple of hours and still...but you see the dam driver on the #$%^&* floppy and still you can't chose it... so you decide to add new harware and choose from list pop in your floppy and install... you restart the system... and now it sees it...but you have a conflict with the one that your OS initially saw...so you remove it and restart...

I have more many more...did you guess the OS. It's you friendly Window$...so user friendly in fact that most users need the same Linux/FreeBSd/Unix techie to figure it out.

so for you who think that Windows is so easy all I have to say is THANK YOU MICRO$OFT for all the MONEY YOU HAVE MADE ME. 'cause when I Install FreeBSD/Linux I only get calls 2 to 3 years later due to harware failure or upgardes...When will the OO comunity solve this one..I hope it's after I retire.

Re:Window's one graphical environment

[tswinzig]

Wow, you've found a dozen exceptions to the rule. You left out the links to the thousands or hundreds of thousands of windows applications that use all the standards, and are intuitive because of this. Even when you run these applications under XP, they will look like Windows XP applications.

There's a big difference between the KDE/Gnome type battles, and in the Windows world where you get some renegade applications that use their own interface.

Re:Window's one graphical environment

[ibullard]

He said "graphical environment" not "graphical interface."

You're right, interfaces aren't consistant across all applications. However, they all use the same environment to get the interface they desire.

On Linux, you have multiple environments in which to create the interface for your application. You can create an interface that looks exactly like a program running on windows but that doesn't mean you can run it in the same environment.

Emphasis added for clarity.

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[drig]

(And as a suggestion, change the ID to the computer's MAC address. These things change a lot less frequently [How often does a hardware hacker completely change his ethernet card? Not often.])

Actually, as a laptop user, I have 2 ethernet cards which I switch out. When I'm on a 10baseT network, I use a standard NE2K. When I'm on a wireless network, I use an Orinico WaveLAN card.

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[drig]

The point wasn't that Windows can't support multiple NICs. The point was, that if you restrict software to running on a machine with a particular MAC (based on the NIC), then said software will fail when I change to a different NIC. The original poster said that people don't change NICs. I was saying I may change my NIC multiple times a day, depending on where I'm accessing the LAN from.

Re:Who picked these questions?

[gelfling]

Ya know anytime I ask questions like that on /. I get dinged for flamebait -

What about - "why or does Whistler impose licencing restrictions that are absurb, prohibitively expensive and don't insure us of anything other than kowtowing to MS - - How does MS actually fucking propose to do anything that helps us administer desktops?"

Is that too fucking obscure for you buddy? Or are too comfortable sitting in the big fucking easy chair carping about your technical fucking purity?

Re:You may be a Microsoft Drone if...

[Art Tatum]

He could have answered "We're the dominant player in the desktop OS market space, so obviously it adds more value to our competitors products when they make their offerings work well with ours than making ours work well with theirs." That would have been honest and nobody would have faulted him for it.

Actually, he *was* being honest--didn't you hear him say that they were in business to make money? <grin>

Computers are still too hard to use

[Cato]

"Windows offers a friendly environment that makes it easy to use software."

I've recently been getting my uncle, who is in his eighties, into using a Windows PC.

This is the first time he's used a computer, though he has used keyboards before, and it's made it clear to me that, for the average person, *using computers is still too hard*. It's easy to forget this when you've been using computers much of your life, and are surrounded by basically PC literate people at work.

Windows is certainly easier to use than DOS, but I've had to simplify the Windows setup so much that I could do this equally well under Linux. The only reason I didn't is that my uncle's friends provide local tech support, and they know Windows. Also, he can get local training in using computers.

One of the hardest things was the atrociously complex interface to dialup networking in Windows NT, and the way IE4's Offline/Online setting is shared with Outlook Express - I ended up buying a shareware dialer so that I could set up Netscape as the browser, not for ideological reasons but so that it wouldn't mess up the Outlook Express offline settings (which make it easy to compose email offline).

The lessons for Linux or any Windows alternative are:

- focus on real ease of use with non-PC literate users (Redmond Linux is getting quite close to this with task-based menus and so on - see http://www.redmondlinux.org/). Microsoft is pretty good at this, but maybe Eazel and Ximian type companies will run their own usability labs.

- incorporate natural language and voice input technologies - the keyboard and mouse are still barriers for some people

- settle on a single 'default' GUI, so that local training and support can be obtained without the 'I only know GNOME' syndrome

If my uncle lived round the corner, Linux would have worked well, but supporting someone 100 miles away solely through the phone and dialin is just too hard.

Re:Computers are still too hard to use

[zuvembi]

If my uncle lived round the corner, Linux would have worked well, but supporting someone 100 miles away solely through the phone and dialin is just too hard.

My mother lives about 2 hours away (75 miles + 35 minute ferry ride). But she's been getting along with Linux fine. She has Windows on her computer also, but she doesn't run it anymore because she can get everything she needs to do done on Linux.

I suppose part of the appeal (to me) of setting up Linux for her was the remote management features. Granted, I haven't had to do this since it hasn't broken, but it's a comfort to me that I can ssh into her box and do maintenace if I have to.

She's at the three month mark, and is now bugging me to find her a decent book so she can do some sysadmin stuff herself. Any suggestions from anyone? (Something that covers KDE & SuSE with pretty pictures would be nice)

Academic computing.

[Lemmy Caution]

Remember, most Unix vendors charge more for their systems than Windows vendors, and full-on Unix-based solutions are costlier than Windows ones. Virtually all of the examples you are citing come from academic computing - Unix is more respected in academic CS environments, and academic projects are more likely to be released freely. GIMP, Postgres, Linux, BSD, Mosaic and Tex all had roots in academia - the only major open projects I can think of that didn't are Mozilla (which, remember, has some roots in Mosaic) and Apache (which also began life, I think, in the original NCSA httpd, although I may be wrong.)

You want to promote high quality free software? Promote higher education! Make it more exciting to work in academia than in the private sector!

on #8

[Locutus]

It is sad that we have seen so much talk in the industry about devaluing the worth of software. Software is core to the computer experience. People create software and it is essential that we pay people for their valuable and creative work.

Now come on. What did they do to Netscape by giving Internet Exploder away for free?

This just shows you, MicroSerfs are hippocrites(sp?) and don't be fooled by their use of the word OPEN. It means something totally different in Redmond.

LoB

Re:on #8

[Locutus]

Oh, I'm sorry did I say they just gave Internet Exploder away for free? What I meant was THEY FORCED IT DOWN EVERY WINDOWS USERS #&^!#%^'ing THROAT AND THREATENED EVERY OEM IF THEY DIDN'T COMPLY. That is what I meant.

And now the poor little MicroSerfs are crying that people are devaluating software. Well, fork you Bill Gates and company and that high horse your riding too.

Since you replied to my post, how dare you assume I believe all software should be free!

LoB

Re:on #8

[Locutus]

Are you THAT naive? I'd say 90% of the NON techies I know who have PC's wouldn't even consider installing another browser because they already have one. PERIOD. If that doesn't tell you that forcing applications on users via pre-installs is the same as eliminating most, not all, of the distribution of anybody else's application serving the same purpose.
The browser is an internet/networking application and paying $50 for what a browser does is not unreasonable. That money could have producted a better product very quickly but we'll never know that because Micro$oft used its MONOPOLY MONEY to fund it's browser application and all but eliminate all other browsers via forced OEM pre-installs. Just look at the stat's, 80% Exploder....... just over 10% for Nav/Communicator.

They, M$, has done the same with Java. They knew they didn't want Java on client PC's going out the OEM door. The only way to stop that was to stop Netscape and fool the OEM's into using a corrupt M$ JVM to keep that precious DOS application called Windows protected.

bla bla blah. They are so F$CKed this could go on for months and you say Tony yada-yada didn't force you to keep your preinstalled browser. BFD IMO

LoB

Re:on #8

[SuiteSisterMary]

Slashdottie: SOFTWARE WANTS TO BE FREE! Microsoftie: Oh, ok. Here's IE for free. Slashdottie: HOW DARE YOU RUN NETSCAPE OUT OF BUSINESS?!

Re:on #8

[dfalgoust]

First of all: settle down, you'll live longer.

As I noted, there are legitimate reasons to dislike Microsoft. To the extent that they prevented OEM's from including Netscape, they are rightly condemned.

But simply including IE as a part of the OS isn't a terrible thing; indeed, it is to be applauded. It provides the consumer with greater value for his OS dollar, and it does not prevent a consumer who is so inclined from grabbing Netscape if the consumer thinks he would prefer that browser to the one provided by Microsoft.

If you're going to condemn Microsoft simply for making a browser part of the OS, then you also have to condemn them for providing memory management, disk defragmentation, and screen savers with the OS, since all of these once had to be purchased separately.

Always & Never

[ch-chuck]

Microsoft has always been a customer focused ...
The Mac crowd has always been a special ...
We have always made an effort to provide highly functional ...
... more than 20 years and you have always been able to get the source ...
"Never say never." Microsoft is continually looking ...

<yawn>

Nothing very enlightening here - pretty much standard Msft party line public relations stuff, like a politicians meaningless july 4 feel-good speech then heading back to the office for more backstabbing, bribes, payoffs, graft, corruption, vote fraud, etc.

</yawn>

Re:Security Vs Usability

[Si]

Also, personally speaking, I must declare an interest. I much prefer using Linux to Windows because it is easy to use and allows doesn't want me to be an idiot and try to do everything for me. The last time I used windows it wouldn't let me recompile my kernel so that I could have working sound and access my linux partition.
Except it didn't work. So I was screwed over.

Re:Hold your ground; don't be fooled.

[proberts]

> nor does it help pay the bills for many people.

It's software, as it becomes more commoditized, it won't help pay many bills in and of itself.

Products and services help pay the bills, no matter what flavor they are. You can charge for the "product" that is software, or you can use it as a loss-leader. You can also do it as well, or better as a hobbiest than as a professional. That makes the software itself much less valuable, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as that affordability makes it easier for people who need the software to have it.

FWIW: I do INFOSEC, so Windows helps pay my bills more than the Open Source OS' that I use to do my work every day. I'm not sure that's the positive thing that you seem to paint it as.

Paul

Re:Does anyone here develop software?

[proberts]

It may be true of most people, however there are a lot of people writing a heck of a lot of code gratis. If *all* software were free (as in beer), not many companies would go out of business which weren't ISVs or Microsoft, or software consulting houses. If it were all required to be Open Source but not free very few at all would go out of business (companies like SuSe and RedHat open source all their software and they seem to be in business, so you see it's possible to do.)

The only externally used software I've written for my current employer was given away. Eventually software will reach the same stage of life as stock photography- almost all the pictures necessary are already taken- what will happen to your economics then?

Remember, unless you're playing, software isn't an end, it's a tool. If hammers were free, only the hammer makers and sellers would be impacted. The fact that there are very few commercial DNS server products on the market, for instance, doesn't mean people won't sell non-generic name service solutions or go hungry.

The opposite question is why spend years paying for a product if, after you've purchased it, the developer has made the fair value from you?

Finally, not everyone who is being paid to write software _should_ be. Narrowing that field down wouldn't be a bad thing in all cases.

Doug's point is only key if you're a one trick pony with only one way to make a living, otherwise it's not a very important point.

I spent almost 5 years at an ISV (mostly as an assembly language programmer), and let me tell you- "product" code is nowhere near as lucrative as custom code, which would be cheaper if most of it was already built- but the fact that VB programmers make more than teachers isn't necessarily a good thing.

Look at the stock photographic industry and understand what happens if you've only got one skill and the market shifts to commoditize it and be full of talented ameatures who don't mind making a tiny ammount or no money producing as good or better material.

Paul

He doesn't get it.

[panda]

He makes it very clear that he doesn't understand the nature of Free Software and GNU/Linux when he says, The model around Linux is truly bizarre. How much do RedHat or Caldera really make from selling their distributions?

He is focusing on the busines side of things, on the competitive side. He reflects the Micro$oft ethos and figures the only thing that matters are the other corporations and businesses. He overlooks what is really driving the Free Software Movement, the users and developers who actually do the work.

The model around GNU/Linux isn't bizarre at all. It's about what everyone should have learned in kindergarten: sharing, cooperating and playing nice with your friends. These are lessons that Micro$oft still needs to learn.

GNU/Linux isn't about bu$ine$$ or selling software. GNU/Linux is about a guy in Cambridge, MA and a guy in Helsinki who thought that the world would be a better place with a free implementation of a UNIX-like operating system, and the thousands (now millions) of other people who agreed with them.

Re:He doesn't get it.

[warpeightbot]

(This was said before, but there wasn't any substance to it and didn't get modded up, so I'll say it again.)

Not bizarre. Bazaar.

No need to kneel before the altar every month and make offerings of gold. No need to present your machine to the monks when you want it upgraded. Most of all, no need to trust the Cathedral with your private data.

Indeed, you are allowed to commune with the gods of software themselves, who know little of MarketSpeak, but are honest, direct, and often very funny. Moreover, should one be so inclined, one can become one of them (what heresy!), without shaving one's head nor wearing a badge, without even leaving the comfy confines of one's own lair. But if one doesn't want to, one doesn't have to do that, either. Yea, verily, there is even now being made a version of the Penguin specifically for those seeking escape from the Cathedral.

Of course, with this freedom comes responsibility.... but even that can be made easy. But no longer do you have to be dependent on the Cathedral to get your computing fix.

It comes to mind that the last time somebody said you could talk to G-d directly without having to part with your gold at the door of the cathedral they fought several bloody wars over it...

Re:He doesn't get it.

[Ill_Omen]

Actually, I think you missed his point.

He's not talking about Open Source or Free Software. He's referring to the business model around companies 'selling' Linux, eg RedHat and Caldera. RedHat is a publicly traded, for profit company. RedHat needs to make money to exist. While GNU/Linux may be about all those great things that come with Free and/or OpenSource Software, RedHat is not, despite the fact that they are basing a company around it. That is what he means by "bizarre."

I happen to agree with him. It is bizarre. That doesn't mean it's not going to work, however.

Re:About Microsoft

[RayChuang]

I hope you run fast before you get flamed. :)

I think while Linux has its strengths primarily as a server operating system (after all, that's what UNIX was heavily designed for), the chaotic nature of Linux development has kind of hindered it from being used on desktop computers. Indeed, the best-known use of Linux in the consumer market--the TiVo Digital Video Recorder--is not marketed as a Linux device, and I think TiVo wants it that way.

Hopefully, with the completion of the Linux Standards Base (LSB) program, then Linux can be improved in an orderly fashion.

Re:Some comments

[RayChuang]

That may have been more a research project than anything else.

I think if you want to put a quick kibosh on Real, make the .ASX and Windows Media formats Open Source. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens fairly soon.

As for the .NET initiative, Microsoft would wave a major olive branch at the Linux/BSD crowd by making API information available under the GNU GPL on how to make Linux and OpenBSD servers operate in the .NET environment. That would be extremely bad news for Sun, since that will undercut Sun's strategy very quickly.

Re:Some comments

[RayChuang]

If there was an Internet Explorer for Linux, it will NOT be a port of any existing code. If you look at the current versions of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh, they're written from scratch specifically for the Macintosh environment (it was written by a team of MS engineers based here in the Bay Area), owing nothing to the Windows version.

Very likely, IE for Linux will be written from scratch, and will likely function akin to the upcoming IE 6.0 for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP.

Re:Some comments

[RayChuang]

Internet Explorer for Solaris was kind of a rushed port that did not really take advantage of the graphical environment used normally in Solaris.

I think if we do see a version of IE that runs under Linux it will likely be a written-from-scratch version that takes advantage of the API calls used in KDE or GNOME so it works seamless in these graphical environments.

Some comments

[RayChuang]

I think he has some very interesting insights in regards to the computer industry--probably more than the vast majority of the Linux crowd.

First, I think that Microsoft will be a huge contributor to MacOS X. The reason is simple: it is relatively easy to write to the Mac environment, since all the API calls are standardized. After all, we will see Office for MacOS X and very likely Internet Explorer 6.0, too.

Second, Miller is correct that Linux is still primarily a server operating system. This is where Linux's strength lies, and don't be surprised that Microsoft offers ways for Linux servers to operate in the Microsoft.Net environment.

Finally, Microsoft may port a few programs to Linux. The most likely thing: Internet Explorer.

Re:Some comments

[droleary]

The reason is simple: it is relatively easy to write to the Mac environment, since all the API calls are standardized.

Standardization in itself doesn't ease development. I gave up Mac development in 1992 because the API at that time was horrible, and it's only gotten worse. Microsoft products under OS X will use that API (Carbon) if IE is any indication, and most existing Mac apps will move over to OS X via Carbon. This won't help Linux users at all, since there are no efforts (I know of) to get the Carbon API implemented directly (sans emulation) on Linux.

Cocoa on the other hand is based on OpenStep, which has seen active open source development at GNUstep. Clueful new development for Mac OS X will use this API. Slap whatever GUI you want on it; OpenStep doesn't care. If Linux users hope to take advantage of Mac OS X application development, they should put their efforts into GNUstep.

Re:Some comments

[levendis]

I doubt it. Apps in OS X use an API called Cocoa or Carbon (I forget which). The kernel of OS X is BSD-based, as are some of the core OS components, but most GUI-oriented stuff uses Apple's (closed-source) API. Porting from that to, say, Gnome, is probably no easier than porting from Win32.

----

Re:Some comments

[Unknown Lamer]

I hope you read this...but if the developer strictly adheres to using only the standard frameworks and libraries built on the standard frameworks for the Yellow Box / OPENSTEP / Cocao / whatever it is caled now...it should only require a simple recompile to be ported to linux and most of the other major *nix's and BSDs. What you say! How is this possible! Why, there is a little (not so) secret things called gnuSTEP. What does it do? Well, it provides a set of Frameworks that are 100% compatible with the OPENSTEP specification. And guess what? Mac OS X Cocao is OPENSTEP! Yay. And, gnuSTEP is really close to 1.0 (the last release was what the developers said was the last release before 1.0). So, we may see lots of cool apps on linux in the future, once people start writing Cocao apps for Mac OS X. See all the fun and magic over at gnustep.org. Today.

-------------

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[Syberghost]

That's nice, but what if you have something ELSE in the other slot?

-

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[einstein]

but gnome and KDE are both working on making apps interoperatable...

• KDE And GNOME To Share Component Architectures?
  
• Writing Apps for GNOME *and* KDE?
  

there is a lot of development going into making both of those evironments be able to talk to each other.
---

Money is a great motivator

[JohnnyX]

As mentioned in a previous question, if the Linux community wants to attract great applications, then they need to be willing to compensate developers and that means paying for software.

The willingness of Windows and Mac users to pay for software has led to a much larger pool of production quality desktop applications.

Similarly, back in the early 90's, it was well known that writing shareware for Macs was more lucrative than writing it for Windows/DOS, since Mac users were more likely to register and pay for it.

Yours truly,
Mr. X

...freedom...

Re:About Microsoft

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Just so I'm clear... you feel that you owe a lot to Microsoft and, as a result, feel that they should have carte blanche for any and all misdeeds? Sounds like "Mussolini made the trains run on time."

Consider AT&T. Prior to their breakup, virtually every business in the U.S. had a telephone and depended upon it for their business. AT&T had "won" the market and no one would ever compete with them. As a result, they sat on their asses and stopped innovating. Everyone had virtually the same telephone in their house (and AT&T owned them all and leased them out). Post-breakup, and what have we got? CallerID, Call Waiting and a gazillion other services. Telephones in every shape and size and available at every price range. True innovation, at last.

> That's why open source products such as KDE have copied all their ideas off Microsoft and Apple.

Apple got the idea from Xerox PARC. Microsoft copied CP/M to get DOS, and then Apple to get Windows. I will give Microsoft all the credit for one result of their R&D budget: BOB was 100% pure Microsoft.

Re:skillfully skirted the 'hardware fingerprint' Q

[Col. Klink (retired)]

I thought he answered it quite directly: "We charge money for our software."

This allows them to sell more software. Never mind the first-sale doctrine or any of that nonsense. They want your money, and they have the technological means to extract it. What more did you expect him to say?

Re:skillfully skirted the 'hardware fingerprint' Q

[IntlHarvester]

Before everyone takes this informative post at face value, check the previous discussion
--

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[IntlHarvester]

A great example is component embedding. OpenOffice has a whitepaper up discussing the component models available on Unix systems.

Turns out you have:
+ The Gnome model (still in beta?)
+ The KDE model (different in KDE1 and KDE2 ?)
+ The Mozilla model
+ And now, the StarOffice model.

Meanwhile on Windows, you've got a single model, COM.

Now, tell me why a platform with maybe at best a 2% desktop marketshare needs 4 different ways of component embedding and a platform with 90% marketshare can get away with one.

And sure, there's always a good reason that you don't want to someone else's widget set. But, now, we are talking about fundemental interoperability issues. It's been possible to insert (say) a Excel chart into a WordPerfect document on Windows for nearly 7 years now. Will this sort of thing ever be possible on the tower of babel of Unix desktops?

But, yeah, I know emacs and pipes rule and nobody needs that stuff.
--

Just a few more comments in a sea of bits

[MSG]

We fully support data, directory and system interop with UNIX, Linux, Novell, Mac, IBM mainframes through our base OS protocol support as well as through products like Services for UNIX, Interix, Services for NetWare, MetaDirectory and Host Integration Server.

Well, I'm glad this was first so we can get this out of the way. Doug defends interoperability by stating that MS offers products that will provide it. However, their OS's alone provide interoperability only with other, similar (read: MS) products. If you want interoperability with, say, a UNIX system, you have to pay for additional software licenses. Their customers are criticizing them not because interoperability isn't available, but because they feel like they have to pay for MS licenses for every machine they run, whether it actually uses MS software or not.

Further, Dave goes on to defend MS tactics of 'Embrace and (Extend|Extinguish)' as protecting their IP. If we consider MS's undocumented (for our intents and purposes) extentions to Kerberos, we can clearly see why customers complain about 'vendor lock-in'. In order for a Kerberos ticket to be valid in a Windows domain network, it must contain the additional information that a Windows server will place there. That's valid. That's why there's a chunk of a Kerberos ticket left undefined by the standard. However, because that information isn't documented, only a Windows Kerberos server can be used for authentication. That is not interoperability. That does not give your customers the ability to choose the best solution for the job.

Re:Whatever...

[Bongo]

Several times he dismisses Linux as not being particularly revolutionary. But it is revolutionary in several ways.

Yep. Mr. Miller talks about customers, value, competition, market, products etc. etc. Every sentense is pure business achievement speak. And looking through this filter, knowledge is just a saleable asset.

Linux and other free software makes no sense in this worldview. I think Linux only registers with people who's worldview is beyond business achievement, and is rather about love of truth, utility, competence and discovery. Linus says he wanted to be a famous scientist. A person who's just interested in science, is really just interested in discovery.

Linux and free software is more of a leading edge in culture, because its a movement who's principles and ideals are not about success and competitive slaughter, but about knowledge and integration. Business success, while a part of society, is not the cutting edge in society's development.

Our world faces new levels of problems that are not going to be solved by business competitive thinking. And MS is pure business competitive thinking par excellence. They are kings of the marketplace.

But the children of these business achievers know that in the end, their parents grew old and unhappy. Success brought money, but it didn't bring lasting joy. So newer generations look for higher values. They measure themselves not by the paycheck, but by something higher. Not that there's anything wrong with paychecks. It's just that they aren't enough. People want more, but not more money, rather, more community, or maybe more knowledge, or meaning or spirit etc. This is the leading edge in culture.

So the "products" of tomorrow have to work for the whole planet, not just the corporation or the market. MS is culturally like the pyramids. Very large, and rather immovable. But also history.

Re:3d printing

[An Ominous Coward]

The current legal definition is that you are stealing the exclusivity to the software. The ethical question of whether or not this loss of exclusivity is worse than the social gain of eliminating the concept of software ownership is another issue.

Re:Blah blah blah

[kaisyain]

And OS X stole from NeXT and NeXT stole from Mac and Mac stole from Smalltalk.

it exemplifies the old saw that if you build something totally idiot proof, only an idiot will be able to use it.

That's right. Cars are idiot proof and I'm sure you drove one to work today. That must make you an idiot. I'm surprised you aren't also complaining that your toaster doesn't have an "expert user" mode. Different people want different things from their OS. And not every OS can be all things to all people.

Re:Blah blah blah

[kaisyain]

I honestly fail to see the distinction. Unless they came up with the ideas completely on their own without recourse to other people's work I don't see how it is any different from Microsoft. Microsoft hasn't broken into anyone's headquarters and "stolen" anything (besides, the slashdot community is usually so ready to tell you that the whole notion of theft of intellectual property is bullocks anyway since no one actually loses anything). The mere act of transferring cash from one party to another doesn't change the fact that there was no innovation on your part. After all, I know a lot of people who say "Microsoft doesn't innovate, all they do is buy companies that innovate!"

You have to subtract the vitriol from Microsoft side of the equation, too.

What, exactly, are the non-obvious enhancements that OS X has? When the topic is evil patents by evil corporations looking to make an evil buck the slashdot community is ready to scream about independent discovery and obviousness of supposed "innovations". Why do all of those observations suddenly become nonapplicable just because it is Microsoft?

It just seems to me like there is a double standard in effect.

Re:Blah blah blah

[kaisyain]

I didn't say it was the same as a car or a toaster. I had only two points which, apparently, I somehow obfuscated.

The original post said that idiot proof things can only be operated by idiots. His implication was 1) that Windows is idiot proof, or will be Real Soon Now, 2) only idiots can operate such things. In response I say, 1) Windows is so far from being idiot proof that his statement is ridiculous, 2) there are plenty of idiot proof things in the world that non-idiots are able to operate, invaliding the entire basis of his "insightful" claim.

Secondly, the original post seemed to be operating under the assumption that everyone wants the same thing from their computer, namely what the original poster wants. Some people don't want to tweak every last thing on their toaster. They aren't interested in the physics of toasting. They just want to eat toast. Different people want different things from their computer, which will necessitate different approaches in OS design and user interface.

FWIW, I agree with you that OSes need to evolve towards a more appliance like attitude, at least for the overwhelming majority of users and uses. I would wager that the poster I responded to do does not agree, since that is making things idiot proof.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[NMerriam]

The trick is for someone to create a nice little distro that only HAS one of those hundreds - if you want a different one (as so many people will) then get a different distro

Okay, maybe this is just not clear enough -- we should not PREVENT people from using a different interface (as Windows does not PREVENT someone from replacing explorer with another shell), but make no mistake that different distributions having different window managers will permanently prevent Linux from ever competing with MS. Having a different WM for different distros means that there is NO STANDARD. If there is no standard, then companies will not waste their time writing linux software that may or may not be compatible with a given distro.

I don't have a problem with other people wanting their choices made for them. I do have a problem with those people forcing that choice upon me

Please, this isn't an issue of personal freedom, this is an issue of commercial reality. If linux wants to stay as merely a sysadmin OS, server OS, or for hobby users, then by all means it should continue to leave every single decision unmade until the first boot.

If you want to compete with MS for the desktop (which makes sense, otherwise no one would give a damn about what MS thinks or does) then you have to realize that we are not talking about "forcing" choices on users, but rather making actual design decisions. If the right mouse button functions differently on every computer a secretary sits down at, she will NEVER learn how to use the computer. This isn't about restricting power users, its about making systems work consistently out of the box. It's about making it easy to program for an OS because you know ahead of time what interface conventions a user is expecting.

I repeat: feel free to develop a hobby or power user OS any way you like, those groups are willing to learn anything because it is FUN for them to use the system and bend it to their will.

The is a distro responsibility, not the responsibility of Linux, or window manager coders, or anythign else

Well truly its no ones responsibility, so I guess thats why linux will never succeed on the desktop. I'm not saying linux is bad for not having these things, only that Doug and MS are correct that Linux will not succeed on the desktop until users and developers can expect the system to function in a certain reproducable manner. Windows has its quirks between versions, but in all honesty the typical user would have trouble telling the difference between Win95, Win98, Win98se, and Win2k.

Again, if Linux developers are happy having the system only used/usable by those willing and able to make these configuration decisions, more power to them. But then please stop complaining about Microsoft owning the desktop, because they have made a product that is usable by both power users AND people who search for the "any" key...

---------------------------------------------

Re:The will of the truth.

[NMerriam]

See if you can find all the places Linux in it's present form is being used

Um, it's being used by sysadmins, hackers, geeks, and hobbyists, like I said. Or do you know of some huge cache of desktop business and home users that aren't showing up in any OS surveys?

If there is no standard, then companies will not waste their time writing linux software that may or may not be compatible with a given distro

Well looks like I'll be calling a lot of companies tonight giving them the bad news. Can I quote you as a source?

Yes, you can. Please, tell me where the huge cache of commercial software for Linux is? Software that is guranteed linux compatible, regardless of distro, and doesn't say somewhere on the box "Only tested on Red Hat 6.x" or somesuch?

It'll probably cost you about 25 cents to call all the multi-distro commercially successful Linux software companies, and you'll have money left over for a cup of coffee when you're done...


---------------------------------------------

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[NMerriam]

This seems to be the pervailing attitude among those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are stupid, so stupid that we must make all their decisions for them.

No, users are trying to USE their computers for something. Unlike kernel hackers, geeks, and your general /. crowd, most people WANT TO GET WORK DONE on their computers. They really don't give a damn about pushing the envelope on new OS technology, upgrading their file system, or taking positions in a religious war.

I'm beginning to think that Microsoft really will continue to kick Linux's ass around the block, because no one seems to want to actually figure out why their products sell so well. MS woke up, and they clearly understand how and why people use Linux, and are incorporating that knowledge in their development and sales goals.

Linux folks seem content to just say "oh, they're just sucky, so pooh on them" rather than actually learn something frm their success.

NORMAL USERS DO NOT WANT A HUNDRED DIFFERENT WINDOW MANAGERS! THEY WANT TO GET WORK DONE AND GO HOME.

I do not know how much more clearly this can possibly be stated, but it doesn't seem to be getting through to Linux developers. You would think that 95%+ of desktop systems using a single interface would give the hint. We're not talking about developers or power users, who DO like to customize for power, we're talking about actual users who write reports, run spreadsheets, and download porn. They do not give a rat's ass about KDE vs GNome, and if you tell them the first thing they have to do to use the system is decide on a freaking window manager, forgetaboutit.

There rarely is One Right Way

That is true. But there usually is one standard way. Regardless of the inefficiency of the QWERTY keyboard, MOST people don't have trouble with it because its pretty much the same everywhere.

I'm sure NASA is thrilled that their engineers can "choose" between english and metric units -- it gives them more power! So what if it leads to the occassional incompatibility and loss of millions of dollars in equipment. We'd hate to take away the power of choice.

Most people are not seeking the "perfect operating system" (otherwise known as One Right Way). People are looking to get work done, and Microsoft excels at meeting the PERCIEVED needs of their customers. Whether Linux or some other system would be better if properly customized and learned is a whole 'nother topic, but Microsoft sells a solution that is Good Enough (and in business, Good Enough is usually more cost-effective than One Right Way).

The first thing Apple did when they moved to OSX was standardize the interface. They didn't REMOVE the ability to customize it (or to run X with Gnome or whatever), but the truth is the VAST majority of users have no desire whatsoever to customize their interface beyond wallpaper and icons and sounds, etc.

Please, the world isn't that stupid. Don't insult the people who fund the very survival of your company.

MS is the single most successful company in the history of the world, pretty much. As long as they stay paranoid, I don't think they need to worry about going bankrupt any time soon.

People are not stupid, and for you to take "standardization" as an assusation of stupidity is an interesting mischaracterization of Doug's statements. People have enough complexity in their lives, we hardly need to be forcing more on them just to send an email. If they want to customize, they'll find out how, but Linux forces the issue from the first boot, and that turns off a lot of people just looking to get work done.

Editing the windows registry is no harder or easier than editing unix config files, the difference is that you don't HAVE to edit the registry just to use the system. You don't even have to know that the registry exists...

---------------------------------------------

Re:interesting

[Tim C]

Not only that, but you need to be able to split the tasks between that many people sensibly. Also, as the number of people working on a project increases, so does the overhead of managing it and making sure that people are communicating effectively, that everything gets done and nothing gets done twice, etc

After a point, throwing more people at a project at best has no effect, and at worst slows it down.

Cheers,

Tim

ActiveX/OLE the ultimate component model???

[alienmole]

Meanwhile on Windows, you've got a single model, COM.

Now, tell me why a platform with maybe at best a 2% desktop marketshare needs 4 different ways of component embedding and a platform with 90% marketshare can get away with one.

Microsoft's COM itself is not too bad as a substrate, which may explain why Mozilla chose to emulate the COM model with XPCOM. However, the actual embedding of user-interface components within Windows applications depends on ActiveX, a broad collection of COM interfaces, and implementations thereof, which integrate with the underlying Windows API (Win32).

Almost anyone who has done any development with ActiveX should be able to tell you that this is not the ultimate component embedding model. Nor, for that matter, is Win32 the ultimate OS API. I should add that these are both serious understatements.

I think it's far more likely that future user interfaces will use a model more along the lines of HTML or Display Postscript, i.e. a more client/server based approach, although clearly neither of those two technologies in their current form can fully address the problem.

It's incredibly unlikely that Microsoft will be the one to provide the next rational component model - its entire history demonstrates that it doesn't have what it takes to truly innovate, no matter how many of its billions it throws at people researching Bayes networks and first order phase transitions.

If anything, Microsoft's ability to innovate is probably declining as market forces begin to work against it - IOW, it may have peaked. Perhaps its research division will eventually begin paying off in the way that IBM's does, but so far there's no indication that it will do so in the software arena.

So, while I don't happen to think Gnome or KDE will be the future of components either, I do think that the future is far more likely to come from an unexpected direction than from Microsoft. HTML and the web are a perfect example of this; Java is another, with Microsoft now vaporing .NET to catch up.

The bottom line is that we're not at a stage where it's technically valid to say "OK, all the user interface development problems have been solved and we can all standardize on one thing". We need alternatives, and there's no place better to try out different approaches than on a free, open OS that doesn't restrict competition and innovation with a closed API.

productization of Linux

[alienmole]

...do not necessarily need to be 'productized' (although much of the don't-use-windows rhetoric around here is founded in the idea of Linux as a product).

I have a response to this too. ;)

Linux is already a real and valuable product, being used for example in servers, and various custom embedded applications - the Tivo consumer digitial video recorder is a nice example. It's also being used to drive parallel supercomputers used in big, serious research applications, a role which otherwise would have to be filled by expensive commercial OSes on proprietary hardware. So Linux's future as a "product" seems assured - the fact that it has already succeeded in displacing competitors at every level, from small embedded devices to giant number crunchers, highlights one of its unique strengths, and a flexibility that any commercial competitor will be hard-pressed to match.

The only real open question is Linux's ability to be a product for users who require a desktop OS. Even here, Linux is being used in environments such as schools, for example, where X terminals running Linux make for affordable workstations for students (search on "K12Linux" for more info). It's also being used as an OS for products like graphics workstations; it's the default OS for network computers like the ThinkNIC; and it's used in other situations where the user interface provided to the user is constrained in some way.

Many of the companies using Linux in these various ways are also contributing to its further development. Under these circumstances, I think it's quite likely that Linux's viability on the mainstream desktop will grow, probably quite fast. The amount of intellectual capital that is being targeted at Linux right now is unprecedented, and the pace of change since, for example, the beginning of the Gnome project has been impressive.

Because of standardization around things like TCP/IP and other Unix-heritage protocols and standards, basic OS functions have become commoditized, even on Windows. Linux excels at providing this functionality, so can easily compete with Windows at this level.

However, other functionality, in particular desktop GUIs and their APIs, are not commoditized in the sense of being standardized and therefore interchangeable. HTML is the first widely used, non-proprietary standard display model. I'm sure it won't be the last, and the future of desktops may lie in the direction of its successors. But even without that, Linux use on the desktop can only grow with time.

Re:About Microsoft

[Skapare]

Open Source creates as much wealth as proprietary products do. The difference is that there is not a huge chunk of that wealth siphoned off to a vendor in the process. Now that in and of itself isn't as bad as it first sounds, because what goes around, comes around. However, when you have to fund the vendor through this mechanism, and if the vendor has a say in how the product behaves, then they will end up putting forth a lot of effort to make the product do certain things strictly to enhance that siphoning. Software vendors like Microsoft have to ensure that customers pay for the products and services and not steal them. The problem is that so much effort is expended to ensure that revenue stream as opposed to other innovations that actually benefit everyone. In the past we have not seen a great deal of this because as the computer market grew, Microsoft's corporate value grew along with it. Now that there is saturation (virtually every office and most homes now have a computer, and the vast majority of them run Microsoft OS products), Microsoft has to find other means to not just ensure a revenue stream, but to also make it grow.

One big difference between Microsoft Windows and Open Source systems like BSD and Linux (the distributions) is what and who the designers are focusing on. I can assure you that for whatever goals Microsoft has in terms of value growth and value siphoning, they are indeed focusing on making software for others. The BSD and Linux community still come across as making something more for themselves than for others. However, that may not be as bad as it sounds. Read on.

With the technology of software becoming ever more complex, it still takes people with intense technical backgrounds to deal with the issues. I'm often quoting Bruce Schneier when he says "Security is not a thing, it is a process" and I keep wondering if that shouldn't also apply to virtually everything else in computers and technology, as well.

Business is shifting more and more to a service strategy. Microsoft clearly knows this and are working to position themselves to provide these services. Others will do so as well. It will happen over a broad scale from the largest (Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Oracle, etc) to the smallest (your local contractor). Many new business ideas will come not as products, but as services. The technical community will be the source of a lot of that, if not most of it.

Where Open Source and free software comes into this, and where BSD and Linux have their advantage, is that they are oriented more to the technical person who is deploying these services. They will then be the embedded components not of a product, but of a service, where the particulars matter only to the service provider, not the customer. When businesses stop buying computer systems as products, and start subscribing to them as services, they will be less and less involved in the roles of administering them. The service provider will be doing that, and the focus on making the administrative interfaces easy for the technically inept will become less and less important.

Why should someone, even a sales guy in an ISP, be administering a system? They shouldn't. It will be done for them as part of the service when they shift from buying a product to subscribing to a service. Services are where it's at, and those who do have the tools handy (your collection of free software) are in the some of the best positions to create and offer those services.

Re:They're damn well trying

[WiPEOUT]

You won't be able to get a C compiler? You've obviously never worked as a developer on Microsoft's platforms. They have the best developer tools, documentation, training and support options I have ever seen. Nothing else from any other company comes close. Novell, Sun, IBM and all the largest software vendors are simply playing catch-up in this ballgame, and Microsoft is not letting up.

Microsoft is firmly committed to providing the best development environment around.

Sure, with Linux you have the source code. There's no denying that is useful. Does it have anything approaching the quality of Visual Studio? Any developer documentation as comprehensive, accessible and easy to use as the MSDN Library? Regular training events, developer conferences by the dozen even out in Australia? Anything to rival COM+ for power, scalability and relative ease of use? Notice I haven't even mentioned the .NET framework yet, which is probably the best thing since sliced bread.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[Stephen]

Does anyone in Redmond think the /. crowd will feel like they got real answers out of this?

You know, apart from question 8, I was surprised to find that I do feel like I got real answers. Of course, it's Microsoft's own special view of the world -- but I still feel that it was answering the questions clearly and coherently. Don't confuse a different point of view from your own with a failure to truly answer the question.

Re:NOT worthy of respect!

[abelsson]

Sheez.. you cant compare hitler or stalin - both who caused the death of millions of human beeings with Microsoft who's just another company.

Give me a break..

-henrik

interesting

[austad]

I liked his last response about KDE and Gnome and deciding on one, or joining the best aspects of both. I know that both of those groups have their differences, and it probably will never happen, but just think of the progress that would be made on one project with double the number of developers, instead of on two completely separate projects.

I'm actually torn between the two. I use KDE 2.1.1 at work, and Gnome 1.2 at home. Sometimes I switch, but I think both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Recently, I decided to write a small app which I'll soon GPL once it's functional. I looked at both Gnome and KDE, and decided that KDE seems simpler to write code for (I'm not a code wizard :).

I probably just started a huge flame thread, but Linux seriously needs one desktop standard that nearly everyone can agree on. Unfortunately, alot of work has been put into each system, and if someone did start a project to merge the two, we'd just end up with Yet Another Alternative, which would make 3 major environments. Lot's of choice for users, but it sucks for commercial developers who want to port to Linux.

One "Environment" and not one look!! Read b4 post!

[cybrthng]

I think the article stated "One graphical environment" and clearly stated "one graphical environment" so ISV's can develop for one GRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT.

That environment is full of many widgets and hooks and features so you can customize and build from it, but it is the same environment.

He's not talking about conforming to button bars, he is talking about coding. He is talking about choosing between KDE or GNOME simply because they're TWO DISTINCT ENVIRONMENTS FROM AN APPLICATIONS DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE. Hell you can make KDE look like GNOME and make GNOME look like KDE but you can't code for both unless you want to add gobbs of code and headache or have to distinctly different applications on a coding/support level.

I must agree, the beauty with Windows is everyone tries to emulate it. The true power of it is the simplicity to develop for it while having a standard application framework available but also being able to veer from it with your own widgets.

So read again, its not one look vs another look or the conformity of all applications. It is simply the problem that you can spend millions developing a KDE app only to have GNOME come out ahead and have to port the app or fear not both of them dissapear and something new comes about. Atleast with windows you code for one and you code for all. Ofcourse through inovation, new features and technological advancements things will always change. But atleast it is ONE environment with many interfaces and THAT LINUX DOESN'T OR WILL NOT HAVE.

You may be a Microsoft Drone if...

[Merk]

I wonder, is there anybody at Microsoft with a somewhat senior position who isn't a drone? This whole thing just sounds like the questions any other senior MS employee would give, with a bit of Unix knowledge thrown in for seasoning.

On question 1 he says "Microsoft has received unwarranted criticism by some for its [in]ability to interoperate with other operating systems" and that "I actually believe we have better interoperability today than any other OS out there". I think just the opposite is true. Linux could read FAT32 partitions when NT couldn't. You can open a Windows formatted floppy in an Apple OS, Linux, or any number of other OSes, but try going the other way. Because MS is the dominant desktop OS, they have no real need to play well with the other desktop OSes. The other OSes, on the other hand, have to play well with MS just to be useful. When MS does make something work well with a competitor's product it's often because that competitor is dominant in that particular area. That's just business.

He could have answered "We're the dominant player in the desktop OS market space, so obviously it adds more value to our competitors products when they make their offerings work well with ours than making ours work well with theirs." That would have been honest and nobody would have faulted him for it. (Well some rabid MS haters would have but they'd fault him no matter what he said). By claiming that MS has better interoperability than any other OS out there he just comes off as yet another MS drone. It really looks like MS is founded on intellectual dishonesty.

Next, on question 2 he seems to lay out a few backhanded attacks like "... Mac OS X, as a result of the new UNIX-like features". Saying that OS X has "UNIX-like features" is like saying that ice has some very water-like qualities. Now it could just be unflattering wording, but it just looks like more incidental MS FUD. "OS X has UNIX-like features but don't get your hopes up".

With the question of MS security WRT outlook and the VBScript viruses he slipped by the question like a seasoned politician. Instead of addressing the issue -- "what caused this horrible security model" he addressed how they fixed one particular problem, then quickly tried to change the focus to something else. It's a model so often used in politics:

Q: Some people are concerned with [LARGE ISSUE W] after [INCIDENT X]. What do you have to say about this criticism?
A: [INCIDENT X] was unfortunate, but we quickly came up with [QUICK FIX Y] and since then there have been no further issues. We'll be doing great things in the future, as evidenced by [DISTRACTING SHINY THING Z].

His answer to the next question tries to take an isolated incident: Corel's poor results in their one and only foray into the Linux area, and turn it into proof of a bigger issue. Corel failed and they had cool stuff, so what hope does anyone else have? Anybody who knows the whole Corel incident well knows that there were a huge number of problems in the way Corel went about doing things, from arguably violating the GPL in their beta test agreements to making their version of Linux look like a bad Windows rip-off.

The next question actually started with a truly honest and straightforward answer "We definitely take Linux very seriously." In less than a paragraph he was again slipping in the FUD: "But looking at Linux technically, there is no real revolution here. Linux looks and feels like UNIX and isn't any better than a commercial version of UNIX."

If Linux isn't better, but is just as good as a commercial version of UNIX then isn't that a revolution right there? An OS as good as a commercial UNIX where every standard component is Free is revolutionary.

Next he tries to dismiss Linux because the concept of a free OS isn't new. But he's again missing what makes Linux such an important thing. Not only is it free (no cost) but it's Free (libre). And not just as a whole, but free *per component*. The GPL, and its widespread use, is revolutionary, and obviously MS recognizes this because they're now lobbying the government to rid the world of this unAmerican scourge.

The next question? Dodged. But if you read between the lines the answer is obvious: "For companies that choose to charge money for their software, there should be ways to ensure they are paid appropriately ... and have some legal or technical assistance to protect their property."

My guess is that as soon as MS builds hardware copy protection into their OS they'll launch a FUD attack against Linux claiming that Linux doesn't care about protecting someone's IP, and that it's a system for "hackers" who only use it so they can get around The Law.

The issue of hardware fingerprints in the next question was ignored completely. He only mentioned RedHat and Caldera enough to insult them. But the end result the attitude was perfectly clear. "We're a propriety software company and that's what we're going to stay, no matter what".

The next answer was actually well written FUD. So well written I missed what he was doing the first time around. He built up a straw man pretending the issue was building software that did what a standard said and nothing more, then showed how ridiculous that was.

At the same time he dodged the real issue of Microsoft breaking standards. Apache can do some really cool things that aren't part of any HTTP standard, but when it comes right down to it, Apache still is a web server that follows the relevant standards. An end-user will never have to know what kind of web server he's using to know if his browser can use it (pages are another matter). Is Microsoft Kerberos truly Kerberos? What about Microsoft's Java? If they had simply added keywords to the language that affected how the code was compiled but the code still ran on all JVMs that would be one issue. But Microsoft's Java extensions made bytecode that could no longer truly be called Java bytecode.

The last answer actually seems like it comes from the heart (I guess his wasn't completly removed when he became part of the collective -- they have it on standby so it can be used in an emergency like this).

Anyhow, I wasn't impressed. Are there any senior level Microsoft employees who can do any one of these things?

• Admit the company made a serious design mistake in a product (say a horrible security model in outlook)
• Concede the company in the past has used shadey business practices
• Say that there are areas they are seriously behind their competition
• Admit that they haven't discouraged piracy at times in order to broaden their market share

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[powerlord]

What makes you think MS will have to pay for it?

The key will probably be a combination of a CD key (like with 98/2000 where the key only works for that CD) and the machine config.

After the CD key is used X number of times, they just start charging the user an 'administrative fee' of say $20 to generate a new key. (although I bet key generators make the rounds on warez sites rather rapidly).

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[LarsG]

(And as a suggestion, change the ID to the computer's MAC address. These things change a lot less frequently [How often does a hardware hacker completely change his ethernet card? Not often.])

An eth card is one of the better solutions if you _must_ do this sort of thing.

However, I know that WinME will be the last ever version of Windows I'll buy. If they don't honour the concept of first sale, they won't see my money.

Re:About Microsoft

[Hadean]

>There is nothing more important than wealth
> creation.

Baw, you had me going until this point... now I see how ignorant you are to what's really happening in our society.

How about question #9?

[hey!]

It seemed to me like he is confusing two different issues: publicly documenting extensions to standards that might undermine interoperability, and opening source code.

This is either a failure to consider the question thoughtfully, or a deliberate straw man argument. The questioner didn't raise the issue of opening source code, Mr. Miller did. So far as I know nobody wants access to Microsoft's Kerberos code, they only want information about what Microsoft Kerberos clients expect to see on the customers' wire so their servers will interoperate correctly.

Why not open Microsoft's source? Well, Mr. Miller would argue that Microsoft's software is a valuable commodity and that users should expect to pay for it.

Fair enough. But what are standards? Standards happen when different parties put work into a common set of public specifications rather than incompatible private ones. That work has value, and they should be able to enjoy the benefits of that work: a larger and more robust market.

There's nothing wrong with extending a standard, so long as it doesn't raise serious interoperability roadblocks for users for trivial reasons. But by extending Kerberos in the way that they did, Microsoft is benefiting from the work of Kerberos' developers while denying thos developers the same benefits.

There is a word for this: freeloading.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[Salamander]

That's fine for users, but not for developers.

That's fine, but I was quite deliberately only addressing the issue of users' choices. Issues surrounding MS's business, development, and standards-compliance processes are a whole different matter.

No, not limiting their choices. Putting a big warning sign on the preferences menu

I thought I was pretty explicit about why that's not sufficient. Something about newbies hitting the "expert mode" button, I believe. Then again, people hitting the "reply" button before they finish reading is a related phenomenon, so I should have expected that too.

Speaking as someone who flipped every switch in the software I could find when I was little

I'll bet that led to one of two outcomes. Either you sometimes managed to mess something up and learned to fix it (good for you!) or you messed it up and found someone else to fix it. In either case, you probably found that outcome pretty acceptable. Here's the crux: most people find neither acceptable. They'll just be pissed that it was ever possible for things to be rendered unusable by what they considered (rightly or not) to be innocent experimentation. Before you think they're being unfair, stop for a moment and ask yourself honestly whether you've ever had the same reaction. Have you really *never* said "I can't believe they didn't handle that properly" or cursed a sloppy programmer for not testing all the cases? Yeah, right. I'd wager a drink that you've even criticized *Microsoft products* for exactly those kind of failures, whether it's as a user or as an anti-MS zealot. Well, MS wants to avoid that. They're willing to take the hit for being too inflexible or dictatorial or whatever, in preference to being slammed for being flaky or counterintuitive or hard to configure. Again, it might not be *your* choice but it's a *valid* choice.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[Salamander]

This seems to be the pervailing attitude among those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are stupid, so stupid that we must make all their decisions for them.

Many - not all - users *are* stupid. Even many of the supposedly computer-savvy people on Slashdot are *frighteningly* stupid. Everyone in this field learns sooner or later that if you provide an option, some idiot will set it inappropriately. The world is full of newbies clicking the "expert mode" button. If you're providing products for millions of users, the vast majority of whom can barely handle anything more complicated than clicking on an icon, then limiting those users' choices seems like a pretty valid design decision.

There rarely is One Right Way

...unless it's your way, apparently. I hack kernels for a living, and I also *choose* to use MS products for some things. Are you, the champion of free choice, going to tell me my choice is invalid, that the products I prefer *shouldn't even be on the market* because they don't satisfy your desire for twiddling and tweaking? Yes, choice is good, and one valid choice is to *forego* certain other choices in the interests of getting on with life and getting things done. Windows users forego some choices, Linux users forego others. Live and let live.

Re: What Customers Want

[chill]

Customers want convenience first, last and in between. EVERYTHING else is a distant second (if not third or fourth).

Windows is a major success because it is everywhere. You can get software for it at every store that sells software (except the 0.01% that sell only Mac or Unix). This means CompUSA, Best Buy, Walmart, etc.

99% of the files/data found on the 'net can be loaded/run in Windows. (You might not be able to get them out once in, but that is a different story.) Convenience.

Convenience will convince people to put up with blue screen crashes, crappy software, extra expense and everything else.

I can't remember how many times I drove by my local CompUSA or Best Buy and wanted to buy a game -- but they don't have them for Linux. (The manager at the local CompUSA now tells me "nope -- nothing yet" before I even ask if they are going to stock anything.)

Linux won't be able to match them on the desktop until it can match them in convenience. Eazel is working on one track with Nautilus and their services -- so is Red Hat. More needs to be done.
--
Charles E. Hill

Re:About Microsoft

[Platinum Dragon]

Hey kip. Remember me? The guy from SlashNET you tried to convert to MS from Linux, and failed?

Although I'd immediately suspect you were a troll, I remember checking out your ISP (/whois, nslookup the result), and it looked legit. So...open source is communism? Microsoft is capitalism, which is good?

Sounds like Allchin calling the GPL "unAmerican". Ironic, considering I recall you work at a British ISP...sorry, my astroturf alarm is screaming right now.

Re:About Microsoft

[Platinum Dragon]

Hi kip. Me again.

You did say your ISP is an all-Windows shop, oui?

You guys do have a Solaris admin for the Unix web servers, right? Or is the IT/sales guy handling that from one of the Windows boxes somehow? Just wondering how your ISP is handling what I assume are the only Unix boxen in the shop.

And if any immature kiddies try anything now that they know the ISP...go die somewhere.

Only a drummer

[CharlieG]

I'd like to see you run Linux,
Check
knit a sweater,
Check
and fix a car.
check
play a musical instrument,
You got me there, I'm just a drummer (Or used to be)

Re:Whatever...

[mpe]

But to most desktop users who know nothing behind the scene.

Unless they run an OS which likes to give out register dumps if things go wrong...
For a supposedly "non-tech" system Windows sure does expect the user to do a lot of sysadmin tasks too.

Re:Mr. Miller was talking about features

[mpe]

Two of the three revolutionary things that you list about Linux (distributed development, GPL) have to do with the development side, not the end product.

Also they could just as easily be labeled as "back to basics" :)

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[el_chicano]

I think the historical evidence is pretty clear; the use of personal computers was not widespread until interfaces like the MAC OS and Windows became available.

You are putting the cart before the horse. In reality Mac OS and Windows did not become available until the use of personal computers became widespread...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!

Re:So, did you build your television?

[el_chicano]

The BSD crowd has been offering a free choice for years now, but that crowd seems to avoid most of the histrionic arrogant, fequently ill-informed posturing that passes for discussion here.

ROTFL!!! You obviously must be new to Slashdot otherwise by now you would have seen the BSD people crawling out of the woodwork crowing how superior their OS is everytime a Linux article gets posted...
--
You think being a MIB is all voodoo mind control? You should see the paperwork!

Re:Blah blah blah

[gorilla]

Cars are very far from idiot proof. It takes a long training procedure to operate & care for a car.

Re:Blah blah blah

[gorilla]

Or anything else other than in a very large flat area with no obstacles.

Re:Pathetic Answers

[macpeep]

Microsoft's Java VM was *the* best and *the* fastest until Sun got to version 1.1.8. After that, Sun was ahead in the game and the only contest left was between IBM and Sun. The only things missing from Microsoft's implementation were RMI and JNI. Lack of RMI was a little odd since it could easily be implemented 100% in Java code and therefore be added later to the VM simply by adding the missing classes to the classpath. There was also no real good reason to drop RMI. As far as JNI goes, Microsoft truly had a MUCH better technology, and Sun itself had gone from one implementation to another. These two parts of the Java spec; RMI and JNI, are the only valid complaints about their VM IMHO. Complaining about bugs is bogus because Sun's own VM was in MUCH worse shape. Netscape's VM always was a joke and still is (the one bundled with the 4.x series browsers).

Vagueness

[Junta]

There is a degree of vagueness in all the answers, and non-comittance, but in most cases he does address the issue asked. The *MAJOR* notable exception in my eyes is the question on licensing. The question seemed to be asking about the technical problems with the scheme, not the dieology of it. He repsonds with almost a sermon on how evil pirates are hurting microsoft and they have every right to do what it takes to control that. I don't think that piracy concerns are the only thing microsoft is worried about here, there are other, much more acceptable strategies such as dongles for this. Having the software strap itself more firmly to existing hardware has a few implications/possiblities.
For one, some people have more than one computer, but do not feel that a single user with multiple computers should have to purchase multiple copies. This seems legitimate feeling to me, but to microsoft, this is considered wrong and lost revenue, but from a legal standpoint, it is an uncertain area. This serves to take care of that "problem".
Also, a number of users have hardware lifecycles that are shorter than their operating system lifecycles. They will continue to buy new systems, but Microsoft is unable to offer new features that warrant purchase of new versions as quickly as they would like. For example, in the environment I work with, brand new PCs have winNT 4.0 and win95 installed, because those are still good enough, and the appeal of ME/98/98SE/2000 has not been enough to purchase new software, though the hardware gains have been great. By tying a purchased version of the OS to the current hardware, they are forcing the consumer to purchase another OS copy, even if perfectly identical to the old one, when buying new computer equipment.
I would much prefer dongles, if they are going to continue to charge outrageous prices for their products, they can afford dongles. If they lower prices to more reasonable levels, fewer people may wish to pirate it. The privacy and limitiations of this new licensing, if it goes in effect, will certainly keep me from purchasing this product, and I have made significant purchases of MS products before... I also think many IT outfits will not go for this licensing idea and search for alternatives/simply not purchase the product.

Reverse engineering??

[hemp]

When Compaq (later followed by others) loosened the Golden Ring from IBM's grasp by reverse engineering their proprietary bios, the Open Hardware PC platform revolution was ignited. Motherboards, memory,

IBM actually published the info about their bios. Since when is reading a book reverse engineering?

Re:Reverse engineering??

[Eil]

It may have been published, but IIRC, it was copyrighted and trademarked to the nth degree, and anyone else who attempted to build a copy of it would have been dragged out and shot.

The standard myth goes that the people from Phoenix Semiconductor (or might have been Compaq) called in a group of electronics engineers who had never used an IBM computer, put them in an empty room and had them reverse engineer an IBM bios without the benefit of being able to reference any documentation regarding the chip. This was supposedly difficult, but the result was a BIOS chip 100% compatible with IBM's without violating any of IBM's copyrights.

Those in the know are welcome to provide any links or additional information. Especially tell me if I'm wrong, because I am, from time to time. :)

Re:Reverse engineering??

[homer_ca]

Compaq's BIOS was a clean room implementation. One team read the books and disassembled the ROM and wrote the specs. The other team wrote the BIOS using only the first team's specs so that it wouldn't be tainted by IBM's intellectual property. Try a google search on "compaq reverse engineer ibm bios".

I remember the days when the Apple II user manual had the 6502 assembler source code to the ROM.

Re:Reverse engineering??

[Danger Vole]

IBM published the source code under copyright. Compaq had to reverse engineer the BIOS to create an IBM PC compatible BIOS that was free of intellectual property claims by IBM. Compaq had two teams, one that wrote a functional requirements document based on the IBM PC BIOS and another team that used the requirements document to write a new BIOS from scratch.

"hard to call it an operating system"

[bob_jordan]

Strange how he says ...

"It is hard to call it an operating system when in fact "Linux" typically refers to a distribution that includes contributions from hundreds of projects"

... when Microsoft has no problem calling windows an operating system even though it includes contributions from other projects such as internet explorer.

"Pot, meet kettle."

Bob.

Blah blah blah

[MadAhab]

Boring answers. Very neat, efficient, evasive without being duplicitous, redefines the questions to fit the answers he has, etc. I'm sure this guy is a very effective executive.

But there's really nothing new here at all, except that he got so jizzed up about XP. All available evidence points to XP being another example of Microsoft stealing the innovations of others, badly. XP steals from OS X in this way, only it exemplifies the old saw that if you build something totally idiot proof, only an idiot will be able to use it. OS X at least allows the possibility of expert users. You know already which one of those will never darken my doorstep.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

Re:Blah blah blah

[MadAhab]

Wrong. The point is that there is a right way to engineer simplicity, and a wrong way. The right way makes simple things simple, and lets hard things be hard.

OS X is getting closer to this than anything else I've seen. XP takes the same notions, superficially papers them onto Windows ME in a way that only a PHB or software reviewer could love, and totally fucks the end user for ever and ever.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

Re:Blah blah blah

[VividU]

"You know already which one of those will never darken my doorstep"

Yeah, theres no doubt about that. The only place where there is "nothing new" is in your reply. Typical anti-MS knee-jerk Slashdot post.

I wish Slashdot would flag all anti-MS posts so I can filter them out.

You guys are boring me silly. These posts reek of anger and ignorance.

Nothing new indeed.

Re:Pathetic Answers

[kettch]

hehe, double talk. Maybe that's why they have so many problems with their products stability and security. They don't directly fix the problem, they just make it so that i can't send myself a word document from home to work. (outlook blocks all *.M$ documents.)
----------------------

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[Chandon Seldon]

Who cares. Eithor is fine. Gnome apps run fine under KDE, and KDE apps run fine under Gnome. There are only a few areas of functionality where intercompatibility can be a problem, and in most of those cases it can just not work.

I really can't remember the last time I tried to embed a KDE component in a Gnome app and got annoyed that it didn't work. Inter-App drag and drop is the same - I don't need it. Just off the top of my head, I can't even think of a Gnome App that I would want to drag and drop into from a KDE app. Copy and paste annoyed me once, I tried to copy some data from a KDE app, and use Edit->Paste to paste it into a Gnome App. This didn't work, middle clicking immediately pasted the text with no problem.

I have absolutely no problem putting a Konqueror button on my Gnome Panel, or a X-Chat menu option on my IceWM menu. I don't really see actually needing more intercompatibility than that.

All of the real itercompatibility problems are getting solved in any case. By Gnome 2.0, Drag and Drop, Cut and Paste, and Embedding should all use the same protocall in both KDE and Gnome, AFAIK.

This leaves the only real difference between KDE and Gnome to be look and feel. Just use the same theme in both if thos bothers you =P

[ This message posted from Konqueror, Running under IceWM, while listening to music with XMMS, and chatting with X-Chat. ]

Re:Pathetic Answers

[_Quinn]

Had they done their extensions in a way that remained compatible with Sun's or IBM's VM, I wouldn't have minded so much -- it may have spurred Sun to make a better product -- but they didn't. Extension is fine -- nVidia's version of OpenGL, for instance -- but incompability is not (AFAIK, straight OpenGL calls will work fine with nVidia's library).

-_Quinn

Re:Pathetic Answers

[anticypher]

In addition to Java and kerberos, there are many other examples of extend and extinguish. The one I am most familiar with is the PPP authentication protocol MS-CHAP.

PPP defined a open ended number of authentication protocols, PAP and CHAP being the first two implemented. PAP and CHAP are both freely available, and CHAP was designed to respond to security shortcomings in PAP. The spec allows for future authentication protocols to be developed.

MS-CHAP is a one of those future protocols, but there was a twist. MS-CHAP was introduced into windoze NT3 RAS dial in server, and later as the only authentication protocol in windoze 95. That meant that any user with windoze 95 could only use the dial-up software with an ISP running a copy of NT behind each modem.

Modem server makers such as Ascend, 3Com and Cisco all quickly reverse engineered the protocol, but M$ had patented the algorithm and the protocol. Since M$ was at the height of its monopolistic bully attitude, and the comm server makers were all relatively small, none dared a court battle over a patented algorithm. Cisco approached M$ to put regular CHAP into win95, but M$ refused.

Then M$ approached all the modem server manufacturers with a deal, they would license their own code for MS-CHAP for about US1.20 per modem, and existing servers could be upgraded for about US$1.50 per modem. So all the ISPs who wanted to play in the win95 dial-up market had to upgrade all their modem servers at a fairly hefty cost, with all that money going to M$.

As a side note, M$'s implementation of MS-CHAP has some serious security problems, a google search can turn them up. The security holes are pretty difficult to exploit, but allow for session hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks.

the AC

Patents and "other industries"

[QuantumG]

Should we be required to publish the source code or underlying designs of all our software so that anyone can copy it? I would hope not - much the same that companies in other industries have the right to build products and retain the intellectual property rights associated with those products.

Go on, show me one other industry where a company has the right to make a product and not provide an enabling specification as to how it works. Only with copyright (which btw, is supposed to cover expressive works, not functional ones) do companies have such a good deal as to be able to create something and not tell anyone how it works.

Re:Patents and "other industries"

[QuantumG]

The point is that software has both functional and expressive portions and we cant copyright the expressive part seperately, so copyright ends up covering purely functional portions which is not right. If all software patents were required to contain source code and be submitted to a searchable database we would have a wealth of code to use. You could choose whether you want to use a patented technique to perform some computation or come up with your own. As it stands, we reimplement and reimplement stuff over and over because we wrap it up with compilers and copyright and never stand on each other's shoulders.

Re:Patents and "other industries"

[leviramsey]

Only with copyright (which btw, is supposed to cover expressive works, not functional ones)

By your logic, computer code is not speech? Based on the DeCSS discussions, I think a lot of /.ers will disagree with you.

Re:Copyright isn't the point at all!

[QuantumG]

Although I think a wholesale replacement of copyright with patent law would be better than our current system I still like to think that there is something expressive about code that should be copyrightable.

Mod this up.

[Dwonis]

I totally agree. Microsoft doesn't understand that the only reason their bad-quality software sells is because consumers don't know any better, nor do they (the average joe) have any real alternatives with the features they want. Even a lot of Linux software is bloated (i.e. KDE and GNOME -- how many people really run a desktop linux system on a 486?) and doesn't provide the features that MS software does.

Microsoft's attitude is like that of a smoker: "I smoke, and there's nothing wrong with me, and look at that sick non-smoker over there!" In the short run it will benefit Microsoft, but in the long run, it will be its downfall.

End Transmission.
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.

Interoperability

[micahjd]

It seems that Question 9 is where he really felt pinned, because instead of answering the question, the question got redefined somehow...

The distinction here is that POSIX and the other unix standards had to be _added to_ because other features not included in them are necessary. Java (and kerberos IIRC) were blatantly contradicted in a way that added a few extra features but sacrificed the spirit of the original standard, interoperability.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[jovlinger]

The question was aimed at delving into microsoft's development practices that seem to inevitably produce insecure-by-default products.
The answer was about how quick they are at fixing/patching/disabling the holes as they are publicised.

Yes the patch came out and fixed that hole, but that was just one example. The question was why there seems to be so many, as if they are put in on purpose.

When the answer doesn't address the question, that is a dodge. Plain and simple.

Re:skillfully skirted the 'hardware fingerprint' Q

[Coward, Anonymous]

There's an article at ZDNet which lists the requirements and recommendations. It does not say which are requirements and which are recommendations, so it's unknown whether the no upgrade policy will be a requirement.

user != admin

[mrjinks]

There are a lot of people out there who don't know how to compile the source they got from someone to get a program to run. To be an efficient Linux user, this is one of the many special skills you have to have.

No, these are skills you need in order to be a Linux/Unix administrator or consultant. I work in an office full of people who don't know their way around the guts of Unix, but they all sit in front of Linux desktops all day and get along just fine, because they're able to offload the low-level stuff to a dedicated admin while they concentrate on getting their work done.

WELL, you might say, what about home users? They don't hire admins. Well in many cases they don't do their own Windows administration either. They take the box out to a service technician, or put the touch on their techno-geek teenager to work on it when it breaks. When my parents' AOLStation gets sick, my phone rings.

And the sort of Windows administration that most people do for themselves can be done just as easily on a Linux box using package management utilitys and GUI management tools like the stuff that has been coming with Red Hat for years now.

Microsoft

[oldzoot]

What scares me is the idea of Microsoft selling a Linux distribution. They would be selecting a particular subset of components and "blessing" it. They would take advantage of all the free work and effort of the development community and sell it for profit by enhancing it. Their corporate-desired products such as office and exchange server etc would probably be tailored to only run properly ( or only be supported on ) microsoft linux. All the corporate linux customers would probably want Microsoft Linux because of the " can't go wrong with IBM ^H^H^H Microsoft " mentality and that would take market away from struggling open source vendors who have actively been supporting open source development.
It might be nice if they made a gnome-office or KDE-office for sale, even at the $300-$400 kind of range that they sell for on windows platforms, but I don't see them doing that.

Z

Re:Microsoft

[Eil]

You have a really good point, but I don't think M$ would get as far with Microsoft Linux as you think. You see, the vast majority of what makes Linux tick is GPL'ed, which means that if M$ modifies *any* of it, they'd have to release their source as well. (Freely, even.)

Conversely, if M$ wanted to keep their distribution nearly as closed as they do their current OSes, they *might* be able to do things like closed-source kernel modules or daemons that would be required to be present for their commercial software to run. But this would be difficult for them in the long run, and I think M$ would much rather keep with their existing OSes than go hacking up their own mediocre version of Linux simply for the sake of being able to call it "Linux."

Re:Origin of the Negro Species

[CmdrPinkTaco]

Yet another theory is that Cain and Abel represent the split of modern agricultural man from the hunter-gather man. Abel was the gatherer and Cain killed him, much like man used to be a gathering animal who then learned how to harvest and use the land strictly for themselves by means of agriculture, effectively killing off the gathering man's land.

just a little food for thought.
--------
"Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs."

Re:Darwin's voyage

[konstant]

Blame this response on too many months spent on talk.origins, but..

The flaw in this analogy is that the entire purpose of minor speciation events like Darwin's finches is to reduce the commonality between strains of finch. Thus, the newly derived finch does not compete with the older, successful finches and consequently has a chance at being successful in its own right, by exploiting different resources in the environment.

However, with software - which is what I assume you're talking about - all the "finches" want to exploit the same "resource" of customer dollars. Therefore they are constrained; they simply cannot speciate in certain ways because it would prevent them from getting more of the common resource. For example, if the only edible thing on the island were walnuts, you wouldn't see any finches speciating to have thin, delicate beaks because they would starve.

Likewise there are certain things required by consumers of software that are not negotiable. One of these *appears* to be a well-understood UI theme. Another one *appears* to be certain metaphors like menus, shortcuts, buttons, whatever.

So while the software can certainly innovate in all kinds of crazy, cool ways to improve efficiency behind the scenes - a bit like some finches getting more efficient lungs or hardier stomachs - they can't dramatically change their interfaces to the customer because the customer is not malleable on certain issues.

That is why we are all stuck with the original Mac metaphors after all these years, despite the likelihood that point-and-click is not the best way to get work done. Only with long training and gradual acceptance can users be brought around to think of things in a completely new way.

Funny post though :-)

-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

Re:Pathetic Answers

[mwalker]

Let's put 2 and 2 together:

Doug: - "Interoperability is a key competitive strength."

Anitcypher: - "That meant that any user with windoze 95 could only use the dial-up software with an ISP running a copy of NT behind each modem. "
- "Cisco approached M$ to put regular CHAP into win95, but M$ refused."

Since Doug would never flat out lie in a public forum, we must conclude that:
- Doug means: "interoperability with our own products" is a key competitive strength.
- He leaves out the implied "non-interoperability with other people's products is a key competitive strength".

Doug writes: -", we need to be even more diligent about building solutions that customers want"
- "In the end, it all comes down to solving customers' problems"
- "we continue to proactively innovate and continue to be totally customer driven. "

Anticypher writes: "As a side note, M$'s implementation of MS-CHAP has some serious security problems, a google search can turn them up. The security holes are pretty difficult to exploit, but allow for session hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks"

Again, since we must assume Doug is telling the truth, then we must conclude that a large customer base has demanded security holes in this product

Our job is to find these customers, and kill them.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[rossz]

I have taught people to use M$ Windows. Compared to the choices available on Linux, it isn't hard. This is so typical of the Linux crowd: "Shut down" is under "Start", therefore it is hard to use. Bullsh!t.

Every single one of your examples is arguing over semantics. For the things that do matter to a nontechnical person, Windows is easier to use.

The Linux crowd needs to stop arguing whether Linux or Windows is easier to use, admit that Windows is the better choice for the typical non-geek, and LEARN FROM MICROSOFT. Oh my god! How can I suggest such a thing. Blasphemy! Damn right. Linux can be better than Windows (again, I'm speaking about the non-geek crowd), but it has a long ways to go in ease of use.

BTW, at home I run SuSE Linux, Windows 98, and Windows 2000. At work I run Windows NT, Windows 2000, and FreeBSD.

Dont blame MS .. blame people!

[SirSlud]

>Microsoft is a commercial operating system company that makes most of its revenue from selling its software. We charge money for our software. That is how we pay our developers, our support people and others to provide for the ongoing existence of our company.

We live in a capitalist economy. MS is fully within its rights to do anything and everything to try and get more money. Thats what capitalism is. No where in the capitalist doctrine does it say, ' .. but you should give up your attempt to amass more riches should you feel you are not being /nice/.' If MS, Nike, McDonalds, and all the other conglomerates have prooven anything, its that the consumer has no boycott power. For every anti-MSer, there are 9 people who could be told 'the whole story', and still not care. So what it really comes down to is the lack of 'checks and balances' in capitalism .. there is nothing to dissuade a corperation from becoming 'too big', or 'too .. unnice'. People complain that MS does all this evil stuff, and then go to work and probably work their own web-of-lies to see product (hell, the internet boom practically owed its existance to the near-hysteric levels of hyperbole in business exchanges in the late 90s.)

So don't complain about the traffic cop who gives you the ticket .. complain about the fact that the traffic law exists in the first place. MS is just doing what the all-american dream is - beating the hell out of your competition, getting stinkin' rich, and relaxing by the pool. While I may not fundamentally believe that they deserve it from a technological point of view, you have to give them credit just for doing what any other huge corperation has succeeded in doing; convincing millions and millions of people to run their software by /any/ means neccessary. Sure they 'embrace and extend' .. sure they market to dummies .. I'm sure MS has made hundreds of questionable decisions not based on technical merit alone. But McDonalds, up until three years ago, used to feed dead cats and dogs from animal shelters to your BigMac cows, and people still ate it (you probably did too, according to statistics). Nike has the sweatshops, but kids look up to the NBAers who make more than all of Nike's factory workers salaries with one deal than the factory workers do in a year. So when it comes to the MS whining and bitching, do it at your terminal (I sure do); I dont think its a revelation to /anyone/ that MS will do just about anything to Get Your Money, but in the end, its all relatively harmless in the context of the big picture. The real irony here is that the reason Microsoft thinks it needs to do this (with respect to the serial key situation with XP) is because people copy and use MS for free. I'm always confused by how much 'anti-commie' sentiment is still around, in the same climate as 'things should be free if you want them to be' (witness Napster as a recent case). Again, MS is just doing /everything/ they can to make the /most amount of money/ .. its capitalism baby!

Choice *good*, lack of standards *atrocious*

[Nailer]

Choise is great, and the competition between KDE and GNOME enhances the Linux desktop.

However, the complete lack of standardization between the two hurts the Linux desktop much, much more. Sorry, what was that you said, GNOME and KDE apps work in each others desktop? Yes they do. Poorly.

I have
* Completely different file/open dialog boxes in my applications. Users have to navigate both to have any chance to survive.
* Non standardized drag and drop. xdnd is either broken or partially implemented in both toolkits, it seems. Try dragging an FTP file from the latest Konqueror to the latest GNOME desktop, for example.
* Silly companies that think the other desktop is going to go away and conveniently ignore it. Users use apps based on quality. The solution to KDE apps being not quite right in GNOME (and vice versa) is to fix the problem, not ignore it.
* 2 places to configure half my app's pook and feel.
* Different
* 2 sets of menus. Theres no functional difference between the two. Apps add themselves to both, or confuse the user by adding themselves to one. Their icons live in 2 seperate locations.

The near complete lack of standardization between KDE and GNOME hurts the Linux desktop more than competition enhances it. That said, standards can still exist within this competition, and neither desktop will go away

Sorry for the rant. But IMO its important.

Windows also has multiple toolktis, MFC and VCL. Over the years, VCL now looks like MFC. And they both wrap around a common layer called Win32.

Is there a reason why GTK and QT couldn't do the same? They're both GPLed. I want as much as possible coded into a uniform library to be loaded once, and a small GTK and QT library that live on top of it.

Remember how much 56k modems sucked before V90? X2 versus K56Flex. If your ISP used one, you couldn't use the other. Thats KDE and GNOME right now. I install Nautilus on my KDE desktop and it overwrites it with an enhanced GNOME desktop. That sucks.

For the things that need to go one way or the other, find a neutral third party (our ITU equivalent - say, Linux international) and let them decide the specs for a common base, taking the best bits from both. It worked damned well for 56k modems.

Would code it myself, but I don't write applications or code beyond bash and basic Python. By the time I learnt' it will be too late. I do Open Source documentation instead.

Right...

[dimator]

Interoperability is a key competitive strength. We clearly accept that customers will choose multiple operating systems depending on how they need to solve their business problems. Providing ways to plug into those other operating systems - both at a system level (e.g. files, user directories etc.) and at an application level (e.g. data formats) is essential.

I see. So that means Microsoft will publish the full, open specs to all Office formats when exactly?


--

Re:Right...

[OmegaDan]

Read the subtext ... Interoperability is a *competitive strength*. Publishing the office file formats would only strenghten other operating systems :) It reminds me of a phrase from applied cryptography [parahrasing] "Almost by definition the 3 letter agencies are more advanced then us. They read all of our research papers, and we read none of theirs." Same thing with MS ... they read lots of formats ... they don't publish them :)

Me? I'd like to see MS Word tget friendly with PS/EPS and latex ... I'm not holding my breath

Re:About Microsoft

[haggar]

Actually, Microsoft is much more frightened of open protocols and standards. This, of course, is related to the opensource facet, but it's a larger issue.

Microsoft wants to prey every aspect of the IT economy, by putting in piece of their proprietary technology. Example: Windows on each PC, because everyone has it. Office on each PC, because .doc and .xls are de-facto (proprietary) standards. MSN (the replacement for Internet) - well, this one (thank Heaven) didn't work out for MS. WindowsCE in every mobile phone - this didn't work out YET. Internet Explorer - everybody must use it, because more and more sites don't look good with Netscape.
etc. etc. etc. With .NET and Explorer, Microsoft is becoming the middleman everywhere, and is going to be able to leverage it's muscle everywhere. Literally.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[wcb4]

(ie: free software is bad. Only proprietary software can be good).

This is typical OS zealotry. Its not what the man said. There is good OSS software, and always will be, but admit it, there is also a lot of crap out there. Its the same in the Windows world. There is a lot of really good freeware and shareware out there, and there is a lot of junk. There is also a lot of good commercial software out there and some junk as well. In the commercial software arena, the signal to noise ratio is a bit better, as the REALLY poor software companies cannot afford to stay in business and disappear. In the free software arena, subpar software is accepted simply because "what do ou expect...its free" is the accpeted attitude. If the linux community did not mind paying for SOME of their software, some that is actually worth having (not to say that they cannot continue to use the truly good free stuff) you might find more quality developers moving into this space. Commercial developers will not move into a space where the attitude is "a half asssed peice of software that is free will beat a great piece of commercial software every time".

A (not so)prime example is GIMP. GIMP is a fantastic piece of software for 90% of the market, but for the other 10%, there simply is no substitute for photoshop, yet adobe, which does make a superior product (and whoever disagrees has obviously never really learned to use photoshop......flame if you will, but I've used GIMP extensively under linux and spent 12 years in printing where hot-retouching was a major part of my job, so I speak form experience) will never move into that space because there is a "good enough" attitude simply because GIMP is free and photoshop never could be. While many of you may argue that GIMP is not a good example (and I agree to the extent that GIMP is *very* close to commercial quality) there are many examples of this attitude.

When the linux community wakes up and realizes that some of us make a living at this stuff and have families and children who actually want to have food to eat and house to live in and we need people to pay for the services and software we create, the sooner linux will grow up.

Its not the technology behind linux that's keeping it from being mainstream, its the attitude of the community behind linux that keeps it from growing up.

I think....therefore I am

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[Eil]

This seems to be the pervailing attitude among those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are stupid, so stupid that we must make all their decisions for them.


You haven't turned on your television or been out to the mall lately, have you?

Re:About Microsoft

[rotor]

We provide ISP services, using Microsoft products. As a result of this we recently got a multimillion dollar contract.

There is only one IT admin guy and he's also the sales guy. He doesn't know anything about unix, and we couldn't with such a small operation, afford a fulltime unix admin, so without Windows' ease of use (think standard dialogue boxes, GUI configuration and so on) we would not have been able to make any money.


While I don't agree that many companies owe their existance to MS or that MS is wrong for charging for software, I'd be careful with your business... You may just end up watching that multi-million dollar contract go down the tubes soon when something happens that a part time administrator who relies on "standard dialogue boxes, GUI configuration and so on" can't handle. This is the whole problem (as has been pointed out here many times) with the MCSE program - it trains people to use those dialogue boxes and GUI tools, but doesn't teach them the theory behind them which may be needed for more severe problems.



-

Support...

[TV-SET]

Well, let me say this one...

If I charge about 100 USD for a piece of software I wrote, then, I most probably don't want to here about it when it hits the customer. I've got my money as software vendor. Support? Who cares about support? ;)

If, on the other hand, support (and similar services) is the only thing that can keep me alive, then I will be pretty sure I do my job right :)

Having this in mind, I would really prefer to go to RedHat Inc. for support instead of Microsoft.

Bee-ess

[supabeast!]

"There is nothing like good competitors to help a company focused on building even more value in their offerings..."

So why does Microsoft work so hard to cruah competition through other means? Wouldn't they have been better off making Internet Explorer 4.0 a better browser, instead of tying it into the OS to make it hard for Windows users to remove? Couldn't Microsoft have just have fixed all the performace and stability problems in Windows that made OS/2 Warp look like such a great alternative, instead of strongarming IBM into dumping it? Why didn't Microsoft just fix the bugs in NT sooner to compete with Linux, instead of pushing Compaq to not support it years ago when Compaq wanted to ship Linux machines?

While I am sure the Slashdot guys are pleased to be able to have a Microsoft representative answer questions, stating that he is not weasly is little more than an ass-kissing attempt to get Doug to come back for more. The truth is, Miller simply spouts out the standard Microsoft line, trying to make his company look a little bit less like the corporate scum they are.

Re:Bee-ess

[supabeast!]

I wish that this was not in response to one of my comments, just so I could mod it up!

Re:skillfully skirted the 'hardware fingerprint' Q

[mikej]

Actually, MS released their required specification for a pc that will be allowed to carry the "Windows XP' logo (like that little metal sticker saying "Designed for (list of windows versions)) not that long ago, and it included a clause that the case not allow access to the internals. They basically stipulate that for a machine to be deemed 'XP Compatible' it cannot be upgraded by the end user. That's how they plan to get around the problem: The service tech. gets a new key from MS after the hardware has been upgraded at his shop.

Re:About Microsoft

[j-beda]

There is nothing more important than wealth creation. Wealth creation allows for true redistribution of wealth. Companies such as Microsoft have made tons of money and now Bill Gates is giving billions away.

...

The kind of socialist ideal implied by open source, where no-one makes pits of money is very bad for the country. If this happens, you get barely affluent people - people such as yourself, who in the main don't pursue any philanthropic activity.

The USA is hardly a model for "good living". The health stats for the US poor are not very great compared to other industrialized nations. The gap between the rich and poor, worker rights, environmental standards, and all sorts of other things that seem to be better addressed in other more "socialist ideal" influenced countries is not the best commendation for the current system.

Your points about innovation may turn out to be true - but really there is no good data to support them yet. It is certainly true that financial considerations can provide great incentives, but it is also true that without proper checks and balances such drives can make for terrible long term decisions that can effect the entire society.

I would put forth that anyone who thinks that wealth creation is the most important thing in the universe needs to spend a little more time thinking about community, family, health, and happiness. Money can be an important tool, but it is just that, a tool. Don't be just a tool seeker.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[kevinank]

Well, apart from question 8 the answers were mostly consistent. But did anyone else notice that Q8 (and the immediately preceeding statements in Q7) were inconsistent?

I think he should have answered Q7 as "We like to think of ourselves as customer focused, and indeed we are where that doesn't interfere with our first priority which is profitability (or the ability to offer software for profit.)" Or generously, perhaps his answer to Q7 was intended to include software developers as the customers on which Microsoft focuses, in which case the two statements become consistent again.

It certainly isn't driven as a first priority by end-customer needs though...

Whatever...

[Greyfox]

Several times he dismisses Linux as not being particularly revolutionary. But it is revolutionary in several ways. It runs on damn near every hardware platform ever. There's no other OS that does that. I can take a program on my IA32 archetecture, move it right on up to an S390 (or down to IBM's Linux watch) and be pretty sure that compiling it there will work pretty much the same way. I reiterate, no other OS does that.

The cooperation Linux encourages in developers is truly revolutionary. While BSD was the first "free" OS, for some reason it didn't seem to encourage the level of cooperation that Linux does. I don't know why. Maybe it's the GPL, maybe it's the timing, maybe it's the marketing but the Linux community has managed to grow while BSD has remained out on the fringe. The fact that all these developers are coming together from all over the world is pretty revolutionary.

The GPL in and of itself is pretty revolutionary too. Some people don't like it, but I do. If you want to profit off my work, I want you to give something back to the community. I tend to be more inclined to muck about with the lgpl which strikes me as being more evenly balanced. At a time when Corporate America wants to tie your computer up in proprietary standards that keep you from using your computer in any way without their express permission, the GPL will become more and more important in encouraging hobbiests to tinker with hardware and code.

I'm pretty sure the "Revoltionary" vision Microsoft is trying to force down our throats is one where your only choice is that you lease a propetary machine, run Microsoft's proprietary OS and pay for each application by the minute. I really don't want to live in that world.

Re:Whatever...

[bmajik]

No other OS runs on lots of platforms ?

I'm sure you're familiar with NetBSD :)

Linux is not "#1" in platform-variety. Many linux ports are half assed or unusable.

Your microsoft paranoia is a bit unfounded. Why would microsoft give a damn if you wanted to run linux on your computer ? It's your computer - not theirs. If linux is what you want to use, by all means, go for it. They'd rather sell you windows, but if you dont want to buy it, they can't make you*

*A long time ago it was difficult to get a cheap name brand computer without paying "the windows tax". even this is no longer the case. But it was never _impossible_.

Re:Whatever...

[Hoo00]

Technically, GNU/Linux is revolutionary. But to most desktop users who know nothing behind the scene, GNU/Linux is just an ugly unix-like OS with confusing applications available for free. This is how Microsoft sees the picture, i.e. from their customers' eyes who they assume are non-tech consumers.

Re:Whatever...

[shren]

Hey, propaganda, modded up. Whee. Refutations:

Several times he dismisses Linux as not being particularly revolutionary. But it is revolutionary in several ways. It runs on damn near every hardware platform ever. There's no other OS that does that. I can take a program on my IA32 archetecture, move it right on up to an S390 (or down to IBM's Linux watch) and be pretty sure that compiling it there will work pretty much the same way. I reiterate, no other OS does that.

Linux doesn't do that either. Linux is a kernel, a kernel that a great many people have made to work on a great many machines. Linux uses a lot of things that were around a long time before Linux was.

If you have Linux running on your machine, then you can download and compile things. So? You can do that with most any kernel that you've gotten GCC to run on top of. The fact that it's the *same* kernel deserves a round of applause. But where's the revolution? You promised a revolution, dammit.

The cooperation Linux encourages in developers is truly revolutionary. While BSD was the first "free" OS, for some reason it didn't seem to encourage the level of cooperation that Linux does. I don't know why. Maybe it's the GPL, maybe it's the timing, maybe it's the marketing but the Linux community has managed to grow while BSD has remained out on the fringe. The fact that all these developers are coming together from all over the world is pretty revolutionary.

Once upon a time, if you ran Unix home, you probably ran BSD. They had pretty much all of the home Unix marketplace. Now Linux has almost all of the home marketplace for Unix. The home marketplace for Unix is larger now (because more people need router boxes, etcetera), but this is a massive victory for Linux only if you see the world through penguin-tinted glasses. You haven't supplaned anybody but BSD, and BSD is far from gone. It moves from the home market to the buisness market because people know how to use it. Interesting, noteworthy, predictable. Still no revolution. Same thing happened with BSD.

The GPL in and of itself is pretty revolutionary too. Some people don't like it, but I do. If you want to profit off my work, I want you to give something back to the community. I tend to be more inclined to muck about with the lgpl which strikes me as being more evenly balanced. At a time when Corporate America wants to tie your computer up in proprietary standards that keep you from using your computer in any way without their express permission, the GPL will become more and more important in encouraging hobbiests to tinker with hardware and code.

Pyramid marketing in code form. No wonder it's taking the net by storm.

I'm pretty sure the "Revoltionary" vision Microsoft is trying to force down our throats is one where your only choice is that you lease a propetary machine, run Microsoft's proprietary OS and pay for each application by the minute. I really don't want to live in that world.

Nice persecution complex. "They" wanted to crush tapes, and failed. VCRs, and failed. Ectetera. Do you see the US government collapsing into feudalism any time soon, as well?

This gets a five. *This* gets a five. They're giving moderation points to anybody who stumbles off the street with a forty these days, I see.

Re:Whatever...

[TheGratefulNet]

it runs on damn near every hardware platform ever. There's no other OS that does that.

obviously your net connection to netbsd.org is filtered by your ISP. you should ask them to remove that entry since its making you look stoopid.

--

Re:Whatever...

[Ars-Fartsica]

It runs on damn near every hardware platform ever. There's no other OS that does that.

Because when it boils right down to it, there is no reason to have one OS on every platform. Added to which, we are not talking about an identical piece of software running on an IPAQ and a 390. The tweaks are signficant enough from a developer standpoint to almost consider them separate products.

While BSD was the first "free" OS, for some reason it didn't seem to encourage the level of cooperation that Linux does.

The FreeBSD core committers model has worked very well, and by the looks of it, linux is heading in the very same direction.

They're damn well trying

[Greyfox]

I was attending a keynote by Scott Draeker last week and he was quite concerned with the possibility of newer video cards putting DirectX right on the hardware. While I don't know a lot about CPRM (Which fortunately was shot down this time) worst case I would have to have a special driver to run my hard drive. A driver I'm sure I wouldn't be able to get for Linux. I can't get a free (speech, not beer) DVD player for Linux. Intel and Microsoft (and a bunch of other people including IBM) were working on the I20 spec which originally was structured to shut out open source developers. The RIAA and MPAA want nothing less than end to end encryption from your computer to your output devices and none of that shit will be ported to Linux, I guarantee you that.

And you think my paranoia is unjustified and that they can't make me buy windows? Well if I can't legally get drivers for my hardware, I can't choose to put Linux on that hardware.

Currently I have a choice and only buy hardware that I know I can get true open source drivers for (Matrox G400, Creative SBLive, that sort of thing) but I can see a day coming when there will be no choices. When that day comes, you'll get your computer free with your lifetime MSN subscription which I'm sure will be a very reasonable $100 a month. All your hardware will be "Windows Optimized." All your data will be in remote .net data stores. All your applications will charge you to access that data by the minute. You won't be able to get a C compiler because "The average user doesn't need to bother with that sort of thing." Am I being paranoid? They're pretty much spelling out their business plan. If anything, your Microsoft complacency is a bit unfounded.

Re:Most people don't give a shit...

[Deluge]

People, even non-technical people, love customizing their systems. In doing so, they make the machine "theirs." They spend hours messing with the backgrounds, the icons, and the sounds.

Indeed. This machine's mine...

background: black (any other crap's a distraction)

icons: standard (I prefer to have folders clearly marked as such versus, say, the trash bin being a stegosaurus and my documents folder being a brontosaurus, or some such shit)

sounds(!): NONE! one of the 1st things I do on a Win box is turn off all sounds (though I haven't found out how to turn off the PC speaker beep when the trashcan empties)

These things are wildly customized especially by the non-technical people because they don't care that it's a distraction - form over function for them. Technical people, outside of a background pic, will usually make more functional customizations to their environment, the reason being they want to get more work done, faster, and not make their machine "pretty." Besides, that's what comp cases are for :)

---

Re:Most people don't give a shit...

[Deluge]

I used the screwdriver solution. :) As an added bonus, I don't have to worry about that magnet right next to my hard drive. Yeah, I know it won't hurt anything, but...

I *did* have the speaker disconnected on my old machines. But now that I have a motherboard that starts freakin' out if the CPU fan dies or anything overheats, I'm too paranoid to disconnect it :(

---

Here's an idea

[ahde]

You should interview Doug Miller and ask him what he thinks of the answers to the questions that *he* answered.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, but at least the proofreaders added their signatures to the final product.

Re:I've heard him before

[bmajik]

I hope you don't mean to imply that he is unknowledgable about Linux and UNIX in general.

Remember OpenNT ? Softway Systems ? The re-implementation of the NT posix subsystem to let you run and develop unix/x11R5 apps natively on NT ?

Same guy.

Re:About Microsoft

[TheCarp]

Doe sthat count package install time?

On debian I could easily have a machine installed from scratch and running as a webserver in an hour or two. Depending on the machine of course, there is alot to the OS and just loading and installing the inital packages can take a while.

With a fast enough network connection (and fast enough machine to unpack and install things quick) I could then apt-get dist-upgrade to the latest stable (ie all the security patches that are needed).

Now granted, I do this shit for a living. Can a newbie who never installed the OS do it in such a short period of time. Hell no... well they probably could actually but - I would never recomend that a persons first intro to an OS be running a webserver on it.

For the most part you can use apache "out of the box" - it works great.

Course then again... you work with Windows stuff for a living, much as I work with Unix for a livig - can a newbie, who has never used either system (hmmm say An apple II user who just today decided to upgrade to a new machine) set it up AND get a webserver working in an hour or two?

Hmmm... bring up a spare machine next month and a Win2K CD... maybe we can talk Liz into helping us perform this experiment? (Yea I know - no way in hell)

-Steve

Despite Politeness, Doug Irritates

[crucini]

First, Doug attaches too much importance to the fact the Linux is free as in beer:

Our products need to show long term value that goes beyond the initial purchase price so the argument becomes not how much does your operating system cost up front but more importantly, how much will your operating system save you over the years that you use it.

and

so the fact that the OS is "free" really has little bearing on the fully loaded costs of deploying and using a computing platform.

In the Linux-based systems I've worked on, the acquisition cost of the OS was not even a factor. Rather, the stability, flexibility and remote management were the factors that made Linux far more attractive than Microsoft's offerings. So while I agree with Doug that initial cost of zero has little meaning, I disagree with his implication that any Microsoft OS offers lower fully loaded costs of deploying. With Microsoft, you're bleeding money all the way. The ratio of sysadmins to machines is too high.
Then there's this 'pretty good' stuff:

... Linux - a pretty good server operating system...

and

Linux is a pretty good collection of technology...

I have no problem with that characterization in a vacuum. However, if you're going to call Linux 'pretty good', then I hope you call Win2K 'pretty bad', and I get the feeling that Doug wouldn't do that. Given the framework of Microsoft overpraise that implicitly lurks in the background ("innovative", etc.) "pretty good" sounds like damning with faint praise. I sense that Doug is giving us a polite, euphemistic version of the anti-Linux FUD that Microsoft is delivering to large customers.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[btlzu2]

I'm not sure what you expected either actually, because he addressed it in a straightforward manner. He said that they're having a struggle trying to balance functionality and security and what they're doing to try and alleviate it. What was "marketroid-speak" in his answer? He didn't dodge it as far as I can see, unless you could explain a little further what you meant!

Wow a nice layout ...

[Christianfreak]

On how Linux can be really successful for the end user. End users and pointy haired bosses look at a software package and evaluate it by how it looks, I think that Msoft has this one down pat. Really their idea of renting software is pretty attractive in some ways to larger companies (I've worked for a company with copies for every single one of like 500 machines, not fun). I don't think it would be good for end-users but that remains to be seen.

I appriciate his honesty. Msoft isn't the Borg, they're out to make money and they are very good at it, some of their practices are questionable and for the most part their software sucks. On the flip side we in the Open Source/Free Software community would be very wise to take some these ideas and apply them to our own projects, I think that he raises some very good points about things we need to keep being successful.

"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[OmegaDan]

you're asking the wrong question, why SHOULDN'T you be able to change out ethernet cards? ...

He was smart to answer this...

[alexhmit01]

Slashdot is officially news for nerds. It is unofficially a Linux advocacy site. However, it also has GREAT information on technical issues. It is easier to read Slashdot then to follow 10 websites.

When a student, I could read Slashdot 5 times an hour to get every new story quickly. Now, some days I check twice, some times a few days before reading. Sometimes I'll post 10 times in a day, then not post for a money.

However, I also like keeping up on technical topics from Slashdot. However, it is a very anti-MS site. As an MCSE that got burned in the NT4 screw on the MCSE program, I have my own MS rants. However, he took a good opportunity to look good. When someone is reading Slashdot, they see that MS is being reasonable, and the kiddies on /. throwing tantrums marked up to a 5 shouting about Linux, and you get some good points.

He painted MS's blemishes in a good light. From someone whose server room is divided between NT4 Boxes and OpenBSD boxes, knowing the MS wants to fix it's mistakes is a good thing.

Alex

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[alexhmit01]

Because most don't have any money.

Most of the screaming on Slashdot is your high school and (to a lesser extent) college crowd. I remember futzing with Linux about 4 years ago, and I didn't mind that it took a few days to get everything to play nicely. At my last job, getting Linux configured to my liking took the better part of the day. Now that I sit on the other side of the employment divide, I realize the value of my employee's time. I want them enhancing the bottom line, not losing 4-6 hours getting sound to work.

This crowd talks about buying games. Most of the probably pirate them, or buy one copy and burn many copies. I found that as I have more money and less time, it isn't worth hacking anything. It is rarely worth the effort to get half assed solutions.

Professionally, at a job a while back we tried to mess with some open source stuff to adapt to our needs (including Slashcode!). Most of it was BEYOND subpar. The code being available was nice, but the documentation was lacking and the coding involved few abstraction layers so getting inside was a nightmare.

I have often found it easier to play with a few OSS packages, poke around when needed, but implement our own stuff. Having it available under the GPL is nice (to give back, we tossed a few of our building block pieces up, but never got around to polishing up the rest for release... maybe when we're not too busy) for learning, but most of the code out there is garbage.

I just dropped $130 to get MacOS X for my G4 Cube on my desk for playing around. It's nice, and I want to move over to it (to keep my development and application environment on one machine), but knowing Windows as well as I do (MCSE and NT Admin for the past 4 years, just moved back into the programming side of IT recently), it isn't worth it.

The problem is that people playing with Linux are mostly doing it as a hobby. Hobbyists don't want to spend money for the hobby, it's a labor of love. They learned Linux to learn Unix, and now find that they like some of the software and prefer to use it professionally.

However, despite all the GUI copying, KOffice is a joke compared to MS Office. When companies make an effort to develop something cool for Linux (VMWare, for starters, that was mentioned before), the OSS community immediately attempts a copy of it. That is somewhat self defeating. If you want software available right away on your platform, it would be nice to buy it instead of trying to copy everything.

Oh well, we'll just reimplement everything twice. Company 1 will make something useful and sell some copies. The OSS world will try to FUD them out of existance with a crappy substitute that will be good enough "real soon now".

Maybe the Open Source Advocates should start playing nice. Talk to Apple about GNUstep. Maybe if they toss some effort into it and OpenSTEP again, we'll have a real cross platform development environment. KDE/GNOME boys, you can provide your hooks.

Maybe we all write OpenSTEP applications to run on MacOS X, Linux/KDE, and Linux/GNOME, and when source is available, you can compile on *nix/KDE or *nix/GNOME... but maybe we'll all just flame Microsoft instead.

However, when a game purchase is a major portion of your income, $500 for Photoshop seems outrageously priced. But if you saw the salaries of your Graphic Designers... they get whatever they want.

Alex

Re:Typical M$

[mmmmbeer]

GNOME and KDE are both GUI's. They both go beyond that, but that is their main difference. Their API's could be merged, but they would still be TWO GUI's. Miller specifically stated that the two should join together and make ONE GUI. He did NOT say that they should create two GUI's with shared API's. That would be a good idea, one that has been proposed repeatedly in the past, but THAT WAS NOT WHAT HE SAID!

Why don't you read the subject matter before you post in the future?

Re:Well...

[mmmmbeer]

What a load of crap. The reason Windows is installed in MOST (not all, you fool) big, dumb businesses is because they want to use Word. It's simple momentum. Other companies use Word, we need to be able to share documents with other companies, therefore, we need Word, so we need Windows. (This is true of other products as well, but Word is one of the big ones.) Microsoft has a chokehold on the market, that's what that whole antitrust thing was about.

And as for Windows being easy to support? I laugh in your face! HAHAHAHA! What universe do you live in? Try telling that one to your IT guys. Windows is a pain in the ass to support - I've been there. Hell, Windows is so bad that at my old company we banned Win95 because it wouldn't work right with WinNT.

And as for that last paragraph, could you have missed the point any worse? You CAN'T have one GUI that satisfies everybody, particularly the "nerd" people (although we prefer "geek", you obvious "Org" person).

Re:Typical M$

[mmmmbeer]

You don't have to let the KDE or Gnome teams decide for you. Use one sometimes and the other other times. Not what youi want? Take the code and make your own. Don't like that? Don't use a GUI at all. Like windows? Use windows. But don't act like whatever works for you should work for everyone.

Real answers??? I think not...

[GreekGeek]

Here are some quotes from this interview:

"I can't really say if anything has changed over the years..."

"I'm not sure much will change ..."

"We clearly accept that customers will choose multiple operating systems depending on how they need to solve their business problems"

"Today, there is an almost violent dislike for anything Microsoft in the Linux community"

"I personally think that we will see a mixed model for the foreseeable future"

"...I don't see a major revolution here"

"In the end, it all comes down to solving customers' problems "

These answers to questions are about as vague as saying, "It depends on what the word "is" is...".

Please, nothing came out of this interview that surprised or even raised any eyebrows. Yes, Microsoft makes money and doesn't like it when an equivalent product out there competes with it but doesn't use the profit model as the reason for its existence. So what, we've all known that for years.

LINUX and Microsoft represent two distinct and fundamental splits in the IT world. One world, the Open Source world, considers software to be a commodity--an advanced engine whose purpose is to lower the cost to the "consumer" to almost zero. To Microsoft, software is a very valuable piece of a corporation. Because of its cost-saving capabilities, it should charge a premium for its product.

Microsoft charges for its OS--LINUX distros allow themselves to be used for free.

Microsoft uses proprietary protocols to perform many of their tasks--LINUX doesn't.

The real question is--which fundamental split is the way to go with in the future. No answers have been given...

Microsoft *is* innovative

[Richy_T]

If the Linux community could take the best thinking from both the KDE and GNOME projects and join forces, they would have the best chance for success.

I believe I have just seen the first ever attempt at "unite and conquer".

Sure, unite up then Microsoft only has a single target to aim for and squash. I personally think the strength *is* in the diversity. Otherwise we'd all just be stuck with some extension of twm.

Rich

Darwin's voyage

[Richy_T]

The scene: The Galapagos Islands, on board "The Beagle" which has been at anchor for two weeks. We are in Charles Darwin's cabin, he is studying some books intently

A knock at the door

Darwin: Come in

Dougabus Miller, a young socialite enters. Dougabus has made his money by exploiting a monopoly on grain exports to Namibia to extract exorbitant prices and to force unecessary purchases of umbrellas from his factory in Scunthorpe. On board the Beagle by accident (he thought he was boarding a ship bound for Jamaica for a two week "fun in the sun" holiday), he amuses himself by pestering anyone who will pay him attention

Dougabus: Hey-ho, Darwin. What's up.

Darwin: I am just finishing up these drawings for my journal

Dougabus: Drawings? Nothing Lewd I hope? Can I have a look?

Darwin: No, Dougabus. Nothing like that. I am drawing the finches that we have been studying on the island that Jaques noticed on Sunday

Dougabus: Finches? That's rather a lot of drawings you have there. Why so many? Why not just one? Isn't one finch much like another?

Darwin: Ah no, you see, young Dougabus. That is the interesting thing. Each of these finches is slightly different. See, this one has a beak adapted for pulling insects from bark, this one a beak adapted for cracking open small snails and this one, claws that can open this shrink wrap on CDs in under a second. All slightly different, all adapted to exploit their environment to the maximum.

Dougabus: Well, Darwin, old chap. I don't see it. I mean, surely all these differences just cause confusion for the lady finches and finding a dinner jacket to fit must be pure hell. No, they should take the best features from each of these "adaptations" and unite them. Then they would have the strength and the power to rise up, march forward and TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Muahahahah Muahaha Muahahaha Hahahaha

Darwin: No, you see...

Dougabus: Muahahah Muahahahaaaaa

Darwin: Dougabus!

Dougabus: Muahaha Muaha All your base are belong to us Muahaha

Darwin: Stop it

Dougabus: Muahahahahahahahahahahahahah aha

Darwin reaches down and draws gun from under the table

Darwin: The things I do for evolution.

Darwin points the gun at Dougabus and pulls the trigger. A loud bang rings out and Dougabus falls to the ground, fatally wounded

Dougabus: Muaha?

Darwin puts the gun down, having saved the human race for another day. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Darwin, at that very moment, a seamstress from Portsmouth Harbour is carrying the spawn of Dougabus Miller.

The End

Rich

ALERT: Godwin's Law

[(void*)]

demands that this thread of argument be closed.

Re:Typical M$

[(void*)]

This just shows misunderstanding on the developers part. You can install the KDE and GNOME libraries on the same harddisk. You can run them and they will run without stepping on each other's toes. the only choice you have to make is the choice of window manager, session manager, sound daemons, etc.

In fact, I look forward to the day that Miguel de Icaza promises, where GNOME and KDE can talk to each other. Not only will they not tread tread on each other, they will actually interoperate.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[(void*)]

All thanks to MS for driving OS/2 out of the market then.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[pz]

Don't confuse a different point of view from your own with a failure to truly answer the question.

Then, I suppose something like Bill Gates' famous gaffe is, oh, well, merely a "different view" (Stephen (sret1@cam.ac.uk)'s words) about mathematics:

The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." (Bill Gates, The Road Ahead, Viking Penguin (1995), p. 265.)

The opinions Doug Miller presented in this interview are nothing more than propaganda from a big company. He clearly misunderstands basic technical issues (eg, exactly whence Linux developed, what constitutes an operating system, how competitive Linux vs. MS operating systems are in high-availability deployments, what the difference is between free software and open source, etc.), but is very savvy on business models (eg, how MS really makes its money, effective models for future revenue, what divisions within the Linux community are important in terms of competitively threatening MS, etc.).

Certainly, one could not expect anything of real import from such an interview. No trade secrets, no meaningful glimpses of strategies. And we saw none. MS has been built into a powerful corporation not because it has ever produced good software, but because it has had a leader who knows the business world very, very well. That confusion has lead to such assertions as Mr. Miller's, "Microsoft has always been a customer focused company and to satisfy customers, you need to build solutions that are competitive," which, while narrowly accurate, does not imply that these solutions are meritorious in any technically relevant way. And we know that they are not. I stand by my long-repeated claim that we, as a society, are 10 years behind were we could be, because of Microsoft.

Personally, I'd rather not have seen this interview, and I disagree strongly with Roblimo: this man should not command our respect, other than being part of a company with a proven track record of success so pervasive that the US Government felt it had gotten too big. Sadly for MS, other companies which have achieved similar success had far different ethics (Ever used a pre-breakup AT&T phone? High-quality and indestructible. Ever heard of what Andrew Carnegie did with his money? Among other things, a large series of architecturally beautiful public libraries. Bill Gates had not given any money away before the DOJ case.), but we fortunately live in a world where we are not forced to use their products.

-- pz.

Interesting Comments

[cluge]

I find it some of the comments a little funny.

Bill Gates is forceing you to rent his software NOW. If you don't believe me talk to the poor IT guys in a large corporate env. trying to keep up with the latest software demands of his users. Office is out every 2 years (or less sometimes) it uses a slightly newer, slighty different format that isn't read by the older format. Go upgrade. NT will no longer support XYZ, it is only available on win 2000. Of course if you just bought NT 6 months ago because win2k drivers weren't ready for your other equipment sorry. Go upgrade. Your new frontpage won't work with your old frontpage server? Oh so sorry go upgrade. You want some of the new features in exchange 2000 (now that it's not a default open relay?) we're sorry go upgrade.

The continual upgrade cycle is no more than renting software. New releases purposely break old, security updates are made available ONLY if you register with MS (outlook and SP2 for office).

MS is trying to keep this big profit wheel going. They are pulling out all the stops to try and keep one of the longest and largest growth spurts in ANY companies history going. To that end we see that NET initiative, MS has invented it's own engineers. (You memorize 150 questions and are called an engineer, and can reccomend MS upgrades for you clients).

Eventually there will be a contraction at some point. How MS handles it's current customers will dictate how big the contraction will be. Providing an ever diminishing return on their software investment may mean that the contraction will be much larger than it has to be.

Re:Interesting Comments

[Ig0r]

I think that should read:
Take as much as you can

Getting assumes that someone else is giving it to you.

--

MS porting apps to linux, they'd probably pick Qt

[StandardDeviant]

I suspect that they would use Qt. The reasons are threefold in my mind: 1) it's C++, and the object model would be fairly familiar to somebody whose done MFC, 2) it's pretty standard looking from one instllation to the next (no wild and wooliness like Gtk+ can get with themes; yes I know Qt is themeable too but frankly I haven't seen many of my KDE friends do that), 3) the company that makes Qt is open to it's use in a commercial, closed-source application (and has the corporate infrastructure to sell it).

Note that I said Qt and not KDE. I think the dithering over KDE or Gnome is a ruse, as I use apps from both "environments" quite regularly in my Enlightenment (0.16.5) WM. I truly don't think the WM has much to do with how the app operates (and if you're anal enough about the way your app's borders look to care about it at all, you've got problems a WM won't fix). Can anyone think of an instance where an application required (I mean would not operate without), Gnome or KDE (as opposed to gnome-libs or kde-libs)?

That being said, I'd gladly pay for some Microsoft applications on linux. Word and Excel spring immeadiately to mind becuase I pretty much have to use them for some of the classes I take (well, I could probably do without word but Excel simply offers things that gnumeric et al. don't). Heck, I'd pay for IE too if it didn't suck like some of the other Unix IE ports apparently have (figure $20 or $30). Further, I think the reason that Linux will never catch on in the corporate envirtonment outside of the IT dept is that it doesn't have Office/IE/Outlook. Too many normal business types (bizdev et al.) simply will not make the change (don't want to or can't), and why should they? The computer is just a tool for them to acheive their real goals, so once they've learned one application or application suite well enough to acheive those goals, why devote more brain power to switching abscent a compelling technical reason.

Anything that speeds the adoption of linux on the desktop and home market is good for linux, even for those of use that use it soley as a servcr and use it on our desktops. Quite simply, the larger our market share is, the more likely hardware companies will develop linux drivers at the same time as win32 ones. Increased hardware support benefits the entire community.

--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org

Outlook E-Mail Security Update

[aengblom]

...For example, after the "I Love You" virus of last spring, we took the initiative to change the balance between security and functionality by releasing the Outlook E-Mail Security Update. The Update prevents executable attachments from being delivered to an Outlook user, and also prevents code from sending mail on the user's behalf without the user's permission. No user who's installed the Update has been harmed by any of the e-mail viruses that have been seen since "I Love You"...

UGG! This update is a security update in the worst of ways. It is totally brute force. It simply cuts off access to potentially harmful files even if the user knows the file is safe. This includes VBS files, EXE files, but also Access database files and so on. It literaly says "Outlook has blocked access to FileA, FileB, ETC." Even worse It made no warning I would be denied access to such files and there is no way to turn it off. I can't TELL YOU HOW MUCH THIS PISSES ME OFF! I had to turn an assignment in LATE because Outlook blocked my MS Access file I sent to MYSELF!!

(yeah it um real gets to me)

Sell software to pay...

[bluelip]

If they are paying their support people by selling the software, where the heck does that $35 for a dekstop incident or $100+ for a server incident go when they charge me when I call their "support" line?

Re:Sell software to pay...

[susano_otter]

Well, it's a good point. As far as I can tell, you've got two scenarios:

1. Pay for a software license. Pay a competent technician to manage the software. Pay for end-user training. Pay a support provider for support. Pay for periodic upgrades.

2. Get the software for free. Pay a competent technician to manage the software. Pay for end-user training. Pay a support provider for support. Get periodic upgrades for free.

The question is: "Does the money saved by getting the software for free offset the higher costs of a competent technician and end-user training?"

Microsoft seems to think the answer is "no", but with a caveat - even if owning, managing, and using the free software is cheaper, it is still difficult to find a market for applications developed on such platforms.

This makes little sense to me. First of all, if the free software truly is cheaper then more people will migrate to it, and the market for apps will increase dramatically. Second, many companies don't make money by selling software for platform X; they make money by selling physical objects or services of some kind (websites, clothing stores, auto manufacturers, &c.). For them, free software might reduce their overhead and allow them to spend more resources on improving their core business.

On the other hand, if free software achieves the goal of becoming user-friendly and intuitive, then the need for support will decline, and then there will be little or no revenue stream to support the development of free software. Free software will go back to being a basement hobby, and the commercial world will continue to be dominated by Micro$tarbucks/SunOracle.

Re:You gotta understand

[SuiteSisterMary]

It gives you choices, unlike windows. You can make your desktop be the way you want, not the way windows wants.

You just gave the reason why the average user won't like Linux. Reread the first paragraphs of your own post.

Standards

[donglekey]

All that crap about standards and other companies extending them is pure bullshit. Good examples are SQL extensions made by people like Oracle and OpenGL entensions made by people like Nvidia are completely different. They give extra options to someone using the standard without actually breaking why the standard is in place to begin with. Microsoft had to settle with Sun because they broke Sun's license agreement. If they thought something needed to be added to java they could have gone through the same process that I could go through if I thought something should be added to java. Instead they put their own infections into it and defeated the purpose by making java that could only run on Microsoft VM's. They broke the standard, they didn't extend it in any way. There is a definite difference.

KDE and Gnome

[Dlugar]

The big benefit I see to this is that I prefer the window manager Enlightenment. I can run Gnome applications. I can run KDE applications.

So what's the big deal? Just pick whichever one you want to write code for (like the above poster). It's not as if Gnome users can't use KDE programs, or as if KDE users can't use Gnome programs.

Of course, I'm in favor of a standardized GUI protocol, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Dlugar

MMX is licensed from Intel

[yerricde]

he is wrong about AMD making "clone" processors of Intel. That hasn't happened since the 486

Intel holds patents on key components of the x86 architecture such as MMX and SSE. AMD has to license these patents (and the corresponding trademarks) to be able to create fully x86-compatible processors.

Re:Pluralizing singlars?!?

[StoryMan]

Thank you,
one of Shakespeares Countrywomen.

Does the Queen's English have apostrophes?

Re:About Microsoft

[Salsaman]

I don't think many would complain if Microsoft competed fairly in the marketplace, but remember, they were found guilty of using illegal means to destroy their competitors.

a Hardware solution to a hardware hacker's lament

[evil_one]

A dongle that provides an encrypted key.
poof.
make it a USB passthru device.
---

Re:skillfully skirted the 'hardware fingerprint' Q

[TheGratefulNet]

you mod'd me 'flaimbait' ???

sheesh! I addressed an issue that was ignored so conveniently by the guy answering the questions.

guess there must have been a M$ person moderating today.

--

skillfully skirted the 'hardware fingerprint' Q

[TheGratefulNet]

note how there wasn't one bit of content reply in the question of how the end user (with a laptop or continually changing hardware config) will deal with the 'get a fingerprint, call in to M$ and then get the license key' issue.

this doesn't seem well thought out other than being a way to suck more money from the end user. in no way is this 'customer friendly', its a pure money-grab.

in a corp environment, sure, most of the time the hardware doesn't change from its initial install config. so this scheme might work ok for this env. but home users DO upgrade their own boxes. do you (M$) plan to alienate home users who want to upgrade a single component (video card, drive controller, sound card, etc)?

if there was one and only one thing I could use as an argument against M$ and their licensing, this issue would be it.

and its sad that it was asked but not answered in this forum ;-(

--

Re:skillfully skirted the 'hardware fingerprint' Q

[shyster]

According to the (now-defunct) Winmag.com's Insider column (Google cache), the Product Activation will be unaffected by "minor" upgrades. Changing of a motherboard, BIOS chip (I assume flashing the BIOS to a new revision would be OK) or (perhaps?) the CPU could affect it.

Microsoft's FAQ on the subject is a little more vague, specifying only that "It is able to tolerate a certain degree of change in a hardware configuration so that users can change their hardware without having to reactivate the product. If the user completely overhauls the hardware, then activation may be required again, which would take place by telephone." What is a complete overhaul? I'm not sure...I've overhauled my engine before, but not my computer.

Volume licenses should be unaffected, OEM licenses may or may not be, retail definitely will be.

The EULA in Office (apparently) states that the primary user of Office on a desktop may install on a laptop computer for exclusive use. You would get an activation code for that laptop the same way. Windows (retail and OEM) and OEM licenses of Office only allow for a single installed copy.

Office may be reinstalled as many times as necessary on the same machine without a different activation code...but a reformat may require a new code. The FAQ only states that Windows can be installed as many times as necessary on the same machine, but does not say if a reformat (which is really the only way to install Windows properly) would require a new code...I'd guess it wouldn't, however.

All in all, this may actually be a good thing for small corporate customers (those not on the Volume Licensing programs, anyway). Remember those Slashdot stories about small governments and corps being confused on MS licenses? Well, now there's no excuse. If you've got a code for the HW, then you're legal. SPA Audits may become a thing of the past.

As for Windows warez and those that are admitted pirates, we'll just have to wait until some enterprising coder cracks it and links it to Astalavista and bypass it. Shouldn't be any more of an annoyance than other copy protection schemes have been, hopefully.

Any other questions?

*** HAPPINESS ***

[f5426]

is a state of mind

-- #1000 --

(Posting logged)

The best Unix clone....

[Alomex]

But looking at Linux technically, there is no real revolution here. Linux looks and feels like UNIX and isn't any better than a commercial version of UNIX.

While there might be a bit of hyperbole in that statement, so far what Linux has done is mostly replication of UNIX. This is no mean feat, considering how much work it involved. But Linux must definitely move beyond that and start innovating.

Can it support a better development paradigm (see OS X)? Can it provide by default a more powerful security model (a la Kerberos)? Can we at long last ditch NFS into the trashbin of history and replace it with a decent and secure file server? Could we get rid of X windows, the worst UI to adorn a desktop since Windows 2.0?

About Microsoft's Scamming

[d.valued]

Then again.. what was the last Microsoft innovation? The GUI and mouse-control? Turned useable at the Xerox PARC, turned user-friendly by Apple. Web browser? Licensed from Spyglass, commercial port to NSCA's Mosaic. Networking? NetBIOS is a twisted protocol which (correct me if wrong) was also a PARC product. TCP/IP stack? It is a rotten importation of the Winsock program, designed to allow 32bit networking on a 16 bit Win3.1. I will be the first to admit that Windows has a place at the desks of those who neither need nor desire a truely powerful computing environment. (These are the sales types and those who want basic word processing and to play that damned Solitaire. I prefer to play GNU Chess with my pc's spare cycles ;) However, as an ISP I see NT and its constant maintenance and massive security holes as highly - and possible litigiously - unresponsible. I would wager that you either have needed or will be needing in the near future some form of professional securing of systems which will leave your paper tiger confused and dizzy. (And yes, all MCSE's are paper tigers. Try taking LPI or LCA tests. They actually require siginificant knowledge of the workings of Linux, XWS, TCP/ip and other networking.. ;) Don't tell me about their 'innovation.' From what I read, it looks like you've a microsoft.com email.
Windows.. Good for targeting rocks.

Choice and competition are *good* and needed!

[d.valued]

I agree with you.

Cases in point:

My mom types out proposals for her workplace and other related locales. She doesn't do much online except read her email and checking out websites relevant to her employ. She doesn't need to grok the Gimp or code, nor would I wager will she ever learn to do these things. Windows is a good fit for her; it sorta does what she needs to do and that's that.

My bro works sales for a large retail chain. He only surfs for images of a questionable nature and for cheats to his favorite games *cough* Sims *cough*. Windows will fit for him as well.

But... my sis is an artist. I'm teaching her the basics of Python so she can make funky 3d with the Blender (http://www.blender.nl ; free, tiny 3d image creation and animation proggie, kicks ass!) and so she can play with Pyth-Fu in the Gimp (which she uses with my drawing tablet.) She likes to make webpages, and she checks them with Mozilla. I've taught her to cold-code HTML in emacs. She likes the power and flexibility of Linux.

The $6.4e10 (that's about Darth Vader^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Bill Gates' net worth ;) questions are making a simple (set of) window manager(s) for Linux and XWS (for ease of gui program coding); superior functionality with the myriad high-speed data ports (1394, USB, potentially the parallel ATA standards); and getting the apps people want into Linux, from the high-end (like moviemaking, CMYK and HSV art, prepress tools, CAD/CAM) to the lowest common denominator (all together now: games! napster!) and making everything run well without necessarily needing to run some things as root.


Windows.. Good for targeting rocks.

Not the content, but the tone...

[connorbd]

If he truly believes the party line, than at least I give him credit for not sounding totally like a MicroDroid.

He's made some interesting points; screening for the MicroSerf factor, even though I disagree with a lot of it, he's not stupid and he's not spending 100% of his interview time talking down to us.

/Brian

Re:Not the content, but the tone...

[connorbd]

Hey, I didn't say he was being 100% straight either :-)

Besides, that line rings hollow anyway, with MSware getting ripped off right and left and yet still somehow they manage to make money anyway. But I don't need to say that to this crowd.

/Brian

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[wholesomegrits]

Truthfully, there are a lot of people out there for whom Linux is not an option. There are a lot of people out there who don't know how to compile the source they got from someone to get a program to run. To be an efficient Linux user, this is one of the many special skills you have to have. In this sense, Windows does appeal to a lot of people, a lot of smart people too, the only difference is they are not computer techs, they have other specialities.

You imply that some special and exotic ability is required to compile and install software. For 90% of the stuff out there, these are the steps to follow:

./configure
make

make install

done.

Provided your distro isn't dumbed down and assumes, much like you do, that a compiler is way to hard to use, so why include it in the default install? What the hell is so exotic about that? I think even the stupidest person can type about a dozen keystrokes.

You make a good point about the learning curve, but to assume that the vast majority of people aren't capable of learning, so why bother teaching them is so completely arrogant that I am insulted. Even me, as an English Education major, had zero trouble configuring a decent firewall and masquerade box with a bit of port forwarding.

The difficulty in using Linux lies not with the difficulty of using the OS, but a failure for users of all skill levels to RTFM. *EVERYTHING* one needs to do to compile programs, or setup qmail, or setup IP masquerading is available in step by step documents no more difficult to use than a recipe for pound cake. That's all it is, just a recipe. Linux HOW-TOs, for those that have enough sense to read them, in lieu of stupidly hitting keys and bitching, can solve a vast majority of issues.

Things ain't any easier on Windows. I have yet to fully understand how the hell Windows 2000 works for IP masquerading, aka Internet Connection Sharing. So few decent docs exist, that Linux was a much easier solution.

To assume that some people just aren't fit for linux plays into many of the Linux elitist stereotypes that turns off informed users.

Anyone is capable of being an "efficient Linux user" provided they'd just read the damn directions.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[IronChef]

I feel like he dodge the answer to #7, hardware-level copy protection. He turned it into a Windows piracy issue, when the question clearly is about our right to have control over all the data on our systems.

Re:About Microsoft

[jargoone]

they were found guilty of using illegal means to destroy their competitors

They sure were. Glad to see someone putting faith in the U.S. judicial system.

By the way, did you also support the U.S. judicial system's ruling in the Napster case? Just curious.

Sorry, but you're wrong

[Ars-Fartsica]

You can slice and dice and rationalize it anyway you want, but you cannot go forward on the desktop with two user environments.

Its not as if either KDE or GNOME has really pushed the envelope in terms of architecture, useability, or look and feel. There's really no compelling technical reason at all why these projects must go forward independently.

As it stands, the important players have lined up behind GNOME, so its probably a moot point anyway, nonetheless, the linux community is wasting valuable time and resources providing interoperability between two products that are more or less slight variations on the same theme.

The death of open source...

[SnapShot]

650 comments on slashdot.org as of 4pm EST. Microsoft has finally brought the Linux movement to a standstill. ;)

Re:Boy alot of gobbldy gook...

[pvirdone]

does he think EVERYONE is an AOL user???

There are enough AOL users out there to make a lot of money...

Outlook and Attachments

[mttlg]

In the case of Outlook, we've taken several steps to provide improved security for users. For example, after the "I Love You" virus of last spring, we took the initiative to change the balance between security and functionality by releasing the Outlook E-Mail Security Update. The Update prevents executable attachments from being delivered to an Outlook user

Why stop there? Why not prevent all attachments from "being delivered to an Outlook user?" I know, you could have all e-mail routed through a Microsoft virus-checking server. Or just force everyone to use Hotmail instead. It could be prompted by a message that pops up when someone tries to use Outlook: "You are too stupid to be trusted with e-mail client software. Please sign up for your very own FREE Hotmail account and take care of all of your e-mail with the fun of the latest transparent peer-to-peer file sharing and remote computer access and control features in Internet Explorer."

It seems to me that closing the security hole would make more sense than blocking attachments, but then again I don't work at Microsoft, so what do I know? Just how many average Outlook users use Visual Basic? How many even know what it is? It's been almost 2 years and the best they can come up with is limiting useful functionality? Of course, this is also the company that makes most of its money on bug fixes but can't get a simple patch right...

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[Fervent]

Unless you're working a server, why are you changing your ethernet card regularly on a Windows machine.

(By the way, if you're running a server anyhow you should probably be using FreeBSD/Linux).

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[Fervent]

In Windows 98 and higher you can install two network cards and have them run concurrently (I currently have that for my central Windows 2000 machine which doles IP addresses out to the rest of my home network). Try putting both cards in and just manuevering the cable around when you want to play games.

Still no reason to completely take out both cards and replace them entirely.

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[Fervent]

Once again, every OS from Windows 98 on supports multiple installed network cards. I have the exact same configuration on my laptop (NE2K card in one slot, Dell TrueMobile Wavelan in the other).

Hardware hacker's lament

[Fervent]

While most of the questions were answered pretty succinctly (I liked the straight-forwardness in saying "We sell software. This is what we do. That's why it's proprietary."), the unfortunate dodge of the Windows XP "fingerprint" ID upsets me.

I hack my machines regularly. Video cards and occasionally motherboards move on a 6-month to 1-year basis. I also reformat my partition every 3 months for Windows, every 6 months for Linux. Does this mean I'll have to be constantly calling in to get new keys? That's just ridiculous.

For those of us who have followed the rules, who haven't made a million copies of our W2K CDs and passed them around the campfire, this is like a shot in the face. I severly hope this is corrected.

(And as a suggestion, change the ID to the computer's MAC address. These things change a lot less frequently [How often does a hardware hacker completely change his ethernet card? Not often.])

Re:Hardware hacker's lament

[shyster]

And as a suggestion, change the ID to the computer's MAC address. These things change a lot less frequently [How often does a hardware hacker completely change his ethernet card? Not often.])

MAC addresses can and are faked. Never rely on them for bulletproof security.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Linux market for Office

[wytcld]

As someone with a long-term dislike of Microsoft products (I preferred ZCPR-CP/M on a Z80 to DOS, I always ran DR-DOS under Win 3.1, and I still vastly prefer the Lotus SmartSuite to Office, but I've been using Linux for most things since '93), I have to say this guy is totally wrong about the market for Office on Linux. I have good-sized clients who could be moved very rapidly to Linux + Office, were Office only available on Linux. And I would strongly urge them to make the move. As it is, I have to wait until there is the equivalent of Office on Linux (which is probably still 1-2 years away - my bet's on the KDE efforts - StarOffice sucks in all the ways Office does, and worse, IMHO). And then I, and a lot of sysadmins who feel like me, will move everyone to Linux + whatever.

So the Microsoft marketing choice is this: Don't issue Office for Linux and hold on to your OS market share in the short run, because business users demand Office-level functionality; or issue Office for Linux and gain a longer-term advantage for Office, but lose the OS advantage in the short term.

Again, I would have major clients buying Office for Linux tomorrow - because they could throw out Windows. There's a great advantage in OS standardization on the best, and all these clients already run Linux and perhaps Solaris for their critical servers - only the Office hold on the workstations prevents Windows going out the window in total. But there's all sorts of money Microsoft can only make in the long term if it quickly takes advantage of the openning for a good Linux desktop suite for folks who really do want to run Office - or the better equivalent that will come along in 1-2 years if Microsoft doesn't seize that ground fast.

Single Desktop Environment

[jmu1]

Miller states serveral times that he feels that unless there is one unified desktop environment that Linux on the desktop will fail. Why is that again? I have been using StarOffice for much longer than I have KDE _or_ GNOME and you know what... it looks the same and acts the same no matter what. Could it be that someone has been reading /. and has noticed (even though the holy war seems to be at a stalemate) that KDE vs GNOME has been an inflammatory subject for some time? Could it be that seed of doubt that we are always dodging? Could be... and I am sure it is. I think this guy is defenately an M$ employee. He obviously fears all things not M$, so he looks into them... finds out what we bicker about the most and exploits them. A true strategist. But, let's keep in mind who can discern facts from opinions, and let's also remember what camp this fellow is coming from. Who cares what his background is, or where he has been. We all know where he is now. We all know we can't bow down to "his" speculations.

Choice and competition are *good*

[TrumpetPower!]

I had this debate with Bob Young once where he stated it was great that so many desktop options exist for the Linux user. I don't see it. Lots of choices of desktops in the academic community might be good for stimulating many different approaches but having too many choices in a commercial platform environment in the end, confuses developers and users.

This seems to be the pervailing attitude among those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are stupid, so stupid that we must make all their decisions for them.

That's great if you're trying to consolidate your monopoly position, but it does absolutely no good whatsoever for the advancement of anything whatsoever.

The world is full of choices! There rarely is One Right Way. I feel sorry for those who are so confused and terrified of the world that they don't even want to be presented with choices.

Besides which, the problems with a monoculture are legion...I hardly think I need to go there.

Please, the world isn't that stupid. Don't insult the people who fund the very survival of your company.

b&

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[RandomPeon]

Windows offers a friendly environment that makes it easy to use software. Truthfully, there are a lot of people out there for whom Linux is not an option. There are a lot of people out there who don't know how to compile the source they got from someone to get a program to run. To be an efficient Linux user, this is one of the many special skills you have to have.

A real life experiment: Set up windows-clone themes for you desktop and window managers. Put your favorite office program, email client, MP3 player, and web browser on the desktop as icons. Place someone "who isn't good with computers" (according to that person) in front of this machine. Leave them alone, and see what happens. Unless they are exceedingly stubborn, they should survive just fine. I have tried this expirement 3 times - results ranged from "What do you mean this isn't Windows?" to "It's a litte harder than using a Mac".

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[RandomPeon]

Try Redhat 7. Create a new user account, login as that user, download the appropriate themes, run gnome-config and pick the themes for gnome and sawfish (or whatevver). Make a couple new icons on the desktop that point to /usr/bin/xmms and so forth. Total time - less than 30 minutes. (If you're serious and want more details, reply to this post and I'll reply when I get home to my Linux box).

Kudzu (included in RH 7) might autodect USB devices - I don't know, I don't have any. It did autodetect my new soundcard and run sndconfig for me, but that's a PCI card, not a USB device.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[Geeky Frignit]

This seems to be the pervailing attitude among those at Microsoft and elsewhere: users are stupid

You know, I have run across a lot of people in my life who are not efficient computer users. Windows offers a friendly environment that makes it easy to use software. Truthfully, there are a lot of people out there for whom Linux is not an option. There are a lot of people out there who don't know how to compile the source they got from someone to get a program to run. To be an efficient Linux user, this is one of the many special skills you have to have. In this sense, Windows does appeal to a lot of people, a lot of smart people too, the only difference is they are not computer techs, they have other specialities.

I'd like to see you run Linux, knit a sweater, play a musical instrument, and fix a car. Hell, I can just barely do the first. I am not a supreme Linux user. I can do a lot of things, but I can't get WINE to work, use the Gimp worth a damn, etc. There are many types of people in this world, not everyone has to use Linux.

Re:Choice and competition are *good*

[leviramsey]

I agree with you that that is true, but at the same time, it could be useful to have a "standard" default wm/desktop across Unix/Linux. KDE is probably the most newbie friendly, but licensing issues would probably mean that GNOME became the default. This would not preclude people from writing a new wm/desktop, but it would tend to mean that only advanced users are using sawfish (standalone), or Enlightenment, Ice, etc.)

Moving from vi to notepad - did it hurt?

[BigBlockMopar]

Of course, it's Microsoft's own special view of the world -- but I still feel that it was answering the questions clearly and coherently

I wonder how long it took for them to brainwash him from vi to notepad when he got to Redmond....

Why did we ASK the questions?

[donutz]

t does make one wonder, though, why he even bothered doing the interview.

We all know we're biased anti-microsoft, so I think you're asking the wrong question. Why did WE bother to even ask the questions? We know we're not going to get answers we like, and whatever answers we get, we will see as him being biased against us...

I think he did a good job with the interview. He knows he's walking into the flames, but he answered anyway. His answers may not make us happy, but so what? did you stop to realize that the Open Source movement isn't perfect? It's made of people...I've said it before, and I'll say it again...people are stupid! Yes, even in open source. What I see from this interview is that we've got some stuff right, they've got some stuff right, and there's obstacles in the way to getting all of our right stuff together...

ok, enough ranting.

. . .

Re:About Microsoft

[mgkimsal2]

It's a troll, but there's probably sincerity behind it...

"We provide ISP services, using Microsoft products. As a result of this we recently got a multimillion dollar contract. "

If you believe this, you've got larger problems than MS or non-MS issues. You didn't get that project because you use MS product. You got it because someone was convinced you could solve their problems. That's it. They may feel comfortable that MS will solve their issues, and you're the ones to handle it, but the moment something comes up that your GUI can't handle, and you can't deliver the goods, there will be trouble.

You got a multimillion dollar contract, but you can't afford a fulltime unix guy. Not even a parttime unix guy? A parttime college unix hacker? They gotta be cheaper than a fulltime Windows admin/salesguy. Come on!

"knowing unix". I find this strange. The internet was built around common protocols, and primarily on unix-flavored systems. It's only been in the past few years that MS has gotten into the game. And you've publicly posted that you got a multimillion dollar contract (presumably involving ISP services) and you don't have anyone on staff who knows much about internet services beyond MS stuff? Again, you will have problems at some point - probably soon.

China's GDP is, I would think, far more a product of their oppressive government than anything to do with 'sharing'. The open source world has already proven that sharing things can lead to fantastic products (bind/sendmail/etc.). Without the rise of DNS services and email programs, often based on open source/sharing philosophies, the internet would not have taken off as much as it did - you owe your existence to open source software far more than MS - far more than you know it.

Who said no one makes money in open source? We deal primarily in open source software and are doing just fine thank you.

I'm not sure a few companies making 'pits of money' as you put it is terribly good for the country in the first place, and by limiting your view to 'the country' (presumably the US) you are exhibiting extreme narrow mindedness when it comes to the global view of things. Keep pushing your MS solutions - that's fine. What do you do when people CAN'T afford it? YOU can't compete - not when one (legal) license costs as much as a village earns in a week.

ending rant... :)

3d printing

[lazn]

I have a question for everyone here.

Right now if you buy all the parts for a 83 Ford Escort separatly (eg an engine from one place, a replacment fender from another) and put together a complete car, do you have to pay Ford after you are all done and have a complete car?

So how about if you had a real working perfect 3d printer (eg: duplicator) and used it to make a copy of your 83 Ford Escort (right down to the leaky power steering pump) using your own electricty and your own raw materials, would you have to pay Ford for the copy when you are done?

Then take this to copying a new car. Would you have to pay then?

And if not, how is this any different from software "piracy"? Because when someone "steals" a program, the person he "stole" it from still has his program. That person did not loose anything.

Just like if someone copied my 83 Escort I would still have my original 83 Escort, and I would not care if someone did.

(actually I don't drive a escort, I just picked on it as an example)

==>Lazn

Re:About Microsoft

[Gordan1]

There is nothing more important than wealth creation. Wealth creation allows for true redistribution of wealth. Companies such as Microsoft have made tons of money and now Bill Gates is giving billions away.

1. How so? This is a misconception that represents all that is wrong with modern capitalism. We assume that big buisness will help the economy, and this economic prosperity will, in turn, benefit the middle class. This is called "Trickle Down" economics, and as was seen during the Reagan era, it doesn't work. The truth is, the rich will keep getting richer, and the poor will keep getting poorer.

The kind of socialist ideal implied by open source, where no-one makes pits of money is very bad for the country. If this happens, you get barely affluent people - people such as yourself, who in the main don't pursue any philanthropic activity.

1. Open source is by no means socialist. Look up the definition of socialism. Open source is not controlled by the government. People control open source. Open source could not be further from socialism. I am not affluent in the least. I struggle from week to week to put myself through college so that maybe sometime in the future I will be moderately affluent. A touch of philantropy would be welcome at this stage, but I certainly don't see any coming. In fact, the least amount of philantropy occurs from the upper class. You want philantropy, go look for the nearest social worker, and I don't see them getting big paychecks. As for Bill Gates... I wouldn't look there. I think you've got your view of reality screwed.

Furthermore, just as communism doesn't encourage people to work harder or innovate (which results in stagnation), so it is with open source. Without the upgrade cycle made necessary by needing to sell more product, innovation doesn't happen.

1. Then how do you explain the recent advances of the KDE or GNOME desktop enviornments. These people aren't after profit at all, they do it as a hobby, and when one person decides to leave the project, he is easily replaced with someone else who is willing to work. There is no shortage of competent programmers out there. The knowledge pool that works on open souce is Microsoft's dream. Just as two heads are better then one, several thousand heads, are better then whatever Microsoft can muster.

That's why open source products such as KDE have copied all their ideas off Microsoft and Apple. They have neither the money (R & D) nor the capitalist need to be better to incentivize innovation.

1. The incentive for innovation is to give the world a stable, secure, and powerful OS that can be freely used and modified to meet the worlds' changing needs. Everyone steals from everyone. Microsoft from Apple, Apple from Xerox. At least the open source community, makes this practice more or less ethical.

The problem is with Microsoft, not open source. Microsoft is the thing that stagnates the industry. They release inferior products, and discourage competition. The only way to combat this is with open source. Capitalism has suffered due to the practises of Microsoft and similar entities, and as a result the top 10% own 90% of the worlds wealth, and this is wrong.

Re:Not that bad actually

[update()]

OK, but there's a tradeoff between asking hostile, loaded questions and getting informative answers. Personally, I would have preferred more neutral technical questions so I could have learned something from the answers. But it's unfair to ask questions like "Why is your security so poor?" and then complain that the answer was inadequate.

I agree that there were some decent questions here. (Although no one asked whether there really are MS astroturfers on Slashdot!) Half the questions in the Carnivore interview I referred to, though, were rude, pointless attacks with question marks at the end.

you could pollute the thread with 10,000 examples involving Al Gore/Ralph Nader/Harry Brown/Cowboy Neal and they'd be true

Hey, we read Cowboy Neal's interview -- you don't need to tell us. ;-)

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[update()]

Does anyone in Redmond think the /. crowd will feel like they got real answers out of this?

Looking at your question, there wasn't much to say and he said it. There's a trade-off between security and ease of use. They erred on the side of convenience and some users got burned -- but those users didn't have to setuid their CD player software to get it to work. What were you expecting him to say? "We're idiots. Linux r00lz!"?

Like a lot of Slashdot interviews of "The Enemy", questions that are basically "You suck. Don't you suck? Admit you suck." got moderated ahead of ones that might produce interesting answers. And then when the answers fall short of, "Yes, we suck." everyone complains that it's just a lot of marketroid-speak.

The interview with the Carnivore reviewer was a great example -- 5 of the 10 questions essentially are "You're a liar. Why should I believe you when I say you're not a liar?"

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

Re:never say never...

[code9]

The biggest problem with Linux and with a company like Microsoft porting its apps to Linux is the amount of variations between systems. Apart from the differences in installed libraries and their interdependencies, there are also install location and config file issues.

Furthermore, an app like Office needs a fairly high level of integration with the desktop environment: URL launchers, drag and drop, embedded docs... X of itself lacks support for pretty much anything, so Office would have to be written to a) a specific desktop or b) multiple desktops in multiple versions.

It really tickles me that many Linux users see everything as a conspiracy to not use Linux, or to falsely accuse it of weakness rather than honestly evaluating their OS. I used Linux exclusively on my desktop machine for half a year and then went out and bought Windows 2000 Pro, Word and VC. Why? Productivity! Linux is stable, Linux is free - great, but how much work can you actually do with it? And how quickly? I got tired of having to read tons of docs to get every little feature working, debugging source code just to install some tiny app, configuring and tweaking to deuglify X fonts (why do I have to deuglify fonts in the first place?)

Linux lacks standards (which is also part of why the games aren't forthcoming). Linux lacks ease of use. Linux lacks simple, pure productivity, except for software development.

Flame away!

Slashdotter's don't like MS?

[Hairy_Potter]

Today, there is an almost violent dislike for anything Microsoft in the Linux community - just look at some of the postings on slashdot!

/coy Why, whatever does he mean?

Re:About Microsoft

[yttrbium]

Microsoft is the thing that stagnates the industry. They release inferior products, and discourage competition. The only way to combat this is with open source. Capitalism has suffered due to the practises of Microsoft and similar entities, and as a result the top 10% own 90% of the worlds wealth, and this is wrong.

Can't even begin with where this is so wrong. I have yet to find an office suite that comes anywhere close to what MS offers. True, not much has really changed from Office 95 (I have 97 and I don't plan on upgrading to 2000, maybe the new one with voice), but it's still the best. I use Outlook religiously. For browsers, I prefer IE over Netscape any day. NN4 is incredibly buggy and NN5 takes forever for anything. IE5.5 works well, though Opera is still by far the best of the bunch. I hardly call the industry stagnate, let alone MS being the cause of it.

As far as 10% owning 90% of the wealth, what would you suggest? Everyone owning the same amount of wealth? That would hardly seem fair either. Bill Gates deserves everything he has. He did it. I didn't. You didn't. MS has done a lot for this industry, and if they didn't have the wealth someone else would. Would Apple or IBM having it be any different? Somebody had to, and it just happens that MS got it this time. If you want it, work for it, and get it!

Long live Open Source. I'm working on some projects right now. But, when I graduate from college, I dream of making 6 figures, which isn't too far-fetched. That money has to come from somewhere and it's not open source! In my off time I can afford to do Open Source for fun...

Not that bad actually

[RandomPeon]

I don't think the questions were all that bad for an interview to a hostile audience. A couple were quite valid - why do you make the security decisions that you do? Will I ever see Office for Linux? and so forth. This is how hostile interviews go - watch GW Bush try and bullshit his way out of questions about racial profiling after his NAACP speech. (Flame suppressant - this is an example, you could pollute the thread with 10,000 examples involving Al Gore/Ralph Nader/Harry Brown/Cowboy Neal and they'd be true. Please don't.)

We got some loaded questions, we got some good ones. We got some reasonable responses ("Supporting Linux can be a real pain in the ass"), we got some total nonresponses, and we got some outright denials of embarrassing facts("We don't break standards, ever"). Par for the course.

What do you expect? A completely objective, level-headed discussion? You'll never get that on issues people feel this strongly about. I'm fairly impressed.

Re:Pathetic Answers

[RandomPeon]

It actually worked both ways - I know the MS implementation did not recognize some of the methods in the File class, which caused me great pain once. The ASCII "extensions" can screw you up too if your Java program tries to read text files on two different platforms - "what, you wanted me to stop reading the config file at the EOL? What EOL?"

Bottom line, the incompatibilities were sufficent that you had to test even simple Java programs with MS Java and Sun Java to confirm that they worked correctly. That kind of kills off the cross-platform advantage Java was supposed to have.

Glad he answered our questions, but ...

[WillSeattle]

as someone who modded up the first posts (three made it as final questions), I was a tad disappointed in some of his answers.

Until I got to his answer for Microsoft applications like Office, Visio, and Project being ported to Linux.

Overall, while I'm not too surprised by some of his more ambiquous answers, one feels that we learned some things from this exchange, especially in regards to how MSFT will market to compete with Linux and BSD. It looks like the Oracle TPC debate - they'll aim at the "total cost for the system over the years", ignore the time and salary costs for dealing with security and other bug fix glitches, and just come up with lots of nice Total Cost Per Project Year charts.

Have to agree with his assessment on the likelihood of MSFT marketing products in the Linux space, given our awe and wonder at all the really keen MSFT tools ... not.

Awesome display of OS bigotry by the /. community

[Shivetya]

Awesome display of OS bigotry by the /. community and moderators.

The guy was right, why bother trying to create software for Linux. Just read the responses to the article, see which ones were "moderated up" and /. simply proves his point.

The /. Linux crowd is so damn fucking hostile to anything microsoft they will get downright stupid in their comments and such just to "put down" Ms or any of its people.

Corel is proof that it doesn't work to try and sell stuff to the "we must have it free, and we must have the source, or your not going with the spirit of Linux" crowd. Why should any company step into that.

There is nothing wrong with wanting it all to be free and open (both mentally and financially). However get off your frigging high horse and realize that the rest of the world, specifically corporations which exist to make money for their owners, don't have to agree with you, let alone cater to you.

What originally started out as an interesting subject became truly depressing as a I started reading what was actually modded to the top. (Yes I sort on highest first, it drops the FPs very quickly).

I expect to have to read below my threshold to see this, but after all its apparent that even moderation is done to support OS bigotry without regards to logic or reason.

You asked the questions, don't get all pissy because he anwsered them.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[RareHeintz]

Anonymous cowards like you hurt the whole site. So why don't you shut the fuck up?

First off, my argument was neither vague nor hand-waving, and I happened to give a concrete example. I brought up a pretty basic issue with how Microsoft builds software that affects corporate security the world over.

My response? He gave me some hand-waving bullshit about how Microsoft is "sensitive to the growing security threats to [their] customers", and answered my specific example by saying that a patch made it all better (which, you may have noticed, it did not). He did not address the larger concern - and the thrust of my question - which was how such ill-designed software got out the door in the first place.

So, he did not answer my question. He dodged it, hoping that saying "Microsoft is conscious of security" would make it so.

OK,
- B
--

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[RareHeintz]

You know, if customers were really demanding the product because it was better (by whatever standards) than alternatives, I'd buy the argument. Unfortunately, much of the "demand" exists because Microsoft has suppressed alternatives in the market and engaged in predatory licensing practices that limit OS offerings from major PC vendors.

For those reasons, I don't buy the "customer oriented" argument at all. They don't drive demand, they reduce choice.

OK,
- B
--

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[RareHeintz]

I know the pitfall you're speaking of, but I don't think I'm doing that here. I really don't feel like I got anything out of this that I couldn't have read in any of Microsoft's content-free press releases. For example, just saying that "Microsoft has always been a customer focused company" neither makes it so nor does it represent an answer (or even a useful part of an answer) to a question about how the anti-trust case has affected MS's interoperability strategy. It's a feel-good non sequitur.

OK,
- B
--

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[RareHeintz]

Perhaps you weren't paying attention.

My question was not about individual security flaws. Everyone knows that every product has those. I don't know why (if you actually read the article and the rest of this thread) you think I don't understand that mistakes get made.

My question was about the set of attitudes and practices that systematically ignore the most basic security principles and lead to frequent releases of software with gaping security holes. Note the difference: honest mistakes vs. deliberate adoption of poor doctrine and practices. If you don't get it now, I can't be bothered to explain it to you further.

OK,
- B
--

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[shyster]

Well, apart from question 8 the answers were mostly consistent. But did anyone else notice that Q8 (and the immediately preceeding statements in Q7) were inconsistent? I think he should have answered Q7 as "We like to think of ourselves as customer focused, and indeed we are where that doesn't interfere with our first priority which is profitability (or the ability to offer software for profit.)" Or generously, perhaps his answer to Q7 was intended to include software developers as the customers on which Microsoft focuses, in which case the two statements become consistent again. It certainly isn't driven as a first priority by end-customer needs though...

He may like to think of Microsoft as "customer-focused", but every corporation is, at the end, shareholder focused. The only goal of a corporation is to maximize shareholder wealth. If, by being customer-focused, you can get more sales, then great. Otherwise, you're right...once customer focus gets in the way of the wealth, then you've got to change gears. That's Business 101, and any company who doesn't follow it will fail.

Luckily, Linux isn't a company, but a community. Think of it as a nonprofit, volunteer, organization. Linux has no "shareholders" to answer to, and so can be totally customer driven. (Un?)fortunately, different customers have different needs, and so we end up with fragmentation and different solutions to the same problem...which really shoots talk of standards and interoperability in the foot, don't you think?

Perhaps we should get a grip on standards and interoperability (for applications) within the Linux environment before we trash on Microsoft....After all, they are just doing what comes naturally--maximizing shareholder's wealth.

Re:Pathetic Answers

[JohnDenver]

> Java (using one of those two refered to) was
> VERY well defined, and there are many good
> implimentations. What was 'incomplete' about
> this standard which forced them to break it.
> And not only do they modify the standard, but
> they can't even impliment it correctly without
> a discusting number of bugs.

I don't think he denied that Java wasn't a well defined standard, instead he pointed out that most standards aren't well defined.

Last time I checked, Java isn't a standard, but rather Sun's IP, which will probably explain why Java is SO well defined (which supports Doug's rule of thumb).

Like Doug mentioned, every software company and even non-companies add something to standards to make them more useful. In the MS/Java situation, Microsoft added JDirect which allowed Java to talk to Windows components much more efficient than JNI.

The fact is that Microsoft was doing a great job supporting Java and providing a way for Java to interoperate with legacy Win apps, which was seriously threatening Sun's revenue stream.

If Sun hadn't stepped in to bar Microsoft from supporting Java, they would have lost all control and revenue as they struggled to keep up with MS and everybody else.

The fact is that MS does a decent job implementing standards (consider how many they've had to implement), which is not to say they don't extend the standards with thier own stuff, but they RARELY feel like the must or even can BREAK the standards without consequences.

To break the standards would to depreciate the value of the technology while extending the standard would give the customer or developer incentive to use thier proprietary extentions.

This is how things work with most other software companies and is a fact of life, to expect otherwise is setting yourself up for dissapointment.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[Thordain]

He did not address the larger concern - and the thrust of my question - which was how such ill-designed software got out the door in the first place.

Really. That was the thrust of your question? I guess you expect that no software should ever be released. Windows is not the only software in the world released with security bugs present...it's just one of the most publicised (and hated, amongst O/S ppl.). Whenever a Microsoft security flaw is made known to the public, people flock into the message boards and say "See, just another example of how the monopolistic bastards are allowed to release half-baked, bug riddled software into the grasps of the poor, un-educated and un-knowning public who are forced to deal with their stupidity."

However, whenever a Linux security bug, or a BIND security bug, or Apache, or has a bug published its more of a "See how our infinitely superior peer review system coupled with availble published source code allows us to squash bugs easily?".

Don't get me wrong...I am not a huge fan of Microsoft, I don't like the way they run their business and I think that often times they do stupid things that I don't agree with. But that doesnt mean their software is so inferior because it was released with security bugs. What about software like BIND. The thing is older than the planet earth practicly, but they are STILL finding security holes in it.

I am forced to agree with the guy that said somethign like Every time Slashdot posts an interview about "The Enemy" people seem to post questions asking them to admit that they suck and are stupid and would add to that that often times they think that their software is perfect and vastly superior.

Perhaps Linux is vastly superior for certain people and for certain particular purposes (indeed, in my eyes it is) but you would be a fool to think that it is superior in, per say, the home user desktop market. The uneducated in the computer world (or rather, those people who do not need to user computers on a high scale in their daily life, and therefore have no need to learn every in and out of them) would rather have a simple, easy to use, eye-candy riddled operating system where every type of application under the sun that could possibly be imagined for a home user exists. What operating systems fit this mold?

However, I digress. Think about the questions you ask in reference to everybody before you start blaming one particular entity for their lack of an answer towards it. You can't accurately measure the world if you use a ruler that changes based on what (or who) you are measuring.

Re:Pluralizing singlars?!?

[Lover's Arrival, The]

In the Queen's English it is plural. I am a subject of the Queen. Take your bastardised English and begone.

Thank you,
one of Shakespeares Countrywomen.

Pathetic Answers

[antarctican]

It's been a long time since I've seen such double talk, this guy should be in politics!

One question explicitly asked about MS' dealing with issues such as Kerberos and Java, and how MS basically broke those standards (don't deny it, they fucked those standards so far up the ass they could taste it), and what do we get, double talk about 'intellectual property'.

Java (using one of those two refered to) was VERY well defined, and there are many good implimentations. What was 'incomplete' about this standard which forced them to break it. And not only do they modify the standard, but they can't even impliment it correctly without a discusting number of bugs.

You really expected MS to be honest and complete with their answers? When I first say the call for questions up, I dismissed it knowing the amount of spin doctoring which would be done would make all answers worthless.

We are the enemy, the only reason they bothered to do this is to try to gain our trust (ha! like that'll ever happen) and throw us off balance. Anyone who buys the bullshit they just spewed or think these answers are at all complete is a total moron.

Intelectual property my ass, if they were so concerned with interoperability they'd publish these standards which they've extended. No one said they'd have to publish the source code, but at least TELL US how you changed the standard and maybe, we might embrase your modification.

Geez, micro-morons.


antarctican at trams dot ca

Same old same old - example:

[Spamalamadingdong]

Good ol' Dougie said this about standards:

Should we be required to publish the ... underlying designs of all our software so that anyone can copy it? I would hope not - much the same that companies in other industries have the right to build products and retain the intellectual property rights associated with those products.

In other words, Doug wants Microsoft to be able to use the hard work of others involved in creating architectures and protocols to engineer his own proprietary, incompatible protocols which he then refuses to share with the people whose work he exploited. Did anyone expect any better from him?

I'll accept that Microsoft plays fair when they publish all their file formats and protocols for all their products, make their own products adhere to the published formats and protocols, and allow anyone and everyone to use the published standards to produce competing products. Fair's fair, and that's what interoperability is about.
--
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.

Warning: logic flaw!

[OSgod]

History has said that if you build a killer app it will draw the customers even if the cost is higher

If the end users needs are met by that app and not on another platform/application then their is no competition and the vendor can charge a premium for their content. This may not mean they own the entire market but they do own their segement.

Example 1: Apple owns desktop publishing. LINUX is NOT a competitor in this field at ALL.

Example 2: Lotus 1-2-3 was released (at a premium) and drove people to buy expensive hardware. They did it cheerfully and accomplished their tasks

Example 3: Microsoft owns ~90% of the desktops today. No other OS has anything near the application base, usability and return on investment that Windows has. This is not an argument -- it is a fact of the current computing field.

Linux is a niche player especially on the desktop. It has a better server story. It is not a threat to example 1 or 3 today.

Re:I don't know what else I expected...

[Krusher55]

I agree 100%. I especially liked the answer to #10. Applications are what will make Linux successful on the desktop. The reality is that writing software for Linux is like shooting multiple moving targets. Variations among distributions, kernel versions, desktops, etc. make software development a real pain for commercial software developers. Can a company claim Linux support if it only works on Redhat 6.2? What if it only works on Linux kernel 2.2.x using XFree86 4.0.2 with KDE 2.0? Is that enough to claim Linux support? Do you think customers would understand that although we claim support for Linux that our software will not or may not work on a large number of configurations? This is a real issue for Linux that really needs to be tackled for Linux to really make it on the desktop. The nice thing about developing software for Windows or the Mac is that the API's for Windows 98 will be the same on all Windows machines. Windows 98 is firm target that won't change and isn't different on every machine.

Software be Tools... not Religion

[slattery_jim]

MCSE here... logging in to shoot down a couple of misconceptions about Microsoft, as well as about Microsoft users/admins.

M1. Microsoft is the devil/satan incarnate/ naughty jungle of love.
A1. They are in business. To make money.

M2. Microsoft products suck
A2. For the most part, I would rather support MS software than just about any other. There is a large community of MS admins like myself who share answers to common and not-so-common problems. Through Newsgroups. Mailing Lists. email. (sound familiar?)

M3. Microsoft admins/users buy into the M$ Hype.
A3. Nope.
Predatory marketing practices?
Check.
Windows Errors/Problems that totally baffle your mind sometimes?
Check.
Wonder what kind of logic they used when designing the stuff one moment, and smiling at that wierd quirky thing that is just 'right'
Check
Believe in the power of what works, and screw the hype?
Check.
Believe that there are systems that do some jobs better than Windows?
Damn Straight!!! (Particularly NDS. NDS has an elegance and purpose of design and function that can make any geek, that will take the time to understand it, smile...)

M4. You 'have' to upgrade M$ software.
A4. Not at all. As a matter of fact, we are upgrading all of our systems to Windows 2000 Pro on the desktop, and Windows 2000 Server for one simple reason. It works better than what we have. That is the ONLY reason to upgrade software. XP isn't shaping up to be a heck of a lot better than 2000, and hence... we will NOT be 'crossgrading'

M5. An M$ product that lasts Years? At best I give anything one year until the service release is out, then the next upgrade...
A5. Software is created by humans. Humans make mistakes. (ie, bugs) Software developers release bug fixes. Happens all the time. Anyone subscribed to BugTraq knows that it's not just M$ that has bugs...

M6. Microsoft's treatment of standards is proprietary and bullying.
A6. OK, you got me there... :)

M7. The licensing issue.
A7. I know that I won't stand for it. I have too much crap to do without having to sit on the phone waiting for an authorization number. But I think that the home user is more in danger of this. I am SURE that there will be a way around it for corporate/large volume installations. (Office 2000 is supposed to have this check, but I have installed it MANY times with the same SN, on our network, and have YET to be asked for it.

A quick comment: I'm surprised with the amount of passed-along RUMINT that gets spouted on this list as truth. One person says that M$ has broken a standard, and next thing, it's stated as gospel in here.

BTW, I have been messing around with LINUX for a couple of years now... even had a ipchains firewall running at my last job. Didn't even tell them, and they didn't notice. One of the things that I plan to do along with my upgrade to 2000 is to set up an SAN using LINUX/SAMBA storage... geek fun!

Crap... I do ramble, don't I? (And No... I was NOT waiting for my NT server to reboot...) :)