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ESR Says as PCs Get Cheaper, Windows Will Die
james writes "Eric Raymond reckons Windows will be obsolete because people won't be able to afford it soon." Owning the OS gives MS too great of
an advantage. They'd sell the client for 5 bucks if
it meant that they could still control Office, the
server market, and the zillions of other markets that
their OS monopoly lets them crush.
Apparently the
Walmart.com is selling PCs without Windows. In a Cnet article (sorry, don't have the link) Walmart announced this because the cost of Windows is offsetting the cost of cheap hardware and Windows is making the computer too expensive.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Everybody Slams Raymond
My other sig is extremely clever...
Ahem, YES. Because if 90% of desktops are PCs, when you're on a mac doing anything, you generally want to be able to open a word document.
So, windows monopoly -> word monopoly -> even on macs makes perfect sense for me.
*sighs*
this has been gone over a million times, but i'll try to do it here as best i can.
horizontal and vertical monopolies are *very* different things. the point of such a move would not be to immedately break microsoft's OS stranglehold. the point would be to prevent microsoft leveraging its OS monopoly to create and maintain monopolies in application areas.
The idea is that microsoft's app division has, if they so desire, direct access to all sorts of internal things that no one outside microsoft has. If MS were split into two companies, then *all communication* between the apps and OS microsofts would have to be above-ground and visible to outside-microsoft entities. For example, if MS-Apps wants to embed a web browser into the OS, then they have to publicly ask MS-OS if this is possible, and MS-OS will have to create some kind of public object framework or plug-in architecture that would make such a thing possible and publish the interface to it. The end result of this would be that MSIE can be embedded into microsoft windows, but if netscape or opera so desires they can embed themselves into the OS as well because the manner in which MSIE did this was documented. There would be three upshots of this:
- MS-OS would be forced to create more flexible and almost certainly superior interfaces because (to continue the above example) they'd be designing "an architecture to embed a web browser in file browser windows" rather than just copy&pasting code from internet explorer into the windows graphical shell. (i will attempt to refrain here from attempting in detail to explain how years before windows 98 was even thought of, apple had a plan to use something called opendoc to eventually merge any web browser you liked into the OS, because it not relevant..)
- It would be an important first step toward levelling the playing field insofar as software apps go. Microsoft would still have an intense head start insofar as money in the bank and product inertia goes, but if the DOJ forced MS to fully document the Word file format then microsoft word would be forced to compete on its own merits. (Never mind that all of MS Word's real competitors are now dead; never mind that after all the time MS has had for a head start, MSWord would probably win on its own merits anyway..)
- If MS was forced to document everything for the public, then projects like WINE would have an exponentially easier time.
You could of course say that the DOJ could just force MS to publicly document all interfaces, but MS has a quite clear history of basically spitting in the face of any legal judgements passed on them. Ensuring and enforcing compliance with something like "MS, you must publicly document all interfaces to the OS" would be near impossible, especially since MS has made it clear they are very good at avoiding obeying legal judgements. Witness the early 90s "no product tying" consent decree. . . this is just the *only* way to absolutely make certain that MS-Apps is not recieving preferential treatment, to ensure that the two divisions can only communicate by publishing APIs. Nothing else works. Moreover, once MS-OS and MS-Apps were seperate companies whose survival is not necessarily dependent on each other, if they continue to give each other preferential treatment then their respective stockholders will NOT be happy.This does not mean that a breakup would solve all problems. However, i think it would be an important first step towards allowing some fresh air in to the OS Apps industry, i believe there are a number of things that can only be achieved by breaking up MS. I believe that if MS-Apps was forced to compete the same way normal companies are, other companies might be able to create viable competing products, and those products might be ported to and make viable MS-OS's competitors. It may be it is too late to reverse the damage MS has done to the software industry in sucking up basically all of its resources into one entity. I don't know. Still, though, i would say that splitting up MS is certainly a valid course of action, even if it is not the most logical one.
Does this make sense to you?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Or just use Wordpad. Very few college students need anything more complicated than that.
No, they just didn't ship it :-)
Windows 2000 did have more bugs than any other windows release previous, and it was supposed to come out in 1999. Microsoft delayed it so it wasn't doa.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
No, he doesn't. He thinks it's unethical to sell (or even give) software without the source code, the full rights to modify the source code to suit your needs or fix bugs, and the full rights to redistribute the code (giving credit where credit is due).
He has no problem charging for software, it just doesn't make sense in his plan, since the code can then be given away to someone else.
On the other hand, he did say it was unethical for companies to sell you hardware and then require you to license proprietary tools (often with heavy restrictions) in order to work on that platform. Compilers are a great example - way back when, many companies actually required royalties if you developed a commercial application with their compiler. GCC was a way around this - build GCC with their compiler. Then rebuild it with itself. That was usually enough to get around those pesky licenses.
Kudos to RMS. I think he's horribly unappreciated.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
XP Home Edition = $76.00 (Use "XPHOME" as coupon code.)
XP Professional Edition = $89.00 (Use "XPPRO" as coupon code.)
You'd have to think that computer OEMs are getting much better deals than this. I don't think it's absurd to think that Dell is paying $20 or $25 dollars for Windows when they buy 10,000 copies. I doubt that saving $25 on a new computer (even if it is a $350 computer) is going to convince Joe Public to switch to Linux....
Really, this FUD makes Linux and open source look VERY unprofessional. This ESR guy needs to relax a bit (I have a feeling that he just likes to see his name in print.)