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"Linux is *the* threat," Says Microsoft
Ami Ganguli writes "Anybody who works selling Linux into large accounts should read this leaked MS memo on The Register. Show it to your clients as well. The good news is that Microsoft is scared. The bad news is that these guys play tough. On the other hand, I've worked with IBM sales before, and they're no push-overs either." And it appears that they want to go after the the City of Largo as well.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people. For the same reason, Linux isn't the threat. People who use Linux to kill Microsoft are the threat. ;)
To tell you the truth, the memo looks like one you would find in any major corporation. Microsoft and Linux are competitors, there is no doubt about that. I don't see why this is newsworthy.. But then again this is slashdot so I guess that doesn't much matter!
No this is not a troll!
I don't see that happening, at least in the enterprise space. The last thing they want is to downgrade an application to the Windows platform. (Frankly, here, they are HAPPY to get rid of Windows boxes.) Good luck trying to sell people on a switch like that. It isn't realistic.
isn't that a great way to make people talk about you? doesn't matter how, or what they say. just as they did when they blocked non-ie browsers to their website, *exactly* when they were launching xp..
.02 euros
I refuse to believe that those 'memos' escape microsoft non-intentionally.. it just sounds suspect.
just my
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Its already being slashdotted......
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Not too easy competing with free, is it?
They can't cry foul too hard though, since the relative cheapness of their platform and OS is one of the major elements that brought Wintel to the dominant place in the market...
Enter Linux.
Linux is not remotely a threat on the desktop - as long as it has multiple different GUI's and window managers and toolkits and all the rest, and a lack of a decent browser or office solution, it always will not be a threat.
On the server end, Linux is more of a threat, but Microsoft has never had a big slice of this market anyway. If anything FreeBSD is a greater threat than Linux in this arena, as it is better performing.
However, MS will always have a big place of the server market for as long as they produce a system that is easy to use. Not everyone can afford £60,000 a year for a Unix export, especially small businesses, to keep a server running. MS ensure that a boss can do such things part time - this has really driven the internet revolution, by opening access to the internet to many who would have been cut out by a skills shortage before.
All in all, I can see that MS are wary of Linux, but in truth they have nothing to worry about, as the two OS'es operate in different spheres, and don't really compete at all except in the minds of unthinking Linux apologists and Windows Advocates.
Windows will always have 95% of te market, MS need have no fear of that. The only way Linux will threaten this is if they start behaving in a more proprietry fashion by gearing things at the consumer and not at the Linux Geek.
Oh! I volunteer for the Penguin Attack force[tm]. Can we have laser beams?
--
Rasher - use it in new amazing ways.
Is Microsoft *the* threat to Linux?
How to Download YouTube Videos
Any guesses why they're pushing Windows 2000 as a substitute for Linux instead of Windows XP?
Why is Microsoft scared of Linux? We don't have the leverage or the monopolistic power of Microsoft. They should really be worried about Solaris, but I guess Microsoft sees Linux as an entirely new kind of threat. Neophobes :)
It is true that seeing how a major sales operation works is very informative, but I think the fortune 1000 clients should be more interested in the Microsoft's official position on things, and not what some sales guy thinks.
If this memo had Bill Gates at the top of the page, then we would be having a different conversation!
Yes, and be sure to CC the person who leaked this memo!
*shrug*
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
This is tantamount to saying that a car salesman should never go below the sticker price. Sales people have to sell. If it means giving discounts, so be it. I wish the sales people at my company did a better job of selling! Bribery is not the right term for what this guy is doing or what he is advocating others to do!
Yeah, apparantly its really really hard to design websites so that if there`s a lot of traffic, you dump the graphics etc, and serve a low-bandwidth version.
I guess the good news is that it shows GNU/Linux is gaining in popularity, enough that it is now "the long term threat against [MS'] core business" but -- do we want Microsoft using its substantial influence to retard the development and implementation of GNU/Linux and related free software? This basically a direct assault by MS -- look at the language they're using: "wins against Linux", "Linux Compete Team", etc.
The free software community seems to be in a bit of a sticky point right now. We can no longer be completely ignored. However, the bigger we get, the more attention and fire we're going to get, and we're not really equipped to defend ourselves yet. It would nice to suddenly be the same size as Microsoft, to have that much power and influence, but the only way to get that influence is go through this very impenetrable gauntlet. It's a real Catch-22.
Look at what happened to, say, Napster. When no one had heard of it, it was great. Then the meme started to spread, and more and more people adopted it, and it eventually trickled all the way into mainstream news. And as it broke onto the mainstream, the RIAA immediately caught wind of it (well, they'd probably caught wind of it earlier, but didn't need to take action against it until it was getting too popular) and shut it down. It's sort of like underground bands that steadily gain in popularity for their genuine talent, then suddenly use that popularity as a wedge to sell-out and become yet another generic pop group.
Maybe GNU/Linux would be after all as a purely underground software phenomenom. Then the people who really need a free operating system can make use of it, without attracting fire from biased mainstream news outlets or monopolistic evil corporations. Maybe it's time to stop trying to position the growth of Linux as a "good" thing -- after all, you don't see ISO groups writing up Warez Advocacy FAQs, do you?
Of course, there's really nothing we can do to STOP people from adopting Linux. It's just part of the cycle of things. The underground, real coders start an operating system (remember, DOS and Windows were the new kids on the block once), it gradually spreads to more and more people, it starts getting compromised by the mainstream, the underground jumps ship, the platform soon dies without the support of the underground, and the underground begins its work anew.
To continue the MP3-sharing-software analogy, look at how Napster was abandoned in favor of Morpheus and Audiogalaxy. Now everyone knows about and is using them. So the RIAA sues them, and they've started to crack down. Now we'll have a bit of a "dead" period, but soon they'll be another wave coming out of the underground.
It's all cycle.
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.
it seems i hear more and more linux wins than windows wins. like largo. but then, apple was (and is) a threat to microsoft. later, microsoft made apps for it. wonderful world isn't it? hope there won't be any ms office and msie for linux though. and no IIS:Linux :-)
This has to be the Troll with the lowes user# I've ever seen on slashdot...
Obviously MS is going to try and do everything it can to prevent linux taking any of its market. Naturally it is going to be aggressive to restrict linux where ever possible, its just common business sense.
So, this may be some 'leaked' memo, but really it doesn't tell us anything that we wouldn't have known already. It just proves what we know/would assume.
XP Home & XP Professional are desktop operating systems. XP Server is the server OS, and it ain't out yet. 2000 is the only server product MS are pushing right now.
;)
And of course as we all know, Linux is a server OS, and isn't ready for the desktop
Note the emphasis of the article. Microsoft believe that they are being very successful in migrating people away from Unix. Linux is eating into Sun, HP, IBM et al at the low end. Microsoft don't appear to be worried about people replacing Windows with Linux, they are worried about people *not* replacing Unix with Windows, which isn't quite as triumphalist as the Slashdot story suggests.
/. is that Linux developers like to compete against MS, but haven't givin much thought to cannibalizing the existing Unix user base, and *that* is where this particular battle is being fought,
And the worry is not to do with TCO and administration and operations, areas in which many people believe Unix has a clear advantage (altho' Windows 2K and XP are catching up fast). It's the porting of existing applications, which is perceived to be easier from Unix to Linux than it is from Unix to Windows. But remember that you can buy tools (MKS Toolkit for example) that make it very easy to do, and that Rogue Wave et al sell APIs that make it easy, and that in a world of Java/EJB, the virtual machines on Windows are very good indeed - often faster than VMs from the same vendors on Sun.
So what I'm saying is, Microsoft are taking Linux seriously, like they take *all* existing and even potential competitors. And, my general feeling from reading sources like
To: Brian Valentine
Subject: Sales team motivation...
Brian,
I'm concerned about a lack of motivation on the part of our sales team in really pressing the benefits of XP, .NET, and the evil of Linux on our customers. As you know, Linux is the threat to our business, and we need all the wins we can get.
That's why I think we need to take a more agressive stance in our internal communications with our sales people. Starting today, I'm authorizing you to initialize Operation Ink. The main thrust of this operation is:
Please make sure that all staff are made immediately aware of this new corporate policy, Brian. I mean it. Don't make me subject you to "discipline".
-WG
sigs are for suckers
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
i think someone should point out that the register often prints rumors and other stories with only a slight reason to believe something is true and very little research.
god knows i've seen countless articless there where they've just been entirely wrong.
Any business will identify competitors as threats to their own business and will react to it.
This is nothing new here.
It looks like just another opportunity for slashbots to pour on the MS hate.
Seriously, you people need to find other things to talk about.
It doesn't matter to you that it is a FACT that freeBSD does perform better, or that, yes, Linux will have to behave in a more proprietry fashion (ie, make stuff geared at idiots and not intelligent people) to succeed, does it?
The latter they have been attempting (Konq over Lynx, Eudora ovwer mutt), but they have a long way to go.
Cos `leverage` and all that other advertising/management talk is bollocks. If linux is good, it`ll be taken up and used. Simple as that.
Hmmm, I expected something extremely damning when I clicked on the Register story but saw little to be surprised about. MSFT's biggest rival in the server space used to be proprietary UNIX, now that expensive proprietary UNIX solutions are giving way to cheaper Linux solutions it only makes sense that MSFT should refocus their energies at Linux. This is especially since the biggest UNIX vendors(IBM, HP/Compaq, Sun) have all embraced Linux in one way or the other from IBM's billion dollar campaigns to Sun ensuring that the next version of Solaris runs Linux binaries.
MSFT didn't get where they were today by ignoring rivals and pretending they don't exist so I don't see why this memo should come as a shock to anyone. Frankly, what would have surprised me is if there were no internal emails flying around concerned about the growing popularity of Linux and how to tackle it.
...Linux may well be a threat to M$, but according to this article, a bug in Microsoft's new operating system could lead to actual physical harm of its users.
-----------------------
Moderator's essentials
I don't see anything particularly vile or reprehensible in the MS memo. It looked like some fairly standard marketing diatribe and the kind of thing that any agressive company would promote.
What's to be learned from this? That if you want Linux out there instead of MS, then you're going to have to market it. Whoever is selling Linux based solutions will need to be just as tenacious and aggressive as a MS marketer can be. No laying down just because Solaris/AIX/HP-UX/etc to Linux is a "natural" migration -- it's clear that MS will make it seem unnatural, slow, error prone, etc. After all, if they can sell IIS over Apache (and web service is one of Linux's strengths), they can certainly do it in other areas as well.
IBM's marketing department has been aggressive for decades. And I know most small firms don't roll over and play dead easily either (or else they wouldn't be in business long), but this is a good reminder that there's competition out there.
Sure, it's a standard pro-forma "foo is the enemy" sales memo, but it is notable that "foo" is Linux (though it's difficult to see what other enemy Microsoft's sales force faces for low-end stuff).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Is great, because deep down inside we really are a plague. We have:
1. Carriers --> the pre-installed masses out there who love the OS and tote it everywhere they can. You can't cure a carrier with the M$ vacciene, because they're stuck with the disease for life, for free, and don't even understand that its a problem, because they typically show none of the symptoms.
2. Infection Vectors --> You can also spot evangelists, who might not be the best users or carriers around, but they sure do love to spread the word, show the symptoms of the "disease" of Linux, and make serious threats to Microsoft's soverignty.
3. Symptoms --> Ranting about Emacs vs. Vi, BSD vs. GNU, wearing funny tee-shirts, or having epileptic fits about free software costing literally nothing at work, at home, during spare time, on dates, etc. People who do not learn to tame these symptoms can end up becoming terminal geeks, even if they are recovering Windows users.
Which is probably why Microsoft sales people have to spot the companies with even a single Linux user, because they KNOW Linux will spread if left untreated.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
The memo says nothing new, actually. Companies are shifting from expensive proprietary platform (SUN, HP, IBM) to commodity PC, which now have enough horsepower for most of the common tasks tasks low-middle servers are purchased for.
Without Linux, the 100% of these shifters would have gone in the arms of Microsoft. With Linux, they have to fight harder to get some of them.
All this was already true two/three years ago, but now Linux is more recognized, also thanks to some advertising effort mainly sponsorised by IBM, and PHBs don't frown (much) anymore when their techs are proposing Linux-based solutions.
This is why Linux it is considered _the_ threat for MS on the server market.
Ciao
----
FB
1. Microsoft's largest competition is from a 'free' (beer) product. Would you invest in a company that was competing with something that is free? Whether Linux is as good as Windows or not it a moot issue because Linux is free and Linux continues to get better.
2. Linux has no sole entity. Microsoft doesn't know how to effectively deal with Linux because it's not a company. It's a type of product that is beginning to gain significant market proliferation.
Basically, MS needs to either lock people into using its software before it's too late (XP is pissing people off) or it needs to constantly stay one step ahead of OSS (which is starting to get difficult).
What can they possibly do? I believe that better public relations would be a start. Now that Windows2000/XP is actually a nice operating system, they can focus on removing peoples ideas that software will constantly crash. Of course, at my work Excel 2000 on Windows 2000 still constantly crashes, but they have to fix that.
Keeping
I think Scott Adams was right when he placed the sign: "Two Drink Minimum" above the entrance to Marketing.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
OK, so I tried to visit theregister. Couldn't connect. So I thought "they must have a story on /.". Yep.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
"...where you see Sun machines, IBM, etc and ask them what they running on those machines"
Fess up Linus, you wrote this, didn't you?
I just think it's funny that there is a guy named Bret Cocking.
I'm a legend in my own mind....
I think people are kind of forgetting that Microsoft identified Linux as a serious competitor at least since 1998.
/. readers.
In short, you're right: it's OLD news for most long-time
I highly suggest using DemoLinux to show people how easy Linux is to use. It has a lot of powerful features such as StarOffice, GIMP, etc. and requires no install to run. First download the .iso and burn it to a CD. Make a boot disk using the CD-ROM, insert both disks into the computer you want to demonstrate Linux on, and reboot. The computer will restart and load X Windows automatically. DemoLinux also gives the user the option to install Linux to the hard drive if the user likes it. This is a great way to demo Linux to anyone, a business or a home user.
~Ken
It's a beautiful thing.
I love the way he keeps talking about Windows 2000... shouldn't he be selling WinXP? it's more bloated, it HAS to be better :-)
Linux won't be "the threat" to Microsoft until any average Joe can put in the CD's, select what they want, install, reboot, and EVERYTHING works. The one thing MS is good at is helping out the user when configuring the system. Now, don't get me wrong, it only works for a couple of days, then you get the blue screen of death or some sort of conflict, etc. The simple fact is though, any person can install any hardware as long as they have the Windows CD. The computer says: "I detect new hardware" and asks for the CD, and that's all you have to do. That takes away from the user control, and that is something I don't like.
My main point is that I've just started to get into Linux and I really like it so far, but it's a pain in the ass to get everything working. I have a 6 month old Gateway with a P 4 and all widely used hardware, so the latest distros of RedHat or Mandrake should have no problem with it, but they do. I can't get my soundcard to work, my USB HomePNA device, and other stuff I probably haven't gotten to yet. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but I have a background in computers, it shouldn't take that to get a computer to work. That's the main problem right now with Linux, it's just not that easy to get everything up and running. On the other hand, the main advantage of Linux is that once it is running, it doesn't stop.
~ now you know
Just a side note: Microsoft's ordering system was down last week which put them days behind in product fulfillment. OH the stability of the Microsoft platform!
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
IMHO, I dont think that solution is Apache / PHP / mySQL. I think that the solution is J2EE. This offers a language and framework for building web-enabled applications end to end. Furhter, there are a range of J2EE solutions from free (JBoss, Jonas) to vendor supplied and supported (Weblogic, Websphere). Linux needs J2EE to compete in with Microsoft in this arena
The problem is, quite simply, we don't know how Microsoft's salesmen are pushing Windows.
Are they lying about the capabilities of Linux?
Would you lie about Linux in their shoes?
Surely the MS folks must be mentioning Linux in their sales-pitches. I doubt it's very glowing.
-Evan
Now they are forced to offer discounts to win companies over Linux ( even though I don't doubt they plan to get back the discount money as soon as the curtomers are hooked).
Loosing money is annoying for _any_ company.
I bet that also in SUN and IBM there were (are?) people annoyed by Linux growing popularity.
Ciao
----
FB
I guess the golf game they offered my VP wasn't too hot!
He's very anti-windows and wants to rid the entire datacenter of Windows boxes at every turn. (It isn't a religious stance, either.) It isn't cost... it is about them being a pain in the ass. A "win" is converting them to Solaris and never having to hear about them again.
One reason why Microsoft may very well come out on top in the long run is that there is no spiritual competitive mind to Linux. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, but it limits its competiveness. It wins on price point, but if you think that a Redhat or a SuSE can compete with the sales force of Microsoft, you have another thing coming to you. IBM is a possibility, but they really are selling hardware in the end, and people who don't use them are wary to get tied into expensive IBM solutions.
:)
Microsoft has very motivated people pushing their unproven solutions on very gullible company executives who don't know anything about the effort of a migration from Unix to Windows. Linux has no one credible force going out there and explaining it. Hopefully, one of these distribution companies can rise to the occassion and compete head to head with Microsoft and win on the merit of the technology and not on the prettiest graph. Heck maybe we could through in a pretty graph here and there
Hmm 40+ webservers in florida going windows 2000. .. the same people counting the Florida ballots are also the people who decide on how the IT budget gets spent?
So
Interesting
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
What a wacky nut this guy is. Reminds me why I hate sales people, particularly crazy used car salesmen cum M$ Sales.
The question is, who's going out and pushing Linux like this? In my experience, sysadmins "sell" Linux in their organizations, not an external sales force. Unfortuntely, it's often the case that an external "expert" is more respected than any member of staff.
One of the 'wins' cited in the memo was supposedly one on the back of MS' advanced new platform (presumably XP/2k + nice backoffice stuff) and 'volume licensing'.
Is there some volume of licenses beyond which MS pay you to use the product? I can't see how else they can win on licensing.
The only other possibility is the licenses for what Digital used to call 'layered products' like the RDBMS are really obnoxious if you are use (say) DB2 or Oracle. Oracle is pretty expensive, but enough to negate the advantage of no OS/App licensing? For a whole site?
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Evidently, none of these guys are in engineering. I wonder when exactly Microsoft's core comptency shifted from software to bullshit.
I didn't realise that expressing a different opinion meant I had to be rendered invisible from the children :\
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/valentine/ default.asp
RFC1925
In a way I already knew this:
I have a nice row of redhat boxes and books in my office (5.2, 6.0, 7.1) . I never do anything with it at work. I just buy them with my companies account to play around with on my home system. But whenever a M$ salesrep is here for a meeting, or a salespitch, I make sure he sees my nice row of boxes.
They always notice them, and they are always a bit nicer to me and my company.
Cheers.
I have alway wandered if also Vallopillil's halloween memo was intentionally leaked. Wasn't that the time that Microsoft had disperate need to show to DepOfJustice that they stll _had_ some competitions?
Ciao
----
FB
Does anyone know what happenned at Ameritrade. The CIO chooses Linux but the schedule slips and he resigns. Was this because the rest of the board pushed him out due to the schedule slips or was he fed up with an incompetent IT department and left of his own accord?
Not really. Some people might see this as a threat to linux in general. But still. Even if Microsoft manages to take out a few linux operations, its not going to hurt that much, they'll never turn over the linux developers. As far as business, linux was never intended as a business product, look how far it has come on its own. Add onto that, even if they snuff out the big companies, they'll still never get the people who truly want to run Linux. I for one could give a shit about what corp america is running on their mainframes, because its not going to effect what I run on my home machine. Nor is it going to affect what I'm running on my 12 servers. All 12 production servers run linux, and after playing with a win2000 IIS server, I'd never go back. Microsoft, I'm one customer you'll never turn, have all your reps call me, I don't care how strong your sales team is, you'll never sell me anything.
Can all fish swim?
There is something to what you say - that if Linux was to be genuinely mainstream, whatever that is, but lets assume more commercial at the point of delivery to joe average, then yes, maybe some coders would move away towards something different.
:-)
... :-)
But this is not the same as the death of cpm, dos, win3 etc - those were not replaced by a *paradigm* shift , only by a commercial product lifecycle process.
Even if there is a *new linux* in the wings now, that will not prevent those 2nd and 3rd wave coders from fixing and developing linux for some time to come. If only that option had been available to os/2 then some folks would, by all accounts, be in 7th heaven right now
The other analogy of napster is also off beam slightly as they were a single point of failure and (relatively) easily nobbled by the forces of darkness etc. Not quite the same as linux - critical mass etc.
For sure we are a target now and other posters are right in saying that this is *normal* tactics in the marketplace etc. An unnamed oxygen supply company with a 99% market share was once surprised by an upstart trying to *enter the market* shock horror. Now buying it would be out of the question, legislation prevented that so they simply set up a *fighting company* and went in under any price that the startup could think off. Never made a penny of profit but quickly saw off the newcomer. Linux is way too *darwinian* a development and distribution model for that to work.
To end a bunch of waffling here, don't panic or fret
Well, not all managers are as stupid as they seem :-). They may have given up on your VP, but they'll try again with the next one. I bet they're on good terms with a few other managers around your datacenter though :-).
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Linux doesn't need to win to survive
Even if it wins, who cares? People who do Linux aren't motivated by profit, since they rarely see profits.
Theirs is a near-religious zeal, whether you think that is a good thing or not.
Linux will continue to get better, or bigger, or whatever, until it ceases to be Linux. Even when you stop hearing about Linux, it will still be there.
As long as one person keeps a copy of the source somewhere on a forgotten P10 server with only a terabyte of RAM, Linux will survive and someone will stumble upon it and become enamoured with the spirit of the whole Linux movement. And then it continues...
There will now always be an alternative to commercial software.
-- My Weblog.
"On the other hand, I've worked with IBM sales before, and they're no push-overs either"
Riiiiighhht. Like we've EVER seen good IBM salesmanship. I'm a huge Linux advocate but we need (and luckily have) more support than just IBM. OS/2? Man, IBM sales really wiped the floor with that one. The PS/2? Yep yep yep
IBM sucks at marketing, to the consumer and at a corporate level, although this has gotten significantly better nowadays. Let's hope it gets even better competing against the greatest marketer of them all.
Who knows who that ousted CIO from Ameritrade is and where to find him for for a /. interview? What caused the schedule slip? Is Microsoft's characterization of what happened (CIO chose Linux after MS early wins, Linux didn't deliver, CIO out MS in) accurate?
/.ers have to know!
There's more to it than this.
You Americans slashdotted our register!!!!!! we do not take kindly too terrorism, now prepare to feel our wrath as we DoS your country until you hand over Hemos and all his supporters
(and bomb the ms training camps)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
- The Coming "Open Monopoly" by timothy with 171 comments on 09:24 AM -- Sunday October 28 2001
- Software "Open Monopoly" by Hemos with 284 comments on 01:49 PM -- Wednesday October 24 2001
There is the possibility that Microsoft could face a situation where it could not embrace and extend and where it can not control that market, cannot monopolize it. Thus the efforts to outlaw open source:-
MS Wants To Outlaw Open Source: "Threatens" the "American Way" by Hemos with 1169 comments on 02:53 PM -- Thursday February 15 2001
There are two basic ways to get ahead in this world.One is to build things up. The other is to tear things down.
The problem comes when you view the freedom and success of others as an attack on your success. While any exercise of power will use both, when someone goes psycho or nuerotic on the second, then you have a real problem.
It comes down to Microsoft being afraid of the freedom of others, or specifically certain people in MS are afraid of the freedom of others. Marketroids, etc. I'm willing to cut the coders some slack.
Since the company is the vision and living embodiment of the vision of Bill Gates, not him.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I can only run my new M$ FS2002 on Windoze 98 and up. It doesn't support my "old" Win95 (which I maintained on my computer for gaming) so I will have to install some new Win version.
No Linux solution here.
I think you'll find that The Register is an everyone bashing site. They can be rather cutting and bitchy, but they are also pretty even-handed about it.
I would be a paid subscriber if Taco and Hemos weren't such cunts
Linux needs hardware manufacturers to create drivers for their new hardware. If Linux is going to be an "underground" OS, then why would manufacturers spend time/money making drivers for it? Ya ya, so many people are going to say linux users can write their own drivers. Well there are plenty of pieces of hardware I would like to plug into my linux box that don't have drivers for them.
Linux needs to show that it's mainstream and not an underground OS, or companies will continue to ignore it.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Okay first, comments about this being a typical memo are right on. Big companies send stuff like this out all the time.
But also, this is Microsoft, they have been saying that Linux is the threat for years!
I failed to see what is new or news about this honestly? I mean, we already know corporations send out memos like this, and we already know they regard linux as the threat for years.
I thought the comment of Bill Gates that he created Open-Source (err the enviroment in which it can thrive) and that open-source users and programmers are all communists, was much more interesting. It's also on The Register for those of you who don't mind hunting - sorry I don't have the URL on me! :-)
Derek Greene
... but it still doesn't make it any easier for me to deal with. The brutality of the Redmond re-education camps is nothing short of legendary... what other corporation could get away with branding their employees like cattle, and then laugh it up in a department-wide memo?
I want a job there. I'm mandated to use M$ servers. I was lucky to get them to let me install Win2k even. groan
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
This guy must be crazy. The main reason why companies use Windows is familiarity - people who are familiar with Unix don't switch to Windows. And ESPECIALLY not in order to port their Unix software.
The situation described by the article is one in which any salesman would absolutely have to admit defeat: the competitor's product is better at every feature.
Consider:
Cheaper: free vs not
Easier to use: already know Unix
Easier to port stuff: already have apps in Unix
More stable: Umm...duh?
What else does M$ have going for it? About the only thing I can think of is that IE is the best web browser (defining "best" as "having the most capability to parse webpages"), and I don't think that's a big enough selling point.
Windows is made to be sold to the secretaries who use whiteout instead of backspace, not to huge firms who are migrating to cheaper platforms.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
> Linux won't be "the threat" to Microsoft until any average Joe can put in the CD's,
> select what they want, install, reboot, and EVERYTHING works.
The type of installation we are talking about is one like mine, where there are 60,000 desktops. This is where Linux could be a threat to MS, think of 60K WXP and Office XP licences to keep track of. Think of the number of servers you have to keep up to provide file and print. Think of the effort you need to implement and maintain PDC/BDC or Active Directory. Moving that from Windows to Linux could really cost MS a packet.
The Register not being available is not because of a little Slashdot traffic, they can easily handle it. More likely to be a LINX or server issue.
Maybe Linux needs a large advocacy site or two that specifically does these things:
1. List companies/organizations that have switched to or are created new uses for Linux.
2. Allow those companies to post their own progress reports, the good and the bad.
3. The linux comunity could provide anything from advice to development support for these companies.
4. Advocates could point to this site as a Linux testamonial and direct rebuttal to the same type of stories that MS uses. By showing the good and the bad it displays honesty (Which MS can't do) and by showing support activity, they see that there really is good support, and that bad senarios can be corrected with enough people available at your fingertips.
I know lots of this type of support is available through news groups and other channels. I suggest this specifically as a commercial/sales type operation. It should be big and well advertised and pointed directly at the corporate officer, with specific examples of problems found and solved. This is MS home territory. Lets get the battle off our terf and onto theirs.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Microsoft and the current DOJ lawyers started with the economy card. Sue Microsoft, see the economy tumble. Next we had a judge whose orders were to settle this, out of court. Why? It appears she has a lack of both Anti-trust and technology experience.
Then in a secret meeting between Microsoft's attorney (a former Reagan appointee) and the lead attorney for the DOJ (a current appointee), a deal less restrictive than accepted prior to the trail was accepted without the state's knowledge.
This is an op-ed piece supplied for the consumption of U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. As we start to enter the 60-day review period, this will give Microsoft more leverage to indicate they do have competition and the deal is fair. Of course, the exclusions put into the deal also ensure Open source will not be considered a legitimate third party to receive any advance notice or right to information.
In addition, they can force those who do have 'the right" to sign non-disclosures, under the guise of ensuring security, and sue anyone attempting to provide access to open source. Then they begin legal action against anyone who uses the information to enhance open source.
While it may make us "feel good" to know we are considered a threat, we are not. A threat is something you do not have a solution for. They have a solution and it is about to become a legal document by which they can exclude all open source from access.
Consider how far we could push Linux, BSD, etc... into an environment where merely communicating with the existing NT network would be considered illegal. A simple API change we cannot mimic or duplicate and they can tie it up in court for years. The mere specter of such possibility will keep us out of many shops.
Now is the time to re-read Ralph Nader's letter and create your own. Keep it specific to the agreement, factual and polite. This will become a legal document, not an editorial or slashdot forum. Revise, reread, and revise some more. When the 60-day period begins, print it off, and mail it. Start working on it now to be ready when the time comes.
Note to editors: can we put up a forum where people can post their letters for comment?
Osama is *the* treat for americas national security.
& America bombed afghans
and if Linux is *the* treat for microosft.
Get ready friend, hide in cave.
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
javajerk writes: This is as old as the halloween documents and as boring as well. Why should we care if Microsoft likes us? We don't care for Microsoft either, do we?
:o)
Somehow I seem to have lost my edge... Perhaps it has to do with the fact that we can do without M$ now, so we can just peacefully overlook the fact that they exist.
Confuzius says: The mighty elephant flattens the ant without noticing its protest
Cheers,
Lars
I use to be one of those guys a long time ago (about 10 years ago) that thought what the home computer user wants controlled the market. Your completely wrong. It's the business accounts that matter. the companies in the fortune 100 list spend far more on wintel boxes than all the home users worldwide combined.
If a IBM or some other provider comes up with desktop and sever solutions using linux that work and sell, MicroSoft will feel the pain a LOT more than if home users everywhere installed linux. Home user sales only affect Radio Shack and Future Shop.
because of development times. If I have to write a system in 2 weeks, what tools exist to rapidly develop a (maybe crappy but functional) database-web-etc. system?
Devin
The register gets as many hits as this site if not more and even it was slashdotted
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Above is Troll
The funny part of this is that the memo indicates that business are opting for commodity (Intel) servers. What Microsoft does not seem to understand is that the reasons that businesses are migrating in this direction is the same reason they're migrating to Linux.
Lastly, I recall back in the early '90's seeing TCO industry projections for Mac's as being 1/2 that of a PC. You can see the result. They don't call it "sticker-shock" for nothing.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
Thank you team -- that's one less tattoo Mandy and crew will need to get.
What kind of weird marketing practice is this? Have they take to branding and torturing the sales staff to help inspire them?
Tattoos?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Truthfully I think microsoft's biggest threat is the stupidity of MS itself. I can already see the idiotic licensing scheme for MS office backfiring. Other things such as passport will probably only make things worse once a major security hole is found. Why am I not using XP (other than I don't want to)? Because maybe I want to take my sound card out, and put it back in 5 times in a row just because I WANT to, and I don't want to call uncle MS to explain to them why I am worthy of them gracing me with my validation code. MS is probably only doing Linux a favor by focusing more on Linux. I think if MS actually focused on THEIR crap and made it better, and didn't try to screw customers at every turn, they probably wouldn't even have to worry about Linux.
But the letter showed a win for Microsoft, when the "techie" CIO was in favor of the Linux solution and against MS. After months of struggling with the Linux migration, the CIO resigned. Within one month the new CIO, together with Microsoft made the shop running again.
Techies are not always right and sometimes MS has the better, and finally even cheaper solutions.
Are a collection of retarded, childish brats who want nothing more than to sit around in front of their PC all day, refresh Slashdot, and post "insightful" comments about negative Microsoft stories so that they may further warp their tiny little worlds into being Linux centric.
Grow the fuck up. No one cares about you. No one gives a shit about what you have to say.
Microsoft is a business. Do you know how a business works? Typically you provide a service, or product, you push it into a market and you attempt to achieve as great a market share for that service or product as possible. It isn't fucking rocket science.
Microsoft isn't scared. The DOJ didn't scare MS, and Linux sure as fuck doesn't. They have 30 billion dollars just sitting and waiting to be spent. They are extremely agile. They keep costs low. They are anything but bloated (see: IBM). Every single company that has gone up against MS has lost. Been annihilated. You think that's only because of "dirty" business practices? You're deluding yourselves.
They are one of the most efficient, motivated, and driven companies on the planet.
And you're all a bunch of children who wouldn't know a business model if it jumped up and bit you on the ass.
I can give two recent examples:
1. I recently upgraded vmware on Linux, which required me to change my video driver, because the vmware code for the video adapter changed. (Please note that this example works just as well when you upgrade video cards.) When I rebooted with the upgraded video device, my machine would hang. Apparently it's critically important to first tell Windows (98) that the video device is 640x480 standard VGA. It took several reboots to remove the offending adapter driver and get the machine working again.
(BTW - on RH Linux, when I install a new video adapter, the on-boot hardware detection routine notices and asks me to configure it. One boot cycle to fully functional X windows. If I didn't need to power down to install the card, it would have required 0 boot cycles!)
2. I recently acquired a Kensington USB video camera. Kensington no longer manufactures such devices, and has produced drivers for '95&'98 only. Users with 2000 or XP are simply out of luck. While I have a '98 machine on which I can use the camera, if I want to "upgrade" to a later version of windows, I'll need to buy new hardware.
(BTW - Interestingly, on RH Linux I was able to get the camera working just fine with xawtv. Here a device is not supported by the manufacturer, no Linux drivers have been produced, and the free software geeks reverse engineered the functionality and produced drivers, then gave them away!)
Don't even get me started on how dang complex all of this stuff is! My sister just got a cable modem and wants to set up a network so her kids can share the internet connection with her. She needs a firewall, proxy server/NAT solution, LAN adapters, cabling, ad nauseum! None of that is trifling, regardless of OS. (For her I'm recommending a dedicated device for firewall and a local consultant to assist with configuration.)
WRT your problems, have you had the opportunity to seek assistance from any newsgroups/mailing lists? I'm not sure that I can be of great assistance, but I'm willing to try. Please email me if you are interested.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
- "Learn about what they do with those systems, keep that inventory in your back pocket --
- hell -- tattoo it on your butt if you have to -- and go after them. (My emphasis)
I mean come on. Even if he's the VP of salesTHIS SPACE FOR RENT
ShitBSD sucks. It has NO chance of beating Linux.
Why? Because Linux performs better, and is an overall better OS.
Why is Microsoft scared of Linux? We don't have the leverage or the monopolistic power of Microsoft. They should really be worried about Solaris, but I guess Microsoft sees Linux as an entirely new kind of threat.
The reason is that the kind of techniques they have used in the past to squash competition simply won't work with something they can't either buy out or bundle into Windows.
At what point does MS start to just buy off the critical developers of various Open Source projects? I think this is a tactic that cannot be overlooked. With a few well placed "hires" they can put a short term dent in some critical projects to slow the progression of the development down. This is not to say that the development will stop, but it could lose some of its critical mass.
I hate to say it, but if someone were waving large wads of cash under my nose, I would be tempted (not that I have contributed anything worth while in terms of source code) I have two college educations to pay for in about 12 years.
Food for thought.
~Sean
"Learn about what they do with those systems, keep that inventory in your back pocket -- hell -- tattoo it on your butt if you have to..."
Sounds like M$ has come up with yet another unintuitive user interface... Could any of you read something that was tatooed on your butt?
"... the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy" - Janov Pelorat
One response would be to turn this round and use the tactics against them. Next time you are discussing a server room with anyone political ask them what the M$ boxes do. All we need are some good answers ready:
Exchange? How many messages per second can this take before you'll have to upgrade the hardware or buy more servers? What's your backup/recovery procedure if a single, important message gets deleted accidentally. How many clients can it support?
IIS? How much downtime do you need on the server to install the patches? What's your regular patch cycle? What is your procedure for emergency downtime for critical patches? Oh? Haven't you heard about the security problems?
File-serving? How many clients can you support before you have to buy new hardware?
Then hit them with Exim+IMAPD/Apache/Samba.
Bob.
Those who do not learn from Dilbert are doomed to repeat it.
I have been a Linux user for 4 years now, having had flings with Slackware, Debian and Redhat, while still being called upon to install/maintain Lose98/2K boxes every now and then.
Last week I dropped an install of Mandrake 8.1 on my workstation box, and believe me, it was a lot less troublesome a delivery than I have ever found with any version of Windows (or DOS, for that matter).
All hardware picked up first time, none of the broken packaging I found in four releases of RedHat... Everything just works.
I would say Linux probably is ready for the general user's desktop.
There is of course nothing in this article that is particularly scandaous of itself. So M$ is using agressive sales tactics and doing their damned best to sell their product. That is as it should be.
The point is that this is a _far_ cry from calling linux a toy, like balmer did not too long back.
The point is that M$ is taking linux seriously as a competitor. Is this news? No. Is it important? Yes. M$ seeing Linux as the primary threat and competitor is, in many ways, a ringing endorsement of the OS. So the next time someone says to me that Lionux is nice and all, but not ready for prime time, well, M$ doesnt seem to agree. And thats nice to know.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
Yes, I agree... I enjoy playing with Linux, but most of my time is spent getting things to work, not actually using a functional system (at least with X, KDE, and other desktop apps). Non-standard, or non-popular hardware is always a hassle, where with Windows you get the driver supplied with it. A Windows support person (I was one) could easily walk my grandmother through the process of putting the cd into the drive, clicking the right things, etc. The required steps to get hardward working good under Linux can be (and often are) much, much more complicated and time consuming.
Not to mention... trying to compile a new application from source, discovering it needs version x of some lib, downloading that lib, discovering it needs version y of some other lib, downloading that, etc. etc. etc.
The only way I can see Linux as a good desktop machine right now, for the corporate end user (not the home user), would be if you had a lot of identical machines - identical hardware and software, and had all necessary software pre-installed, and the users use that software only. The home end user is accustomed to adding new software continually, and would not be able to do this on Linux. Not yet anyway.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
How will the Linux community respond?
Deriding Microsoft won't be particularly productive, and we haven't much to gain by simply assuming business and government will "get it" and buy Linux. If we want to compete successfully with the Beast of Redmond, we need something more than a cute logo and Slashdot rhetoric.
The importance of the subject memo is in telling us how Microsoft plans to compete with Linux. Microsoft is competing against IBM and Red Hat; those companies are pushing Linux beyond its geekish roots, into board rooms and server farms. We can preach technical superiority and reliability until we're blue in the face, but it is old-fashioned marketing, the art of the deal, that will break Microsoft's monopoly.
When we have squabbles over VMs, when we fight over trivial license issues, when we let the religion of Linux get in the way of rationality -- that's when Microsoft will strike, like a shark devouring a wounded penguin.
There's a certain petty smugness in the Linux community, a sense of superiority that stems more from a hatred of Microsoft than from our real technical achievements. If Linux is to succeed beyond its current niche, the community must grow up, maturing in both attitude and strategy.
Otherwise, we're just a flock of penguins, waiting for the shark.
All about me
... wasn't it microsoft a few years ago saying that linux WASN'T a threat??? always a few steps behind...
Brian Valentine exists at Microsoft, he's the Senior Vice President of the Windows Devision. Would he address his colleagues in such a way? Why not.
JB Were's web site is partly dysfunctional, so not much information on this one. The City of Largo has just succesfully migrated to KDE desktops at the end of August. It's a bit hard to believe that they switch again after such a short time, and that his wasn't addressed in Valentine's memo at all (maybe it's about the servers, who knows, but then things would be really, really bizarre). Ameritrade has already been a Microsoft customer.
So, if this one is faked, it was faked in a much more credible manner than the previous NTs.
The problem is with the devices, not the software. When device makers are pressured to adopt goofey "standards" without adopting reasonable communications protocals the user suffers. A prime example of this is the WinModem. Every try to figure one of them out? You won't because they are all different. It's a pain for the device maker too as they have to keep up a bunch of software for each new device. Parallel scanners have the same sorts of problems, but parallel printers don't. Go figure, in one case device makers decided it would be easier to follow the leader, in the other they did not. It might have something to do with M$'s power and influence when each became commodity devices. Ever see a stupid M$ flag on an old printer? It sucks hard, but the end is near.
The problem would be quickly resolved if larger computer vendors would loose their fear of using alternate OS and advertise like they did for M$ once. In the mean time, happy hacking with that HomePNA!
For ease of software install and upkeep look into Debian dselect and apt-get.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I never had a problem with your oppinion!.. You just put it forward in such an agressive way that it was a de facto troll comment. And it evidently is a good Troll judging by the numbers of mods and replies aquired.. :)
But, security is top issue, and the windows platform is not a very secure platform. Especially if it has IIS Installed on it.
"leak" a vaguely "indiscrete" document that actually doesn't say anything new, doesn't reveal/expose someone, and most importantly doesn't get you sued;
relax and watch as the media starts a lenghty discussion about it, mentioning your company's name 1000's of times.
/. tey are targetting: it's the more "mainstream" media (zdnet, nytimes etc.) or even "dead tree" media and tv.
And when I say media, it's not about theregister or
I don't know that the reg would thank you for this. They are a very high traffic site, a little /. effect will do them no noticeable harm. Reposting their stories verbatim however steals the page impressions that make them cash. Nice try but wrong site to help :( IMHO.
I suggest you go to Their Merchandising and buy a BOFH T-shirt to atone for your sin.
Cheers,
R. (Not connected to the reg, just a long time reader)
Maybe you live in interesting times
Mods: Since I know moderators can't see the mods here they are so far: Moderation Totals: Offtopic=1, Troll=2, Insightful=4, Interesting=2, Total=9.
Trolls: Read, analyze, learn.
``Why be yourself, when you could be someone really worthwhile instead?'' - (no known attribution)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
just watch the fish get trolled in the net
A much bigger threat to Microsoft than Linux is market stagnation. 90% market share means you have to look to other markets for customers (Xbox, keyboards, mice, Pocket PC), try and sell your product over again to the same people (XP), or change to a rental structure (.NET).
Having salespeople trying to win business in the fractionally tiny sliver of the leftover 10% of the market "people who are migrating from unix to linux" is freaking lame - what about the rather hefty and lucrative segment "people who aren't migrating to XP because it doesn't offer anything compelling"?
Microsoft should be spending its billions generating new demand, not trying to take its 90% market share to 92.5%. Where are the golden oldies, like voice recognition, speech synthesis, handwriting recognition, not to mention all the crazy stuff that no-one's dreamed up yet? Where are the VR interfaces, massive dataset visualisers, database filesystems, all built to smash my machine into whimpering shards and only run on XP(tm)?
The only killer app driving upgrades seems to be games, and MS seems to be further stagnating that by shifting games like Halo to the XBox. If a PC version of "uber-Halo" required a P4 2Ghz & Windows XP, gamers from here to Osaka would be selling their livers to get on board, economic downturn or no.
So Linux? A tiny dot in comparison.
shut up man
Ha! I love this. Go with Microsoft, and you're on some sort of "PC economics model" treadmill. You pay what they want, when they want. Go with Linux and all you pay for is a sysadmin or two (or n). Very predictable costing: n persons' salaries, every year; no surprises.
John.
I went to visit the article and followed the links to the Halloween documents page provided there. I never actually read this set of pages before so I decided that I'd just go ahead and educate myself rather than relying on the concensus to set my opinion.
As I read the Halloween information at the site indicated above, I decided to re-read the "Linux Myths" page at Microsoft.com. I had read that one before in its entirety but I wanted to refresh my memory once more. As it turns out, the "Linux Myths" page is either missing or has been moved. So I searched using their search facility.
Entering "Linux Myths" into the search text box and "OK" I waited and waited for a response and eventually, the page came up with a header but a blank body portion of the page. "An error?" I thought to myself. I tried again with the same results. Then, I searched only "Linux" with the same results. Finally, I wanted to test the search to see if it was broken. I searched "Office 97" and was immediately given a long list of document references from the search. The search is not broken, it appears to be blocked!
Is reference information regarding Linux blocked at Microsoft's site intentionally? Maybe someone could test that.
Even if the article is a work of fiction, there are some truths about sales, deployment and cost. First and foremost, what wins with management isn't the technology itself, but the perception of it's usefulness. Microsoft sales staff are highly trained at stating what execs want to hear. Most of what execs want to hear isn't technical gibberish about kernels, exploits, architecture, languages or other detailed technical gems.
What should we the community do?
I am sure everyone knows non-technical people whose eyes gloss over when words like kernel, port scan and ssh are mentioned. If the open source community wants to ensure a strong future, more technical people will need to spend a lot of time educating the average joe/jane about technology. Once people understand technology, the advantages/disadvantages become obvious. That is perhaps the best weapon against Microsoft. Knowledge is power and Microsoft will never be in the game of real education.
Actually, for the Micro$oft reps I've dealt with, this is practical advice. These guys have their heads up there most of the time, anyway.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Don't forget you're reading an email to:
WW Sales, Marketing & Services Group
Please don't go off on a story about MS running scared, Linux being not ready/ready, etc, etc without bearing in mind that these guys wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, wink and say 'today's the day, big-shot!!!'
It's marketing language: you're lifting your eyes up from sane, stable, calm Linux. Don't lose perspective...
Please...
Several people have made comments about how linux will not be truely competative until any joe can stick it in isntall and reboot:
I work as a IT person. In the last two months I have done ~10 linux and ~10 windows installs.
Total problems that caused install to take more than 2 hours with WinNT/98 - 6
Total problems that caused install to take more than 2 hours with RedHat 7.1/7.2 - 1
I'm not the average person, but if you just want to pop a cd in and go, redhat is MUCH better than any MS OS has ever been (although I haven't been able to try the XP install).
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
are truely akin...
There is a reason we called them Sales Slimes...
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
One of my non-linux using friends joked about "selling his soul" to buy Windows XP...take from that what you will...
It does make a great platform for stressing where Linux has shortcomings again though. Linux calendar apps which support multiple users still seems like a weak area. I have yet to see anything that resembles MS Project on Linux, which would prevent even the technically inclined PHB's who'd be interested in trying the OS from giving it a shot. I think we should also leverage the Linux strengths by tieing all the remote administration potential of the OS into some GUI apps which could be used to propigate configuration changes and software updates across hundreds or thousands of machines on the LAN, possibly using broadcast packets. Updating an entire web server farm with a click of a button would be a pretty compelling feature and Linux is more that capable of it.
We don't have to write those customers that Microsoft has claimed either. We should be out there talking to them and asking them what they would like to see in Linux. Ask them what the OS needs for them to switch to it. Such feedback would be very valuable for enhancing this OS.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Maybe in the PDA calendar worshipping world Linux is Microsoft's biggest threat but I never figured out as many uses for PDA's as the computer science world keeps telling us there are. In the XBox, Divx world there's no threat as far as I can tell and no-one is daring to criticize the XBox.
Where Microsoft has lost the mighty PDA the case of dying a painful death of stabbing and electrocution if you don't immediately run out and buy an XBox has certainly been put forth enough times.
Since Ameritrade's quote system will go from FIVE systems running Linux to HUNDREDS running windows 2000. Hmm...
Problem number two is that IBM is more interested in investing in/assimilating small businesses with highly patentable ideas than they are selling services/hardware/whatever to these companies. Wierd business model.
If you want good advertising, hire the people from one of the following groups:
- Budweiser
- Phillip Morris
- Microsoft
- Coca-Cola
- Apple
Note that IBM is definitely NOT on that list.There is one big inaccuracy in your argument:
If anything FreeBSD is a greater threat than Linux in this arena
*BSD is more of a boon than a threat to Microsoft. Thanks to the BSD license, Microsoft can integrate any and all BSD code into its own code. They have publicly stated that they like *BSD for this very reason, and it's well-known that many pieces of their code came from BSD.
They can't steal Linux, though. Hence, it is the enemy.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Linux can't be losing ground because it's not even playing in that game.
Linux will always be there for anyone inclined to put it to use (unless it's outlawed as a terroristic tool). Windows will go the way of the dodo the minute Microsft pulls the plug.
Microsoft is playing a second neural circuit game based upon "territory", where for them to win, someone else has to lose. (And for them to lose, someone else has to win).
The people who truly get open source aren't even concerned with such matters. The develop what they have a need for -- and share the results with others. Everybody gains in that scenario -- except people who aim to profit by creating spurious shortages by controlling a resource.
I just got off the phone with the DIO of the City of Largo, FL. He states that they are very happy with Linux and are absolutly staying put.
Am I missing something here? The article mentions tattoos something like 4 or 5 times --- like the sales dweebs have to get a linux tattoo if they lose an account to redhat or something. Anyone know what's up with that?
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
As long as Gates can make Linux look like a threat, he can continue to say that Windows is not a monopoly. These "leaked" memos are intended for the courts, not the general public.
I'll believe Linux is a serious threat when Bill Gates tries to crush it like a bug.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
In network-intensive times like the Queens plane crash, how can we take MS's word that their solution is best, when they are now not accepting any connections?!
CNN's UNIX-based news servers is still up and running.
Actions speak louder than words.
I have been running a Linux server in a small (7 boxes inclusing the server) shop. Microsoft in my opinion has only one thing going for it in marketing their products and that is ease of use. Things like cost, that elusive TCO, the hostile licensing rules are strong reasons for going to Linux in the server market, but the biggest reason for not going to Microsoft is the data itself. I have read that once a shop switches to a MS solution, their data is owned from that point on by MS, i.e. you can't move the data to another application, other than another newer MS application. Linux on the other hand you can move between applications, and if there is no provision for that in your application, you can hack one. Can't do that with Microsoft. I wouldnt worry too much about MS going after large accounts and large headlines. It's the small businesses which create jobs in this country and they are always on the lookout for better, more cost effective solutions. Let them have the big boys. Once they realize the kind of corner they are getting into you will see migration towards Linux. As it is I have no real vested interest in either MS or Linux; it is just that I was horrified at their tactics using the BSA and all the other techonological means they are using to enhance their position. I have convinced my family's company that we should be moving towards chucking WIndows, and we are slowly moving towards a MS-free office.
Dawn of the Dead
Is this why Microsoft reps have their heads up their asses?
Next time, try getting the name of the company right (hint: Ameritrade).
From the comments I gather the memo is pretty standard language in the marketing/sales departments of big corporations. I guess I knew that management generally pushes a lot of stupid/silly/inane crap to the representatives that actually do the leg work, but the memo still manages turn my stomach a little.
Tattoo's on employees arses? Lovely. I'm a postgraduate student and happen to be lucky enough to work with a very nice professor and senior scientists and I do not work in the US or the UK, so thankfully I have been saved from this sort of pep talk. If I ever work for anyone who sends this kind of shit in email, please someone just kill me.
I largely agree that Microsoft is irrelevant to Linux's "success." However, that one point cannot be ignored.
When the accountants start overuling the
techies, it's time to dump a company
that relies on technology.
Remember that Microsoft is in a "Grow or Die" mode right now.
They have finally saturated the desktop market. They are trying to sustain growth in that sector, but doing so generates more and more bad PR as they crack down on the license terms.
In looking for areas in which to grow, the server market has become a primary target.
The problem for Microsoft is that you can only pull the wool over their eyes for so long - eventually, everyone is going to realize that what they are charging for can be had from other vendors for free (with higher quality as a bonus).
This fact will become even more aparent with UNIX releases tailored to run Win32 binaries (aka Lindows, etc.).
Regardless of how much marketing they throw at this issue, they can't change the fundamental truth behind it.
In a related vein, I heard a rumor that Microsoft is threatening the states that won't settle in the antitrust case with reduced licensing at high prices - supposedly some universities have been called and threatened with cutoffs or price increases.
I really hope that Microsoft tries this. I would wholeheartedly approve of the state and/or federal goverment throwing a few million dollars at developing alternate Win32 platforms.
It comes down to senior management, and most execs are non-techie. Much microsoft advocacy is down from a primarily business perspective, much nix advocacy (especially Linux) is done from a primarily technical perspective; until nix vendors do a better job fighting Windows on the finance, marketing and media battlefield they'll keep losing ground to Microsoft, irrespective of the technical merits of the products involved.
Red Hat markets primarily to CFO's.
The basic issue is that people are migrating the majority of UNIX servers to Linux and Windows (Telecom being a major exception). Linux is picking up some of this market share and Microsoft does not like this. Microsoft has worked so hard to beat UNIX and when they win, along comes Linux to take away their prize-- server monopoly.
BUT-- businesses are no fools. Many prefer a heterogenous environment despite interoperability problems because it provides an exit strategy from a single-vendor solution.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I work in a management role in IT and am constantly listening to the Linux is bad, MS is god mantra. Even in the advent of XP.
I was interested to see that it appears that MS marketing even sees that XP is a hard to impossible sell. The memo suggests selling Win 2000 in place of Linux and makes no mention of XP.
Hmmm...
He's trying to outsell something that's free to keep his job.
Go Lakers!
Ouch. This is not good. Microsoft will continue to bash Linux. And execs in suits will listen. This may be considered as redundant, but:
Now, I'm a UNIX admin for a respectable European company. While the suits in their big offices praise Microsoft, I scream in pain. As I frequently pass by my bosses huge offices, I frequently hear phrases like "We should have Microsoft Exchange in here allright, it even comes with a handy calendar" and "IIS has crushed more barriers, we need that, oh yeah!".
I cry out loud and run down the hallway; there is NO way in HELL that you'll see me working on a Windows box again. Dude, it's all GUI, it requires state of the art computing power, and it's all just too darn expensive!
Listen execs -- When low on cash: instead of cutting down on employees, companies should cut down on Microsoft products. Do you really know how much one has to pay to stay up-to-date with Windows? It's frightening that the suits with their big offices can't understand.
Anyone notice the similarities between Microsoft-speak and Scientology-speak?
Uhm.
Why are we being directed to read a private memo? Does a company not have a right to talk privately within itself?
Slashdot likes to act like a privacy advocate, but then you promote stuff like this.
Boo.
How do we really know this is real? Has anyone seen the email trail back to microsoft? I am just playing devils advocate here, but How do we know some didn't make it up the forward it to the Register.
Can we call these the Turkey Documents?
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
"Some middle-manager salesman guy writes that Linux is *the* threat..."
Actually, his quote simply said that "Linux is the threat" - no emphasis. Then, the register's article leads with the quote, adding a Nazi reference ("...memo to his Sales Brownshirts..."), and adding the "*the*" emphasis. Then, slashdot picks up the register's emphasis, puts it in the article title, and attributes it to Microsoft.
It's not news that slashdot and the register are anti-Microsoft, but they both lose credibility when they manipulate the words that they attribute as quotes from someone else.
Slashdot is entertaining like pro wrestling is entertaining
... is the undertrained (not their fault) man/woman in the blue shirt at Best Buy.
I know this *is* offtopic but I could resist when I say Best Buy mentioned. I was in one recently looking for a printer for my father. The guy tried to tell me that instead of buying a parallel port printer I should add a USB port to my father's computer and get a USB version. Why? Because parallel printers won't be made or supported after December 2001.
Keep in mind also that my father is on Winblows 95 and uses old DOS apps (He refuses to change)
My analysis: Microsoft will use every means it has to kill any serious competitor. Linux falls into that category, so MS will use marketing, lobbying, blackmail, etc. to keep Linux off the boardroom agenda. It's really simple: "Clause 23: deliberate infection of the coporate network by viral tools, packages, or other programs violates this support license". When you have your customer by the touchie-feelies, you can impose any conditions you like. Oh, the courts may eventually rule this illegal... yeah.
It's also irrelevant AFAICS because this war is moving towards the irrelevant. MS's strategy is to create a taxable infrastructure. It believe the future of IT is more centralisation, and it wants to control that.
I believe the future of IT is decentralisation based on smart peer-to-peer applications running on simple and cheap protocols such as email. The value of Linux and OSS in general is that is makes small and cheap (sub-$100) servers feasible.
A world of packet-switching microservers will eventually revolutionise business and render the corporate IT policies irrelevant.
Just my 5c.
My blog
I just woke up after a hard weekend of partying at the ALS and found a big fat penguin tattoed onto my ass!!! Those nasty Linux people always trying to play catchup to all of those great MS ideas!
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I think your picture is a bit too simplistic.
As for the common-man's desktop, at home.. linux isn't there yet. Common-man doesn't want to learn about administering unix.
For the workplace desktop... linux is actually there in my opinion. Not for every shop, certainly.. but it's there.
Largo is a great example. Yes, you need administrators who grok linux... but a couple of those and you end up wiht a HUGE, easy to maintain network of diskless workstations.
You say not everyone can afford a 60,000 gbp/year for a unix expert... please! show me where I can go work for 60k pounds a year!
The kind of person who can run such a network, let's say, 20 workstations and a 2 servers (for redundancy). does NOT have to make US$100,000 a year. This is not 'huge company head unix guy'.
Maybe he makes... $60k.
The costs you save on support and downtime can be staggering.
Microsoft sales are very, very good at showing you why the MS way is the cheaper way on paper. It's hard to refute. It just never works out that way in practice.
I'm looking at rolling out a new customer service center. Every clerk needs a computer.
But Linux will still bite deeply into MS's pocket, as every Windows --> Linux server conversion potentially costs MS a lot of revenue. Between the OS itself, plus other add-ons like Back Office, each lost server is probably equal in yearly revenue to 10 to 20 desktops.
Funny hey, we've had the Halloween documents in 1997 following the lawsuit. Now, that some states are refusing to sign an agreement; Here's another supposedly leaked document that discusses how Linux is a threat to MS's monopoly.
according to this page (last updated june 01)h tm
http://www-1.ibm.com/linux/illuminata/linrfpt4.
" Ameritrade, one of the largest online brokerages, provides its primary web access through Linux--a substantial commitment given its 1.5M clients execute over 100K trades per day, for which security is an absolute. Ameritrade is also one of the fastest-loading homepages on the Web."
a netcraft query shows they are running
Server: Stronghold/3.0 Apache/1.3.12 C2NetEU/3011 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.6.4 OpenSSL/0.9.5a mod_perl/1.22
sounds like they still have some linux left in them.
I've been getting email from people about this '
leaked memo' and wanted to let those interested know that in no way has our roadmap changed.
We were contacted by Microsoft, and they asked questions about how we have deployed Linux and what issues are keeping us from using more Microsoft products. We expressed concerns about licenses, and about the number of people that can be run on Windows in a centralized environment on the same hardware (about 1 to 5 compared to Linux) and how many more people we would have to hire if we moved in that direction. We had a short meeting with them to review the XP product line and see it running in person. We have some stand alone PCs that are running at our library for patrons and at some point those machines probably will be running XP, so we wanted to check it out. We also run some Citrix/WTS products on NT and wanted to review what their plans are for the future to ensure we can continue to run those programs.
We are still seeing Penguins for almost everything running here and in fact there are 3 servers sitting 15 feet from my desk that are spinning RedHat 7.2 right now and being prepared to enter production.
Nothing has changed...and we certainly appreciate those people that cared enough to drop us a line.
Dave Richards
City of Largo, FL (Yes, "City of Progress")
Systems Administrator.
I just gave away a Linux Mandrake 8.0 system to a poor grad student.
Chalk one up for the Revolution!
I plan to continue this activity and have a couple of families who
are disadvantaged in mind. Let's open up new fronts. If you know
someone who is disadvantaged, give them a leg up, give them Linux.
(don't forget to support it).
When I demo linux to a business.. I need to show them more than 'look you can open a word document'.
If you try to simply show them a desktop, you may lose.
I need to show them how one fairly cheap server can handle remote desktops with all the neat features using a bunch of crap PC's. I need to show them how it will be much LONGER before they need to upgrade their PCs to run new applications. I need to show them that, instead of upgrading all 20 pc's in their network in a few years, they will only have to add a new server (and even keep using the old one as well).
And I need them to actually SEE this working, because otherwise they don't buy it.
Then I show them how, oh, you have expansion plans? Well when you add 20 more staff, with this system, you don't NEED to spend a couple grand on each person for a computer.. you can buy terminals from so-and-so and just drop them in.. and they will simply work.
Gimme an electromagnetic pulse cannon! That'll really frag Wintel boxen good.
--
Blue-eyed snugglycat!
NetCraftThe site www.cnn.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/4.1 on Solaris
The site www.msnbc.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
Somebody please make this visible to the entire MS sales team. It's 1:26pm EST, and STILL cannot get into MSNBC.com!!!
Microsoft makes in money like the auto makers make thier money. By constant maintanance and upgrades. Cars are made to fall apart.....Then they buy a Honda and get Linux on their computer. If Hardware companies are smart (IBM, Compaq, Dell, HP, etc listen up) They can sell great hardware running this opperating system...
Yeah, except those hardware companies also make money from planned obsolescence. Dell in particular. Their motherboards seem designed to limit expansion possibilities. Particularly in regard to memory. IDE controllers that don't support big drives, etc. Why would a PC have an upper limit on RAM expansion that is only 2 times what the machine ships with? (i.e. back in 1995, a 32MB machine limited to 64 MB. A recent machine with 128 MB limited to 256 MB. etc.)
In contrast inexpensive machines built by mom-and-pop shops (my Linux machine at home) typically have 768 MB or higher RAM limitations, and that was three years ago.
Surely I'm not the only one to notice this trend in PCs?
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
gotta race up there and set up that tux-tattoo-on-the butt parlor franchise in Redmond ....
First they ignore you
then they laugh at you
then they fight you
then you win.
Microsoft has clearly stepped through to the fighting.
IBM once had one of the world's greatest sales organizations. They were famous for it. If things are now that bad on the sales side, it's really pathetic.
In a sane world, without a neurotic behemoth convinced that its survival depends on the erradication of Free Software, what MS does doesn't matter to linux one bit.
However, the parent poster brings up an excellent point. Microsoft is, in fact, everything I've described above. While obviously limited in their technical innovations, they have proven to be extremely tencacious and creative in coming up with practices that kill anything they perceive as competition.
They'll try with linux. They'll try to shape their contracts and the law. They'll try to shape public opinion. They'll try technical trapdoors. They'll try anything they can. That's how MS works: use any means necessary to kill anything competing.
And anybody who is interested in making choices about what kind of software they use should care
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Quote: hell -- tattoo it on your butt if you have to
Meaning that when/if they pull their heads outta their butts they'll be able to read the inventory?
Someone had to say it and I volunteered.
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
See for yourself.
This memo talks about "winning" customers from one platform or another. Reading through the posts here, I see lots of people saying how they got "wins" by switching some server to Linux from Windows or UNIX or whatever.
This is the wrong strategy. This is playing by the rules Microsoft want to set. How about we follow the lead Linus sets and just do our thing and improve over ourselves, and not worry about what MS think.
If peoeple are wise and insightful enough to use Linux over other solutions, let them reap the benefits. Otherwise, lets not waste our efforts cramming success down peoples' throats. If they want to suffer with Windows, let them. We'll still have the superior operating system, and their increased costs will enact Darwin's laws.
We will lose if we play Microsoft's game. They have it rigged against us. Concentrate on code... write software, not marketing pamphlets.
Why bother.
I mean forget about the h/w and think about it for a second - wouldn't it be easier for Microsoft to begin to put their bloat and software processes in some of the linux communities opensource arenas and obfuscate the line between the two that way?
.. I've started seeing a few reviews recently that begin to point out certain linux projects who are practicing "embrace and extend" ..
Perhaps Microsoft is already putting some of their developers in certain key projects
"...Lloyd now has more body surface area saved to get that Windows tattoo he has always wanted!"
Is this the mark of the beast?
Wow! Until now we could only see penguins in space, underwater, in the offices, all over Internet, conferences, books, T-shirts, car bumpers and North Pole of course. But it seems that from now on we will see (? or we will now they are there) penguins all over Microsoft Staff asses. :)
Leonid Mamtchenkov
Corrollary to my post:
We should learn from how they attack us. We must also go through small and mid-size shops and hunt down and eradicate Win2K, and WinNT servers on grounds of cost and support needed. We must help those trying to win the server space, be ready to call for help in fighting the fight, and be willing to slaughter them on our territory.
For it is our territory, and there is only one way to fight the evil ones, and that is the destruction of their evil network.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
mod this up. it's obviously better read than most of the rest!
It took me a while to put my finger on exactly why this article--and many of the responses to it--annoyed me, but I think I have it now.
You know that Ghandi quote that people who take Linux a bit too seriously love? The one that begins "First they laugh at you..."? The wisdom behind those words is that once you become an active participant in a so-called "battle" of this type, then you have lost. The quiet revolution is one that eventually bubbles to the surface because it is _honest_. People going about their lives, doing what they believe in, is a powerful thing. It is more powerful that calls to arms and out-and-out zealotry. In fact, the latter often tends to get people away from what it was they believed in in the first place; they get swept away by the grandeur of the "war," and no longer represent their original ideals.
Linux was interesting when it was the honest bubbling up of what was perceived as a better solution by some people. Now that there has become obvious and pointless fighting between Linux users and Microsoft, it isn't Microsoft that has lost...it is Linux. All this energy devoted toward hating Windows, talking about Microsoft, putting down XP, and as a result a large, large segement of Linux users have become these aimless zealots who don't even know why they use Linux any more other than to crush Microsoft. And as such, Linux has lost.
How can you compare GNU/Linux with Napster?
,which currently support linux, to "new" underground projects. What about programmers, who joined the GNU/Linux project because it has become big (say: IBM, for example)?!
You seem to be afraid of loosing programmers/hackers
These people should outnumber "lost" programmers, by far. Anyway, this comparison is not neccessary because GNU/Linux cannot loose because of becoming "mainstream".
Unlike Napster or an underground band, to stick with your examples, GNU/Linux can have an indefinite number of states (see the various distributions) and anyone can choose the one he likes.
Take the Internet bubble a few years ago (where Linux-companies where pushed into the stock market and then miserably failed)as an example how Linux survives media hypes and comes out even stronger.
Well, we've got no real browser. Netscape/Mozilla suck ass. I'm sorry, but they're much worse than IE.
..Which doesn't really affect the average user. Who uses MS Office? Businesses and warez kiddiez.
We are, however, catching up on the office suite bit.
Desktops. Vaya con carne, Microsoft, vaya con carne. We've got several to choose from. Blackbox, for those who want a sleek, sexy windowmanager that does just that - manage the freakin' windows - without jitters and craptasticness from bloat. Bloat, though, you're ex-MS and want bloat? We'll give you bloat the likes of which you've never seen. Enlightenment. Gnome. Choose your poison, and see what *real* coders can do with feature bloat.
..And for those who are lost and scared by the minimalistic ideals of Blackbox, or the totally off the wall, all but works-of-art themes of Enlightenment, we've got KDE. Aka, Microsoft Windows(tm) for Linux.
All Linux needs is a decent browser, and that's it. It's easy enough to install now. RedHat, at least, is - it's no harder than reinstalling a Microsoft Operating system, and I don't know anyone who's never done that.
Hell. My father, a man of over fifty years, is quite comfortable with the intricate text-based command line he's got at work. He hasn't grown up with computers, yet it didn't take him long to learn. I have no doubts that it'd take a day or two of fiddling for him to get 'comfortable' with Linux. (Well, any decent distribution.)
"We need a single desktop!" Bullshit. You people are morons, recycled drones from the world of Microsoft, spouting embrace and extend, embrace and extend! Linux is about choice. Linux is about freedom. And we'll see anyone who tries to make one standard desktop in the firey depths of hell.
Companies won't develop commercial apps without a single desktop? Fuck them. No other language will suffice for that. Like we need commercial apps? Hmm.. Borland Overpriced Compilers. Microsoft Visual Drek. GCC. One of these things kicks the crap out of the others, one of these things just isn't the same..
In the end, Linux will 'win' this so-called war, simply because it works, it works well, and most importantly, the men and women behind the code take *responsibility* for their actions - they patch bugs instead of ignoring them for months. They create useable documentation (Man pages vs. normal windows help files? Hah. Man pages win, hands down.)
Come, batter yourself against the shores of freedom, Microsoft. You'll find yourself ignored but for a few idiots who joined on the bandwagon to look cool in front of their friends.
The rest of us? We'll simply ignore you.
You're not important anymore.
I agree that this memo looks like nothing more than ordinary motivational rah-rah blather. What I absolutely adore is the sense of entitlement.
"EVERY propritary Unix server out there is a Microsoft sale waiting to happen, gosh darn it! Every time one of those faithless IT people swaps in a Free Unix to replace a proprietary Unix... they're STEALING our sale! That's money taken from OUR pocket! Linux is to blame for the tattoos on my ass! EVERY TIME ONE OF YOU BEARDED, TEE-SHIRT-WEARING HIPPIE SCUM BOOTS Linux, MICROSOFT CHILDREN GO HUNGRY!!!!!"
Large projects require extensive planning before pulling the trigger. They also require nearly perfect execution.
I have no inside information about Ameritrade, but in my career, I have been on many projects, including some disaster. I have been one to come in after the failure, and clean it up. I have also been responsible for causing failures. You learn from it, and move on.
as far as I was aware no company memos to distirbutors/resellers would ever be like this. it strikes me as a little bit suspicious but never mind
Non-standard, or non-popular hardware is always a hassle, where with Windows you get the driver supplied with it
Nothing to do with Linux, all to do with Windows' monopoly.
A Windows support person (I was one) could easily walk my grandmother through the process of putting the cd into the drive, clicking the right things, etc
I could say the same about Linux. Actually, the support person could just ssh and install it for them.
The required steps to get hardward working good under Linux can be (and often are) much, much more complicated and time consuming
Installing a quick module, or selecting from a list seems much simpler than the hassle of sorting out hardware in Windows, with countless reboots, conflicts and things going wrong.
trying to compile a new application from source
Erm, how easy is that under Windows compared to Linux? At least Linux comes with decent compilers, taking the pain out of compiling programs.
discovering it needs version x of some lib, downloading that lib, discovering it needs version y of some other lib, downloading that, etc. etc. etc
Sounds just like the hassle I've had with various vbrun and similar libraries, whereas with Linux I can just type "apt-get install program", and this will be all sorted out.
The home end user is accustomed to adding new software continually, and would not be able to do this on Linux
Erm, the end user ISN'T used to continually adding software. Either it comes preinstalled, or they get someone to do it. With Linux, then can just use apt-get, or just get someone to ssh in and do it for them.
Not yet anyway.
Why? Haven't they got apt-get?
"I can't do it Raymond, I can't kill my own father." - Linux Community
"Then the empire has already won, you were our only hope." - - Obi Wan Raymond
"IBM spoke of another." - - Hacker Community
"The other he spoke of is your twin sister"
"-but I have no sis-"
"To protect you both from the emperor you were hidden when you were born. That is why your sister remains safely anonymous."
"BSD... BSD is my sister."
"Your netcraft surveys server you well. Bury your usage statistics deep down. They do you credit, but they could be used to server the emperor...."
Go Lakers!
Hmmm...Could be. But Microsoft wouldn't do THAT would they?
That answers a lot of questions for me, I was always wondering why they had that funny walk.
Most Comp Sci departments at leading institutions, such as MIT, Stanford, CMU, Cornell, etc, are pushing .NET technologies and the Windows platform. The fact that the CRL is simply more adapted to both real world and pedagological tasks is what is driving Linux from the classroom, just as Intel has pushed MIPS based processors out. Leading experts cite four to six years as the amount of time before serious development on Linux starts to dramatically slow down.
I suspect that was before MS started buying congress.
The laws that have started appearing aren't about technical merit, and have no respect for it. They are about the purchase of a legal monopoly. The court decisions have been about the purchase of a legal monopoly.
Justice doesn't enter into this picture. If the laws were neutral with respect to legislators, then this would be bribery. They aren't, so it's lobbying. And legal. But ethically and morally it's bribery.
If the legal system wants respect, it has to deserve it. The current legal system has created a people that believes in "what you can get away with", because that's the standard that's held up as an example.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, seems like that memo was written
by some Marketing asshole.
I wonder does he even know the difference
between Linux and Windows 2000.
People like him never use more than Ms Word,
and Ms Solitaire
Ok, this might be long, so please be patient.
....
:CVS, Postgres, excellent networking, thousands of other open-source/gnu tools ...., but nothing has ever been built upon those to create good management products.
RedHat is a corporation with a LAN and employees. Some of these employees are engineers and are certainly "familiar" with Linux. Well they are since they make such great distros. However, they also have secretaries, management et al... Do they use Linux too?
I ask because, then as all other corporations they will need some form of Office+Exchange+Project
Of course, they might all be using Linux, but I doubt their work is as efficient (management wise) as if they were using Windows+Office+Exchange+Project. And I am not trolling here. I am dead serious. I have yet to see a good combination of those tools on Linux. Sure, we already have all the building blocks of such things
You could also say they all suck since Windows crashes so often. Well, the bad news is XP/2000 is crashing much less now and those tools have been around for a looong time. So, I do not think we are a real threat to Microsoft except on the server side YET.
Now back to RedHat. Wouldn't it gain profit if it created management tools such as Microsoft but based upon already existing and powerful net-centric tools? Of course it would. It would have better management as starters for itself, and could also start selling it to people using its distro.
In other words, it is up to Linux corporations to start making corporate tools for themselves as starters then maybe in a couple of years, we will be able to compete seriously in the corporate desktop world.
Have fun
Linux blunts MS move into traditional UNIX markets, hardly anything new there. Linux is more of an enemy for folks like Sun than MS.
Now in the workstation arena things can get more interesting. I've seen Sun boxes replaced with PC/Linux workstation and somewhere along the line it was decided to have the workstations dual boot to Linux or NT. The only loser here was Sun, MS was a co-winner.
While I hate to respond to a sub-troll that's designed to fill up Slashdot with useless garbage, I'd like to make a point to all the people whining about how unfair it is that Slashdot has the nuts to reference the truth. Show me a page hosted by MS, MSNBC, or any other traditional media outlet that works as well as Slashdot. The news is here, user posted and moderated. The only abuse comes from MicroTurd appologists and others who manipulate multiple accounts to self moderate offtopic and inflamitory blither up. The truth shall set you free, and it is only revealed by free dialog.
Slashdot's confidence in it's readers, freedom and the truth have show it's strength. M$'s closed source garbage, Astroturfing, massive advertising budget, and fear of their users shows weakness.
M$ is dying.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The best part of the original memo is when the veep appluads a random salesperson for convincing Broward County, FL to use M$ instead of Redhat for their 40+ webservers, including a quote of a joke something like ~"If Broward County is all about progress, then why would they use Linux?" hahaha.
Remember who fscked up the elections, folks? Yeah, they're all about progress, and they just made another stellar decision.
11*43+456^2
You the man!
It comes down to senior management, and most execs are non-techie. Much microsoft advocacy is down from a primarily business perspective, much nix advocacy (especially Linux) is done from a primarily technical perspective; until nix vendors do a better job fighting Windows on the finance, marketing and media battlefield they'll keep losing ground to Microsoft, irrespective of the technical merits of the products involved.
Well, the business advocacy is very simple: Why pay for something you can get for free?
Linux service contracts are cheaper than Microsoft service contracts. Linux licenses cost nothing. Better security in Linux will mean less downtime, meaning more income. Linux also runs faster than Windows and has fewer hardware requirements. In short, Windows means substantially more cost in the short term and the long term, for substantially less revenue. If you want to gain and keep a competitive edge, you MUST use Linux. Otherwise, competitors who use it will drive you into the ground -- especially with the economy the way it is, who can afford to waste money on Windows?
how paranoid M$ would be if "linux" had even 1/10 the amount of salesman drones they have. the "wins" sited are soooo lame.
This guy makes reference to the "Linux Compete Team." I think that if a super-behemoth company like M$ creates a team dedicated to eliminating choice through FUD, (i.e.: the "Linux Compete Team") well, that is noteworthy.
.Net initiative, so try to sell them on green or mauve. If they put up a fight, remind them of that ozone hole that current blue skies allow! Remind them that, with us, the sky (with M$ SkyColor 2.0), is no longer our, er, I mean, THE limit."
;-)
On the other hand, can you imagine being on that team? "Ok team, we have to convince people that a blue sky is not necesarilly the way to go. Sure, it may be free, pretty, and dovetail perfectly with the present environment, but blue skies do not integrate well in our
Seriosly, though... I am a theatre major-turned bookseller-turned library tech guru, and when I started the tech stuff, I was a Windows neophyte. I hadn't programmed one line in about 15 years, and the library was about to move into a new building. By the time the hard drive on our NT server crashed, (a convenient excuse to replace NT with RH, even if it was a hardware problem) I was more than ready to cut the umbilical to M$. Now, with free office suites available for Linux, an apparantly endless upgrade path for Windows, and a gestapo-like enforcement of insane, outdated EULAs, there are fewer and fewer reasons for me to encourage the board of trustees to continue supporting the M$ model. That's $$ better spent on books, PCs, and tech toys for me, IMHO.
Maybe I can email my open-source success story to Mr. Valentine someday.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Maybe Microsoft will make Windows more Linux-ish, not on the surface but as long as those who need the tools can get at it, hey why not?
...can't Windows just be happy with the gigantic market they already have? Doesn't Microsoft earn enough money already? Do they really need to take over the Linux market too? :(
"No, we don't do monopoly stuff" my as$...
Linux is a heck of a lot more secure and more scalable than Windows. And for real databases,
you can't beat a high end Unix/Linux back end.
In fact, I work for a State that's I am not going to name. We've got an Oracle database for this
project running on a HP 9000 for the backend.
Typical load average with 275 concurrent users is
.25, and guess what... the bloody frontend (Metaframe based) is slow because the 4 citix servers are nor enough for the 275 users. I say,
toss the NT boxes and the Windows front end out and write our own app and serve it out.
Windows is a joke when it comes to true Enterprise Solutions.
Well I guess that the bunch at Microsoft have totally missed the point, considering the events of the last few months,such as a constant flow of worms, trojans which seem to haunt the Microsoft Products. Didn't the Gartner Group say a month ago that IIS server's were fast becoming a liability, considering these security and related maintenance issues ? Companys are moving to Linux because such security issues are promptly dealt with, plus the fact that Linux excels as a server with a minimum of maintenance, etc. Perhaps Microsoft should focus their efforts on improving the aspects of their products where these vulnerabilities are of a crucial nature and hence remove any such *threat* to their market share.*grin*
My two bits
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
On the other hand, I've worked with IBM sales before, and they're no push-overs either
:P
Anyone heard of OS/2 lately
From the article:
if you see Linux and/or IBM in there with it, then get all over it. Don't lose a single win to Linux.
Someone should tell that guy that if you lose, then it's not a win. It makes no sense at all to say that you "lost a win".
Unless, perhaps win means Windows. If their customers lose their win, that means that they REALLY win.
If I become a salesman someday, I'm going to play stupid head tricks with my fellow salesmen. For an experiment, I'm going to see if I can get everyone to say "come on and let's win the FUCK out of it." That would be funny.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It's funny how not only MS doesn't realize what it is deaing with but that even a large number of linux supporters don't realize.
MS being fearful of linux/gnu/gpl is as silly as being afraid of the ground doing damage to the foundation of a house. Trying to dig the dirt away to protect the foundation.
Linux/gnu/gpl is a natural evolution of common open computer science/industry/application that is only comming into focus now because MS's distraction (which started with Bill Yelling Piracy) is being seen for what it is, a distraction of what would have otherwise beter evolved.
There is no way to stop this evolution, it's been held back long enough. And to add to this, IBM has begun to recognize the need to openly move towards auto-coding techniques - autonomic computing and an open source bridge tool eclipse
As a matter of genuine computer science and the core of autonomic computing there are the NINE action/function constants
In short: MS is trying to battle what is in essence genuine computer science, the natural laws of the physical phenomenon of how we use abstractions. Inherently MS will lose, for even it has to use these in the distractions and distortions it tries to create.
The fact this direction is being called linux is perhaps a distraction from the GNU effort which is in fact just a label that is being used to identify this open source direction.
Maybe Godwin's Rule should be extended to include the words "Florida Recount." Unless, of course, we get a story where Brian Valentine blames the whole "election thing" on Linux. In which case we'd have to extend the Rule to include "Brian Valentine," as well...
This is a problem. YOu can't go up to a CFO and say, "Linux has X, Y and Z features that would be really cool for us to use." You can't even say that to the CTO. Rather you can say, "We can develop project X for $Y on Windows and $Z on Linux." Show them the bottom line, not the tech details.
THis is why marketeers market to the managers, not the IT personnel.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Of course, there are threats to the Free Software community. The most dangerous one is abolishing the general purpose computer, i.e. a computer on which you decide which software you run and install. Abolishing the general purpose computer is certainly on the agenda of the copyright industry (look at all these copy prevention schemes), but it is not something Microsoft can do alone.
Abolishing the general-purpose computer is also on the agenda of a whole bunch of ordinary Joe Q. Users, I suspect. Do you think people like having to turn on their computer, wait for it to boot up, start up their Internet connection (dialer or whatever), wait for that to connect, and then start up an E-mail program before they can read their E-mail? If so, you're nuts. I expect that in 20-30 years, the PC will be fading away, to be replaced by either thin clients (think .NET but without the monopoly) or special-purpose E-mail terminals, word processors, whatever.
I don't claim that PC's will completely disappear, of course; I personally will probably keep on using one, and probably a lot of the Slashdot crowd as well. I could even see Open Source staying at least as common as it is today, with companies simply providing network connectivity / hardware and bringing in money from users. But remember that a huge majority of people out there doesn't have a clue what source code is, much less an interest in using it.
It's too bad they're not spending the billions working on stuff like voice recognition , natural language parsing , voice synthesis or intelligent user interfaces .
Where are the VR interfaces, massive dataset visualisers and massively distributed systems ?
Oh... wait...
isn't it likely that MSFT will try to endrun you by working on your policitians, though? this is a favored tactic of theirs.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
While I have my doubts about this email being true or not (Microsoft is usually pretty tight about email leaks--the only thing they are tight about and their only security concern) I do think if we as the Linux community want to see more wins on our side we should do like the religous and other groups. We need to email the hell out of Ameritrade telling them that we wouldn't trust our money to be handled by a system built on a buggy Win2000 base. If invested pull the money and put it somewhere else. This is why the other groups do so well--This is what Windows does along with courting D.C. to make bad things go away and get stupid bill proposals started.
OS/2 and the PS/2 weren't killed by poor marketing -- they were killed by IBM's arrogance that anything it pushes out will sell, JUST BECAUSE IT'S IBM and not because of any of its unique traits.
The marketing that IBM _did_ do was excellent and professional -- what killed them was the marketing they _didn't_ do because they thought they didn't have to. Unfortunately, the consumer drooling in front of their TV only buys what they see on TV, and here comes a Gateway 2000 and Microsoft commercial...
Except that they will have no power to say that certain things are 'no longer supported', the way that they can with all things DOS.
Now there are projects like ZipSlack and LTSP - I don't see how they can make things like that go away.
Sure, things like KDE and Gnome and StarOffice might get all bloated, but you can always dump them for BlackBox (or your favorite shell) and VI. You don't have that choice with Windows XP.
I can't see the Kernel gurus letting the kernel get out of hand anytime soon, either. Even if it does, there's nothing preventing someone from releasing a new distro based on an old kernel.
-- My Weblog.
This is the question. Whether it is noble in the mind to suffer the slings and ...
The answer - people who like McD food (not so cheap, greasy, spongy bread, ground nostrils, hydroponic lettuce, soy bean oil mayo, lard fries, whooaa. To put it in perspective,
a lunch at Botin (the mnu of the day) is what you pay for a full egg crate of the McDee's goods.
Same situation as in Linux/Unix, got to have a brain to begin with. Like it brainless, click on.
Slashdot is good because it is a community based news service. However the previous post was a complaint about manipulation of the media to get something across unfairly, particularly by Slashdot posters.
The truth sets you free more easily if it isn't hiding behind propoganda-like manipulations of it. It is good that the Register actually put the memo up so you can read it outside of the anti-MS stuff and come up with your own opinion of it, even if it comes out anti-MS or not.
Of course, how the article was presented, especially by the title and such, made it seem a lot worse than it was.
And then Slashdot posts it so the effect was that much greater.
Is it ok to "reveal the truth" and complain about how unfair Microsoft's marketing plans and actions are, but not to complain about how Slashdot postings and The Register's revelations are kind of sensationalized to make it seem a lot worse than it is?
Talk about FUD. Apparantly it is ok to be open minded about using non-MS and non-proprietary products, but not ok to be open minded enough to be ok with choosing to use MS and proprietary products.
And again, that is not what the original post was about. It was about being able to get "news" without the sensationalized and blown out of proportion crap that comes with it. Yes we know Slashdot is generally anti-MS. Does news of MS have to come coated with barbed wire, or can we assume that if MS is as bad as people say that it's actions will show it by themselves?
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
Yes, everyone, Microsoft does have a sales organization. And (this should come to no surprise to anyone) they are a GOOD sales organization. The only thing surprising about this memo is how tame it actually is. Anyone who has even remotely seen how sales people need to be motivated knows this already.
Yes, this memo says that Linux is "the" threat. However, look at the cases where it's a supposed threat. Apparently this particular representative of Microsoft feels that it's manifest destiny for the good old boys at Redmond to take over the server market where heavier solutions like HPUX, AIX, and other backbone systems have traditionally dwelled.
To me, this is a world apart from the traditionally eye-candy desktop toy that Windows has been in the past. NT foundation or not, Windows still has had a background of the desktop, and its ventures into the world of webservers and database backends apparently has been taken for granted by some parties.
Linux has stepped up because it's a familiar platform. Apparently that's the only marketing ploy according to Microsoft. If anything, Linux advocates need to show the technical superiority and ease of use/support that is possible, reasons why Windows may be encroaching into the traditional server world.
Yes yes, it's true once again - MS is the one true evil and their only purpose in life is to lie/cheat/steal their way into the hearts, minds and wallets of the public! Too bad we have such a gutless administrationin Washington these days (no problem with bombing dirt-poor Afghans back into the 3rd century, but whoa if you want to put a stop to a multi-billion dollar IP scam). Alas, welcome to Western-style Freedom in the 21st century! P.S. - Hi Aum, long time, no see! --> move along, move along, nothing more to see here...
-- People who think they know it all, really annoy those of us who do!
In a related vein, I heard a rumor that Microsoft is threatening the states that won't settle in the antitrust case with reduced licensing at high prices - supposedly some universities have been called and threatened with cutoffs or price increases.
that parrot is going to bring the computing world to it's knees
that their software blows, and sooner or later, the masses are going to find out
There, I said it.
there's no place like ~
2 things to consider:
1: A fabricated document that tries to show some wins for Microsoft.
2. Was never really leaked, but is real. It was leaked due to stories about Linux wins and because IBM had been saying how successful Linux was doing (and then pumped more money into Linux...).
Either way, it shows terror. They are probably getting hammered on the server side, or at least getting severly slowed down.
Matt
Maybe that's the problem... when an Operating System turns into a religious following and suddenly a business transaction takes on a sinister implication. You can see this as a company trying to beat their competitor, or a fight against the 'cause' of free software. Frankly I'd rather go with option A, because MS would be happy to produce 'free' software if they thought they could make more money off their products that way. Are they worried about this great cause for freedom sweeping across the world and influencing the common man, or are they trying to improve their sales at the expense of the competing products?
When an OS turns into a religious following? it's not about the OS.
Capitalism is squashing evolution and innovation. Forget the nitty gritty... look at the w h o l e picture.
it says so on their website
Tell Microsoft-only organizations to threaten Microsoft, saying "we'll switch to open source software (e.g., GNU/Linux) instead of Microsoft's software." Organizations that do so might be able to save a lot of money, even if they have no intention of actually making the switch.
Many of these Microsoft-only shops have been hit with the recent licensing changes that (for most) increase their costs, and believe that there's nothing they can do about it. It looks like Microsoft may be so concerned about losing business that they may grant all sorts of price concessions to keep business. Organizations should develop competitive bidding strategies (just like they do for many other purchases), looking at the costs and benefits of the services they're paying for.
Obviously, organizations are only going to save a lot of money if they're a credible threat, e.g., represent a significant account and have "done their homework" to show that they really could switch to open source software. Total cost of ownership (TCO) calculations and quantitative evidence help here. Many organizations will find employees who can really strengthen this analysis through personal experience (e.g., those who use such software at home). If Microsoft wants "exclusive use" clauses, make sure they're dearly won and for a limited time (so that the organization can save lots of money again in a few years). Even if the organization picks Microsoft anyway (just as they were going to do), open sourcers can find amusement in causing Microsoft's revenue stream to dwindle.
Of course, an organization always runs the danger of finding out that open source software is actually the best choice. In that case, they can find the delight of a surprise bargain they weren't expecting.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Sounds good, but I don't think it's that easy. In my workplace, I find that every time I put forth the "Linux will cost you less!" argument, it quickly gets shot down as a cliche that's incorrect because "re-training people to use a new OS offsets the cost savings".
It doesn't help when you work with an I.T. staff that only knows MS products to begin with. Attempts to change the status-quo are seen as thinly veiled attempts to "one-up" them by installing products that only you are well-equipped to manage and use.
Truthfully, I think the businesses that are enlightened enough to try Linux are doing so not so much because of cost-savings promises, but because they hand off some decision-making power to the techies.
Am I the only one who interprets that email as just more empty headed corporate cheer leading ? Rational people did get sick of this sort of almost militaristic hyperbole, but isn't the essence of the email that M$ just fights hard and dirty to keep market share (surprised ?). Its interesting that Linux is singled out as the main enemy, albeit in part due to its similarity to Unix, when Sun and other competitors are named. I would have fought that the Unix providers are the more likely threat sinc they have traditionally been the server market leaders.
re: database filesystems
I always wanted one of those! I am tired of directory trees. They are too fragile, too hard to change, and divide only on one aspect at a time.
(begin trolling)
OOP inheritance has similar tree flaws. IBM's IMS trees proved the concept sucked 2+ decades ago. How many times do we have to relearn bad org ideas?
oop.ismad.com
Table-ized A.I.
So, start with the simpler things like DHCP backup (non-AD) DNS servers. Maybe some experimental file servers. Ask for permission to put up some demo servers.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Well, his statement is a red herring really.
If someone installs Windows and EVERYTHING doesn't work. Does that mean that windows is no longer a threat? Reality says otherwise.
Well, it isn't theft really since the BSD licence allow that
Even with the BSD license version 2 that eliminated the GPL-incompatible form of the advertising clause ("This program contains software developed by Regents of UC and contributors" in all advertising), all programs using BSD code still must contain a little ad in the about box: "Portions copyright Regents of the University of California." Not only does this imprint "University of California" on the minds of bored high schoolers looking through about boxes, but it also gets people to go looking on Google for the Regents, and lots of BSD licensed software pops up. Advertising works.
I can see an interpretation of the BSD license version 2 that potentially infects software that uses BSD code to be free as in beer:
Will I retire or break 10K?
To tell Microsoft what they can and cannot write into their software, barring intellectual property theft of course, is sick.
Why stop there? Since Linux uses ideas that were originated in Unix, prohibit Linux.
Every argument for violating Microsofts ability to choose what they write as their own software reduces private property rights for everyone else too.
Private Property, the basis of wealth, investment, prosperity, labor and freedom itself, is what is being attacked.
Just because "we" don't like Microsoft it's ok to enslave them to the arbitrary power of the state?
Beware the DoJ and this power you so approve of as it is used upon your foe, for you WILL find that power used against you next.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
had **nothing** to do with that particular project whatsoever. It was actually a very minor deal.
"Wireless : LAN
Out of all the sales decisions customers make:
40% buy it because of the "vision" you get across
40% buy it because of the price
20% buy it because of the products technical features
And then he said:
I take that back. Actually half of the sales decisions are made on the golf course, and for the other half what I just said holds true.
Idempotent operation: Like MS software, wether you run it once or often, that doesn't make it any better.
Give me a break. This is sale rhetoric guys. If MS sales managers aren't all this arrogant then they should be (and probably have been) fired. What else would you expect someone in sales to do? Stirring up the sh*t is their business.
--
Microsoft coming in here and trying to do a 'top-down' push won't work. There operating system and software would cost a LOT of money, and require many more servers and support staff. What we have now is working, and responsive and stable. Local Governments are really often about money, Largo enjoys a very low tax rate, and part of that is because of low IT costs.
the sad thing is, I'm dating a geek now and she and I do sometimes talk about sys admin and programming over dinner....
Oh God, I never realized how sad my life really was until this post.
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!
There are situations when the technology specified and delivered is just not the right solution. But this inevitably stems from poor analysis up front, or an inside deal between the purchaser and the vendor. Sweetheart Deals are the kind of thing to look out for when dealing with MS. Back in the 1970's, it was said, 'No on ever got fired for buying IBM.' It was true then, and in the 1990's that was true of Microsoft. That kind of thinking is still around, bu MS is beginning to feel the crunch. They are getting pushed back in the datacenter, and are not making the kind of ground they'd like in the web arena.
Yes, but if the Halloween documents were truly leaked intentionally for that purpose, it may have backfired on Microsoft pretty badly. A lot of people started taking Linux more seriously after those documents were released - Microsoft basically was seen to acknowledged Linux as a serious competitor, apparently in private and not just as a courtroom claim.
From a marketing perspective, this sucks for Microsoft. This latest memo does something similar. The more frightened Microsoft gets, the harder they squeeze to "eliminate" Linux, the more customers will slip through their fingers. I presented at a meeting yesterday in which I explained to two CEOs - one of a business with 300 employees, and one with annual revenues in the billion dollar range - why we were moving some of their key in-house applications away from Microsoft development products, and they were nodding in agreement. They've heard the news stories. Microsoft can no longer fight the bad PR, except by becoming a genuinely responsible company (and how likely is that?)
It's sort of funny to see the memos plaintively wondering why clients are moving to Linux. I suppose it's tough for Microsoft to admit the truth to itself: "because our business practices suck, and customers are sick of us!"
This is just the normal evolution of any social movement. In the beginning, it's small and consists mainly of people who understand why they're doing what they're doing. As it grows, it picks up "groupies", in effect, who are in it for the cool factor and because they see these other people, whom they admire, doing it. None of this affects the real reasons why the people who know why they're using (and developing!) Linux, use Linux. So the fundamentals haven't changed.
As for the anti-Microsoft focus, the reason for that, in case you haven't noticed, is that we're surrounded by Microsoft, and this is not a good thing! Everywhere you look, people are crashing and cursing their computers and fetishistically running scandisk and installing more and more antivirus software and wondering if their new XP license is going to expire before they get to a phone to call for renewal. Even if Linux didn't exist, people would still bash Microsoft. Heck, many Linux-ignorant Microsoft users bash Microsoft.
Linux hasn't lost anything just because it's seen as a potential haven and refuge from the most egregious monopoly that's been seen for decades. Linux can only win. In fact, the real virtue of Linux is really, really, simple: ultimately, it cannot lose. It is the operating system that the people of this planet have chosen to create cooperatively. Until all of those people decide to switch their efforts to something else, Linux isn't going anywhere, or losing anything.
There's plenty of space for all of us in this world. All parties have to stop these threats and start to coexist. Dualboot, VMWare or whatever. Boot both Linux and/or FreeBSD.
I can't say I hate to see Microsoft getting a bit of a challenge nor that I hate to see Linux moving forward. But in the final analysis of the L vs W battle, I truly don't care. I made my decision to install SuSE 7.1 on my family's machines and we're all totally pleased with the results. I have installed the same on a couple friend's machines and they are pleased, too. Fight all you want, MS. After years of Window-ing, I found something that I think is better. I didn't marry MS and don't feel bad about abandoning it. Certainly I would like to see Linux become the no. 1 OS but if it doesn't, who cares? I like Linux and have NO plans to change and will continue to quietly recommend it to all those who deserve it. Keep in mind that there ARE people who deserve nothing better than MS Windows and AOL. God bless 'em. Linux can't die because it's not a company or a commercial entity - it's a movement of people just looking for a better way of making their computers work the way THEY want them to. Do what you want, Microsoft, but be professional about it. If you can't compete on quality, look for popularity. All I ask is that you leave me and my family alone to enjoy OUR system of choice.
...that intelligence would be a threat to Microsoft. Oh well.
Karma: Non-Heinous
But why the hell should we point to Linux supporters so that Microsoft KNOWS where to attack?
Let them do the search themselves!
Home Page
Yeah, like any Microsoft salesman would talk like that. Grow up.
You are a bunch of pathetic assholes. Linux never ruled, and Linux never will rule. Stop bugging the world with shit like that, especially when it's all a lie. I agree with the guy that said that no Microsoft salesman would ever post a memo like that.
/. but you guys are really behaving like childs now.
I used to be a frequent visitor of
While I agree, this can also lead to unemployment when someones toes start to feel stepped on, or when it is discovered that one less techie can do more work on a better platform?
What kind of cerial was that again?
In my experience there is a cost trade off retraining people, however I have found that with a little time spent making a proper proposal you can show that cost to be a one time deal, and demonstrate that incoming "new blood" will have many of those capabilities inbuilt. Sometimes it comes down to "in order to make money in the long run you have to spend some in the short run"
Sometimes not so thinly veiled attempts are felt by some of those managers less understanding of "newer" technology.
... And after they have handed off some of the thought process the money issue becomes a larger driving factor?
What kind of cerial was that again?