Slashdot Mirror
Halloween Document Revisited
GroundBounce writes: "The front page of LWN has an interesting three-year-after analysis of the predictions in the Halloween document, which was "leaked" from Microsoft around Halloween of 1998. It's interesting to see how their predictions have/have not panned out."
Quick mirror just in case...
. html
http://turbogeek.org/web-archive/lwn.net-20011101
There's been a five-day long Microsoft-sponsored party that culminated last Wednesday for the Windows XP Launch. Other than the fact that BillG's birthday is on October 28, why does it seem that a lot of significant things seem to happen to them during Halloween?
Other than the fact that working with MS software is a horrendous nightmare worthy of a horror movie in itself... :)
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
www.somethingawful.com
Consult the forums, and you could start enough internet trends to last a lifetime.
How Linux saved Amazon millions
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
As the memo says, they only way to "eliminate" OSS is to understand a process. Ironically enough, the entity searching for this "process" will in the end, find itself.
This is much like the ancient greek story OEdipus Rex, where he searches for a murderer and finds himself to be the person for whom he was searching. IMO, Microsoft in itself is the type of thing that drives OSS projects. The desire for non-corporate software, because of their greediness in terms of money, and inefficency of their products, and the desire to re-invent the wheel to be better than the current one, with input from all parties interested.
In order to combat the fees, the source code must be free and open, such that nobody will ever be able to claim it as their own and stop reproduction of it. And with OSS, anybody that sees a better way to do something, can contribute it. Whereas with the corporate model, you must write your programs to your manager's specifications, making innovation difficult at the developer level.
So in the end, the drive for OSS is to get away from the monolithic corporate model, which Microsoft ultimately represents. To destroy OSS, they must truly make their products more efficient and cause people to desire to migrate back to their software despite licensing fees.
Just some thoughts on the statments contained in the memo... maybe they're right, maybe they're not.
The Linux community in general seems to be jumping up & down with joy with the recent "exposure" of an internal memo by a Microsoft employee, which in no uncertain terms identifies Open Source software in general, and Linux in particular, as a serious threat to Microsoft's dominance in the OS market. This was seen as a significant boost in confidence to all who believe that "great men must have great enemies", and in the software world, there can be no enemy greater than Microsoft. It appears that the document was released via some undeterminable source from within Microsoft, and now, confronted with the wildfire distribution of it, they are acting in accordance to what is expected of a corporation which has its dirty laundry hung in public. Shame on them. Tut tut.
But just suppose...
What if this document was not *leaked* out by some careless/disgruntled employee? What if the document was *planted* by Microsoft?
"What good would that bring to Microsoft?" some might ask. Just think: with the DOJ actions against Microsoft for essentially using its monopolistic position to eliminate competitors in other fields, what better defence if this very monopoly is brought into question?
The argument would then be: Microsoft can't be pushing other companies around. It isn't a monopoly. Look how easy Linux got into the market. And see, even Microsoft is "grudgingly" considering it a threat and are taking appropriate measures. And the world agrees. Over 7 million people don't use Windows. What kind of monopoly is that?
Microsoft can't lose! Right now, with the bad publicity it's getting as a giant bully, what better tactic than to show a vulnerability. Furthermore, they can readily admit the document is from within as the strategy to 'deal' with Linux/Open Source only comes from one employee. They'll just say, "well, it doesn't mean we accept all suggestions by employees, right?"
Also, Linux/Open source cannot sue!! How can you show anti-competitive behaviour on an entity that has no legal existence? Especially one which makes no profit?
And the best part is that now that the document is "in the open", they wouldn't be expected to actually follow the strategies outlined. The world would think, "well yeah, now they know we know, they *can't* follow those strategies". But what if they never wanted to follow those strategies in the first place? Then there would be no loss. Case in point: when was the last time Microsoft gave away (as in open source) any serious code?
Lastly, ask yourselves: now that the document is out in the open, is Microsoft in any weaker position?
Is the entire Linux community being played as fools by the master puppeteer?
This article is very poor. There could be way better answers to most of the claimed quoted from these Halloween memo's and though the author has made a substantial effort during writting of the article, it feels like he got tired and didn't think many of his arguments through.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
For many, Mozilla or its derivatives (Galeon, Skipstone, etc.) are the browser of choice.
Sure, the many reading that article.
Fact is, Microsoft continues its market dominance and the vast majority of OSS projects are stillborn or far behind their original schedules (take a look at how active most SourceForge projects are). While Linux users are crowing about how new and improved their latest kernel version is (which was released within 2 weeks of their previous version), Microsoft is loudly proclaiming XP as the messiah of operating systems. OSS users are patting each other on the back for the latest version of Mozilla, but Microsoft is telling the world about the newest changes to MSN. Linux is taking marketshare in the server market, but so is Windows, and they are taking it from the traditional big Unix companies Sun and IBM.
Microsoft has found that they don't have to compete with OSS because OSS poses no credible threat at this time. They have effectively neutralized the movement by waiting until the remaining members were shown to be drooling zealots who could talk a good game but failed to deliver on the OSS promise.
OSS has been shown for what it is: a non-commercial hobby. Because of the restrictions placed on it by the GPL, none of the software can become a commercial success (ask GNAT how well they're doing).
No one wishes the programmer hobbyists harm, but those hobbyists who think they can beat Microsoft at its own game while wearing "Free" handcuffs are going to be disappointed everytime.
Well, maybe not. As long as they only wear their OSS blinders and get their news from Slashdot.
Quoting from the Halloween doc : "The biggest roadblock for OSS projects is dealing with exponential growth of management costs as a project is scaled up in terms of rate of innovation and size. This implies a limit to the rate at which an OSS project can innovate." To this, LWN responds in a totally tangentially way that is more commonly used by politicians ducking the question.
Indeed, Microsoft has made a spot on judgment of the management problem in open source : things eventually happen in open source projects, but not at a pace that anyone can control. Indeed, the management techniques that can be applied to closed source projects can allow people to define deadlines - whereas no such deadlines can be imposed (if one is honest) in the open source world.
LWN has attempted to distract one from this fact by throwing in the red herring that closed source project management is not perfect and can have problems meeting deadlines. (1) The Halloween document is not addressing deadlines - just the rate at which a project can be planned to proceed at (2) While I have observed the slippage of deadlines first hand in closed source projects, mostly they arent very serious slippages. Maybe a few days here or there, but hardly the three month delay quoted by LWN ("2.5 will ...").
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Linux never turned into the threat to Microsoft's financial security that we thought it would be. (I didn't read the article, is that what it said? Probably...)
This reminder of halloween document more than shows us that the ONLY important remedy in the M$-DOJ case is to force open protocols and open data exchange formats. Everything else is just a bonus or bogus. Even restrictive OEM contracts would not uphold long, but proprietary protocols and data formats might have the potential to break neck to OSS development
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
the doc predicted that Mozilla would die and that Apache would stagnate under it's current architecture... we still don't have threaded apache 2.0 yet!
Yes it does. Look at it from the perspective of a closed source proponent. The LWN statements are FUD directed at such folks.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
I know this is offtopic but...
Do you host email?
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
Agreed - it's bullshit to point at "Proprietary software projects" and then point at a commercially managed projects - Mozilla (AOL), OpenOffice (Sun), Gnome (Sun/RedHat), as if there was any fucking difference in project management style.
Such things didn't really exist when the paper was released, and the author was speaking about traditional volunteer projects like Linux kernel and Apache.
I never knew a kernal was an operating system.
In the memo there is a pretty graph of the differnt flavors of "Open Source". They list "BSD-Style". The interesting there is that the "All Derivatives Must Be Free" column is not checked.
M$'s TCP/IP stack is directly from BSD.
Windows isn't "free".
Interesting...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
First, VA distances itself by removing the "linux" from their name - Now they've completed the sell out of Linux.com:
1 /1 844253
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/3
Fire Everyone! Ditch the volunteers! What's next? Content on Linux.com written by Corporate Sponsors? A subscription fee to see slashdot without a ton of cheese advert links? Oh wait! It's too late!!!!!
I can't remember where I read it (it might have been slashdot) but somebody recently was comparing Microsoft currently to IBM in it's last years of domination in the industry.
There are a lot of things in this article that support that theory too. Particularly Microsoft's concentration on proprietary protocols. Like the IBM of old Microsoft are trying to suck everything into their evil empire and proprietize (if that's a word) everything they can... including the internet.
Now, if I said to any Slashdot readers (and some preschool picture book readers) that I thought somebody could control the internet for their own benefit, and be truly successful at it you'd probably just point at me and laugh. And that would be quite fair I think. But not Microsoft. They're still trying to tame this internet thing.
You'd think after the success [sarcasm] of Push internet technology (remember active channels) and the microsoft network in it's original incarnation (now reduced to virtually an MS owned webring and AOL ripoff) and, speak of the devil; AOL's attempts to make the internet branded with AOL for anyone that uses it.
After all this has anyone ever come out on top of the internet? No. Of course there have been plenty of successes, but the internet still remains a global brand-name-independant network.
As the internet grows more it's that very size and reach that prevents it from becoming the MICROSOFT-InterNETWORK.
IMHO, this quest for making everything proprietary is just Microsoft going out of their way to piss people off. And much like the IBM keeping everything IBM attitude of past decades they risk screwing themselves royally because of it.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
What an eye-opening experience. I thought the rhetoric level on /. was high, but these LWN bufoons take the cake. Lets look at their statements.
.... Certainly some of those projects have shown management problems at times - for example, the "Linus burnout" episodes in 2.1 kernel development."
"That observation [attacking process rather than company] certainly remains true. Much more open source work is done with a commercial motivation these days, but the process, at its best, remains. Open source software can not be killed off by destroying companies. "
That's total garbage. You are not on an open sourced development project unless you know somebody. Companies have fallen left and right, and it has killed a lot of open source software. VA Basketweaving will be the next to fall.
"In other words, free software, unlike the proprietary variety, does not simply disappear if things go wrong. "
Horseshit. Go out in today's market and look for a tool to do X (like convert Java code to C). You can find tons of no longer supported crap that never worked, you find little stuff that does. What's open source's answer -- Code it yourself or RTFM. News flash guys. If I wanted to code it myself I wouldn't have started with your buggy garbage. If I have to spend more than an hour to code it, its far cheaper for me to license something that works.
"Microsoft has indeed found that FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) attacks against Linux tend to be ineffective."
Double Horseshit. A big motivator by most companies not to adopt Linux is because, "... its written by a bunch of high school kids." In the end, they still shouldn't adopt Linux b/c its TCO is far higher than Windows, but they are not adopting it precisely because of FUD. Moreover, you never see a profitable company widely deploy any of those bogus OSS applications.
"Some free software projects are huge
Understatement of the year. Later they actually praise Mozilla. Mozilla!! This is the poster child for mismanaged projects. New students at HBS are doing thesis on how bad this project was managed.
"Linus burnout". Guys, get over Torvalds if you want to advance. Give him the open source equivalent of a pink slip. I see posts all the time about "we've come a long way since Minix." News flash everyone -- Minix was a far superior contribution to the world than Linux. This is why Tanenbaum rejected the idea, and his average student started a project to name after himself. You don't need a bloated UNIX kernel. Spend your time on advancing new concepts like distributed file management, global time synchronization. INNOVATE, PLEASE INNOVATE. Adding a bunch of features to 70's technology does nothing. HURD could be something. A group picking up Plan 9 could be something.
This looks like a troll that has been floating around for the past couple of months. Definatley not "interesting".
Somone did mention a yahoo mirror earlier, but you can't see it because your not viewing at -1.
"Ease of use must be engineered from the ground up. Linux's hacker orientation will never provide the ease-of-use requirements of the average desktop user."
"The desktop projects _are_ being engineered from the ground up. It remains true that ease of use is not always at the top of many hackers' priorities, however."
Sorry folks, but this isn't really true at all. All those flashy new GUIs are doing is putting a prettier, more easily configured face onto X and have a whole bunch of standalone applications that look and feel the same. To engineer "from the ground up", they need a _complete package_ that handles _all aspects_ of using and managing the machine.
For example (with KDE on FreeBSD):
* Where do I partition disks ?
* Where do I mount and unmount things ?
* Where do I set the colour depth and resolution of my display (on the fly is even better) ?
* Where do I load and unload kernel modules ?
* Where do I start and stop runnig daemons ?
* Where do I share things ?
* Where do I reconfigure my network settings ?
* Where can I reconfigure my kernel, compile it, isntall it and reboot all by checking a few boxes and hitting a button ?
* Etc.
You can just put a bunch of pretty pictures in front of a few things and call it "user friendly". The whole thing has to look and feel integrated as a single package. That means I should be able to do pretty much anything a normal person would want to do without ever having to
a) leave the GUI and use a commandline
b) use software with a different GUI (like gtk apps under KDE), or
c) install the software myself.
*That* is what they mean by "engineer from the ground up". Everything has to be doable with "user friendly" tools, not just a few things and not just things to do with the GUI itself.
Projects like KDE and GNOME, for all the good work they've done, still really haven't looked past creating Yet Another Window Manager. They still haven't really delved into the guts of the underlying operating system to try and make them easier to use.
I certainly hope these projects are working towards this sort of "complete product" integration. Until they do, you'll _never_ get the "ease of use" of Windows, MacOS, OS/2 etc because at the end of the day the OS still looks like a patchwork quilt.
CS
2.5 isn't out yet, and maybe it should be, but look- you have 2.4.1, 2.4.2... what are we at now, 2.4.13? You can use all of these if you want, and most of them will be (fairly) minor improvements upon the last. Who cares if .14 isn't here yet, run the version before.
With closed-source, however, you're waiting for the next version which bundles all those subversions into one- Wind95... Wind98- three years with no major changes. That's why Linus can miss a target with no major repercussions, while the wait for the next version of Windows can seriously mess up plans.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
It would be nice to have someone really put some thought into examining the letter and what was stated. I thought the article was ok but it seemed to lack something.
It would have been nice if the article would have included some numbers on how many people are using Linux. Perhaps discuss the current position of the varioius software projects in their respective markets. Apache and Samba would be interesting.
I shouldn't talk, I can't write anything I can just critize what other people do. The open source community is represented as much by it's publications as it is for it's software to the rest of the world.
LoRider
If he keeps getting press like this:
ESR: Microsoft Could Collapse In 6 Months (updated)
Written almost a year ago. Let's do a whole slashdot story on how much of THAT memo came true.
:-)
Personally, I think that there has been a fundamental change in the marketplace during the last three years that Microsoft didn't anticipate. Three years ago, they were trying to figure out the best way to protect their interests from the likes of Linux and the rest of OSS. However, while they were concentrating on the external enemy, they missed the internal one. With Windows and Office 2K, Microsoft developed a product that is good enough for most people. That, combined with the subsequent major falloff in PC sales that accompanied the tech bust, meant that people had no reason to buy their software in the huge numbers they had previously been buying them in, and they certainly didn't see much need for further updates. Why pay for more software when what you have works. I would argue that OSS software is superior in most ways to CSS, but the simple fact is that most of Microsofts recent sales falloffs have not been attributable to OSS. Rather, we are seeing a general falloff in sales, mostly due to the fact that people don't need to buy more MS software. Thus, we have seen many of the recent (scared sh*tless) tactics that MS has been using. I'm sure Linux is still on Microsofts radar, but their real worry right now is how to get people to pay for something they really don't want or need, because their current business model is unsustainable long term. Therefore, they are making stupid moves that just serve to make people mad (licensing, Passport, copy protection). This is both good and bad news for Linux. It's good news because Linux has an opportunity to move in and usurp the reigning king. On the other hand, it could be very dangerous for OSS in general. There are few things deadlier than a cornered animal, and right now Microsoft has been backed into a pretty tight corner.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
The document took a look at Mozilla, predicting that it would continue to drop behind Internet Explorer. Much controversy came from the document's use of declining traffic on the Mozilla lists as evidence that development was slowing. Mozilla-general went from 1862 postings in April, 1998 to 687 in June. Mozilla-ui went from 285 to 76. For the curious, Mozilla-general seems to have bottomed out with 211 messages in October, 1999; it carried 1451 postings in September, 2001. Mozilla-ui carried 243 messages, and appears to be headed toward double that in October.
:) Well except that it went up. Oh to go back in time to October 1999 and troll with that information.
That reads just like the *BSD is dying troll
,
faeryman
You are oversimplyfing.
When most people talk about open source projects the preclude the idea of Commercial but Open source projects, they may not be the majority but they do exist.
If a project is both commercial and open (rather than commercial and propriatary) it is inevitable that the will have set deadlines and one can _honestly_ say that these deadlines exist.
Of course they may be an increased likehood that developers get distracted by tangetial features or helping out less skilled volunteer programmers (Brooks Law, adding more programmers to a late project only makes it later).
do you think the Open Office/Star Office Developers being paid for by Sun Microsystems or the Mozilla/Netscape developers being paid for by AOL/Netscape/TimeWarner/whoever are not forced to meet deadlines?
Mmm, Fud, makes me think of that simpsons episode where Homer cant get Duff Beer and has to settle for Fud (or was that FFUD?).
It is true that closed-source projects can make one sort of deadline and stick to it. That's the "we'll ship by" sort of deadline. That's not the kind of deadline that knowledgeable users generally need.
The sort of deadline that open-source projects can generally meet is the "we'll get a nightly build up every night" and the "we won't call it version 1.0 until we're ready" sorts. These will do just fine for knowledgeable users. No closed-source company can meet this kind of commitment.
Notice that the one thing that for-profit, closed-source developers cannot do no matter how hard they try is ship bugfree software on a hard schedule. No one can. What they can do is ship version 1.0 when they said they would, and charge you for the service pack, and then charge you again when version 2.0 comes out with the features that you paid for in version 1.0 actually working.
Here's where the libre software is so wonderful. The total cost of ownership may be higher, lower or just the same as the closed source stuff, but the total benefits of ownership are generally much higher.
Folks like to say that you get what you pay for, and that's almost true: when you buy something you won't get any more than you pay for. The payment makes an upper bound on what you get. That isn't true when someone gives you something. The initial cost of $0.0 makes a lower bound on the value.
With libre software you get what the developers claim they're delivering, and sometimes a lot more. You don't have to wait for a deadline or an official release to start using the latest version of GNUfoo; you can keep trying it and start using it when you say it's ready.
Ask yourself: is it really an advantage for the closed-source companies to ship buggy crap that isn't ready, so they can meet a deadline? It is for them; it lets them gouge you and make a payroll. Is making a deadline that way really good for the customer?
See what I've been reading.
You forgot to mention that people should start there posts with "This may be a troll..." or "Mod me down if you want..." ... Gauranteed Karma points.
Sitting here, I know which model works better. I have several awsome window managers (each of which blows away the M$ GUI), dozens of good editors, three web browsers, great image manipulation software at my disposal. I can run it from any of my machines through secure shell to this laptop I have sitting on me here in bed. No, this is not just theory, I'm doing it now. Goodies are compiling on an Athlon while my P150 laptop with 24 megs of ram handles this silly post. A mailbox is dealing with DNS, FTP and mail behind a 486 firewall. Remote administration is secure and easy thanks to apt and friends. Most of these convinences run counter to the M$ business model. How well that has worked out is painfully obvious when I go to work.
Am I some sort of computer God? Far from it. I've got a little C and FORTRAN. Debian is taking care of the rest of things for me. Yes, it's all free. Yes, it's getting easy enough for a boneheaded engineer to get things done. Something is working well here, and I'm glad to help if I can.
The only thing that LWN got wrong was thinking that M$ has laid off the FUD. GPL virus? Naked PC? Information Anarcy? Make it stop! I laugh at it, but others are taken in all day long.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Measuring the success of an open source project in terms of "market share" is completely wrongheaded. First of all, nobody keeps accurate statistics anyway. And second, the size of the user base has much less impact on the project's health than, say, the number of people who contribute to its development, and the quality of their efforts. And on both these counts, the BSDs are in the very first rank of the free software world.
The BSDs aren't all things to all people. Linux tries to be, and succeeds to a remarkable extent. But there is ample room for the solid, stable codebase that is BSD alongside the blizzard of Linux development. Look at the recent article on Linux 2.4's VM woes, for example. Here is something fundamental that most people agree the BSDs have got right, and that Linux, while always improving, has still got to work on.
In addition to the quality of their codebase, of course, the BSDs have the BSD license. This is not to say the BSDL is superior to the GPL. But the BSDL does make some things possible that the GPL does not, and for that reason alone I think that Linux will never completely displace the BSDs. Consider what Apple is doing with BSD-based OS X: they're putting Unix out there on millions of desktops. Not on servers in closets, mind you, but desktops. Unix for the masses. I think this is one of the most important things to hit the Unix community since Linux itself. And this is a huge victory for free software even though OS X itself isn't free; it shows the power of the open source development model, and it provides an open source-friendly beachhead on the desktop that will hopefully be the basis for further future advances. And BSD made it happen.
So in short, even if the "facts" and "numbers" cited in your post weren't errant nonsense, they would still be a poor reason to turn one's back on BSD.
AC.
Off-Topic means just that. Off topic. The topic of this thread is a Microsoft Halloween memo. I'd mod you off-topic if I had mod points, simply because you don't fit under the right heading. Topics = to organize similar thoughts together. Your point may hold water, but it is not in the right spot - and that makes it irrelevant.
Half of not losing karma is posting in the right places.
(Karma 41 and proud of it! No alt accounts either.)
Ok, repeat after me...
"All your base are belong to us".
Excellent, I knew you could.
"It has been said that if 700 Monkeys typed for 700 years they would eventually produce the works of William Shakspear(sp?)...which, thanks to Usenet, has proven this hypothesis very wrong".
Hey...responding to usenet plagerism with usenet plagerism...woah, the mind boggles.
/me slaps self...wake up.
Just remember that line from ST:TNG
"When Conspiracies are suspected, they are almost never real. When the are real, they are almost never suspected".
Time to find a shiney object...I haven't said (kiki voice) OOooooo(/kiki off) in a while.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
j00 5ux0r!!!!! fr0st p15t ru13z!!
Microsoft missed out on what (IMHO) make open source truly great, It not a money or company issue , it's that OSS mimics two mechanisms found in nature:
First of all - I love FreeBSD for fileservers and OpenBSD for firewalls and VPN gateways. Increasingly Linux has been making great strides in file-system stability, and I imagine in a few years I'll be happily installing Linux fileservers instead of FreeBSD. And it doesn?t matter one bit if Linux or FreeBSD 'win' - because they are both evolving toward an optimum. Just like how sharks (a fish) and whales (a mammal) are evolving to an optimum underwater shape. In addition, if OpenBSD comes up with another security patch - Linux can quickly mimic the new behavior - just like one species of bacteria can swap genetic code with another species to quickly acquire a new resistance to a new threat.
This is the true two pronged advantage of open source - is that the development model mimics Darwinian style evolution, and that and gains in one piece of open source software can be rapidly assimilated in another.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Someone posted a fake mirror, claiming it was a yahoo link. It actually just used yahoo's redirector script to send people to the goat sex page.
Hey, they're circumventing the 'show link domains' feature... let's arrest them under the DMCA.
Nice of that moderator who -1'd me to actually LOOK at the link, before calling me redundant. Since when does yahoo mirror stuff?
Methinks it is an ingenious idea to create another id on slashdot and make it post plagiarisms, and then point them out yourself to get karma.
Well except you have a low UID and wouldn't stoop to this level.
Where else to post? Posting a story is -2 points less than worthless. Taco and the group only rate M$ bashing as pertinent, and maybe some space related shit, while our population sits like ducks waiting for anthrax infection. Geez.
db
Cig:
ôô
I agree with you. I bear no animus toward MS per se, though they've employed some some crummy marketing tactics at times. I don't like their licensing overmuch (in fact, I think it's horrible), nor some of (what I consider to be) their anti-user attitude (everything possible to get rid of MP3s), high prices, ever-shifting file formats, etc, but there's either nothing or little that *I* (speaking for myself, no one else) believe ought to be criminally liable or lead to government interference. However, I feel that way about most things, not just MS ;) I wish well for my friends who work or have worked there, and think MS has some very good aspects.
...") I like to argue for Free SW as being similar to blueprints -- would you want to hire an architect who refused to let you have a copy of the blueprints and other technical documents? If MS didn't exist, the argument remains.
... at a certain level, sure, one system's gain means other systems' loss. But naturally, not that simple -- the market for OSes isn't static, and won't ever be static. I prefer Free software philosophically (and because it's often outstanding, philosophy notwithstanding), but I'd rather people use multiple operating systems anyhow, even if some of them are proprietary. People learn that way, projects are cross pollinated with different ideas. (Also, this enourages universal file formats, my personal small utopian wish.) As you hint, the person computer relationship is complicated, not simple at all, and you can't just start subtracting "them" from "us" to get any meaningful numbers. Them is Us, and sometimes vice versa.
/. readers (80? 75? 85?) are reading with IE on a Windows machine, or [IE,Netscape] on a Mac running Mac OS. Sure, I hope they're at least somewhat intrigued by Free / free SW, but it's just not the case that most readers are MS free. A lot of people feel trapped, and say they "can't" get rid of it, even if they (otherwise) want to, because they have a certain game / piece of hardware / etc. that they want to continue to use. Hard to argue against, but then again, humans are always balancing wishes. If you don't want to use MS, it's still possible to live a relatively productive life, sleep at night etc.
:) That would perhaps make the box worth buying, take advantage of the MS name, etc.
My arguments for non-MS software aren't dependent on Microsoft (if it wasn't them being Microsoft, someone else would be the largest closed-source vvendor, of course), but it does serve as a convenient example sometimes. ("You'd rather have a proprietary WP format from a crash-worthy, bloated program? OK, give me $400
You wrote: "Now for the authors here, I can almost see a reason to want MS to lose market share. Their readership is made almost entirely of linux users and they are operating under the assumption that for there to be more linux users, there will have to be less MS users as if the number of potential computer users were a finite quantity of persons and organizations that will use MS *or* linux."
Well, there are a couple of statements in there
Speaking of which: I dunno current numbers, but I bet way more than 50% of
I'm writing from an iBook which is destined to hold Mandrake 8.1 (when it's ready for PPC) but in the meantime has an OS as proprietary as Windows, depending on who's counting*). Compared to my linux desktops, there are good and bad things -- one of the bad is that I can't just loan the OS to friends so they can, say, use the GIMP, which most people want to do after even a quick demo.
My personal hope, too, is that MS becomes the world's largest Free Software vendor. I can't say there's "no reason" they couldn't be that in 18 months from now (though I have said that on occasion), but it certainly would be posssible. Imagine MS-branded cross-platform free software, with certificates for limited MS support instead of an insane license agreement
Anyhow, just a small rant re: what the authors think (rather, what one of the thinks), and the conflict or imagagined conflict among various OSes and devpt systems. In sum, I like Free but respect closed source software as one way to organize things which is perfectly within the rights of the developers to choose. OTOH, speaking as a taxpayer, for anything the government buys, I think Open sure makes a better investment in the commonweal, encourages pursuit of happiness better, etc, discourages horrible code on teh taxpayer dime, etc.
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
One could argue that future features in open source code could be more credible, not less. Features in Microsoft code are hidden from public view until they spring, fully developed, from the head of Bill. Until a product is released, nobody really knows how development is progressing
It should be pointed out that this (MS springing fully developed features on an unsuspecting public) is most likely more due to Microsoft's monopoly (and their own way of doing things) than due to any natural side effect of commercial, proprietary software development in general. Microsoft's monopoly means that they *don't have to give a damn* what customers *really* want, instead, they are free to put into their software whatever is in *their* best interests (a good example is the recent "smart links" fiasco). These features are not there because they are best for customers but because they are best for Microsoft, but the only reason Microsoft can get away with doing this is (1) the public usually doesn't *know* any better, and (2) the public has no alternatives. In a truly competitive environment, software features would probably align more closely to what customers want. Right now the public will simply swallow whatever is dished up onto their plates.
so does this mean Microsoft will kill IBM, and merge with Apple?
This article would have been objective and well-argued, were it not for its ridiculously biased take on Mozilla. The Haloween document predicted that the Mozilla project would fail. In this, the Haloween document was right on. For the purposes of competing with IE, Mozilla is deader than the bird in the Monty Python skit.
Mozilla is not "going strong" in any sense that matters to Microsoft. Remeber that long-dead company Netscape? Wasn't the Mozilla project concieved to save it? And as for its browser, not only has Navigator dropped under 20% to IE's 80%, but most of those are the 4.x generation browsers. Hardly anyone has upgraded to Navigator 6.x, and no one could in good conscience recommed that the typical desktop user do so.
Mozilla is nice for the Linux niche -- it is my main browser -- but to claim that it is going strong in any sense that Microsoft cares about is laughable, and really makes one look about as reliable as the old Pravda.
Linux may well win the war for the enterprise. With endurance, luck, and a hell of a lot of work it might even someday win the war for the desktop. But history has already given its verdict on the browser war, and the verdict is that MS won, hands-down. Period.
grep: killall: No such file or directory
grep: linux: No such file or directory
I don't have a link handy, but a while ago I read a very interesting essay where the author made the observation that the government doesn't have to legislate or force standards in order to affect a change. The government is such a large purchaser of computers and software that they could simply use their huge purchasing power to influence the market in the direction of open standards if they wanted to. If the government refused to buy into proprietary standards, many companies would support open standards rather than loose a customer that size.
[ With deepest apologies to Mark Knofler and Dire Straits ]
...
...
...
...
"Money for Microsoft" by Dire Warnings
Sung by Steve Ballmer, backing by Bill Gates
You must buy
You must buy Win-XP
You must buy
You must buy Win-XP
You must buy
You must buy Win-XP
You must buy
You must buy Win-XP
Now look at them bozo's that's the way you do it
You lock them always on the Win-XP
That ain't workin' thats the way we do it
Money for Microsoft from Dot Net usage fees
Now that ain't workin' thats the way we do it
Lemme tell ya them guys are dumb
Maybe get a licence on your little desktop
Maybe get a licence on everyone
They gotta install Microsoft Office
Passport Dot-Net deliveries
They gotta take these applications
They gotta take these subscription fees
Look at that, look at that
See the little Win-Troll who is spreading spin we makeup
Yeah buddy thats our own fear
That little Win-Troll got them always complain'
That little Win-Troll makes us billionares
They gotta install Microsoft Office
Passport Dot-Net deliveries
They gotta take these applications
They gotta take these subscription fees
They shoulda learned to use the Linux
They shoulda learned to use them Macs
Look at that user, we got it stickin' to the customer
Man we could have some fun
And their down there, whats that? Protesting noises?
Plannin' on me dancing like a chimpanzee
That ain't workin' thats the way we do it
Get the money for Microsoft get our usage fee
They gotta install Microsoft Office
Passport Dot-Net deliveries
They gotta take these applications
They gotta take these subscription fees
That ain't workin' thats the way we do it
You lock them always on the Win-XP
That ain't workin' thats the way we do it
Money for Microsoft from the license fee
Money for Microsoft from subscription fee
>> Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence ... that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects.
... i'm speachless
The above is from the document.
Dramatic evidence? what do they mean? dramtic as in
"This is really bad for microsoft" or dramatic as in
"dramatically fast improvements".
since this come from MS it's probably the second.
what can i say
But your only bite was me, letting you know I know you're a Troll.
They switched from Solaris, dude. So did ebay a while ago, but they've switched to Windows. Scott McNealy should be very angry. :0)
At the risk of sounding pedantic, I suggest that people working on new distributions or new enhancement to Gnome/KDE-like desktop environments look at what Apple has done with the user interface of Mac OS X.
/etc are modifiable through a really nice GUI system (Netinfo Manager).
On top of what is basically BSD, they have created a wonderful system. What looks and feels like a regular old Mac cranked up to 11, with semitransparent windows and buttons, trilinearly-interpolated stuff flying all around, antialiased fonts and lines everywhere, OpenGL and PDF widgets, has all of the UNIX-like underpinnings. I can open up a terminal window, run my zsh, fire up ssh, launch emacs, and compile stuff with gcc. X11 runs seamlessly with the rest of the windows using OroborOSX, and that's just for the geeks. The people like my wife still have GUIs for all of the "other stuff" that people want to deal with: preference settings, launching commonly-used apps, network diagnostics, heck, even the files in
So check it out for inspiration!
True, most projects don't make it out of the gate, but they don't all have to. Just because most projects fail doesn't mean that others don't succeed. The fact is that there are projects to fulfill just about every desire you could have on a computer. Web browser, instant messaging, servers, office suites, some games, programming tools, etc. etc. Sure, lots of projects fail and die, but enough succeed to make the system viable. If you don't believe me, try running a linux system for a little while.
Straw men. What does this have to do with the previous argument, where you said OSS projects are all stillborn? Here you point out two that are actively in development and consistently improving, contradicting your earlier statement. Both Windows and Linux are moving targets, and just because both projects like to tout improvements with varying degrees of rhetoric doesn't mean that one is less viable than the other. Where's the argument here that says OSS is bad?
As far as I can tell, no such thing has been shown. Granted, OSS may not have lived up to all the Windows-killing hype, but that doesn't make it any less competitive. The availability of free tools that you have near total control of is a very powerful incentive for a lot of people, and will continue to be so in the future. The OSS promise isn't really "World Domination" as so many like to talk about, it's actually the opposite. It's about freedom from world domination by any one entity, and it's about personal empowerment. Linux, *BSD, et al. are still going strong, and in this sense they have completely delivered on the OSS promise.
I've really never understood this argument. True, OSS is a non-commerical hobby for many, but for many others they have been hired to work on OSS as their job. Companies use what they create as "tools" to make money, not as money makers themselves. How many software companies make money off of MS Word sales? One. How many companies make money by using MS Word as a productivity tool? Countless. Paying someone to develop GPL software is like purchasing a bunch of MS Word licenses. You're paying for your software (which you get complete control over BTW) and you make your money actually using the thing rather than selling it. That's where the profit motive actually lies. And even then, how does this relate back to the overall premise of your post that OSS is bad? Just because someone makes something as a non-commercial hobby doesn't mean it's a bad piece of work, nor does something have to be a commercial success to be a good product.
Overall, your post is a load of shit troll-boy. There are plenty of disadvantages to OSS, but you sure didn't hit on any of them.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
This seems to be common view amongst Open Source/Linux advocates. What people seem to ignore is that Microsoft can change its licensing at any time. Let's assume that an OSS desktop did begin to displace Windows in some significant way. Microsoft could switch back to a more reasonable licensing scheme to bring back those who were leaving, or at least stem the flow. Anyone who is ditching Windows because of the licensing - probably isn't very committed to OSS per se.
Displacing Microsoft as the dominant desktop will take more than bad licensing or even technically better alternatives. When you get to 90%+ (or whatever the actual figure is) - the only way you get replaced by the market is if there's a total paradigm shift. A lot of us thought initially that that shift had occurred with Proprietary vs Open Source. But whilst that's a paradigm shift for developers it doesn't appear to be perceived as such by users - so it fails to have the necessary effect.
So I believe the market itself will resist displacing Microsoft for a while yet. But hang on isn't that why we have Anti-Trust laws? Oh wait - for laws to be effective you have to enforce them in some meaningful way...
Art Tatum wrote:
Most people (not Slashdotters, but we're not most people) like Microsoft.
There is a second group of people, who don't like Microsoft: Corporate IT-buyers.
With all those licensing hassles and Microsofts cunning pricing plans, they're just waiting for a chance to tell Microsoft to shove it.
Those corporate buyers will not take risks by trying oddball solutions, but once an alternative to MS-Office is recognised as a valid business-choice, they will kick Microsoft hard. The same happened to IBM.
Did not notice this before in the Halloween memo:
"Who do you sue if the next version of Linux breaks some commitment?"
MS have in their EULA (?) made it clear that you can not sue MS over any damage resulting from use of their software.
Quite an odd thing to put in their FUD, since it expose a weakness in their own reliability and ways to deal with, or rather lack thereoff.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
tormented by guilt, claw his own eyes out?
Just trying to carry the analogy out to its logical conclusion.
/rr
OK, how much of IBM's growth is due to adaption to the OSS Model?
Directly, not a lot; indirectly, rather substantial, I'd imagine. The main effect is that by lowering the bar to competition, IBM becomes, long term, a much safer choice of vendor to supply solutions, particularly when that solution has to interface with and must interact with other peoples solutions.
...read some newspapers..
- There are more that enough problems out there that will never spawn an Open Source projects to solve it. A big number of situations falls into the "Company A (and only company A) needs X done".
- There is also a need to integrate systems (even if they are made solely with open source components)
- Plus there is a need for customizing software for a specific use.
- Plus complex systems have to be designed, assembled, installed, tested and maintained.
So there is more than enough paid work out there (most of it boring), and even if in the future all Closed Source Software is substituited by Open Source Software, very specific needs will still employ most if not all of IT developers.Track spootnik's posts and point out he's stealing them from usenet!
--
Reverse outsourcing: it's the future
"Microsoft has indeed found that FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) attacks against Linux tend to be ineffective. At their best, they are laughable; at their worst, they make up a task list of things for Linux developers to quickly address - the Mindcraft report, for example, worked in this way. The company seemed to hold out a bit more hope for FUD attacks against free software licenses, but those, too, have subsided recently."
What a weird conclusion. Linux is still wallowing in near obscurity years after this report and after billions from companies like IBM and Open Source companies to market and aid it's penetration into the corporate mainstream. Not only through it's own unfriendly and generally non-compatible design, but also through negative FUD like attacks by mainstream software companies, OEMs, and MS itself.
While I agree that these kinds of press attacks do spur developers to produce change as an answer to them, I find them far from laughable, as do the former employees of a half dozen companies that tried to give some flavor of *unix a go. Whats worse to the *nix community is the fact that more times than not, the attacks are steeped (if mis-represented)in fact and difficult to refute on their face value to an unkowledgeable public and corporate IT mindest.
Since when is a Sysadmin responsible for everthing? What kind of corporate kindom stand statement is that. User right now are discouraged from using their systems because the MS os is so unstable and change is bad... users are discouraged by sysadmins from doing things on their own and actually learning something as they make their computers more productive for themselves because sysadmins want to be in control and king of the pie.
And, this statement ONLY covers corporate desktops and doesn't even approach the home user (many home users have to use their corporate desktops too). Typical "I am in charge here" idiot sysadmin.
The Register
"We have to create an evolutionary approach in an open standards way"
"Common standards are the things that equalise everybody"
"It is very important we adopt a common standard space
It is very important we work together, along a common path"
A senior Microsoft executive made the above comments. No, really. What you do need to know though is that they came from Paul Mitchell, Microsoft's senior director of Microsoft TV Platforms Group, speaking at the Interactive TV Show Europe in London this morning.
On one hand they want to propreitize protocols (Computers) and on the other they want to open them up (digital TV). Can Microsoft have it's cake and eat it too?
Let me get this straight... You're holding up GNAT's GNATBox firewall as a prime example of why no GPL software can ever become a commercial success?
I think there are plenty of reasons why that particular product might not be successful that have *zero* to do with it being hamstrung by GPL code!
For starters, I tried out the GNATBox demo for a while, and thought it was one of the most user un-friendly firewall packages I've used. Quite frankly, anyone in the market for a product of this type would be a fool not to consider Smoothwall instead. It's far superior, plain and simple. Nice web-based interface, much more functionality (ability to update addresses via dyndns.org, web proxy caching via squid built in, easy update patch management system built in, etc. etc.). Not to mention, the author of Smoothwall gives his product away for free. (Ok, he asks that you donate to his charity of choice if you use it. So what? Wouldn't you rather do that than pay $495 or whatever to buy GNATBox?)
I think the real issue is this: If you try to sell a commercial product that's already been done better by people willing to give theirs away for free, you have a problem with your business plan.
Look at the Halloween Documents again. The strategy outlined there is to "Embrace and Extend". As long as Microsoft owns 95% or more of the desktop market, it remains a fairly simple matter for them to force their way into the server marketplace. Once they own both sides of the client/server equation, they have a blank check to extend previously open standards, creating an infrastructure where only they know all the "secret codes". The end result is that all competitors (including Open Source) are religated to a sort of software getto.
If Microsoft loses some portion of its market share, it also loses the assurance that it can force standards to do its bidding, and customers in general end up with more choices.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
this is the abyss of slashdot idiocy. this thing is a blatantly obvious hoax, even if you don't take into account that it was released on halloween. you've been harping on this thing for three years now, and some guy has been laughing at you all this time.
but then, what should we expect from a flock of bleating socialist sheep?
Millions of Amazons living in a rainforest in South America were saved by a pack of penguins wielding laptops loaded with Linux.
Rather pathetic a mirror was modded down as being 'Redundant'
An LWN link for this issue does exist already, so people in the future can find the column which we are talking about.
Perhaps the Micrsloth is a dangerous cornered animal. But it won't hurt you if you don't try to play with it. Just keep your distance, and you should be fine. If need be, there are many other animals around to play with. Sure, that Linux can be a stinking beast, but at least it's not a predator. and it can't help it if it smells bad, there are so many people throwing it fish... do you realise how many people offer it bad herring? Regardless, many fishmongers like to play with it.
There are also many different cults of Daemon worshippers, they may not be to friendly, but the BSD bark is worse than it's byte.
You also need to keeps in mind that these animals are only the strays. If you are willing to go to a pet store, for example, there is a wide selction of other species to choose from. Get a fruit. Get a celestial body. Get a life... (I need to pay attention to that last one.)
Realise that if the animal in the corner acts a bit too feral, then there is always always someone at the pound who may have to put the beast down. (Not Uncle Sam? Then how about the EU?)
--
Ugh, this is what happens when I read Slashdot when I should be sleeping!
Kiss my ass - again, asshole.
db
Cig:
ôô