Slashdot Mirror
More Thoughts on Microsoft vs. Open Source
An anonymous reader submitted a pretty well-written editorial running over at LinuxPlanet about the Microsoft Open Source Hoopla that has been fluttering about lately. Several good points (like how MS will obviously blur perception of Open Source and Free Software to their benefit). Worth a read.
Save your breath. I tell my bosses about these things every day. Some of them are pretty smart guys. And they agree with me. And then they go out and budget another $20k for Microsoft products. It's not worth the effort; when they decide to stop using Unix I'll just go somewhere else. Microsoft has made people really believe there's no life without them. The only solution is a 100% Microsoft free work environment from the machine room to the R&D labs to the CEO's desk. Once you let the bad guys in, it's over.
MS could steal ideas from Xerox...just like Apple's crack "R&D" dept.
Who listens to MS? Perhaps the 90% of desktop computer users who run Windows? Don't kid yourself into thinking that that market share doesn't matter--right now, many of the installed base of Windows users don't particularly like Windows but even the ones who are aware of Linux see NO alternatives. The sooner the Linux developers and companies wake up to that fact, the better.
Bullshit. All the Linux zealots should either grow up and take on the responsibility of challenging MS on terms that will win a significant chunk of the desktop, or they should shut the hell up about MS. I think there's almost no threat of Linux challenging Windows for the desktop as long as the developers cling to this immature view of the world.
Put another way, you can either do the hard work and rule the world (and Linux is definitely good enough to do that), or you can play with your toys, ignore the hard problems, and stay in your market niche. But you can't do both.
I am as irked by M$'s FUD attempts as anyone, but I don't see why we are all crying about it. WE are the IT of our companies, not Microsofty reps. I have yet to work anywhere where IT did not have a MAJOR say in what went on in userland. People usually become CFOs because they know what they are doing (in terms of finances and making money). No rational board member is going to want to lock the company into Microserfdom when it is explained calmly and logically by IT. It seems like this article is suggesting IT will just sit idly by and watch all this happen. M$ is scared, and scared badly. This attack on open and free software is the last desperate act of a company whose greedy nature has begun to backfire on itself. I have already printed Microsoft's FUD attempt and sent it around the offices of our VPs. I then went around and made sure they understood the FUD in there. If you are viewed as someone who knows their shit (IT-wise), you WILL be listened to! I mean, for God's sake, they ask me what kind of MOUSE to buy for their home machines! Are these the same folks who will overrule the IT guys? No Way! USE YOUR INFLUENCE NOW! They trust you with their systems for a reason...... remind them of that.
Microsoft has, and has exercised, its power to make offers too good to refuse. Often in the sense of financing or otherwise sweetening the pot for IT adoption. There have been a number of spectacular defections from companies which had been particularly close to Microsoft but switched sides, notably SGI's former CEO (Rick Belluzo) and our good friend Doug Miller, of Interix (now "Unix Services for Windows NT", a Microsoft product.
With US$30 billion in cash on hand (today's Yahoo profile -- and up from $17b a year ago), Microsoft is in a very real position to literally buy business. One of the weak points of free software is that it doesn't come with the inherent, tangible, partnering deals that have traditionally lubricated major software and IT projects.
This has definitely changed with the very active involvement of IBM, but there are few other major hardware and software vendors, and particularly systems integrators and Big insert declining single-digit number here accounting firms who are playing this game yet. Financing new projects is a major part of IT, and it's a game Microsoft is positioned to play, well, and with high stakes, for years to come.
Yes, you should fear marketing.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
We work in an unsigned system here. Get over it.
It already is. In every technical way measurable, the Free Unix systems are already superior. The remaining barriers to acceptance are political. Political battles are never worth fighting.
People will use whatever the media tells them to use...and businesses who use better software should have a competitive advantage over those who use crap. I doubt Mr. Mundie has ever used Linux, so who cares what he thinks? If he wants to use an inferior product, we should all snicker at him quietly and move on. Enough of this feeding frenzy.
Take a step back from the brink, folks; if you just want a stable, reliable, high-performance OS, Linux is a great choice. If you want a cause, go join the Peace Corps.
Forgive me my skepticism, but-- why? Yes, I believe the loudest "advocates" are nothing more than overzealous adolescent (no matter their age) loudmouths, no better than hooligans; but why should that bother the Linux community?
Why should the community even care what the business world thinks of Linux? So we can get more proprietary software? So more people can make money off closed software built for an open system? So more companies can make money from Free software while giving nothing back?
Yes, it would be nice if Linux were a bit more widespread; but really, I'd rather the community stay small and open than giant and closed.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I fear you are falling into a common trap, thinking that software is only created by paid programmers and people who work for someone else. You forget the legions of people who work for the "common good" and people who work on software for the love and adventure of creating a digital work that will benefit others. Some people actually LIKE having their digital works used by other people, as long as those other people follow the rules established for that particular piece of work (Whether it be the free-for-all of the BSD or the "Do what you will, but don't restrict others" of the GPL).
.NET, HailStorm, and a lot of other "initiatives" that Microsoft has on the table, they're going the "service" route, which is something that Free Software / Open Source has been doing for a while. Give away the software, charge for support and possibly access to world-wide servers. It doesn't work for me (And I suspect, many people on Slashdot), but it does work for people like my mother who wants to be able to check her e-mail from any computer with a browser.
Sorry, I just can't see it taking off. The whole software industry is about coming up with something thats better than others and encouraging people to buy their product over others.
No, that's what the software industry WAS about, however, if you look at
This is where I get all confused. Microsoft is essentially arguing that if I write something and release it then I can't make money from that code and, that itself is bad.
And that is wrong. Who says you can't sell the software? Certainly not RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, IBM, or any of the other Linux vendors or reseller. What is stopping you? There are dozens of ways that you can make money off of your software. You can charge for sending it to people on CD, you can write a book on how to use it and sell the book. You can setup support contracts with people or (more likely) companies (Those can be worth quite a few bucks).
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
IMHO, Linux distros that are aimed at the educational, corporate or government markets should be concerned. Mud sticks, even when the mud only exists in the minds of others.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Microsoft's motive is to produce a product which people want to buy. That is a product that people can derive value from in terms of increased productivity and ability to do things.
Linux users on the other hand is only interested in if it's free beer. Could care less if it makes them less productive as long as they don't have to pay for it.
It depends on your perspective I guess.
On the other hand, I am not at all impressed by Microsoft's attempts to replace software purchases with subscription. It may make them more money, but I don't see how it benefits me.
However, I haven't seen the terms. If I can "rent" Office XP for $5/month, then that is a preferable alternative to buying it for $400 or whatever it is.
This is the reason most people have cable television after all. HBO is $10/month, or you can go out and buy video tapes at $15/each.
I haven't read the article yet, will do so later.
But regarding the slashdot comment about Microsoft trying to blur Open Source and Free Software...
Doesn't slashdot do this virtually every day? Well maybe not intentionally, but I see it in a lot of posts by Linux fanatics, etc.
There is a *HUGE* divide in the OSS camp between the BSD and GPL crowds. That divide seems to get larger every day.
What I find curious is that a lot of the GPL-GNU/Linux crowd frequently refers to BSD projects as being tremendous successes and they prove the validity of Open Source.
But then they go on muttering under their breath:
"Oh yeah, but if you are going to release something it should be under the GPL."
There is a debate here which is worth arguing about. I believe the problem is that there is not two sides to this camp. It is not Open Source versus Microsoft.
It's Microsoft versus GPL proponents, with BSD proponents kind of off in the sidelines and not really wanting to agree with either of these other two groups.
Basically my point is, Microsoft isn't the only one blurring the lines. Each group seems to blur lines in whatever way is most convenient to them.
One other thing I've noticed. The GNU/Linux-GPL crowd seems to rely not on solid arguments but on a belief that if they overwhelm their opponents with verbal attacks the other guys will just give up. It's worked so far with the BSD proponents, KDE, etc.
But I doubt this will work with Microsoft.
One thing Microsoft has a history of, and is really quite good at is losing gracelessly. They throw something out to the public, doesn't work, they come back with version 2, doesn't work... Here's version 3, and then it finally sticks.
What you're seeing now is Version 1 of Microsoft Argumentation. It'll be refined internally and Version 2 will evolve.
Are you prepared for Version 2?
But on the other hand, they have well over 10x the risk, as DSL solutions have nowhere the guarantees of availability as the 56K frame relay.
This is part of making an informed IT recommendation, evaluating risk and reward. It's a problem that we juggle with every day.
Now this solution may work exceptionally well right now.
But when the DSL line goes out, and USWest doesn't fix it for two weeks... Will this still look like a good decision?
I don't know, it depends on the business. But most businesses I know of can't survive an extended downtime on their network.
Oh I don't know. I'm an MCSE, but before that was a very active Linux user and have contributed small parts to open source projects over the years.
You'd be amazed at just how well informed us "MS people" are.
But notice how both the Soviet Union and the GPL proponents think they should lead us towards the great wonderful Community of Communism.
They both wish to force everybody to conform, if you don't accept we'll beat it out of you.
That more than anything else is why Communism failed.
It would then follow that for GPL/OSS to reach its "full potential", our current society will have to undergo a complete top-to-bottom restructuring.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
And, really, do any of us give a flying fsck if PHBs love free software or not? The choice will still always be OURS - and that's the important part.
I don't really give a ff if PHBs love free software or not, but I do care about whether or not they're willing to deploy it in a production environment in place of Windows9x/NT/2K/XP.
While I may love running Linux and FreeBSD at home, the only place I can run it in my little domain at work (a Fortune 10 company) is in the lab. And then, only because I do IT security, and need to simulate "hostile hacker boxes" to test various security implementations. A lot of our infrastructure is NT/2K because we aren't allowed to use Linux (even though many vendors are now supporting it).
Why? Because PHBs and senior executives not only don't love Free Software or Open Source, but also because they are 1.)scared of using something which "isn't supported by a vendor" 2.)not interested in deploying something they where they can't own stock in the vendor company 3.)Don't really care about cost differences, only want to pass the next corporate audit, etc.
Sadly, I've learned since I came to corporate from Academia that the article's author is spot on - perception is everyting! The only way to gain ground in corporate is to get the right perception out there, and to get more vendors to write software to support Linux and *BSD.
So why do I care if FS/OS gets adopted in the workplace? Because I spend anywhere from 40-60 hours a week in the workplace, and what we use there has a serious influence in how much time I can spend at home on what technology. I've actually got Win2K at home, and I'm working on an MCSE (shudder!) because there's so much Windows at work. Granted, I'm working on SAIR Linux and Solaris certifications also, but because of the environment at work, I'm spending 33% less time on UNIX technology, just to ensure my resume is spiffy when a PHB/Senior Exec looks at it.
That's why I care what they think.
Now that M$ has declared Open Source to be "Unamerican", and given the power of the dollar to
"encourage" action by the various American governments, I believe that what we really need to
be aware of is the literal threat of prison and/or death for using/having used/knowing about
Open Source software.
The U.S. Constitution has very little to say regarding economic systems, other than originally
recognising slavery and some rather vague language about due process and just compensation in the
Fifth Amendment. So, constitutionally, Communism was NOT "Unamerican", just a concept that scared
the rich, powerful, and abusive. However, people with any association to "Communism" were deprived
of employment, their freedom, and some, in despair, of their lives back in the Fifties.
How much money would it take to convince some Republicans, American Independents, Southern
Democrats, etc. that there was justification for making Open Source software (much of it from "FOREIGNERS")
illegal in the U.S.?
They hate open source/free software. They hate it because Linux uses it, IBM uses it, Sun uses it, and Apple uses it.
Do all the above companies use open source/free software as RMS and ESR strictly define them? Of course not. But each of the above companies has made a point of differentiating themselves with open source/free software in one form or another.
Microsoft doesn't have to fight IBM, Sun, Apple, or Linux now. All it has to do is take open source/free software down a couple notches, and it gets to nail all of them for free.
It really is pure genius.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Exactly. Give the PHBs a choice - if they're smart and the choices are well laid-out, they'll most likely make the right decision.
Your example of using Linux as a router is a perfect example. I had to investigate the most cost-efficient means for a small business here to upgrade it's WAN from 56K frame to something faster. The solution eventually turned out to be and OpenBSD-based IPSec VPN with DSL lines. Proving that this was the best solution was easy to my boss - I pointed out the cost and reliabilty of the OS ($30 for the CD and the best security rep out there), and the cost of the alternatives (faster frame, PTP T1's, cable modems). The decision was a no-brainer and the speed and uptime is very impressive. The cost was half of what they paid for almost 10x the bandwidth.
These kinds of applications for free OSes will be the beginning of their inroads into business.
This is the wrong attitude to take. Because of the very nature of free software, there is NOTHING microsoft can do to prevent people from writing and using free software. The only thing that they can do is spread FUD so that businesses may think twice about using Linux/BSD/emacs/What have you.
And, really, do any of us give a flying fsck if PHBs love free software or not? The choice will still always be OURS - and that's the important part.
<P>Hehe, this is quite the riot but I just remembered that I had made this account way back when. Whee, I have a low numbered account back.</P>
how microsoft blew java out of the water with the confusion they generated by introducing incompatibilities with their version of java?
Ha! Sun did that themselves by implementating their own special Sun extensions, and in any case the Java platform independence works great...just so long as you're willing to modify your code for each platform. Java is its own worst enemy and Microsoft truly has been a bit player in the drama saga that is Java.
If you combine the recent comments from Microsoft's Mundie with those made by Allchin a few months ago, Microsoft is really sounding loopier than the loopiest Linux defenders. Allchin as much as said that it is un-American to make something and give it away. He said that it ought to be illegal and that Congress was being informed. You want to talk about loopy?
I'm very, very concerned about the mental state of Microsoft's top executives and about that corporation's future being run by people who hold such psychopathic views.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
When that didn't work, many of us aren't American anyway, they attacked our credibility.
But if you have the source code you can defend yourself so you don't have to be towed back to port because the clock management software (the clock for Christ's sake,) has a bug and divides by zero.
And as a bazillion scrips kiddies can tell you, its easy to repeatedly crack OSes that evolves as slowly as Microsoft's. You don't need source code. In fact you don't want the source code because the writer's intent keeps getting in the way of seeing what the code really does.
And, by the way, NOBODY who spends serious money on software (like a million for a package and a couple of grand per seat on maintenance for one mission critical system,) buys it without getting ALL of the source code. Of course we make them sign non-competition and non-disclosure agreements out the wazoo.
Microsoft has been selling a pig in a poke for years now because they don't sell anything important. Office apps. Bid deal... And when that market gets saturated, they're broke.
Now the bag is unravelling and their business model is proving to be mushroom fertilizer. For years they made money selling something that was only "almost good-enough."
Well it IS now only just good enough so they're sucking wind trying to hype crap. Nobody I know's buying it. If the OEMs weren't bundling it, nobody would bother buying anything beyond Windows '95 with service packs to fix some bugs.
FUD doesn't work if you can't show something scary. All M$ can show is a bunch of Unix and Linux systems working and not cratering the bottom line.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I read somewhere quite a while back, that Windows (the 95 family) is a loss leader. It could be in Microsoft's best interests to let Linux win.
Microsoft makes $Billions/year on Windows, and most of that is probably from Windows 9x. There's no way it's a loss-leader. In fact, it's one of the handful of products they make that's profitable.
(Which is not to say that there aren't markets where MS sells below cost. Apparently for the low-end home machines you see at electronics stores, Windows is sold to the OEMs at a very steep discount.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Mac Word was a great program, and I guess I get along because it still hiding somewhere beneth 2GB of do-dads in modern versions of Word.
Forget about MacPaint -- the program I really miss from the old Mac was SuperPaint (a combination of MacPaint and MacDraw with a few other features like layers). It's virutally impossible to find a nice low-end usable progam like this anymore. Everythings big-n-bloated (CorelDraw, Photoshop), or retarded (MS graphics progs).
My comment about business trends goes to the fact that Microsoft is redefining their strategy. They're raising prices on the brink of an IT spending recession, and it's pretty certain that they think they know what they are doing, but it's not clear anyone else does. Picking winners in the next few years is going to be tough.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I just want to point out that the secretaries might have sworn by WordPerfect, but everyone else swore at it.*
The adoption of a GUI word processor was part of the general downsizing of the secretary pool in US corporations in the early 90s. It was decreed that middle managers shall type their own memos, and Microsoft just so happened to have the most robust product available at the time.
Anyway, check the newspaper, and you'll find that the demand for "Word Processor" (a job title) isn't as high as it was back in the 80s.
Besides the opportuntity to rip on WordPerfect, I'm posting this to point out that people often are living in their own user-microcosm when they are talking about computers. Microsoft got where they are as a desktop and small server software vendor due to large shifts in the management style of US corporations, not anything they said or did specifically. Future trends may well help establish Linux, or they may reinforce Microsoft. Time will tell.
* Compared to, say, WordStar which let you know what the commands were right on the screen, WordPerfect's 'clean-screen' UI and bizarro F-keys were a ploy to elitists and certainly not in the best interests of the userbase as a whole. Their empire was built on print drivers, nothing more.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
If your PHB's like passing audits, perhaps you should invite the BSA to have M$ over for a little audit party? After all, these audits are for their own good, and they should be more than willing to pay such a small price for quality software and peace of mind, right?
;-)>
Perception is everything, and the perception that M$'s ever-tightening licensing demands coupled with their ever-faster upgrade cycles and ever-more-aggressive lawyers is a significant cost of their "solution" needs to be reinforced. If M$ can be egged into reinforcing that perception themselves, that's even better
My apologies if I misled anyone. My quotes were intended to be a sarcastic paraphrase of what Microsoft executives have said and done over the last month or so. Their varying statements and actions do contradict, even if the specific comments from Mr. Mundie do not contradict each other.
While Mundie writes about advantages and disadvantages of open source software, Jim Allchin claims free software hurts innovation, Steve Ballmer brags about partners accessing Windows source, and Bill Gates says Linux poses no threat to their financial stability or marketshare. (At the same time Microsoft is giving away free software left and right so it can damage competitors and their innovation.) As I said before, somebody needs to decide what Microsoft's Linux / open source FUD will be and stick to it instead of having everybody go around contradicting each other.
Nonetheless, in future postings I'll make note if I'm actually quoting someone or just making a general statement about what they mean.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
"We have made Windows source code available to thousands of partners. .. Open source software is dangerous and kills innovation."
Somebody needs to call a meeting and decide what the standard line will be.... FUD isn't effective when it contradicts itself.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
In the article, it says that the Linux community knows the difference between GPLed code and "open source." So, what's the difference? I don't know. Is it like a square and a rectangle, where a rectangle is always a square but a square is not always a rectangle?
And don't moderate this as funny, because I'm serious.
People who spend their time in any debate making personal comments about the opposition instead of countering their arguments are sure to lose the debate. You can see this in politics in any country. You would see this in any high-school class debate. And you may see it in the great Linux versus Microsoft debate.
What is needed is a united front from the Linux side. To do this, Linux people need to employ marketing people and spin doctors. While we may ordinarily be wary of such people, they have their uses and we should employ them if they can be of benefit to us.
Whenever Microsoft announces a Great New Product, the people on the Linux side can best devastate Microsoft's marketing efforts by pointing out the weaknesses in the Microsoft offering and how Linux products can overcome these weaknesses.
Imagine that Linux and Microsoft are ships in a naval battle. To sink Microsoft, make your shots count.
Microsoft products are expensive. Linux products are far more cost-effective. Wham!
Microsoft products have restrictive licence agreements. Linux products have more lenient software licenses. Wham!
Microsoft products tend to be overintegrated and this makes them unstable. Linux products don't take integration too far and are more stable as a result. Wham!
A few telling broadsides like that fired from the Linux ship and the Microsoft product is dead in the water and doomed to sink. In naval combat, you don't waste your ammunition firing warning shots across the bows of the enemy ship. You take aim at the ship and try to sink it.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
If Microsoft is engaging in a campaign against the idea of Open Source, then they're forgetting something very important:
.NET.
Their own image problems.
This is Microsoft, a compnay whose products people use, but use at best out of habit, often reluctantly.
This is a company that has been investigated on monopoly charges and whose representatives lied in court.
This is a company who, after kissing up to AOL, appears to be ready to compete with them via
This is a company remembered by every user who suffered through a blue screen.
This is a company fearful that Open Source and Linux are catching on overseas - partially because people are sick of being beholden to an American company.
MS has only managed to make Open Source and related issues more visible. People will now ask about Open Source. People will want to know.
And people will wonder if Microsoft hates it, is it then such a bad thing?
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
And when [Microsoft] try to distort reality with their perceptions, of course we need to counter their statements with the truth. Not with scathing flames and rants, however, but with our own calm and reasonable statements. We have to get the word out beyond our little community and into the mindset of the wider public view.
That is where this argument will be won, not on the PC.
I disagree. One overriding strength of the Linux movement is that its driven by people who concentrate on the technological problems to be solved and solving them, and in the process we're leaving the beancounters standing still.
A lot of linux development (apps and kernel) is done by people who don't care whether the stuff they write gets used by millions the world over - they do it because the problems are interesting and the solutions satisfying. And the GPL provides a way of protecting that kind of working attitude.
That is where this argument will be won, on the basis of technological excellence, which definitely includes the PC.
Can you imagine? You seem to be leading two lives. In one, you write code for a "respectable" software company and help your landlady take out her garbage. In the other, you secretly help write illegal code using "patented" ideas. You're working on a non-sanctioned OS, and the Thought Police (lawyers, law enforcement, and mighty patent-owning corporations) are only one step behind you.
It's just too probable to be anything but scary.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
First a quick remark to your parent post...
Software on Windows tends to be either a one-click install, where it's smart enough to find the boot drive when it's not C, to use the real program files, etc. Or it's a disaster where they hardcode stuff and it refuses to work unless you tweak a lot of option - if they let you tweak.
This is almost exactly the same as Linux software. Some RPMs install perfectly, some were written by idiots. If they work well, it's seamless, if not, they'll screw the computer up, just without the pretty graphics.
Now, as to the idea of a LSP...
This is quite reasonable to expect. The LSP would have perfect access to your computer, not like PC Anywhere and other Windows remote access programs. They could do anything remotely that a good admin could do locally.
In fact, they'd find it easier because if the 'user' didn't have root privs for anything they'd be unable to screw things up, so the main system would be untouched since the LSP had last connected.
It was also Bill Gates who once said "What's a network?" - a quote that really doesn't get enough coverage these days. Get the full story.
Of course, this isn't about Bill Gates, though. It's naive to assume that Microsoft don't know what open source is - they see it is a serious threat, and any apparent confusion over what it is (confusing open source with free software, or the GPL with Marxism) is just more FUD.
And why should open source force MS to drop their prices? If people are still willing to pay $500 for Office then more power to them. They like the features it offers, they like the support and accountability, they like the hundreds of books on Word for Dummies. You're not likely to get all that for an open source product. There's room in the world for both models, which is something the hardliners from both sides seem to be unaware of. Or just ignoring.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Yes, you are confused. Not because you misunderstand MS's message, but because you misunderstand the audience.
MS isn't pitching this message to techies. They aren't pitching it to home users (right now). They are pitching it to MBAs, the CEO/CIO/CFO of major corporations. You know, the people that don't say "give me a budget for new servers" but instead say "give me a budget for new Microsoft servers".
Microsoft is very aware of who their audience is, and how to communicate with that audience. And they do it very well.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
[1] as in beer
From www.opensource.org:
Definition of Open Source
I think that makes Open Source free as in beer. Which means that Microsoft will never use an 'Open' license.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
For Mr. and Mrs. America, talk about Free as in Beer and explain that roughly 10% of the price of a computer these days is the Windows Tax.
I guess it depends on how much you pay for your computer, how many that vendor sells, etc etc etc.
So it's 10% +/-10%
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Yes, but you know: unmantained software rots. And who is better than the people who did the maintenance since yesterday to continue doing the maintenance (for a fee)?
IMHO, in some cases, it would be a great opportunity to start working for yourself, not for your boss. Of course, your boss won't agree...
After reading this article (and the others on the same topic) there seems to be something missing.. MS is attacking the GPL, but why? They can say 'Linux' specifically, but (as Alan Cox pointed out) why would they urge others to not use the GPL?
The general consensus is that they're scared of something they can't compete with, but I think that's a little short sighted..
It dawned on me while reading this article, that MS is urging against the GPL, not because they're scared of competition, but because they can't own a GPL'ed product..
I think that if MS was the only software company that provided non-GPL software (as in the unlikely event that every other company on earth suddenly GPL'ed their products..) from a competition standpoint, MS wouldn't really care - from what I've seen, they don't care about competing with other companies...
It's well known that MS rarely (ever?) invents anything themselves - most of their 'R&D' consists of buying other people's technologies.. Just think about what a GPL'ed world would do to them: unable to 'innovate', they'd be forced to come up with new technologies themselves!
I think that this is what really has MS running scared.. each of their competitors that embraces the GPL means one less corporate aquisition.. and that scares them more than anything else in the world..
Linux, by extension of this, is their worst nightmare - a technology that they can't own.
Personally I use Linux, Solaris and Windows ME together in one big happy development environment (read 'family').
I can't remember who said it (might have been Sun Tzu), but some tactician said that when fighting your opponent always leave them a way out. Dont' box them in because if you force them to fight like trapped dogs, they will. It must be shown that Microsoft has a place in a future where Linux is the standard desktop platform.
I read somewhere quite a while back, that Windows (the 95 family) is a loss leader. It could be in Microsoft's best interests to let Linux win. There's the sales pitch that needs to be thrown at Big-Bill. Read the Halloween docs and they mention that Microsoft was working on an open source project to port DCOM to Linux. This would indicate that they don't have religious convictions against open source itself (why is it that the word 'Linux' is normally followed by either 'freak' or 'zealot'?).
Perhaps their actions this week are symptoms that Linux has them backed in a corner. Linux will win because they cannot compete with open source. The Slashdot community continuously shows it will not settle for anything less than complete capitulation by Microsoft. Microsoft is boxed in a corner, especially as if they show too much weakness they could be sucked down with the dot.com garbage on the stock market.
I really believe that Microsoft has a place, even after Linux wins and I hope they can see this too.
Well, Microsoft isn't going to be able to touch the meaning of OSI Certification. It would help us if people explicitly said that their open source project, using a license listed at http://opensource.org/licenses/, is "OSI Certified".
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Okay wiseguy, how long does it take your mother to figure out how to install a piece of software on Linux?
Installing software is a sysadmin task. A good few of the problems with windows can be traced back to the "end user is the sysadmin" paradigm.
Whilst it may be ok to do this on a "home computer" in any corporate environment it's a way to pour money down the drain.
We don't expect drivers to be motor mechanics, so why treat computers differently?
In the past, Microsoft solutions have been popular because of their ease of use,
Except that people have caught on that "GUI for everything" does not mean ease of use. Also could you imagine an NT machine getting walled up for 4 years and nobody noticing?
Foaming at the mouth is ineffective marketing technology. Microsoft is a master of marketing, using their strength in marketing to sell what is considered by some to be inferior products.
You could interpret this as "foaming at the mouth only works when you are already a monoploy"... Then it can work very well.
I don't see what is so contradicting about that.
Mundie talks about advantages and disadvantages of open source. The main advantage he mentions is that it gives more eyeballs and indeed makes development more efficient. The main disadvantage he talks about is that putting stuff under GPL is the "viral nature" of GPL in that any code that is used with GPL also has to be under GPL. He talks about how some companies may not have fully understood what it means to open source their software and that they run the risk of doing an un-reversible move simply because they are uninformed or have not understood the issues right.
Steve Ballmer bragging about MS partners having access to their source code is not contradicting what Mundie says, since sharing the source code ("read only") is exactly one of the strong points that Mundie mentioned about open source.
Bill Gates saying things about Linux and it's economical impact on Microsoft are completely unrelated from any statements by Ballmer and Mundie regarding the pro's and con's about open source. He could just as well be talking about Solaris or BeOS.
And what was Jim Allchin talking about when he says free software hurts innovation? He was not talking just about software but also other forms of intellectual property business, such as music. He talks about how the community mentality is that *all* software should be free. So how does it hurt innovation? He thinks that hurts innovation because he believes that without companies being able to charge for software, they won't be able to spend $$ on R&D and thus innovation. You may argue that he doesn't get it or that he is wrong but that's not the point. The point is that his statements are not contradicting any other MS statements about open source. If you think they contradict Bill Gates' statements that Linux is no threat, then that's a different thing - he is talking about Red Hat selling lots of Linux distros for servers. Allchin was talking the mentality about all software, music, movies etc. being free: "I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat."
Now, we sound consumed by getting market share. We are trying to _force_ Linux's success, instead of watching it grow naturally. Maybe we should go into marketing.
On the other hand, watching Microsoft writhe is kinda fun.
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Classic words from someone who's never used OS/2.
Piece of shit. The problem with OS/2 was the same as the problem with WinNT 3.x back in the day, no-one wanted it. The corps were happy running win3.1, the geeks were happy running dos (and arguing over whether or not qemm was the way of the future) and the government was demanding POSIX conformance. There was a rare geek who ran OS/2 but he always rebooted into dos to do anything useful with his computer. Everyone tries to lead the market, instead of just finding out what the market wants and delivering.
How we know is more important than what we know.
uh huh.. or taking an american's advice on what communism means.
How we know is more important than what we know.
No but those incomming college freshmen next year who need to buy a computer for the first time and don't know anything about computers might chose XP over OSX when they used to chose iMac over Dell w/ Win98. A major demographic for the iBook and iMac is first time computer buyers. The Macs are simpler and "cooler looking." This is what XP is competing for -- not hardcore mac users. Hardcore Apple users use G4s anyway.
Microsoft's motive is to produce a product which people want to buy. This is a common myth of capitalism. Actually, Microsoft's motive is to produce people that want to buy the product. Hence the advertisements and manipulative (if you buy the article's conclusion) statements.
"...stolen...stolen...IP theft..."
There is no such thing as stolen data. Perhaps when you say theft, you mean copyright infringement?
MS Rep: We've got the latest icons an paperclips assistants to help you point and click
Client: Well I was looking into Linu...
MS Rep: YOU DON'T WANT TO USE THAT TRUST ME! Nothing in this world would cripple your finances more than an OS environment who is willing to give you something for free when you could pay for exclusive licensing through a reputable source such as Microsoft. I mean have you ever heard of Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman. Who are these rejects
Client: I don't follow how can free hurt me
MS Rep: Simple, see when you call tech support at least we put you on hold when you call, what are you gonna jump on IRC everytime your systems bluescreen?
MS Rep: Well you go ahead and use it, but when all those hackers who use that operating system infiltrate your networks, you'll see why closed source precompiled executables will outlast an OS who lets you tweak anything you want on the system
Client: Your right I keep reading all those horror stories about hackers using Unix
;)
This reminds me back to when Billy G was on trial and the judge asked him "Whats a box" and Billy G stated, its what's used to ship a PC. Ahh... MS obscurity through obscurity.
Want Root?
At my company I write vertical software that is only used in-house and would not be much use to anyone else. However, we just "sold" the source code to a partner company for $2MM shares of their stock. Would this same thing have happened if we had GPLed our source code? Would we still have $2MM of shares? Would it matter? What would we gain by GPLing the code?
I'm not being a smartass, I really would like to know as I want to be prepaired when the PHB asks me. I know and love OSS, including Jabber, Mozilla, Apache and Linux, and I try to use them everyday.
--
Later...
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
Sortof like the *BSD camp, eh? I have to admit that those guys seem a little more grown up than us Linuxers. And their stuff is just as "free" as ours.
--
Later...
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
They have to think of ways to increase revenues - charge more for software, make sure people pay every 3 years rather than copy their old software onto their new machine, tie OS software to particular pieces of haredware so you have to pay them again when you replace a machine, produce incompatable versions of office documents so everyone has to upgrade etc etc. They're stuck on this treadmill - just to keep still they have to do all these things or the tower of cards (aka the stock price) will collapse - AND they have to do more - in order for them to be a GOOD investment they need to keep growing - and for them to do that they have to continually find new ways to suck money out of someone's pocket - this is reality in corporate america
I think MS is worried about Linux for a lot of reasons - we're stopping them taking over the server marketplace from Sun - we're eroding mindshare - and we (in their eyes) compete unfairly - we give it away for free (let's forget that little explorer/netscape incident for the moment) - but worst of all we're not even competing in the same ballpark - it's kinda like we're playing across town in the football stadium - they have to worry about the quarterly bottom line - we care if people think our code is cool - they worry about dollars - we get paid in kudos
Are you insane? FUD is twice as effective when it contradicts itself. Even better is if it takes twelve different steps to actually prove it. By the time he's done thinking about all that crap, your typical IT manager is like "Whoa this is way too exhausting... I'll just stick with what I've already got."
Since MS has a monopoly, that's exactly the kind of thinking they have to encourage.
Can your IM do this?
Brian Proffitt makes some very interesting points in this article that anyone interested in the future of the GNU / Linux / GPL / Open Source movement should pay attention to.
"... Microsoft, it seems, has not learned Universal Law No. 312: If you call automatically equate GPL'd software with "open source," you will get a corrective statement from the FSF or Richard Stallman. It's like smoke and fire, can't have one without the other.
Yes, Microsoft did confuse the two concepts of GPL and open source. Care to take a guess why? Because they know the average listener is not going to know the difference. And like any good political campaigner, Microsoft is not going after the truth here. They are going for perception and sometimes that's all you need."
That's right, the average person does not know or even care about the difference between GPL'd software and open source software. Now that Microsoft is taking direct shots at Linux, GPL, and Open Source its time for Linux guru's, users and advocates to stop rolling their collective eyes at the thought that someone doesn't understand the difference and to start talking to the masses about Linux, the GPL and Open Source.
In the eyes of the average person Linux is an underdog, this strange OS used by college kids and computer geeks in dark rooms late at night. What is going to change this not the superior attitude that, "Linux kicks ass, and Microsoft sucks so much. Why does it suck? 'Cause Microsoft is evil and Bill Gates is the devil!" Sorry, this just isn't going to work, as Proffitt points out:
"We don't need to attack them just because they're there. When we do, we are just making their case for them"
What this movement needs are speakers that know how to handle the media and the public. Linus is a bit too self effacing and RMS is a bit too fanatical to make good spokespersons. So I issue this question to the Slashdot audience: Who is going to stand for the whole GNU / Linux / GPL / Open Source movement? Who has the availability proclaim the strengths of this movement in an intelligent manner? Who has the availability to manipulate the media in favor of this movement?
I have read several editorials recently concerning MS recents public comments concerning the GPL and open source software. All them seem to grasping at straws to explain why MS top brass would be going out of their way to make themselves look bad and appear as arrogant as legend has it.
Is there some underlying ulterior motive? Is there some devious plan that is starting to unfold? Did MS executives hold a secret meeting and plan this bad PR campaign for reasons that will be apparent only by the historians looking back? I wonder. Or are they really that stupid?
You modified proprietary code and he doesn't get it?
--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
And as several people have said, I rather like using Linux at work, too. Right now the PHBs don't care because I program for UNIX boxen and I get the job done. I'd rather they didn't mandate that I have to use Windows. Having to deal with that shit would severely impact my productivity.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Face it: the only companies that will make good money off of GPL software are the hardware companies. Large corporations backing Linux are all companies that either sell hardware, or closed-source software on top of Linux.
Well, yeah, I pretty much agree with you there. Fortunately, most big corporations in the industry ARE hardware and/or service companies: IBM, SGI, HP, and so on. Sun is a hardware company but still thinks it's a software company, which is why it hasn't been a big fan of Linux/OSS so far. Then there are pure software shops like MS, etc. They're screwed if OSS takes over, which is why they're fighting so hard. Oracle is in kind of the same boat, but I'm not sure what they're position is, besides that fact that I know you can get Oracle for Linux.
And, if you agree with "a penny saved is a penny earned", then a whole lot of companies can make a lot of money from OSS.
Instead of software as the product, it's the service and hand holding that sells. That's what end users want. They are buying a solution, not a program.
I haven't heard that in a while... I thought the idea of selling software support as a service went out with the dodo.
Face it: the only companies that will make good money off of GPL software are the hardware companies. Large corporations backing Linux are all companies that either sell hardware, or closed-source software on top of Linux. People aren't going to pay good money for something that they can get for free... especially now that Linux is easier to install and more user-friendly.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
I know I'm late, but I hope this lays down the myth for once and for all that a support business model implies buggy software.
I still think that it's a myth.
No, where the real money is, is in corporate support,
okay, lets look at it
ie training,
Now RedHat is going to train our employees?? Why would they provide better training than existing training facilities? We didn't go to IBM to get Notes training, and we don't talk with Microsoft for Windows or NT Server training.
custom development
Custom development? I assume you don't mean custom application development, but pay-per-feature inclusions? but if redhat does them and ships them under GPL, the company that paid RedHat would have their competitors get the product for free. we are talking GPL remember.
update services
apt-get is free. you pay for redhat because you like the company or something?
and of course being a target for the PHB's to point at when things go wrong.
being a target is not a way to make money. If you are implying pay-per-incident support that "business model implies buggy software." to quote your words.
RedHat has successfully built a great brand around a product that they share with their competitors. So long as distro's like Mandrake exist, companies will not invest millions of dollars to get what they could for free. GPL==great for individuals, small projects, and bug fixes, but horrible for making money.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
I fully disagree the idea that we should make a distinction between those terms. For me it is a conceptual and strategical mistake. free software should not mean GPL'd software or software using a FSF license. Not even RMS restricts the word "free" to the licenses from FSF.
Eric Raymond used the term opensource as a synonym for free software. As he said, the single reason for adopting this term was that it would be more easily accepted by the business world. It was meant to be a synonym and I see no interest of changing that (except by enemies of opensource/free software).
The reasons I see why people tend to see a difference between these two terms are:
- "free software" == "software using a license from FSF". Mistake:
free software should simply mean software which is
free. And software using licenses other than those from FSF
(BSD, artistic, NPL, etc) are called "free" by RMS himself.
- "free software" == good software for RMS, "open source"
== good software for ESR. Mistake: disputes such the
one involing the license used by Apple should not be a ground
for splitting those concepts. If you take two people from FSF and ask if you
can do something with GPL, you will often get two different answers
(go check gnu.misc.discuss). Licenses are a tricky subject. RMS and ESR do disagree on some issues, but we should not "make" them disagree more than they actually do... and not extend this disagrement to basic concepts like free or opensource software.
The first effort to establish a definition to free software was DFSG. As far as I know both RMS and ESR fully agree with DSFG (though OSI definition carries some changes). One calls it "free software" the other "open source". We should call it the way we prefer and not try to extract two different concepts out of them.Just say no to Intelectual Property! I hope the author of this sig doesn't mind...:-)
Perhaps some day the revolution will succeed, all software will be both libre and gratis, and I'll be forced to do something else to keep me in pudding and matches. Fine. Those're the slings and arrows. But for now, I'm happy working in a closed-source shop, and I'm not going to push to get that changed.
Don't get me wrong -- I think free software is enormously valuable, and I benefit from it every single day. In fact, I'm starting to feel guilty pangs for not personally contributing to the movement outside of the occasional Bugzilla report. But I believe that people and companies -- from Metallica to Microsoft to my own shop -- have the right to define the terms on which they benefit from their intellectual work. If they want to give it away, that's awesome. If they don't, then that's fine too -- the market will deal with them if the price ain't right.
zo.
You can't just hands down say that Solaris is always the best choice of a server for the job because of "scalability". It's very dependant on what the server is for, and what the budget contraints are.
For example, if you are deploying a J2EE application, the scalability of Solaris is moot: you rely on the scalability of the application server.
For another example, if you are deploying a departmental application, then there is no valid reason to purchase enterprise class hardware.
-no broken link
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
What us advocates of Linux need to do is hold community open source meeting, invite the public, give corporate managers food. I'm sure that there are enough of us around that the costs would be less than TV campaigns and things like that (although advertising is a good idea). But such a community "grass roots" effort might be extremely effecitive. We could show exactly how and why MS products can crash and can cost businesses far more money. We could even crush the idea that NT/2000 is so easy to use that anyone can set it up. Just ask an exec to come set up IIS in the presentation :).
Its not a war of OS's, but I think we have an obligation to let people know there are alternatives, and there are inexpensive ways to spin the other way :), MS may be king of the hill in marketing, maybe rather than just accepting that we should make a challange.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
If we lack the intellectual ability to understand the basics of the English language, how can we ever expect to be taken seriously?
For those of you with low IQs:
"loose" is the opposite of "tight".
"lose" is the opposite of "win".
"looser" is what you make your belt after you've eaten too much.
"loser" is a person like the above author who ruin their good arguments with bad grammar.
"I have as much authority as the pope.
I just don't have as many people who believe it."
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Is that Linux needs a spin doctor. Anyone know any agents, campaign managers or anything like that? =)
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Fact of the matter is, Microsoft released Windows 2K with over 65,000 bugs! Maybe if they had hundreds - if not thousands - of eyes pearing at source code, bugs would be fixed because people discover them and usually offer a fix, especially the thousands - if not millions - good programmers that do this kind of stuff as a second living.
Take Mozilla, for example. Yes, there were far too many primary developers and Mozilla was originally a to keep organized, but at least bugs got fixed due to the help of so many people viewing and review source for and bug testing. Maybe Microsoft should learn from this!
Something I see in the Linux community over and over again is the overestimation of the power of marketing, and the underestimation of the intelligence of consumers. This article is a classic example of it.
By saying Microsoft marketing is to be feared, the Linux bigots are implicitly criticizing Microsoft's technology. I assure you that the latter - while not focused on the same things Linux is - is quite formidable.
People do not choose Microsoft over Linux (or vice versa) due to marketing. They choose it due to hard-nosed business considerations - cost of licensing, cost of ownership, support costs, training costs, documentation, features and uniformity of available applications, etc., etc.
Based on the above, it is easy to see why Microsoft has (and probably will always have) a dominant position on the desktop. Ms. Secretary values the ability to drag-and-drop her bosses' excell-based expense report into her email to send off to finance, than she ever will having an elegant Samba configuration. Linux will (due to it's many different subcommunities) never be able to create a consistent unified user interface - among other things.
On the other hand, Linux is obviously better for the network server type tasks it grew up doing. Microsoft products will never be as flexible as Linux, nor free.
i see many open source supporters posting very optimistic messages about how open source will triumph over ms. though i too am optimistic that this will be the case, we should be more weary of microsoft.
when the browser wars first began, we were all confident that netscape would over come, but look at it now. even with open source, mozilla is still months away from a production release and it will take more months and years for us to be able to see if the endeavors of the developers of mozilla will actually pay off and help mozilla regain some of netscape's past glory.
microsoft is experienced in the ways of destroying the competition piece by piece. it has the monetary resources. it has the marketing resources. and even though the public may know that microsoft is monopolistic, they still listen to microsoft (the corporation) because they would rather listen to it than a bunch of geeks screaming open source (an idea that they don't understand) at the top of their lungs.
i'm not saying that we are defeated, but confidence alone will not help us win this war that we are being dragged into with microsoft. changes must be made on how we interact with the general public. we must get open source (not linux, but other software) onto the pcs of the general public. something that enables the average pc user to say, "i have no idea what open source is, but it is cool because i use this awesome program everyday and it is free!" something like winamp or napster ( i know that there are open source versions of these products, but they are not as popular as the original). perhaps mozilla will be able to do this for open source. perhaps...
we can not go on as if it is business as usual. that is the way that we acted for the past few years and it has gotten us far, but now microsoft has aimed it's mighty cannons at us and has fired a few shots. these shots were not meant to be damage open source, but to calculate ranges for the main barrage. the barrage is coming, it's time to dig in (and / or launch an attack of our own).
thanks for reading...
andrew
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
http://web.siliconvalley.com/content/sv/2001/05/03 /opinion/dgillmor/weblog/torvalds.htm
You can't handle the truth.
Universal Law No. 312: If you call automatically equate GPL'd software with "open source," you will get a corrective statement from the FSF or Richard Stallman.
I think they teach that in physics 101, right after the gravity chapter.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Ahhh yes I came to the same conclusion too. Its nice to know that the Linux community is becoming more aware that MS is not as dumb as they thought. I feel a little more secure knowing that MS won't pull the wool over the eyes of the Linux community. Kudos to you all, errr well except to those dipsticks who still think MS people are a bunch of idiots.
Office is worth as much as the market will allow. if people still buy it at that price then microsoft has no reason to lower it. it sucks but *shrug* thats the way it works
who sez death can't be funny....www.endlesssorrow.com
Microsoft would win hands down. Getting Stallman to debate against Microsoft's marketing droids would be like watching Nader debating against Bush. No, GPL will win out if and when it creates a better product. Which is not to say that the best product always wins, but if the best product happens to also be free and open. It's going to take more than just corporations to stop it.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Best I could tell, Microsoft dosen't beleive in the same kind of open source that the rest of us do. What was that whole mess last week with MSFT claiming open source will be the death of us all?
Article:
"And Microsoft knows this. Every time we fly off the collective handle when they do something threatening and they can just sit back and say 'see how unreasonable those people are? See how derisive the keepers of this Linux technology can be?'"
This is very true, I know many people that have been turned off from Linux simply by reading Slashdot. Most people don't like ideas that are assciated with advocates and fanatics, which is what most people see from slashdot postings. They think of Linux as a cult of some sort, you know those groups that rant and rave about the world and then kill themselves off because they can't handle society. I'm not saying this is the Linux community, but what I am saying is that the Linux community needs a more professional aura around it. People should look at the Linux community as something they can comfortably come into and talk with, not something they have to worry about getting their head bitten off by if they say the wrong thing.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I've seen this happen at IBM shareholder meetings. So, yes, you can. However, if the question is out of touch with the business needs of the company and views of the majority of shareholders, it will be readily dismissed with an answer that makes sense from that perspective.
The question posed here would not go very far or get much respect in a F1000 shareholders meeting. You'd have to show up with total cost of ownership data, be intimently famliar with their IT environment, applications and requirements, etc...
Aide: Grant drinks too much to command an army. Lincoln: Find out what he drinks and give it to my other generals!
You are right, though, in that it has the potential to totally negate the business model of selling shrink-wrapped software. It will not prevent businesses from making money, only force them to change their methods of making money to something which just might be a little more honest. Corporations don't have a right to exist, let alone make money in a particular fashion. Microsoft apparently believes otherwise, hence this FUD tactic. Smart people within the giant corporations will recognize the BS for what it is, and will exert considerable influence over what goes on in the software industry, in the coming years.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
remember....
how microsoft blew java out of the water with the confusion they generated by introducing
incompatibilities with their version of java?
could they do the same to opensource?
by confusing the public with yet another buzz word
shared source bah!
back in the day we didnt have no old school
(~0)-1 is -2. I dont know what -2 marketshare is supposed to mean.
If you wanted to represent max positive int you should use (int)((unsigned)-1 >> 1)
perhaps you were thinking unsigned, which should have been (unsigned)~0 - 1
Actually, I made quite a decent living for several years in the mid to late 80's working with open source software. It was an accounting package that was FAR from GPL'd, but it was nonetheless supplied in source code format. The customer purchased the base package from the vendor, and paid me to tweak it for them. Just because a hunk of code is Open Source doesn't mean it's a zero revenue stream...
Remember: Open Source != Free[1], GPL === Free[1].
[1] as in beer.
Has it occured to anyone that MS might be just propping up the penguin to show the Justice Department that they do have competition?
This is a call to arms!
But we must all remember - Microsoft will never be beaten by words, so save them. If you want to put the scoundrels in Redmond in their place in history's dustbin, head out to your bookstore and pick up those tech books you've been meaning to read. Get started on that project you've been meaning to do. Squash those bugs in your source repositories. Finish writing that How-To, or think about redoing the documentation of your project. There are great projects out there that need your help, so fire up your build enviornment and lend a hand! It's time to fight, not argue - and our power lies in the strength of the software that we write.
So, the time has come to ask not what Free Software can do for you, but what you can do for Free Software!
And perhapse most importantly, help the nubies get on board! Get on those newsgroups, web forums and chat rooms! Start lending a hand and spreading what you know! That has always been what has made our community strong - where the documentation fails, the community lends its strength and know-how.
Everyone has something to contribute - even if you're not a coder, a 133t h4ker, or a bearded guru, you can still help your friends with configurations, installations and setups. This is, after all, our software.
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Sadly, Microsoft is smart enough to know what a bad idea this would be, coolness notwithstanding. It provide RMS an opportunity to give his Sermon On the Mount on national TV, and we all know he'd rise to the occation. It would be an event of epic proportions.
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
"The fool is not the one who sets the price, but the one who pays."
-- Finnish proverb
--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
( Read more... )
--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I guess you proved your point.
So, MS is trying to kill Mac OS X with XP?
Yeah, that bit in the article came out of left field. I think the author got it wrong, anyways. M$ is trying to "protect their flank" against OS X more than trying to actually combat/kill it. If they really wanted to kill OS X, they probably wouldn't be developing Office for it.
If ya downloaded it and didn't pay for it (and you know you're 'sposed to pay for it), ya stole it. Although I did say "stole" and not the generally accepted stole without quotes. It's virtual theft. As in, I'm too virtuous to believe that I'm doing anything wrong. Or e-theft perhaps. "E" as in entertaining so it's ok.
We don't really need big fancy words to describe an age-old sin.
Of course if they did lower it then some of the people who are using a "stolen" copy might actually buy the "real" thing.
Then again, since the days of the printed manual are gone there is absolutely no difference between the "stolen" copy and the "real" copy. Bits are bits.
It's like buying music (although mp3's aren't quite the same as cd audio tracks in terms of quality). The "stolen" audio sounds just like the "real" audio. All you get for your money is some crappy packaging.
I don't advocate IP theft but admittedly there's not a whole lot of people that are going to fork over five hundred clams for a box with an MSFT hologram on the side (other than businesses who have the MSFT police beating down their doors).
I would agree whole-heartedly, but there is a shitload of people in that tent. "Beware the power of stupid people in large groups" is a quote from a demotivator, and applies beautifully here.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Oh, man, is that ever true! In the late 80's, the Air Force (and perhaps DoD in general) decreed that all delivered documents were to be in WP format and we the engineers had to learn it as our first word processor. I can still remember "F7 Y Y" as the way to get out of a document, and then there were the little dots you had to put on the CTRL, ALT, and Shift keys, and the F-key template that had Identical commands in multiple places. I, in fact, was one of the ones who swore at it.
But to this day I hear sec'ys bemoaning the lack of er, 'reveal codes' for instance... yes, they may subconsciously deploring their loss of power.
But you wanna know what I Praised, and what hasn't to this day been rivalled? MacWord and MacDraw, the most obviously wonderful feature of which was the fact that Cut and Paste were the Same commands in both programs! Flower-C/Flower-V!
And although MacWord was swallowed up whole and belched out as MS Word, noone to this date has created a graphics program with near the usability and functionality of MacDraw. PP doesn't even come close.
About your comment on future trends... isn't it a completely different playing field today? I mean, MS is spreading their propaganda thick. But I do wholeheartedly agree about us not being able to see the forest for the trees, or as I like to say "does the fish know if it's wet?" The person who can read those tea-leaves is a true prophet, but individuals and small groups can of course create their own micro-cosmic universe...
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
{rant and ramble alert}
Change brings uncertainty, uncertainty fear. Those in power fear a new way of doing business. I was once an advocate for a radical revolution in the marketplace, and I actually thought that the whole internet thing might do as a surrogate catalyst for that change. But those entrenched in the status quo are strong, and they resist the change. Besides, we cannot all gain consensus on what is good change. I might prefer a world without cars in which we stay at home and work miracles from our bedside terminals and then go take herbal baths in mountain rivers just outside of our verdant dwellings; a world where there are no roads; a world where information is free and the government truly is not a part of our everyday life, but a servant to man and not his jailer.
But that vision threatens the current economic model. In any case, hackers work way too many hours for me to want that vision of the future, because it involves us being enslaved by our machines. Don't get me wrong, I love hackers, who work tirelessly in their unceasing efforts to improve the world one app at a time. But we as a people, as a global village have not yet arrived at a consenual vision of what the future will bring.
But corporations do not see such a humanist vision as useful. Ever thirsting for instant profitability, they only see what is in their immediate best interests, this to the detriment of a truly long view. There is no better example of what is wrong with corporations and capitalist greed than, um, US Steel, no, wait, Standard Oil, um, no wait, it was on the tip of my tongue...
Until people with vision have some sort of advocate in a position of power (either the government, the church, or corporations - no wait, strike that last one), then visions will never rise above the next quarterly statement, and no True Utopia can form, even as it is almost now within our reach. It's kind of like Talk Show Hosts; do you think they ever Really mean to resolve anything, to arrive at any kind of consensus? No, because then people would stop calling in. Because they would be happy. Picture it: a world without Talk Show Hosts and Lawyers. That's what I'm talkin about!!! Kumbay-yah, babeeee!
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
It would seem that they are supporting techies who are in their camp, and seeking to provide a single career route for the average programmer: the MS way, where people can't rip off your stuff like the GPL lets you do. It would appear that they are investing in brainwashing techniques, where, if you repeat something long enough (GPL == Open Source == hackers == that evil guy who stole all those passwords) it becomes true.
Funny how the author of the article talks about how calm and reasoned spokespeople appear and yet there was no voice more shrill than Gates before the DoJ. In any event, I suspect that in the business world the average CEO doesn't avail himself of the choices before him. Maybe they remember having spent a bundle on Lotus and WordPerfect, and even though the secretaries swore by WP as a better product (not so sure Excel, the one app worth a damn, is worse than Lotus per se), they were forced to switch to the Word standard in oh, 1990 or so, as all their peers were perceived to have made that the standard.
In my business, engineers are free to establish their own platforms. But Windows and Office are offered as standard; you have to 'purchase' Red Hat. Hell, one guy still uses WordStar in OS2. But even he has buckled under the weight of all those PowerPoint attachments, and so he has learned to use alternative boot schemes.
But I digress. I believe that some of the best programming minds have settled on Linux/Unix, but whereas you have a bunch of tinkering programmers on one side of the fence playing with code to add features and constantly improve performance, on the other side you have a corporate Giant dedicated to the development of products that are targeted at each and every application niche in the business world, with a cadre of trained professionals hawking their product and publicly electrocuting elephants (so what was that time the BSOD showed up in a trade conference? Edison electrocuting himself with a battery?), spreading FUD.
I actually Do think it's time for Linux programmers to put on a tie for once, because, like it or not, it's about politics, it's about marketing, and it's about propaganda. And those dishes are best served with garnishes on the side; the businessman is used to being catered to, not lectured.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
>strings d:\WINNT\finger.exe !This program cannot be run in DOS mode. eRich5 .text
`.data .rsrc
WSOCK32.dll
ws2_32.DLL
MSWSOCK.DLL
MSVCRT.dll
KERNEL32.dll
USER32.dll
finger
SVWj@
ueWh
X_^[
WSOCK32.dll
putchar
isspace
isprint
fflush
_iob
strrchr
_write
exit
_exit
_XcptFilter
__p___initenv
__getmainargs
_initterm
__setusermatherr
_adjust_fdiv
__p__commode
__p__fmode
__set_app_type
_except_handler3
MSVCRT.dll
_controlfp
GetLastError
LocalFree
FormatMessageA
Sleep
KERNEL32.dll
CharToOemBuffA
USER32.dll
@(#) Copyright (c) 1980 The Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.
exe\finger.dbg .exe
uh, huh. Looks like MICROS~1 knows all ABOUT Open Source... as long as its the BSD license, that is.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Wouldn't be nice to see a few of the top people from both Mirosoft and FSF, GNU, etc to sit down, in a live broadcast and have an honest to goodness debate! No fanatics from either side, but a true debate where they discuss issues like public licensing vs proprietary, open and closed source. Instead of all these articles, and responses, and follow-ups, an actual sit down debate.
We have our own future in our hands.
We will not loose to MS because of anything that MS does.
If we loose, it is because we become our own worst enemies.
Foaming at the mouth is ineffective marketing technology. Microsoft is a master of marketing, using their strength in marketing to sell what is considered by some to be inferior products. They market to the masses, people who follow opinion leaders, because those folks do not have the time, ambition, or wherewithal to do the legwork themselves.
This is most likely the correct target to go after.
If you go to page three of the article, there is this bit which sums is up nicely:
There's a lot Microsoft can do, because right now, more people will listen to them than they will to the average Linux über-hacker. If you believe otherwise, then you may need to check your ego at the door.
Because when presented with a calm, reasonable-sounding statement from a large corporation versus sarcastic rants and flames from a bunch of apparent malcontents who do nothing all day but argue why Microsoft is an evil entity instead of stipulating exactly why their product is better, I will guarantee you that the average listener is going to give far more weight to the calm, reasonable-sounding statements every single time.
I am not proposing that everyone associated with Linux get haircuts, take manners lessons, and start wearing Tux-logoed polo shirts. But I am advocating that we don't rest on our superior technological laurels and think that's all we need to fend off Microsoft's very carefully planned attacks. Nor can we get so pleased with ourselves with how inventive we can get with hammering Microsoft with lofty insults. Because all of this is leading up to one inescapable conclusion: no one outside of our community is going to keep listening to this much longer.
And Microsoft knows this. Every time we fly off the collective handle when they do something threatening and they can just sit back and say "see how unreasonable those people are? See how derisive the keepers of this Linux technology can be?" We have our own future in our hands.
We will not loose to MS because of anything that MS does.
If we loose, it is because we become our own worst enemies..
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's all about providing alternatives. In my previous life/job, I was a java developer. So I introduced the Windows Heads to Forte, now NetBeans. Voila, a few people made the switch. They just wanted a graphical IDE. They could care less what's running it (although they do enjoy increased uptime now). A few more complained about email. I showed them prototypes of Evolution. Once that's up and running, perhaps they will make the switch as well.
My current job is wireless broadband. All the embedded developers use an Windows IDE because the compiler is only available under NT. I introduced several people to a new idea in programming: it's called a cross compiler people. Developer under what OS makes you most productive. For me, that's Unix, or more precisely Linux. So, I'll just sit here under Gnome and use gcc to generate cross compiled objects for the PowerPC embedded processor.
So, get of your butts people, and show your windows-hooked friends the altnerative apps that Linux/BSD, Open Source, Free Software can provide. IMHO, the enemy isn't Microsoft (some of their products actually rock -- Age of Empires for example), the enemy (if we have to have one) are people who take what's given to them and think there is only one way to do things -- the Microsoft way!
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
well it's clear that the reason m$ hates gpl especially is that it precludes embrace/extend. can't add your proprietary twinges to it, they're fsck'ed and, the reason they glumped gpl and open source together was to generate the predictable vein-popping tirade from RMS that'll make him look foolish, and to sow discontent among the free/open software collective. this is commonly done in politics, and m$ is quite political. these men are not stupid. but then, neither are we. i was a fan of the bsd licence and wary of gpl. after this latest ejaculation from m$, i'm now a die-hard GPL advocate.
"lose" is the opposite of win.
"loose" is the opposite of tight.
Using the latter in place of the former is the electronic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, IMHO.
hugs,
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
"Perception is something, you may have noticed, I tend to put a lot of stock in. I know this earns scoffing from the more hard-core Linux user/hackers, who proudly proclaim that "Linux kicks ass, it will always kick ass, and there's nothing those [insert insulting expletive here] at Microsoft can do about it!"
Or some stupid thing to that effect.
How many comments like this will we see here today. Quite alot, I fear. Read on....
This is a foolish attitude to take. There's a lot Microsoft can do, because right now, more people will listen to them than they will to the average Linux über-hacker. If you believe otherwise, then you may need to check your ego at the door.
Because when presented with a calm, reasonable-sounding statement from a large corporation versus sarcastic rants and flames from a bunch of apparent malcontents who do nothing all day but argue why Microsoft is an evil entity instead of stipulating exactly why their product is better, I will guarantee you that the average listener is going to give far more weight to the calm, reasonable-sounding statements every single time.
Brian coninues:
And when they try to distort reality with their perceptions, of course we need to counter their statements with the truth. Not with scathing flames and rants, however, but with our own calm and reasonable statements. We have to get the word out beyond our little community and into the mindset of the wider public view.
That is where this argument will be won, not on the PC.
I know it's boring to have to read the article (again, for some of you), but I doubt most rabid MS haters will bother getting to the third page.
Tom.
Oh arse
Meanwhile, push your product based on its benefits (Free as in Beer ain't bad)! And try, just try, to standardize a little, for Joe User out there...
sulli
RTFJ.
This applies equally to the "enterprise" and Joe User audiences.
sulli
RTFJ.
The KKK have this policy where they decide to go out and have a "peaceful demonstration". The police oblige by putting riot troops between them and the people who show up to demonstrate. A few off-camera sly comments here and there by the protestors, and the protestors go nuts, hurling stuff at police and the Klan, while the Klan, cameras rolling, just stand there trying to look angelic. The spin? "Well, we're just here exercising our constitutional rights. It's those animals who were the problem."
Microsoft is trying to provoke the same in the Open Source community. "Hey, we're just the most successful and useful software company ever, while they're a bunch of unwashed, unshaved rabble."
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Honestly, for all the back-patting Linux and OpenSource people do, they/we are still in a hard position with the 'average joe/jane' out there.
If you point out the flaws in MS stuff, you're 'biased'. The louder you shout, the more you turn people off. If you are calm, and simply point out the 'benefits' of open source, you end up sounding like an MS commercial.
"Improved uptime, better security, more stability, etc".
Sounds like those MS commercials where they show the machines in the server room silently chugging away.
IMO, the biggest benefit is actual real-world examples, but as you can't even publish benchmarks these days from the big boys, even that becomes hard to do in a large, public manner.
Showing that you can get the same, or better, performance from open source technologies as closed, WITH a better price tag (long term and short term) is probably the best way, but it's also a longer 'education' process to take people through.
creation science book
I submit as a personally experienced example of superiority left by the wayside because the idea wasn't defended as well as it should have been.
In 1988, I became the prowd owner of an Amiga 500. FAR superior graphics and multimedia than anything on the consumer market. True multitasking OS in 512K ROM space. Back then, I argued over the use of those superior aspects and how they'll make computing more enjoyable. The 'PHB' types would say "Well, I don't need anything like that". Years later, full color graphics and multitasking (of sorts) became available on PC platforms thanks in part to Microsoft. You'd think it was a brand new idea at the time. The PHB types would then say "Hey, look what I can do!!" Those hailing the Amiga knew about these features years before. And the Amiga was coming into its own with productivity software and was destined to be side by side with the MAC. But, in the early days of FUD, MS Windows was perceived as the best, and you could get it very cheap (**cough**) for your PC compatible computer. Eventually, the Amiga died off. Even though I still have an Amiga tightly closed in my white knuckled grip, I look at Linux as a new icon of superiority and creativity. And as an example of a beneficial computing platform even though PHBs don't know that yet.
My point is: If you believe it, and you know it's value to the PHBs even if they don't know it yet, don't sit there. Let them know. Take the time to provide examples. I let the public know about it all the time. I have "LINUX OS" as my state issued license plate. I answer questions people have when asked about it. I've even set a few people straight who thought Linux was only to hack other computers. And as soon as someone wants to bankroll it, I'll advertise Linux with a vinyl wrap on my car and a big Tux graphic on the hood.
Who does like being lectured, I don't. Unfortunatly the sterotype that many computer guys are put into is one of a hacker, A genuis in what he/she does but very slack in social skills etc...
I think we all know how untrue this image really is, but who in the corporate world does? If there is any hope of changing the perception of Linux and Open Source we need to confront these people within their world, if we try to drag them into our world and convince them here, it cannot work. They will be so uncomfortable than all that we say and do will be automatically forgot. It's not so much the image that we present, although that is important, but the World we come from. It's not that businessmen/woman if afraid of new solutions or new technology. but they ARE afraid of anything outside their understanding, and that IS Business.
Look at M$, they are a business, they are involved in business, they must know business. Now look at these Linux advocates, they are outside Business, they do not conform to business, why the hell should I listen to them?
Why indeed? We need to change THAT perception first
Trav
Leg Godt!
While I confess to skimming beyond the first couple of paragraphs, the intro pretty much set the tone: Whatever Microsoft does is wrong, and Linux is the saviour to all things. You can see this hilarious egotistical self-absorbtion by the claim that Microsoft didn't attack "Linux" (what is Open Source but for Linux? Open source didn't exist before Linux, right?) because Linux is "unlike any challenger Microsoft has ever seen" (though it then has some odd wording that seems to clearly state that Microsoft doesn't want anything in Linux, but they want to "embrace and extend" the GPL? Huh?). Is this a joke? It goes on to hilariously talk about how Microsoft is doing PR and is espousing only one side of the argument, a la Edison versus Tesla (which it claims is is an old game in "big business"). And this article isn't doing the EXACT SAME THING? The Linux community is just as guilty of overstating benefits and understating weaknesses, and as a basic personality trait in humanity I think it could hardly be called an aspect of "big business". Beware throwing stones when you live in a glass house.
I'm not even getting into the particular aspects of Microsoft's position, but this article seems like mindless propaganda for the already converted, and this was highlighted by the fact that it mentioned in "talkback after talkback": That's why they are demographic proof of anything: Linux/Open Source fanatics seem to be quite a bit more motivated than BigCompany Co. that simply wants their data systems to work and work well, hence the grossly overwhelming number of GPL enthusiasts rushing to fill every PC Mag talkback channel (while PC Mag rakes in the ad hits laughing their asses off).
I too am a tad bit confused by Microsoft's actions. I wonder if it is Microsoft thinking we need to keep the cash rolling in and since we are a monopoly this is how we can do it. They don't recognize the danger of losing their monopoly.
That's it. This is how Linux will succed. Think of it as Valet Parking for the average user. We install Linux and show them how to get online, then if they want something, they call their Linux Service Provider, and the LSP will install the software for them. This could use some more discussion.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
So, MS is trying to kill Mac OS X with XP? I dont really know... Those few Apple users that are left will probably not switch to MS just because they make their GUI look more like Apples (they've done that for like 10 years now ;)
:)
But of course, substantially less people might switch from Windows to OS X if XP looks as cool as OS X. Fortunately it does not
I guess many Windows users today do not like the unstrict, toylike and colorful XP GUI, so I think MS would be better off not directing its entire production line against Apple.
Mundies states that GPL is bad because if you use a bit of code then you have to give away everything. This I can understand. After all, if you don't like the licence, don't use it. But were also getting to the stage where people are gpl'ing tiny snippets of code. This is almost as silly as record companies trying to copyright a couple bars of music and bill ringtone providers!
This is where I get all confused. Microsoft is essentially arguing that if I write something and release it then I can't make money from that code and, that itself is bad.
Well unless I fancy living in a dumpster for the rest of my life I think I can see where they're coming from. If I work for a company developing software (which I did) and they went open source then I can practically wave goodbye to my job. That company makes its money on the basis that its product is better than anyone elses (which for a very boring market - it kicks other competitors stuff up the arse). By opening up the source, any tom, dick and harry can view the source and the innovation.
This, for the open source crowd, is a good thing. Everyone benifits, the authors get people reporting bugs and the competitors get access to their groovy stuff. Provided of course they release their updates using that code to everyone else.
Sorry, I just can't see it taking off. The whole software industry is about coming up with something thats better than others and encouraging people to buy their product over others.
Okay, lets put this another way. There are three and only three companies (A,B and C) that produce a product called "X"). If X is GPL'ed then why on earth should A develop for it, if its only going to mean that B and C get a load of work for free? (You have to think like a corporation here)
You get this little loop where no-one will work on something because at the end of the day, its a total waste of time because your hard work will be just dropped into someone elses impementation because thats what the licence says they have to do. And for them, it'll cost a tenth of the cost.
Don't get me wrong, the GPL has opened up stuff and helped me enormiously and I'm grateful. But thats me, as in an individual entity, not a global corporation.
And thats where I'm not sure what they think about it ...
--
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
There's a difference between well-written and good content. This article contains several grammatical errors in the first section. Is it asking so much to expect these guys to proof-read?
The part that really said it all for me is how M$ is getting pretty frustrated with all the shops that aren't upgrading to 2K. I moved all of the servers at the shop I'm currently working at to Linux & *BSD and left one server with M$ too keep my MicroSkills up. Whilst that migration took a bit, upgrades on Linux & *BSD are no problem (and no reboot sometimes) whilst upgrades on Windows NT* are so painful, you might as well just reinstall the OS.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Oh yeah, like thats a really good idea at this point.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Heh, I either posted this one too late, or no one is brave enough to respond... :>
There seems to be no other solution to this "Microsoft is evil" dilemma than for Microsoft to disapper, which would really cause us all to be in a lot of trouble. Imagine if the entire world had to start using Linux -- I'm sorry, Linux is not so user friendly that everyone and their grandmas are going to love using a computer. I get incredibly frustrated trying to do anything in Linux, but most of that is due to the couple of months I've used it in comparison to my 15 years of DOS/Windows experience. I can hardly imagine someone with no clue what a directory is trying to get Linux...
I get just as scared as all of you everytime I hear about MS changing licensing policies, whether it be to subscriptions, software timers, calling phone numbers to have to explain why I'm installing Office for a third time (regular reformatting is normal, of course...), etc. But, I'm not going to lose much sleep over it.
If Microsoft's business practices are causing that much harm to the industry, then something else will inevitably take its spot. If the new license is really that terrible, then companies will stop using it. And if Office is too annoying, then there will be something else to install over the top of it. But, it's certainly not anything to get into an uproar about, and it's certainly not anything to condemn the company for, which is just doing what it feels it needs to to keep progessing profitably and intellectually.
We all need to take a look at what exactly we want MS to do. Die? Play nice? Be our friend?
I'm curious to hear what you all think? I used to love MS products, now I wish there was an alternative... I'm just not sure anymore.
Who even really listens to MSFT anymore?? I believe it was Bill Gates who said the internet wasn't going anywhere, and that no one will ever need more than 640k RAM.... If open source software doesn't put MSFT out of buisness, it should at least force them to lower their prices. Who in this world really thinks that office is worth as much as it costs (500 for the standard edition....)...
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
While the article this story points to is an amusing read, I would say that the author is making mistakes he shouldn't be.
First off, I don't know how many people agree with the assessment of his "friend," but I for one do not. M$ is *not* releasing XP to kill Apple. Steve Jobs is doing that very well without any help. Apple is dying, and there does not seem to be anyone with half a brain around to make any difference. Only diehard Mac addicts care about the platform anymore, and they seem to drool every time Jobs steps on stage. OS X? Run a Unix-like OS on equipment considerably more expensive than PCs? Not for the majority, thank you.
M$ is aiming at all users with XP, and especially those that have been complaining for years that Win9x is not a "real" OS. That means many prospective Linux newbies.
The author states that people listen to calm arguments presented by corporations over passionate name-calling from Linux supporters. Where did that come from? Did you witness the last presidential election campaign? The theme is beat your opponent down with half-truths or outright lies, and keep hammering until everyone thinks that you must be telling the truth. Gore is such a liar, we all seem to know that -- even though /. carried a story about how that assertion was pattently untrue. Who cares; he's a liar anyway. We heard that too often for it *not* to be true. That's exactly what M$ is doing with Open Source and the GPL and Linux. Does the Linux community want to win? Here is how to get *many* people to try Linux: "Windows keeps crashing no matter how little you do with it; try Linux, it *never* crashes -- and it's *free*!" You will have thousands of people trying it *once*! If you have more there to hook them, they will stay. If it is too difficult, and they feel overwhelmed, they will go back to M$. But don't give me defeatist crap like "we have to point out what is good about Linux, and then we'll win." That's what the Democrats tried, too.
Please note that these are *my* opinions, slightly exaggerated to make a point.
I used to own a business in upstate CT selling hobby supplies, magic cards etc. .. ALL of the other stores in the area spewed dogma to their customers how 'that new guy' didn't have a good store, didn't have a lot of inventory, etc. .. gamers & hobbiests, being people, were curious, and took a look to see. When they came in MY store , some would bait me and say 'what do you think about so-and-so downtown?' to which I would reply, 'they have a nice store, I used to shop there before I owned this place, but now I carry everything I used to buy there .. come over here .. look at this new game we just got in (etcetc)' .. what do you think of that!' ...' (as i hand them the box and watch them reach for their wallet.)
when I opened up
Did that assure them of keeping those customers ? hell no
i acknowledged that they exsisted, and shifted the topic to get them excited about something else. (and to put their $$ in my pocket.) rather than waste my energy bitching about my competition, I chose to spend it selling my product, and giving the customer service.
Thats why when a kid came in six months later and said to me 'so-and-so two towns over is selling all this stuff at 50% off
I was able to reply 'sounds like he is going out of business, has he gotten (fill in the new product name sitting on my shelf) in yet ? no ?!! well take a look at how cool this is
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
You are one of the converted so of course you will suggest Linux, but your comments would be more interesting if you had said "I am a techy who only knows windows but all the games Microsoft is playing is making me interested in looking at linux." I am not saying you should lie but if a lot of post came up saying more people are dabling with linux now, it would really mean MS's ploys have not been working.
I miss the Karma Whores.
How many of the suits in the Fortune X stand to lose a pile of money if they embrace open source products?
Prediction: there will be a gradual erosion of M$ market share, but there will never be a point of inflection. Too much inertia in the economic system.
I just put RH7.1 on my Linux drive. M0st k3wl. Installed well, learning curve still steep.
The point is, while I'm no elite hacker, folks who are seriously trying out new stuff are a fringe, and will always be.
M$ panders to the unwashed masses, and provides a servicable product to the Lowest Common Denominator. Can we admit that this is OK?
M$ might be the software equivalent of Socialist Security; something that truly draws vacuum, but is too entrenched to destroy, therefore making it best ignored.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The article spent quite a bit of time on Microsoft's work on public preception, but there's almost no emphasis on the work Microsoft is doing to educate (subvert) the U.S. and other governments around to their way of thinking.
While I don't hold much hope of the antitrust trial helping to solve this problem one way or the other, what really can help this problem is if some of the larger linux shops... ARE YOU LISTENING, IBM?!?... will start dropping the Benjamins around Washington just like Microsoft's lobbies have been doing.
This is also a great opportunity to encourage the countries that are considering open source initiatives with promotions, recognition, and cooperative deals. It's also a great time to start building bonuses for international companies who use Linux and open-source software.
Think about all those Internet cafes in Mexico and Eastern Europe that use Linux and Star Office rather than trying to pirate MS Office. Wouldn't it be wonderful mindshare to maybe drop a few late-model or promo PC's on these guys to help speed adoption?
This is not going to be a hard thing to accomplish because no one company or individual will be the driving factor. It does need some big names to happen, however. Maybe if VA Linux ever comes out of Chapter 11, they can start doing some lobby work, maybe?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Uuuhhh....no.
Allow me to explain: you're still thinking as a consumer, where support means hand-holding to the clueless lusers that can't even find their power buttons. I'm overdoing it a bit but you get my point. This however is not what Red Hat is talking about when they say they'll make their money from support. Sure, they will do it, but it's at a loss I'm sure. No, where the real money is, is in corporate support, ie training, custom development, update services and of course being a target for the PHB's to point at when things go wrong.
I know I'm late, but I hope this lays down the myth for once and for all that a support business model implies buggy software.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Good answers. I'll try and answer as best as I can.
Now RedHat is going to train our employees??
Maybe not directly, no. But they do have a very well regarded training program. From what I've heard, RHCE means something. More than MCSE at least. They do, however, charge a tidy bundle for it, so this is one of their revenue streams, and as corporate adoption of Linux grows, they of course hope to increase that revenue.
Indeed. Read the GPL, if RH does custom app development, the GPL only forces them to share the source with those they sell the custom app to. Of course RH is free to use that source when someone else wants a similar app developed, thus cutting down on R&D costs.
apt-get is free. you pay for redhat because you like the company or something?
No I don't. I use Debian too. However, RH update service is more than just download and install, it also encompasses remote managament. In effect RH offers a way to companies to outsource a lot of a sysadmin's duties, thus the company needs less sysadmin man-hours to manage their software, thus lowering their (buzzword alert!) TCO. At least this is what RH wants us to believe, I can't vow for the effectiveness of this way of doing business. I have my doubts as well.
being a target is not a way to make money
That remains to be seen. I could well see RH setting minimum performance and security guarantees in a corporate contract. That way they would take on some liability yes, but PHBs like to have someone to blame, and might be willing to pay big bucks for that.
So, I do think that RH's business model makes sense, it just remains to be seen just how succesful it will be. I don't think they will make billions on it, but several millions a year is still a viable business, and I think that is possible.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I haven't seen such a reasoned article in quite a while. Thanks to the author for that. He clearly points out how, by attacking M$ in such effective methods as calling them the Borg, the Evil Empire, etc., we're playing right into their hands.
To the list of reasons why he says we can give to Mr. and Mrs. Home User, I can add this one: If you try to upgrade your software, linux will let you know before the fact, that you're about to break something, whereas Windows just forces the install, dependencies be damned.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
you're probably thinking of hummingbird's inetd...Hummingbird Communication Limited...completely separate to microsoft
- Dan I.
Microsoft should make earlier versions of MSDOS and windows open source just to get rid of them and invite more customers. But the won't so they'll fail in the end.
Im wondering why MS is FUDing the OSS Movement so much lately...
And I think it has to do with all the support available in the 2.4(USB,pppoe,etc...) 'coz since the release we had Balmer, the windows guys(cant remember his name) and then Mundie, so what is it? It smells like panic.
1- 2.4 has enough hw support to make linux a serious competitor to Win for clueless users.
2- Linux is not a corporation thus MS is confused about how to defeat it?
3- The quality of OSS in general is getting too good to be ignored?
4-...
????
Frankly, I don't care why MS is going after the GPL, it's enough for me to know that they are. GPL is probably the best thing to happen to Intellectual property in a long time. (Obligatory link to article promoting open source) If Microsoft can make enough public statements against open source that congress feels it should not act to promote it, then we all lose.
If Microsoft is going to take extreme and unjustifiable positions, then some of us need to take equally extreme and unjustifiable positions on the other side. I suggest;
Because of it's abuse of Monopoly power, the government should use it's power of eminent domain to seize Windows, and release it under a GPL.
Weakness doesn't make right either.
Quote:
Despite the above quote, it's a good response and also one that might take aback some of the "Free software is a tool of communism" people.--
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Upside.com has an article covering this mess.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Would Microsoft try and kill Apple? Apple has become their new R&D department! Where would they get new OS ideas from if Apple died?
If you are talking servers then right now the 'winner' of that 'battle' is clearly Solaris and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If you want to know why, it's all to do with scaling.
If you are talking embedded systems then Linux may well corner that market. But that doesn't mean that it'll leave the server or desktop market. That's crazy thinking.
Now, can everyone just do me a favour and SHUT UP ABOUT THE MICROSOFT/LINUX WARS. It's a waste of time. Post a story about Eazel so I can post this witty quote I thought of:
"I gave a company $13m in venture capitalism and all I got was this lousy file manager."
Claric
--
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
Fiery sermons may work in revival tents, but the people in those tents are already waiting for something. The people outside the tents couldn't care less.
The only way to get most people to pay attention to you is to frame your ideas in a context which means something to them. For IT managers, talk about improved uptime and security, reduced support costs, smoother upgrade paths and the knowledge that you can't be orphaned by your vendor.
For corporate executives, talk about reduced support costs, cheaper hardware, better IT productivity and superior performance.
For Mr. and Mrs. America, talk about Free as in Beer and explain that roughly 10% of the price of a computer these days is the Windows Tax.
When someone uses hyperbole or inflammatory language, most people start to tune them out, unless they're really charismatic. :::Cough::: Steve Jobs :::Cough:::
If your mother can even successfully complete these tasks on Linux, with any distribution, window manager, or anything, then she is well and above the average skill of any given sample of 'mothers' out there.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
And I assume this LSP is just going to do all this for FREE, right?? So, you've basically just went well and above what Microsoft is trying to do by suggesting a sustained revenue stream from users if they want to use their computer.
More Linux hypocrisy. pfft.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
Linux is succeeding in small business IT and that is great and wonderful. It has not caught on with corporate executives because corporate executives would rather spent their money on big dog vendors like Sun, HP, etc. There are also departmental standards in which certain hardware and software platforms are pretty much set and standardized.
As far as the consumer market goes.... geesh as if Windoze isn't hard enough for mom to figure out how to use -- let's get her to learn Linux!!! Hint: A computer's usability is not determined merely by the amount of colors and purty widgets present in the window manager.
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
You do have a point. However, alot of the time these same CIO's ask their top technical staff for recommendations on what vendors to use, and how to implement solutions that accomplish goals. The most common request I get is "we need a solution that accomplishes goal X. Your budget is Y, make it happen". Well, if I can use Free software and come in under budget, I look good. In the past, Microsoft solutions have been popular because of their ease of use, but with the incredible number of front-ends for quality *nix utilities (think Comanche, or SWAT for example), that ease of use is duplicated. Now it comes down to price and deployment time. Which solution will I recommend? Not a tough guess.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
I have to admit, I am a tad bit confused by Microsoft these days. Between this subscription model software (pay us every 3 years or we pull your apps), the .NET strategy (Host my applications offsite? I don't think so), and all this verbal warfare against open-source and free-software (we can't buy it, so lets just discredit it). It seems as though they are trying to alienate every hard-core techie out there. Do they not realize that these are the same techies that support their products day in and day out?? I am a rabid supporter of GNU/Linux and Open source in general, but my job is mostly Microsoft-Centric. Next time we budget new servers, will I purchase NT? No, forget about it, especially with all the new features in SAMBA, it's getting easier and easier to find alternate routes. I hope Microsoft comes to their senses and stops pissing off the people who have the most interaction with their business-class products.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
The FUD that Micro$oft is casting is brilliant from a marketing point of view. They have the reputation and the size that gives them instant credibility with many decision makers. The /. community has many brilliant people and the best thing M$ can do is to fluster us and allow us to fight the fight that they create.
Think about what the true weaknesses of M$ are. What are the quantifiable problems with Windoze that a Decision Maker can understand? Give the DM applications(Office) that allow them to get their work done with a minimum of re-training of their employees. Then and only then will the beast be knocked to it's knees.
I'm a recent convert to *nix and I love it. I like the idea of it and it works great. BUT I can't do all my work on a *nix box. I can't open the Excel spread sheets that I get sent on a day to day basis, nor can I open a Word document that people are always attaching to their email.
The OSS community is doing a great job, but we still have a ways to go.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
That's the bind that Linux is in. Companies like Red Hat do a lot of the work to make Linux more usable. And Linux needs to be easier to use, easier to install, easier to configure. But the more progress that is made on this, the less support it needs (by definition). So the less money is made, because support is where the money is supposed to come from. How can Red Hat base its business model on undermining its own source of revenue?
Gee, doesn't this guy realize he is now going to get an angry letter from RMS telling him it is GNU/Linux not Linux.
"Guh-NEW" word a horrible "word" sounds like "Pee-U" so if RMS whines about this enough people will call Linux Pee-U/Linux
The writer is d**n right, we have to show all the people outside that we are using Linux instead of Windows and we have to tell 'em that Linux is the cooler way. We also have to answer all their question why to use linux instead of Windows with technical reasonable statements which don't include flames against Microsoft or such things. Maybe that's our only chance to proceed against Microsoft.
Staying cool is our only chance!
When we do some cool advertisement for Linux we can show people that there is some other cool way round.
CU,
kx
PS: Where do you English jerk bags get the "Ü" ??? And since when do you use german expressions like "über" ???
German language is under GPL since 1989!
One of the many reasons Microsoft is attacking the GPL is that they are almost certianly in violation of it! Out of Microsoft's thousands of programmers, how many times do you think they went to the web and snatched code and used it as a starting point for their own work? It scares them to thibk that they mat be caught. Although the GPL has not been litigated in court it should be. It should be protected by US law (and other countries too...possibly the UN). CTOs and CIOs need to understand that commercial software can be used in conjunction with Open source programs. I can write a program that runs on Linux and charge money for it. Microsoft is trying to blur this fact. Write your congressmen. That's write -- not email. A real letter is more likely to be read.
Life is what happens while you're busy making other
The article says more people will listen to and respect Microsoft than Open Source advocates, but I think Microsoft is making a strategic blunder by drawing attention to their competition and transparently displaying their fear.
Mundie's argument is basically "Open Source is bad for our business model, therefore don't use it." He talks about the dangers to the SOFTWARE INDUSTRY, but never names any problems for Open Source software CUSTOMERS.
This Salon article points out that while Open Source software is bad for Microsoft, that doesn't make it bad for software customers.
-jimbo
"Hold me Bob!" "I would if I could, man!" - Bob and Larry from VeggieTales