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."
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.
I think one of the reasons people become so enthralled with the economic/political philosophy of Linux (as opposed to the people who use Linux, because, hey, free UNIX) is because it does something extremely rare (I would say unprecedented) politically.
In what sense is it interesting? Microsoft isn't in the business to make "free" operating systems. Neither is Sun or Apple or IBM or HP or...
The BSD sources are attributed in the Microsoft copyright notice if you ever cared to look.
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.
IMO, Microsoft in itself is the type of thing that drives OSS projects.
I sure hope not! I would much rather use software that was written TO BE something, rather than software that was written NOT TO BE something.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
"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
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
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."
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?).
Although many people think of Linux as a replacement for Windows, the truth is that Amazon used Linux instead of other Unixes.
Oh well, it's still good news.
...ONLY important remedy in the M$-DOJ case is to force open protocols and open data exchange formats. Everything else is just a bonus or bogus
This is the remedy for all companies in the IT industry - not just Microsoft. This would protect consumers, since they would have a choice of tools to use in order to get at thier data. That's really what's at stake here - having some one or some thing get between the user and thier data. Some extract money, some extract code, some extract pain.
With known open standards being enforced by the industry on the industry, we get a level playing field. Then, the company/project/whatever who interacts with the user best and meets thier needs gets the prize, not the one who duped the user into a proprietary format.
(note: The Government may have to enforce this at first since getting the industry to agree on a standard is a daunting task, at best. Having Gates, McNealy and Elliston all in one room at one time may provide enough ego to reach critical mass and create a thermo-nuclear type explosion)
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Sitting here, I know which model works better. I have several awsome window managers (each of which blows away the M$ 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.
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.
It occurs to me that talking about projects killing each other is assuming the Microsoft paradigm - that there can only be one dominant force in any market. Also, many comments on the KDE/GNOME (or Linux/BSD, or which Linux distribution will "win" or "die next") situation assume that there can only be one "winner."
However, who is to say what is the "natural state" of the OS/software market? Is it a winner-take-all market, as Microsoft would (a) like to be the winner of, and (b) like us to believe is the natural way, or is there room for multiple vendors? When there are open protocols, there is no technical reason limiting the number of clients that use a given protocol. There is also no compelling market force.
Take for comparison word processors vs. web browsers. For word processors, Microsoft Word takes advantage of "network effects" with its closed-format document format. That is, the more people that use that format, the more valuable it becomes. Similarly, a new word processor purchaser deciding between closed formats will surely choose the one with the bigger installed base, or at least the one that most of their clients use - which, at this point, are probably the same. The network effect is why Microsoft wants us to think that the OS/software market is a winner-take all situation - this leads to the decision to buy the latest version of Word, simply because you're afraid to get left behind by everyone else upgrading their version.
On the other hand, web browsers are dealing with an open protocol. Anyone can write a browser - and several parties have - that can render some form of HTML and communicate to http servers. On an open platform such as Linux, there are several to chose from and there's no reason to worry that you've chosen the wrong one. That is, as long as the protocol stays the same, you could just as well write your own browser as pick one of the existing ones.
On Windows, there's strong disincentive against any browser but IE, since it is preinstalled, and you can't really avoid that. However, if you're willing to go through the effort, you can get another browser installed.
Open protocols are why KDE vs. GNOME, Linux vs. BSD, or which Linux distribution to choose is not a big deal - just about any application you could want for either system either runs on the other, or a clone does. Then it's just a question of personal preference, but there's no danger of obsolescence.
When it comes to distributions, there's the danger that your distribution vendor will go under, but then again, so what? Once you've got your kernel, utilities and applications installed, it's pretty simple to keep them up to date.
Microsoft is trying so hard to kill other browsers by making its web server work best with its client. Fortunately they are limited in how much they can extend the protocols by their server customers since a company setting up a web presence doesn't want to shut out any potential customers.
That's all I can think of for now, and sorry I can't summarize or introduce it better, but it's late. I hope there was some nugget of insight for someone out there.
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.
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.
For a new technology it is simple. The protocol has to be openly published, available, and useable by EVERYONE. TCP/IP was new once. HTTP was new once. All the open protocols were new once and they were always open and available for anyone to use.
M$ wants to implement a new communication protocol to provide for a feature they want to add to their software? Fine, publish the protocol for everyone to see and use and do your thing.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Oh Jeez! much as I like open standards I really don't want the government enforcing them. That strikes me as a sure way to end up with bad standards and/or to put the corporations in the drivers seat (probably the same thing). Don't believe me? Look at the FDA...
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
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!
Precisely. Open protocols give you a choice. If you're reading reasonably well written HTML transferred from a working HTTP server, it shouldn't matter whether you're using Mozilla or IE or Opera or Lynx or... I wish there was a standard, stable word processing format, because complete compatibility between AbiWord/KWord/OpenOffice/etc. would be cool. Especially if MS eventually included filters for the format in Word :-) (not going to happen though)
As for the "winner takes all" model, something Microsoft didn't realise is that open source means a project can build on another project's work without the second project having died. Because *BSD is free and open source, Linux developers can and do use BSD code even though BSD is still available. In the Microsoft world, on the other hand, to do that sort of thing you have to either buy the company whose code you want, buy licensing for that code, or kill the company and buy their code cheaper.