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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.
I submitted it, so I guess I'm biased. I agree that this isn't unusual. It's news because most people don't get to see how killer sales operations work (as I mentioned, IBM is also very agressive).
It's also useful for anybody who might be bidding against MS to have some insight into what they're up to. If you have a fortune 1000 client then it might be worthwhile to find out what their MS sales rep. has been up to.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Is Microsoft *the* threat to Linux?
How to Download YouTube Videos
Actually we should send Linux victories to the person who wrote this memo. I'd wager this memo was intentionally "leaked" to have a demoralizing effect on the Linux community. We can only be so courteous in return.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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.
"...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?
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.
mod parent up! This says exactly what I've been talking about to my various managers for years. The big problem is, the argument is starting to fall apart. Win2k is almost acceptable from a technical viewpoint, so you need to get into more detail. Exec's don't want to hear detail, their eyes glaze over. At that point, you lose. I'm on the IT Architecture team here now, and I'm finding it difficult to even get the rest of the team to listen. grrrrr. I did manage to get them to consider allowing us to install a Linux box running Oracle 9iAS though, so I think I 'm getting a win. It occurs to me that we (us geeks and sysadmin types) are the only people really selling Linux, our counterparts in M$ land are professional sales people. We kick their ass technically, don't we? No wonder it's tough for us to beat them in the board room, closing the sale so to speak.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
- 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"
> 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.
Well, for the average person there is no need for anything but a default installation. Honestly, as a user of both Windows and Linux and a computer person, I haven't really needed to do that much to windows, and when I have it has been because of a specific piece of hardware or software and I've had instructions on what to do. I'm not really sure about how to play with the registry or anything, but I've never needed to either.
These Linux is hard to install arguments are a red herring. It's true that most users could not install Linux without help, it's also true most users could not install Windows without help.
I would have agreed with this if it were win98, but only somewhat. Windows for me used to always be a pain in the ass to install. But, someone gave me a free copy of Win2k a while back, and when I installed it I had to do absolutely nothing. There were no prompts, nothing. It just installed without a hitch, which I've never had from microsoft before. I assume XP is as polished on the install. Of course, its a purely default installation, but at least it was no problem.
I think a top priority for linux needs to be supporting hardware and making it easy to install new hardware. I think its easy to use linux, but sometimes getting the system configured for a new piece of hardware is a several day process for me involving a lot of web searching and frustration. It shouldn't be that way.
If Microsoft's people can walk in and convince upper management that their products can do the job cheaper than the Linux alternative, 9 times out of 10 they'll get the contract. Anything else would be foolish.
Don't go on about how you don't have to pay license fees for the OS and how this makes Linux a vastly cheaper alternative. Most people realise the fact that OS licenses, in the real world, are a minor factor in the total cost of ownership compared to maintainance, management and training.
It's time the community got together and came up with some significant financial and economic advantages associated with Linux and get beyond the 'free as $0' argument. Then Microsoft will have something to worry about.
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.
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.
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.
> I didn't see one thing in that memo which was a big deal.
I did: Ameritrade tried to migrate to Linux servers & failed. And once the CIO left (obviously due to the failed migration), MS marketroids swept in & convinced them to go with Win2000.
I'd like to know a little more about this failure. We need to learn from the mistakes made here, in order to improve Linux. (And when those Win 2000 servers start breaking, for the next person to come up with a better Linux/BSD implementation.)
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Not too easy competing with free, is it?
I would amend that statement:
Not to easy competing with Free, is it?
It is not the cost of the OS that matters but that there is an extremely large developer community working to make it better AND develop the kinds of application-building environments that Microsoft evengelizes. This helps to reduce the total cost and time to market. Whether Linux is there yet is a good question, and people like myself say it is, but the point is that it will continue to accellerate into other markets (desktop, etc.) and therefore is THE threat to Microsoft's very business model.1
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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.
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.