Slashdot Mirror
What Should Microsoft's Open Source Strategy Be?
JWinterboy asks: "I'm guessing that everyone here has a valid criticism of Microsoft's attacks on, and approach towards the Open Source model. To me, that begs the question of what we think would be an "appropriate" reaction from Microsoft towards the Open Source model. It doesn't have a service arm, so IBM's approach isn't really viable. At the same time, non-service related business models haven't fared very well.
What would we like to see Microsoft do? How can it work with the Open Source community, leverage its resources, and still make a buck?"
I bet you can't wait til they have their own distribution.
Personally, I don't see how Microsoft -- a closed and proprietary company -- could ever cooperate with Open Source Software. Their shared sorce program is a weak attempt, not at opening up, but increasing market share in one area where they're lacking. Yeah, that's a real open source attitude: present some code to the public to get more money.
Besides, Microsoft has already made clear that the GPL is a threat to capitalism; hence, their desire to have nothing to do with it.
Especially given that much of Microsoft's revenue is driven from the upgrade cycle.
I don't really see how a service model could make substantial revenue from the consumer market, either. Consumers don't hire consultants.
Well, they could just forget the software biz altogether and sell videos of Steve Ballmer dancing... Hell, I'd pay good money for more of that!
They should liquidate all their assets and spend it on beer.
Facing GPL'ed competition that they can't buy and assimilate - and not being able to GPL their own software without loosing their revenue stream - they are stuck.
If I was in charge of Microsoft - I'd attempt to subvert the legal/patent system in order to kill the GPL.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
fuck open source in the ass with a big rubber dick!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
I'd be satisfied if they stopped breaking the anti-trust laws. Beyond that, let the market decide. Open source will win in the market. I think MS knows that and that's why they're increasingly afraid.
Miko O'Sullivan
Microsoft says the opensource model doesn't work because they don't want an opensource model. It might be inconcievable to the rest of us, but there are some people that favor an extreme capitalist system and don't want software, among other things, to be shared for free. If microsoft doesn't like that, good for them. My only critizicism of microsoft is how they berate other ways to thinking, specifically opensource. It's this closed minded approach to others that really makes microsoft the evil giant many people think of.
Honestly, I don't think Microsoft *could* make it in an opensource world. They'd have to turn everything upside down and inside out. All of their policies would have to change, all of their licensing would have to change... Everything would need to be different. They could prolly still make a good buck selling software in the stores, but when source is available for free, people may simply learn how to compile it themselves.
I think either Microsoft will keep things the way they are or fall apart trying to adapt to something else... I hope I'm wrong because there is a lot of talent and cool ideas coming out of MS, and eventhough I hate thier policies, they do make a good deal of very cool stuff possible on todays computers.
jdW
First thing they must learn is the correct usage of begging the question. Sheesh
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
I think Apple has proved Open Source's usefulness for businesses and the general consumer market. Yes, their license is strictly controlled, but look at the innovation that has come out of it. They have the first and only viable "Unix for the Masses(tm)".
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Purely from the MS point of view a good move would be to open Windows et al under a form of license that allowed modification but prevented redistribution. The many eyes looking over their code would resolve their security problems and maybe more. And those few enthusiasts who downloaded, built and ran their own form of Windows would hardly eat into their revenues at all (as long as they couldn't redistribute), hell they probably pirate already.
As for wholesale theft of the Windoze code base by unscrupulous vendors, MS has the firepower to kick anyone's ass who attempted such antics.
Check it out: Microsoft Consulting Services.
They built GAP.com, among other things. Operations in 30+ countries and all that stuff...
Kevin Fox
If Microsoft's products are worth the money, then people will buy them without being coerced to by incompatible file formats, protocols, and APIs. Their strategy should be good citizenship in the software community (open AND closed source), by making a good faith effort to make interoperability possible.
I think a lot of the animosity toward Microsoft comes from the obstacles they put in the way of fair competition. Standards are the means by which software can compete on the basis of merit, and Microsoft takes advantage of the fact that pragmatically, a market leader's de facto standard speaks much louder than any written document.
Given that Microsoft is currently leading in the OS market and the competition is struggling to hold ground, I don't see why Microsoft should change their strategy. It would be like American Airlines grounding all their planes and throwing their support behind Amtrak only because some groups think airplanes are too loud. It's downright ridiculous to suggest such a thing.
I would be happy with Microsoft paying for the code they have stolen from open source projects.
James
http://james.nontrivial.org
Instead of destroying their compeitors using marketing technequies, they should make better products. Want more pepole to use your server softwear, make it better. Want people to stop defecting to OSX or Linux, make a better OS.
It sounds simplistic, but stop expanding your market intrests, concentrate in what you have allready, if you need to spin off divsions like your games and mousepads which seemed like a good idea at the time, but now do nothing for you. Use the resorces they you have freed up to improve your products. I would have no problem using MS products if they were good, and microsoft didn't engage in practeses which I do not aprove.
And yah, take a clue from open source develpment, I'm not saying that you should post the code for Windows XP on the site, but the best way to have softwear improved is to GPL it!
Sleep is for the weak!
Seems to me, first you're gonna need to teach MS to share with the other children. Since they already like to hide API's, the likelyhood that they would think seriously about open sourcing anything they do is minimal.
However, if they were smart, then anything that they want to bundle or give away SHOULD be under the GPL. (I.E. Media player or IE ) Seems like it would take the wind out of a lot of legal sails if anyone could alter those programs as they chose.
Alas, this is not likely...
Finally, let's not forget, they make their money from people BUYING their software, so it has to be wholly owned by MS. And it's tough to get capitalists to simply give up their primary source of income... =)
"Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing." -Mark Twain
There is no sig...
They can't. Open the OS code - exposing all the hidden APIs - would remove the advantage that their office suite and other software has.
OTOH, it might work anyway, since everyone wants office nowdays. I can't remember the last user to request Word Perfect. If they open up - expose more functionality and make it even easier to program for they might win mind share.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
Microsoft Consulting Services is the service are of Microsoft. The problem is their operating principle is to implement microsoft products on large projects. If they were implementing open source products it wouldn't be as profitable.
I wonder what would happen if someone paid Microsoft consulting services to write code and then told them to open source it.
But that would be bad because the business would lose it's competitive advantage...
I mean, microsoft and a good open source strategy!? This should have been posted 24 hours ago!
MS's strategy should be to build a hybrid, pseudo-open[like apples], operating system that runs off of free unixen. Maybe the freebsd kernel, or the like, could be used. Driver support is already excellent, and microsoft could introduce a nice, stable, OS that was actually easy to use! That would make for less work for microsoft, less money spent prosecuting pirates, better OSes on peoples desks, and, ultimately, better for everyone. But that'll never happen..
It seems to me that MS could be accepting of this business model despite the fact that they choose not to follow it. MS could acknowledge that there are good things that come out of the open source methodology but also show that there are certain tasks better suited to a proprietary market. Security products are definitely more suited to an open source environment, I think almost everyone in the tech industry will agree with that. So why does MS choose to disagree? --because it would lose them money on their proprietary security products, and they'd have to go back on all of the slanders they've made against the open source dynamic. It has turned into a holy war, and I don't think either side will easily admit any defeat.
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
Isn't this a bit like asking what the Open Source Community's Proprietary Software Strategy should be?
And fully open APIs (a la Sun) wouldn't hurt them at all.
1. Release the source code to all their product offerings to under a friendly open source liscense.
2. Become a non-profit organzation that funds software R&D for the greater good. Write specific rules in organization's charter to make sure the bottomless assests are used for good rather than evil.
3. Unveil new "computers for everyone" plan that puts low end hardware running free software in the hands of every man woman and child who asks for one.
Sure, their money can only last for so long, but they can sell "Che" t-shirts or something and make a buck that way.
May be this license (Section "A" in particular) could get them a clue about what they are doing wrong...
It's not our (generic our) problem if M$ can't "work with the Open Source community, leverage its resources, and still make a buck" The fact that M$ "doesn't have a service arm" and "non-service related business models haven't fared very well" isn't our problem either. They don't need to make a profit from every area of the computer industry, and I certainly don't have any desire to help them do so.
Microsoft doesn't have a guarantee to be profitable. They can open up a service area, if they're so desperate to make a buck off open source.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
He's not a troll. He just has the balls to admit the truth. I'm as big of a penguinista as anyone, but I'm also an honest person. This guys hits the nail right one the head. Now, let's see how many other Linux advocates are in denial and can't accept that our beloved Linux isn't as flawless as it is oft purported to be.
If we ever really want to see Linux on the desktop, we need to resolve exactly these issues and a few others: like the air of "superiority" exuded by the OS's current users. Sure, congratulate yourself for converting early; but don't alienate the exact same people you are trying to convert.
[move
Redmond's open source strategy? Make good software or go away. I shall be calling for MSFT to make a massive redistribution of net profits after settling all law suits, and then close down the shop. By '05, they won't have much of a business model left.
OpenOffice has evolved...have you?
If you want to talk about should, they should either do what is best for shareholders, or shut the company down. (The latter would be my preference)
Reality has a liberal bias
Their incredible growth (in the stock market)
has been driven by profits that only an
unregulated monopoly could rake in.
There's really nothing left for them to wish for.
Yeah, I'll be waiting for that to happen right after George Bush gets nominated for a Nobel peace prize!
I stole this Sig
As the post itself states, business-oriented models that focus on selling OSS software have failed. Microsoft's only real hope is to push itself on to linux as best it can. The already converted, people who have been on linux and are used to it, these people are already out of MS's grasp. MS should ignore them. MS has to come to grips with the fact that there are places where it has already lost, where no Service Pack will help them.
For the as-of-yet-converts, MS has some play. IE would give MS a chance to push Passport a little. Office, real un-emulated Office, would make a lot of linux users happy, especially happy. Not to mention that Office is a big $ maker.
Most of all, MS CANNOT buddy-up to the Linux world. MS needs to realize and make use of who they are: our enemy. MS should act like our enemy, be our enemy. They should compete rather than cooperate. Open-source initiatives within MS would probably be a bad idea. They won't make money, and they won't make friends.
They can't. There is no way Microsoft can work within the GPL framework. There is no way Microsoft can work side-by-side with the GPL framework. The GPL ensures that a free marketplace of ideas will always exist. This means competition based on the merits of the product. Microsoft has never been any good at this.
I suggest they work on making Linux illegal, but from many angles. Work on the DRM front, but also on the crypto-export front. Extra credit for finding more ways to make Linux illegal. The only way they can work with Linux is to wipe it out of existence.
Linux is not an option for any one who seeks a professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability, adherence to standards, etc.
Of course not. For servers you want OpenBSD, for desktops, FreeBSD or OS X.
Hate to result to paraphrasing RMS (maybe I need to get out more) but the developers won't literally starve! OK it will present a problem and they would have to find new jobs but they are skilled (allegedly) professionals and if they earn less in thier new job well that's the price we have to pay to rid the world of Microsoft. The universe would not end if Microsoft went bust and in time they may eventually do just that.
As for giving away all their money there is more chance of RMS getting a hair cut!
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
I don't know about their long term strategic goals for SharedSource but I don't want to find out, or be a part of it.
Just last week, an employee from Microsoft emailed me about using some source code from my website. I told him he could, but that it must not appear under SourceSafe or published by Microsoft Press. He responded saying, fine, he'll probably use it for something else!
Very simply, I would like to see Microsoft follow established standards, and publish full, open specifications for the products which can't or don't follow established standards. Microsoft can certainly publish whatever software they want, but in the interest of their customers, painless interoperability would be nice.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
I'm not asking for GPL; MS GPLing anything would just give the GPL a bad name. Just release the source with the software. It's not going to increase piracy, but it will increase quality- the second biggest thing that most people hate them for. The license will be the same, Office will still be closed and go for $400+, and Outlook will still suck, but Windows itself will suck less. I wiped XP from my new box without ever booting it. If a decent Windows were available, I'd try it. It'd even kill most of the monopoly hubbub.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
I'd love to see the answer to the question.
It would also answer things like:
Can a scientist share his secret with everyone, yet keep funding.. Instead of holding somethings back and selling a product.
Can pharmasutical companies come up with a cure(which doesn't make money) instead of selling drugs(extra treatment = extra money)
And would help understanding copywright problems...
Please someone answer this. Everyone wants to know the answer.
God spoke to me
Let's face it MS's business practice would make a crack-addict prostitute blush, but that doesn't mean that they can't help.
MS is too "afraid" of open source to embrasse it in any ways, and we are renforcing the idea that it's MS Vs open source. What says they can't help integrate somethings, like port their office platform to linux it doesn't force them into anything, they can still sell it but it makes linux stronger and flushes through the whole system. Now I know what you're thinking "why would MS do that ?", well they have to come to a point where they realize that no matter how much money and resources they have as the younger "GPL aware" computer user grow up they will stop purchasing MS OSes (one can hope at least).
all in all I still think that MS can turn around at some point and help instead of destroy.
man am I an optimist or what !
"there is a marmot in the bucket ? I'll go fix that." (don't ask)
My initial thought is, their strategy should be:
.NET.
1. Just go away and leave the tech scene alone forever.
That won't really work, mainly because their like the kid that won't leave his scraped knee alone: "keep touching it till it hurts to see how much he can take, till it gets infected, then he's sorry."
2. Stop "pretending" to be giving source code to the masses, and just do it. Even go so far as to fully disclose all source, in it's ugly tainted forms, and just do it, It CAN be BSD licensed. OpenSource is about trust, the more they keep pretending to give it away, the more people will feel made fun of, or patronized. I for one, don't like a company to patronize my beliefs of trust, good will, and open communication.
3. If they can't stop pretending, they can stop whining about how releasing their code will destroy the company, blah blah blah, and just *conform* to RFCs with NO extra things so as to break other people's technology, AND the RFCs.
Perhaps they should actually USE MORE OpenSource software, admit to it, and let people HELP them make a good OS Shell and underlying bits. How great would that be for them if they got FREE help. There are plenty of windows programmers out there already who release stuff under gpl, bsd license, etc. If MS would use more cross-platform and compliant standards, not MS standards, RFC, totally non-MS, compliant standards, to do all the things they want to do, and allow people to help them develop MS Windows(tm) without having to give away their right to look, hear, see, touch, feel, barter, etc, their code, as it is with
.NET should be the "Code Motel"
"Your code goes in, but it can't come out! Kills your code branch, Dead!"
Come ON MS. Stop patronizing intelligent people and actually DO what THEY want, and not TELL them what they want.
--SuperBug
Actually MS does have a large service segment. According to their 2001 annual report 22,500 of the 47,600 employees work in sales, marketing, and support. And if anyone can figure out how to make money on services it would be MS.
Personaly I think that Apple's responce to OSS is the best ever. Flame me or not, but Apple is just a proprietary minded as M$, perhaps more, but they still have found a way to access the OSS community, without comprimising thier business model.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
If someone invented open source marketing maybe they would.
Let Microsoft hire some strategists to solve this problem. Why should we solve it for them for free?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'd have sworn it said, "Open Source", not "Linux". Hint: *BSD? Try to stay on topic.
"I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear. Linux is not an option for any one who seeks a professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability, adherence to standards, etc."
Oh, but ME adheres to standards? Whose? Where's that SMP copy of 98 again? Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
"According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage. This means it is not intended for production use (although according to many Linux advocates this shouldn't be a problem, which makes me wonder how (little) valuable they find your data)."
Straw man. 10 minutes in the barrel for you, buddy.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Sun makes plenty of money, but they also have some open-source projects... and there's nothing wrong with that.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
why not open up the code for the stuff they don't make money on? heh open up IE, Messenger, etc. Don't allow anyone to distibute their own versions, but let people look and submit bug fixes etc. It would not be a huge step, but i'd be a step in gaining people's trust
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
I want to see who wins dammit! None of this assimilation BS. This is philosophical WAR. Its just getting started, but its getting GOOD.
1. Tell everyone that Unix/Linux is bad.
2. Create a web site to explain the way out of the Unix trap.
3. Host web site on BSD.
4. Remove foot from mouth.
5. Go back to drawing board.
Hmmm. The question, as I understand it, seems to be asking "What could Microsoft possibly do to respond to Open Source software?" My answer is: nothing. There is really very little, that I can see anyway, that Microsoft can do that would not be Utterly Evil. An anti-Unix ad campaign is about the best I can come up with - and lo, here's one now. Ad campaigns are intended to sway popular opinion for whoever pays for them, but at least that's ordinary corporate evil, and not the real Machiavellian Microsoft evil with which we are all acquainted. (Microvellian?)
On the other hand, who says Microsoft has to "respond" to Unix at all? Why can't any company ever be satisfied with not owning the world? Isn't it true that, ff it weren't Microsoft, it'd be someone else? Someone, please correct me, restore my faith!
There's a number of approaches:
;-) ) ;-)]
a) IBM approach- GPL windows and keep office closed
b) keep everything closed and make GPL illegal by changing the law
c) find a way to crack GPL legally (find/make a hole in it that makes it unefforceable somehow; hey OJ got off first time around
d) buy Linus Torvalds/Red Hat off [perhaps they have already
e) create their own Linux distro add closed source interfaces and stuff office and IE on top
f) abandon the software domain and put their $30+G into other businesses
g) spread out into other applications; move away from the OS
h) Buy off Richard Stallman
i) kill em; kill all of them (order hits on main GPL proponents)
j) who cares? let's just buy a small Island somewhere instead. Australia?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"1. Steal Code bully someone around buy someone out. ...
2.
3. Profit
what MS should really do is make the code for their OS open source. It would mean less bugginess, more businesses switching back, and a whole new group of people to sell apps to. With things like Office, games, MSN, and other things MS has their hands in they can make PLENTY of money. This would open it up even more. Think of having just to pay for Office without having to pay for an OS to run it!
I'm all for the various open source(tm) (remember, that term has a specific set of criteria a licence must meet) licences out there, but if you think MS is going to ever comply with some of the conditions attached to most open source licences (freedom of redistribution is an obvious one), you're dreaming.
What MS should do imho is provide complete source code with all their software, at least on request. Users should be free to modify this source for their own usage, and for use within a single organisation (ie company wide deployment). The changes should be owned by the users, but the users would not have the right to redistribute the software with these changes. Users should be free to contribute these back to MS for inclusion in future versions, royalty free, but that is the users ultimate choice, as they own the patches.
I don't know how practical that is, but it solves one of the key gripes about proprietary systems in general. The 'you've got a problem? fix it' principle applies here. It's not open source, but at least its a step in the right direction.
1. Improve Windows by opening up the source to the kernel as well as other core pieces such as the TCP/IP stack etc as Apple has done. A licence as restrictive as Apple's would be ideal since it would eliminate the possibility of people creating Windows clones. Keep higher-level frameworks closed as necessary
2. Improve Office by building it on open standards like xml. Simultaneously release a version for Linux, still closed source. MS Office is still, without a doubt, the best office platform, so this will only increase market share.
3. Make .net an open standard like Java, only more so. Once again, this can only have a positive effect for Microsoft since they have the resources to keep making the best tools to work with it.
What MS should do to work well with Open Source:
a) Document API's thoroughly, and keep the docs up to date
b) Standards: Microsoft is frequently the first one to implement a standard or to make it mainstream. As an example, XSLT comes to mind. AFAIK, IE was the first browser to support XSLT. As the first big boys there, they usually claim the right to make modifications to a standard or to fill in details in the standard. They could win a lot of goodwill merely by consult other companies and open source developers before as they implement the standard. This will greatly reduce (though probably not eliminate) the feeling of railroading that we all feel when MS' software doesn't follow standards, and we all have to deal with it.
c) Document and admit mistakes and bugs. One of the most infuriating things about Microsoft software, is that it either doesn't do what it says, as in undocumented behavior and bugs, or cryptic error messages saying things don't work unless the OS is configured right (which is true ipso facto, but somewhat accusatory, and certainly not helpful). I think this happens mostly because they can get away with it, and writing thorough documentation for your programs is not nearly as satisfying or financially rewarding as designing and writing the code itself. They could again improve goodwill if they were responsive to outside developer's questions about these bugs and behaviors, rather than being dismissive.
I'm sure there are more, but these sure would make it easier for an outsider to like Microsoft.
Embrace and extend!
bash$
We all know what happens when Microsoft and Free Software mix!
Would somebody please think of the children?
To correct a misconception in the original posting, Microsoft does have a service arm. It's robotic an infested with Borg nanites and you can pay a hefty consulting fee to have them come and tell you that you need to buy more Microsoft products to build your application.
.NET application, they'll currently give you a massive discount -- in exchange for a testimonial, some DNA, and maybe your firstborn children.
But if you want them to come tell you that you need to buy more Microsoft products to build your
Seriously, though people, Microsoft charges for tech support for software it's already charged for. They charge for consulting services (as described above, except for the Borg nanites) to use software they've already charged for. What makes you even begin to think that they'd open up the source of their products when they can keep it closed and stil charge people for for "services rendered"....
not to be confused with being rended when Microsoft "serviced" us...
most of the microsoft support, even for "enterprise" products like exchange, sql server, iis, and win2k/nt is outsourced to phone room sweatshops, like Stream and Convergys where poorly trained chumps are paid $9-11/hour to sit in tiny cubes and take calls as fast as possible.
It's really all they do anyhow. I suggest that
they open their source.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
A good April Fool's Joke.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
M$ doesn't need to go open source, so the part about needing a service arm is out... they can still make money by SELLING their software just like most software companies do.
MS could at least get rid of its new product activation...that way at least Windows would return to being free. ;)
Success is the journey...not the destination
Ron Paul
They should lay down and die. In this way, the balance between good and evil might not just be restored, but swung in the direction of "good" for awhile.
The issue with MS is not that it has closed source, but its disgusting business practices.
Will going Opensource mean that MS would stop exploiting their molopoly to push badly designed software and bully the software industry? I don't think so.
In fact I'm glad that Ms keeps its source closed. Going open would just expand their control/influence.
They continue to write their closed source, proprietary software, but they adopt open protocols, without trying to co-opt them with hidden API's. They stop adding Feature Bloat, and get serious about security, and the overall quality of their products.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
The principle difficulty with using Microsoft products is that they seem barely capable of communicating with anything but other Microsoft products. I'd like MS to consider putting all libraries useful for interoperability available in open-source (without the useless licence) form. That way, well, if their software was better than the free version one could use them, and MS and non-MS software could be used together...
Basically it doesn't seem that Microsoft can totally change to an open-source strategy now. Even if they weren't too embarassed/unrepentantly monopolistic to want to.
I don't really see that they would open-source the entirety of Office, but it'd be nice if Microsoft were to make owning Office an option rather than a restrictive locked-in technology (yeah, I know. Word viewer available, inconsistent specs available. Not quite the same as working source code).
In any case, if the arguments about Linux's unsuitability for the desktop are correct, they have nothing to fear - if Linux users were to create Word documents or WMV or whatever with the code they were graciously permitted to use, the average human being would prefer to buy a nice user-friendly copy of Windows and view them on that.
Of course, if somebody were to create a piece of word processing software that happened to be better than Word and utterly interoperable, they'd lose out, but we all know that'd never happen (yeah, right).
My 2 kopins worth:
"Open Source" in the GPL sense does not mean "free". All it means is that if you supply the executable, you've also got to make available the source. Microsoft could do it overnight by just allowing access to their codebase. You specify the exact version of the DLL you want, and you download it. It's still protected by copyright - and frankly, I for one don't think the quality is likely to be high enough to make the code worth stealing. But if anyone did, they'd face the same criminal penalties as anyone who pirates just the binaries.
What the above would do though is to prove or disprove the contention that MS uses "hidden APIs" to gain an unfair and monopolistic advantage over would-be competitors in the applications market. But since they've already been found guilty of monopolistic practices and have successfully evaded any significant sanction, this is not a real issue.
Finally, you must remember that the times they are a-changing. Microsoft is moving towards a licence model, where you buy the rights to use that OS on that machine, and Microsoft will keep it updated for you for a period of 3 years. Then you must renew, or switch to another OS. (Realistically, the vast majority will get a new machine with a new OEM OS at the same time.. a new 10 GHz processor with 100 GB of RAM to run Windows XP5 in 2005) This is entirely compatible with the Open Source model - they make available the source just as they make available patches at the moment. They don't have to give you the source with the binary. They don't have to supply it free. They just have to supply it at a reasonable cost if you ask them. One good thing about Microsoft, they don't charge a fortune for their updates. One bad thing is that the updates are required. One worse thing is if in the future they start charging an arm and a leg for the fixes to stop the next Code Red. Switching to Open Source would prevent Microsoft from leveraging their monopoly this way. They don't do it now, but based on past behaviour, it's only a matter of time. Unless they start losing significant market share to a real alternative.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
I wish they'd stop demonizing it. Specifically regarding the GPL, I'd settle for anything besides their current position, "the GPL is bad for the economy."
Open Source any piece of software that they claim to no longer publicly support. Need support for 95? Found a bug in 98? Sorry, you can either fix the problem yourself or upgrade to XP. Your choice. I wouldn't mind that.
[o]_O
Now this doesn't preclude them from doing something with the community, something beneficial for the community and for them. What they could do is copy IBM before them and open up their standards. It's more beneficial to both parties if Samba suppoorts their latest protocols, that way they can sell clients to UNIX and Windows shops as well as support Linux clients with their servers. Other than cut throat competition, there is no reason to not do this, plenty of shops are using Linux in one capacity or another and MS could still benefit a lot by allowing the network to ride on their technology. Something else, right now they've kind of made it an all or nothing thing. If a shop chooses to use Linux for anything, that task is something MS make no money from at all, they raise the stakes that way and when/if GNU/Linux or BSD or whatever make it to that next level and start to really become viable alternatives they have nothing. They could also put their software on to Linux. I can't see any reason not to other than it allows people to consider Linux that otherwise wouldn't consider leaving Windows. If their pricing structure is done correctly and they feel competition and want to drive costs down then they should see that their truely valuble assets are their apps and they should derive most of their profit from them and they should see that they can grow that profit by opening the market for it to other platforms. Porting IE to Linux would also enable them to further drive web standards, lot's of people wouldn't care as much if they have access to a browser that played them, by not porting to alternative platforms MS is forcing people to want open web standards, i know a dozen web developers that would kill to have IE on other platforms.
They can look at it all as a castle that is built from the OS up, any piece of MS code that runs on other platforms weakens that OS foundation; or they could see that they spend about a billion dollars a year in OS R&D and that they can reduce that cost as well as increase their app protits by not placing so much importance on it. At some point, that R&D cost becomes a really important cost and right now they have no where to go. A lot of this may sound kind of silly but in the long run, MS has made it an all or nothing game and unfortunately just about every company out there has some reason to want them to fail. You look at companies like Sun and IBM who have made some open standards and taken some of their software beyond being comodity applications by supporting multiple platforms and locking customers in to the apps. Java, NFS, DB2, Lotus Notes are all bigger than the platforms they run on. It's also worth looking at the numbers of a company like IBM who makes a ton of money from software with relatively small costs (per application, everything is expensive at IBM but their costs to develop and app and support it are amazing when you look at the profit margins)
They have a whole friggin open source OS (Darwin) which they have grafted their own closed source technology (displayPDF, QuickTime, CoreAudio, etc), and are selling for $130, or bundling with their Macs.
They also have an open source Darwin Streaming Server, and a complementary closed source QuickTime Streaming Server. They bundle Apache as their HTTP server, as well.
What can Microsoft do that would be similar?
How about release the DirectX library as open source? However, use their own in house optimization-compilation technology to ensure that their own DX libs are 10% or 15% faster than anything out there... IE, outinnovate the competition, themselves?
Or release their older Office programs as open source? Sell newer, more advanced copies, but allow the general public to self support and modify their older versions? Of course, again, the key is to out innovate yourself to convince people to buy the newest version instead of incrementally updating and fixing the older, free source version.
Or rather, release a Office Core, which allows you to compile a very basic Office devoid of nifty features... though this might backfire, as people don't generally use 80% of the features in Office, do they?
GPL Deconstructed
First of all, the phrase "begs the question" does NOT mean "raises the question". This is not a post that will only correct grammar, so please bear with me.
I think MS should stop attacking Open Source in the market and cite it as the competition the MS detractors have been calling for. Until Open Source starts pulling in more than a couple % of the desktop market, I don't think they have to worry about it being REAL competition, but APPARENT competition might actually do MS some good (as far as public image).
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
"Freebasing" (R)
http://www.thefifthrune.com/link.asp
This is on sort of a slow server, but it's worth
the wait - it's FUNNY!!!
A lot of people are saying it can't be done. It can be done. There is no reason why Microsoft couldn't keep their apps closed source but have them run on the open source OS. Lots of companies have closed source software running on Linux, Unix, and FreeBSD platforms. Look at Borland. Delphi isn't open source (at least last time I looked it wasn't) but it runs on Linux. Microsoft could do the same and actually, it already has taken a step in that direction. From what I've read the Apple MS Office suite runs on OS X and that's BSD. If they can get it to run on that platform then they could do just as well on Linux. So don't say they can't do it - just say they aren't.
Which begs the question: What are they waiting for?
If Windows is forced to become open source I'm betting that there is a good chance MS will dump it in favor of BSD or Linux. More likely BSD since they could grab a copy just like Apple and start making their apps run under it. Then they can undermine Linux by saying BSD is better and just let the flamers burn each other out. It would, in essence, destroy everything from within and MS could just sit on the sidelines and say we were right - Unix is better than Windows. You see? They no longer are the evil people - we are.
I wiped XP from my new box without ever booting it
...then you will go on /. and post about how much XP sucks, when you have not even booted it......
(sarcasm mode) It has always worked. Release new office, IE etc using a few undocumented (uncommented) API's. Include them in the documentation 5 years later as a documentation correction. That would keep the competition about 5-1/2 years behind. (/sarcasm mode) Basicaly change nothing. Promise open source and provide some of it only with the published API's keeping the ace up the sleeve as usual. (protect the OS but make developement dependent on only published MS middleware API's) Send out updates late and only after MS has developed the latest and greatest middleware bundles in the OS. API's to use MS middleware would be documented and commented to make it the new adopted standard therby keeping the underlying OS a requirement for all developer applications.
The truth shall set you free!
Come on people, why do sites like slashdot exist? Why are there revolutions to overthrow the evil overlords?
Because evil overlords exist, that's why!
If M$ software worked first time every time, and their licencing scheme was reasonable, then what incentive would there be for people to work on open source alternatives?
I am artificially intelligent.
If Microsoft--no, every software company--would thoroughly document their formats, protocols, etc. the open source world would benefit greatly. Projects like Samba, Wine, Open Office, etc. would no longer have to guess and reverse engineer to be compatable with Microsoft, and by extension compatable with most of the personal computing world.
IMHO this is the best thing that could happen. Microsoft and other companies would still be able to run a business based upon their closed source applications, but the openly documented formats would allow others (open source or not) to produce competing products. This would mean programs such as real player, windows media player, Microsoft Office, etc. would sink or float based upon the qualities of the program rather than market share. Likewise, open source programs would be available and if they work better than closed alternatives, they would become more widely used.
True competition such as this produces better open and closed source programs, and thus documentation seems to be the best thing to help progress open source.
Personally I don't think they could do it. See the movie Revolution OS, which has ESR, RMS, Linus T, and Bruce P. They actually dealt with Billy gates back in teh 70's about this issue. Billy said "Open Source is a bad business model" back then. How can anyone make money off of it. It is a good movie to see if you want a better understanding of where they all were coming from.
Only 'flamers' flame!
With W2K, we're talking of more than 10 millions line of code or so. Even after slashing the bloat, using this code is mostly untractable. It just useful for going around this or that bug of this or that API, once in a while.
.doc, .xls, etc.) and its protocols, and to make them open source or public domain. That would introduce a healthy yet controllable dose competition for MSFT and clean them of their monopolistic sins, but it would also place MSFT in the role of the Great Arbitrer of De Facto Standards and bring them a lot of long lost good will.
I'd rather prefer MSFT to really document its APIs, its file formats (including
In a domain where planned obsolescence is the rule of the Game, setting the standards (and giving them away) is a very desirable place where to stand and it's nearly as efficient as close formats to maintain a quasi-monopoly. Just look at IBM, Cisco or Intel. MSFT would also sit as a benevolent dictator rather than a ruthless tyran.
Plain and simple nudity. Whenever the OSS movement creates a product better than theirs, they have to have an office mandatory nudity (commonly known as 'nm') day.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
1. Tell everyone that Unix/Linux is bad.
2. Create a web site to explain the way out of the Unix trap.
3. Host web site on BSD.
4. Remove foot from mouth.
5. Go back to drawing board.
6. ?????????????
7. Profit!!!
It's clearly possible for Microsoft to package all the sources together
for all the programs that go into making Windows XP, and sell it.
It's easy to understand not releasing the copyright,
and it would cost more to produce the source CDs than XP,
But you can be sure a lot of software companies would buy a copy,
even at ten times the price.
Once you realize why Microsoft doesn't do that,
you will realize why Microsoft won't ever willingly
work with the open source community.
Now, I don't see them embracing Open Source or GPL, because it just doesn't fit with making the amount of money they need to support such a large organization.
However, I firmly believe that the best they can do is stop the FUD tactics (like the newly released, but laughable Anti*nix campaign.) Fuck strong-arming your competition to get rid of them, and please stop buying votes in our govt, and lastly drop some of the dumb marketing campaigns.
I swear, if they used two-thirds of the resources that they use on legal, marketing, and "corporate strategy", they could focus on building a decent product that's enjoyable to use.
Coerce me into using your product; don't beat me over the head with a money cudgel.
--I hate big sigs.
I think that Micosoft will eventually come out with a fully supported linux distro and then tout open source as the best thing ever. (MS linux makes me shutter) In the process they will continue to sell their other programs and also push their hardware stuff.
E
Microsoft's best response is to allow their code to be user patchable. I have been thinking about this possibility for some time now and I hope Microsoft is too greedy to think about it. Here is a response that, I believe, we in the Open Source Camp will find very hard to meet.
If Microsoft does this, it will have the benefits of the open source philosophy and still make money selling the base products.
It would be easy to argue that MS owes their Monopoly to the skill they have in developing easy to use GUIs. This talent is valuable in both a proprietary and Open Source world. If MS were to make peace with Open Source, they would still have this as a major advantage.
/. MS bashers using IE are proof of that. Adopting Open file formats would be a cautious step towards creating goodwill that makes good business sense.
.NET is all about. That is the key to an Open Source business model, so they have a choice to either go proprietary, or OS. The key to success for them is win midshare of developers. Most developers I know prefer Open Source, so this may eventually be a manditory step for MS to take. Without going open source, they won't get the developers, then they die. Right now developers have to make a choice between market share, and a more enjoyable programming environment. They would prefer to have both, and this will push the market in that direction. You can already see this by the popularity of Java.
The first step down that road would be to open up all file formats (.doc,.xls,etc...) Their market dominance virtually assures that if they made them open, and easy for other programs to use, they would immediatly become the industry standard. At which point, MS would become leaders in the industry. I'd bet that even KDE aps would adopt the old MS file formats as their standard if they were opened up and licensed properly.(the horror!!)
MS would continue to enjoy their market leader status for as long as they made top quality GUIs. (What, actual competition?) They already have a HUGE advantage with their current market share, and peoples reluctance to switch to a new product, otherwise known as 'brand loyalty'. I would further argue that MS has no brand loyalty now other than forced loyalty because of their monopoly.
They would not however be able to change file formats for each new release of Office, thus forcing upgrades, so maybe Bill and Steve wouldn't go for it.
MS alredy knows that it will have to change over to a service based business model in the near future. That is what
It has already dawned on somebody at MS that they have no choice but to open some of their code up. They don't want to, and may kick and scream about it, but they are doing it. The shared source stuff, and the cheap University source licenses are test balloons. You can bet that they will only release just as much code as they need to retain developers. How much that is, depends on us.
There's plenty of room at the bottom.
they should just compete in a fair way without trying to sneak in standard changes, without punishing distributors that stock OS and without crying to the govt.
They should compete the way software companies are meant to compete - by making better software.
They have enough money they should be able to give os a good run.
Firstly, you have to recognize that while closed-sourced software may be unethical and unfair to consumers, that's not a companies concern. A company's mandate is to do whatever they can that is within the law to maximize profit to the advantage of their shareholders. That's their legal obligation.
So, that said, you need an open-sourced strategy which will both adhere to some of the ideal behind the Open Sourced and Free Software movements, but also give the company a reasonable expectation to make money. So here's my proposal:
1. Companies should release all software under a modified version of the GNU GPL...call it the PGNU GPL license for Proprietary GNU GPL license. This license would be identical to the GNU GPL except it would state that redistribution may only occur to current owners of the software. That is, you could only redistribute the entire source to current owners of the software, who paid the company for it. A simple verification system could be used; i.e., requires you to enter a number to prove you actually own it, like your credit card numbr, w/c ppl wouldn't want to spread throughout the web to allow others to access it also.
2. Release some important critical parts under the pure GNU GPL.
3. Piecemeal, release the rest of the software under the GNU GPl.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
This is *STUPID*. I'm not defending MS, those rat bastards, but how are we supposed to come up with a solution for microsoft when we aren't even "in the loop". We don't know their internal structures, their departments, their "mission statement", their abilities as coders(setting all security and bug issues aside), or how to balance their profit margins.
If you talk to any consultant about reorganizing your proprietary company around open source, they would require some inside information to make some judgement call that doesn't bring the company to its knees, while not screwing the open source community either (one would hope).
That is, unless there are ex-ms-developers who know some stuff listening....but its just a thought.
"It was penguin lust...at its worst." --someone
Here are some random ways MS could cooperate with open-source:
.NET to a standards body, and guarantee that they will not ever patent any of it, so the MONO project has a more certain future.
.
MS should document every API and protocol. That documentation should include BSD-licensed or public-domain reference implementations.
They should either fix their lame POSIX implementation so Cygwin isn't needed, or contribute to Cygwin.
They should work to ensure that Visual C can use GCC as its compiler, and that anything that the Visual C compiler can build can also be built by gcc.
They should include a rootless X Window server in future versions of Windows so that Unix (open and closed source) software can be ported to Windows more easily.
For network tools they maintain (ping, tracert), they should switch to the FreeBSD or Gnu tools, and synchronize their trees.
They should contribute to cfdisk, fdisk and the vfat tools to make their output completely compatible with windows. Or they could open-source their own "fdisk" and "format" tools so they could be ported to Linux and xBSD.
They should discourage developers from creating IE-only web pages, encouraging developers to follow web standards instead. This will make it easier on the open-source browser developers.
They should make their "web fonts" copyright-free: Andale Mono, Georgia, Verdana, Arial, even Times New Roman would make great cross-platform standards.
They could also make some of their patents royalty-free for open-source software.
They could also submit all of
I could go on, but I'd better not. .
The whole conclusion of the DoJ suit was that they'd made their bucks illegaly. If they can't continue to be profitable without adopting a legal business model, that's not our problem. If that means that they're going to lose a whole lot of money, then they damn well should have thought of that before breaking the law. We, the People, don't owe ANYONE a living, much less an illegal monopoly. If they are too lazy and whiny to change, then they don't deserve to be in business. AT&T had to do a lot after 1984, and they're still here today.
In the short term, cooperating with others in the area of web standards would be very helpful.
.NET functionality to it.
In the long term, maybe they can do something similar to Apple. They could open up some of the low level OS code, or build on a current and stable core like Darwin. They could keep things like win32 functionality closed source. Since IIS is crap anyhow, they could take Apache but add their own proprietary ASP and
By using a strategy like this, the Windows platform would support existing standards and software (eg PHP, X windows) while also presenting alternatives of their own (eg ASP, win32). The Windows platform could actually be preferrable to customers based on the many choices in the software avaiable, instead of being so dominant based on restriction of competition and vender lockin.
They've already opensourced W2k in Russia, why don't they do the same in US?
Micros~1 will change or they will die. It's that simple. They feel it, which is why they're doing things like "Shared Source",
Why should the free software community care about Microsoft? Who cares if Microsoft cannot find a way to coexist with free software?
It goes against my better judgement to take issue with your statement, but my education in free market systems brings to light one question:
If people don't like Microsoft and their products, why are they in business?
I believe totally and completely in free markets and that the consumer wins in such situations. If you agree with this line of thinking, Microsoft must be doing something correctly in order to stay in business. They must be providing something of significant worth to the consumer otherwise people would fail to purchase their product and thus put them out of business. It's this simple. You can confuse the subject to make things look better from an anti-microsoft view, but that's not the issue. The issue is that if MS didn't provide something people want, they would cease to exist.
I think that we all, myself included, fail to realize some times that MS is providing what most people want, most of the time.
-JAB
BTW: I don't user Windows for much of anything and hate it with a passion. This is just food for thought.
GUIs are like diapers, everyone grows out of them eventually.
in microsoft's website, if you subscribe to their's software assurance membership licensing and you have licenses for 1,500 computers, microsoft gives you their source code of windows 2000 and xp.
the details is here [microsoft.com].
:)
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
I use linux to build exhibits for artists and museums.
I'm a big fan of Linux and OpenSource, but the real reason I use open source for my projects is that it comes with a compiler and some example code.
Windows in the past has come with 'accessories', such as Calculator, Notepad, Wordpad, Soundrecorder, CD player, etc.
Now, what if Microsoft provided the code to these accesories, perhaps in whatever language they're trying to market, like C#, and also provided a working compiler, perhaps stripped down but functional, so that you could modify and compile these accessories. They could use their 'application signing' for something good, to show when you're running a modified binary.
Linux is the ultimate set of Legos. If I want to make an app that does X, Y, and Z, I can get example code from open source projects which I know do any one of these, and kill and yank until I have the framework of the project I want.
If I could look at the code for Calculator to get buttons, Notepad for editing and file I/O, Something for serial or USB I/O, See what I'm getting at? I could cut and paste the framework of a windows app, and build the code for my project. It would run with a warning message because It isn't signed or compiled with the full version of C#, but it would work, and I could use windows to do my project. The warning would keep this from killing the sales of enterprise development tools, which poor people pirate anyway.
Now, I prefer Linux, I prefer older, cheap (free) hardware, and I'm not big on MS or closed formats or any of that. But, my clients don't know anything about linux. They're usually Mac users but they can suffer through windows if they have to. Often they want to run the project alongside something commercial or they just want a platform they've used before.
Linux lets me take a basic new OS install, write a program that interacts with the filesystem and external stuff through the serial port or whatever, and lets me set it up so it's a box with no screen or keyboard unless needed, that does what it's supposed to do when you turn the power on, and keep right on doing it for months. I can't do that with windows. I can't hook it to a Basic stamp or a BX-24 or MIDI with built-in tools. It's only possible with very expensive add-ons and then it's a maintenance and reliability nightmare.
If windows could do that, I would use it for clients who wanted it, unless there were a larger reason not to. It would be possible to do the majority of the projects I do now on windows, which I would never consider now. I wouldn't have to use a second machine to put an interface on it with something like Director.
It would also bring back the magic of the days when your computer came with a language, like the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe, when people had the freedom to actually DO things with their computers. Linux has recaptured a tiny part of that, but the complexity of doing anything large, especially anything graphical, as well as not being most people's primary environment, prevents it from having that mass appeal.
If Microsoft did that, they'd really be on to something. Researchers would use it. Tinkerers, experimentors, electronics people, innovators. The people who currently have NO CHOICE but to use Linux or BSD. It would turn windows back into a HOBBY, like the pseudo-OS BASIC interpreters used to be. Kids would write games instead of doing their homework again.
It wouldn't give away any of their precious secrets. It wouldn't compromise the integrity of their closed OS. It would promote their languages. They'd still sell their development tools to the people with the money to pay for them. And I doubt very much it would do anything but help their customer loyalty and their revenues.
=Rich
Microsoft will soon work out they cant compete, although their pride/ignorance will blind them from the truth for a long long time.
If you cant beat them join them.
I'd make all of the underpinnings of the OS open source, but keep the display layer closed, as well as the widget set, in order to keep people using the MS experience.
Kinda vaguely what Apple's doing with OS X, making Aqua closed, but the rest kinda open.
Note that Apple is first and foremost a hardware company; the software is the icing on the hardware cake. This is why it makes sense for them to Open Source the ici^H^H^Hsoftware; it adds value to the hardware. Besides, Darwin won't run on anything else *but* their hardware, so more downloads means people need more hardware.
Microsoft, on the other hand, sells only sofware and is thus dependant on controlling the distribution of their milkco^Wsoftware packages.
There is, of course, on exception to this, the X-Box. And Sony has taken the lead by Open Sourcing their Playstation APIs under their Linux for Playstation program. Now that's a path where the Open Source hardware icing could make sense.
"The truth shall make ye fret" -- The Truth, Terry Pratchett
The big problem is the huge difference between their published standards and the actual standards used in practice. What percentage of their published API calls work as documented?
You have no idea who could be reading!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Windowsw HAS no competition on the desktop, from *nix or anyone else. Just remember, only the 0.025% 6-finger webfoot dweezle fringe of computer Lusrs use a Linux desktop. That's cockroach spit, byteboyz ... get yer thumbs outa yer azzhols. Everyone else - that's EVERYONE got real work to do chooses and uses WinX.
it's Microsoft's abuse of its monopolistic position that is the problem.
Publicly available, well-documented APIs and Microsoft application development being isolated from its operating system development is the solution.
More endless polemic! Woot!
I am into the copy and paste.
Okay...
.NET and their developer tools. All of those technologies have functionality that is and has been easily duplicated; I might suggest the same thing for SQL Server and Exchange (IIS should just be thrown out).
I don't know how much they could give away, but they could definitely put the NT and Win9x source code out, along with
Internet Explorer SHOULD be, but something tells me there's still Spyglass crap in there that would make for some licensing headaches.
That still leaves a lot of territory uncovered -- MSOffice, the games, and all of Microsoft's vertical market apps for which an open source implementation would be sort of pointless. But they'd still have to get into services, I think...
/Brian
They should:
1. Open source all their software products
2. Make everyone cash in their stocks.
3. Dissolve their corporation.
Oh, and I want a public apology from Bill. Is that too much to ask for?
In short, we agree: the market rules. I think the market will rule against MS.
Miko O'Sullivan
Alright, the way things are going, Microsoft is dead. But they may be able to stay afloat if they do one simple thing. Make windows better. This may sound simple but, the only reasons windows is so damn popular is becasue of 1) bill gates cut throat marketing and 2) there is so much software for it. But face Mac OS is SO much better its not even funny (note: I have never had a chance to really use Linux so i wont comment). Now Mac OSX I understand is linux and it is great. And the biggest noticeable diffrence is Windows ME (for one) will crash on a daily basis where as OSX wont. So if Microsoft would spend more time on their damn OS and less on other useless crap (*cough* media player *cough*) then maybe they will stay alive. Course when/if the windows source code becomes public and we get an OS that will run windows programs and not crash, OR my favorite possibilty, a FREE OS that will run windows software and not crash. And lets all pray now children.
1) Release only mature products. When a bug makes it through, patch it quickly without breaking functionality, and don't charge for the fix.
2) Treat your customers like they have a choice. Even if it's a tough choice, they'll figure out that they have it eventually, and when they get mad enough with your licensing schemes and poor support, they'll make it.
If you can do these things, most customers don't care if the source is open or not. They just want what gets the job done.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I'm serious. They shouldn't have a policy on it at all. Their only policy should be to continue doing their business and if they see they're losing market space to open source software, they should improve their products to compete. End of story. Microsoft, by their very nature, can do nothing but hurt open source, and vice versa. To save everyone a lot of effort, they should just each do their own thing and have zero interaction. As for the interaction of software, well, that's inevitable, but nonethless, it's not political.
I am sure Microsoft can compete and keep its market share without even uttering the words of our ideals. If they can't, why do they deserve to make a buck?
Why bother.
> Can a scientist share his secret with everyone, yet keep funding..
Yes. That's the whole point of patents. Full disclosure (or something akin) in exchange for full licensing and marketing rights, for a limited time. Then the patented item is given to the public domain, for the greater good, without constraint.
Of course, that begs the question of what's patentable.
I'd settle for them documenting all their undocumented APIs and interfaces, so that Microsoft Applications developers no longer have an unfair advantage over the rest of the world.
I guess everyone is talking about what M$ strategy should be from their (NOT M$) point of view. I think the origianl "ask /." question was about what _should_ be M$ strategy with OSS so as to
1. Retain M$' profit and revenue status-quo.
2. Ensure M$' growth.
And I don't see any way M$ can craft a strategy that achieves these objectives and still manages to remain non-repungent (and fair and lawful etc).
That I think is the biggest cause of concern for M$ bean counters.
...what Yasser Arafat's peace plan is. Everybody knows Microsoft wants to push Open Source into the Meditaranean. MS already has two strategies for Open Source: 1. Make token agreements with it, then break them. 2. Continue to exploit Truly Free bits of Open Source (e.g., JPEG, ZLIB, PNG, TCP/IP, etc.).
However, I think that an independant Microsoft and Open Source could peacefully exist if... 1. MS and the Free Software advocates both recognize the rights of the other to exist. 2. MS agrees to adheer to open standards and not sponsor features that wander into the open standards and detonate.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"I wiped XP from my new box without ever booting it."
Isn't that a bit pre-judgemental? How can you complain about something if you haven't used it?
Of course, if I'd written code as bad as some of the M$ code, I'd be embarrased to have anyone else see it too!
- Phase 1: Write Open Source software
- Phase 2: ?
- Phase 3: Profit
[Apologies to the Underpants Gnomes.]Funny, it worked for them before. Look how much BSD'd code they've already used.
Even those of us who would prefer to remain on X would probably install Windows for major applications like Office and the result would eventually be a practical dependence on Windows for all of the commercial application base. Owning the API they could then do whatever they like with the underlying platform; it becomes almost unimportant.
Perhaps I overlook some strategic barrier to such an approach, but luckily even if I'm right Microsoft is too staid to make the leap anyway. I don't expect any Microsoft Linux applications in the near future.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
The mind boggles.
I think that Microsoft should open-source Windows itself. It's hard to deny that Windows is a monopoly standard, so how can they argue that protecting the code is vital to competitive interests?
Windows is a standard. Standards are open. The only "intellectual property" in Windows are the secret code hooks used to keep Microsoft's applications performing slightly better than their competitors'. That's leveraging monopoly power, and it's illegal.
For me, I think that cro$$oft would be similar to what already as been done w/ the zlib case...
I wonder(really!) how many % of open source software hare to thank for NT's 'incredible' stability...
*cough*
"Burn 'em!"
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity!"
I see what the poster is saying. He's saying how does any businesss that SELLS software justify to stoock holders who own the company that they are going to change to an Open Source model?
But a better question to ask from a business perspective is why would they do this? To please a group that will not buy your product? That offers nothing to your survival? What value will it offer? Most people concerned with open source are open source developers and lan janitors with perl toolkits. I personally like some things open source (I have written and ditributed open source code for all the naysayers). But to be honest I cannot find a viable way to sell software while at the same time giving it away. It's been established that the return on investment will be higher if you sell a product as opposed to selling a service (product companies are regularly valued higher than service companies). If the new paradigm of "software as a service" takes off this may change but it has yet to be established. Its gonna take a lot of work to convince people that can't get decent support/service/help from established service companies (cable, telephone, electric) to switch to a model in which you are eternally paying. But I digress.
Its a good question. As an open source advocate and software developer I love the advantages of open source. As a small business owner I cannot find a viable way to give the code away for free and still make a profit. Unfortunately my billers dont take ideals in place of money so I know which way is ahead of me. It's not always the fair or ideal way that wins out, but it's the one Im forced to deal with.
I think you are asking the wrong crowd. Over the past several years, those of us in the Open Source/Free Software communities have seen what Microsoft has done, and we don't want that to happen to us. We don't want a repeat of Kerberos on some other important protocol. We don't want to see Microsoft Bob for Gnome.
The basic issue is trust. Time after time Microsoft has broken that trust. It would take a gesture of huge proportions to regain that trust, and I for one don't think we will see it.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
Microsoft already pushes it's Shared Source "initiative," which is open to the point where you and I can play, make changes, distribute code, and have fun. It only prevents commercial use, whether it be commercially sold or internally used for profit. Microsoft has recently released a beta of it's .NET CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) as source and supports compilation of it on Windows as well as FreeBSD 4.5. They provide the source for what they call the PAL (Platform Abstraction Layer) which is the Unix implementation of some 285 odd Win32API.
Uh? What kind of nonsense is this? MS should just fuck off and die. No, wait. YOU should just fuck off and die. MS can just fuck off. Really. Explain to me, why should MS have an open source strategy?
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
I seriously doubt Microsoft is going to adopt any form of open source strategy. They have already proven they have no desire to "play by the rules" and they love their position as a monopoly. They do not HAVE to create an open source strategy. I think the big difference between Microsoft and Open Source is Microsoft is motivated by greed more than anything. Does the open source community really need someone like that?
F Microsoft
They should give up all patents and help fight against patents. Then stop screwing with the judiciary system. Stop using tactics that break antitrust laws. Nothing more I can think of at the moment. The world of programming and electronics is already screwed due to MS, patents, and corrupt software/electronic laws. The software/electronic industry will end up like the medical and oil industries. It is a very sad thought, but most likely true unless the open source and free software movement continues to get stronger.
Question everything.
1) GNU all Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows .Net Server source code
2) Assist the Wine project with integrating code from the Windows OS to provide a fully functional compatibility layer for Linux.
2) Keep MSOffice proprietary. This should be theri core business focus. MSOffice is seen as an industry standard. They could base their entire business around this if they wanted to.
3) Charge for customer service.
4) Produce their own Linux distribution incorporating Wine.
5) Sell their Linux distribution like any other Linux distribution, at a competitive price. The value comes from offering a period of free customer service with the purchase of the distribution.
6) Concentrate of developing proprietary applications for Linux and or Wine. I think alot of people have a problem with the operating system being proprietary, but not as much of a problem with individual apps being proprietary. The OS should be free though. People shouldn't be forced to pay a TAX just to use a computer. Linux should be the defacto PC desktop OS. Windows is an inferior OS. The only way Microsoft will win is if they jump on the bandwagon. Otherwise they will be left in the dust.
7) Instead of fighting Linux, Microsoft should openly embrace Linux. By fighting Linux they essentially become an arch enemy. Microsoft can not win against Linux, and should not win against Linux. Microsoft should play fairly, and the only way to do this is to embrace Linux. Linux is good.
8) Linux on the XBox
9) Open documentation for XBox
10) Make good games for the XBox
11) Make lots of games for the XBox
12) Make lots of money from the XBox
13) Release Linux distribution for XBox similar to what Sony is doing with the Playstation 2
14) Sell XBox to home users not only for games but for email and office productivity.
15) By concentrating on the XBox as a major product Microsoft gets its foot in the door making hardware. This provides a stable source of revenue.
16) Microsoft is not evil. It is there business model that is evil. Microsoft can be an ally of the open source community if only they truly Open Source with the GNU, or at the very least a BSD stile licence. Come on Microsoft, if you are reading this, we don't hate you, we hate what you do. Open source is not bad. Open source is good. Microsoft, you throw around all these comments about wanting computers in everyones home, well here ya go. Throw Linux on there and sure makes things alot cheaper doesn't it. Does this mean everyone can have a computer in the home? Well it means alot more people could then do now! Support Linux and you will inherit a community that at the moment has turned its back to you. We are a dynamic community though. If you side with us I am sure we will side with you. It probably will cost you more to fight us then it would to join us, so you might as well just join us. Remember Linux is good. And it could be even better with a bit of cleaned up Windows source code. So give it a thought MS, and please Open Source Windows under the GNU or a BSD stile licence.
17) Do all this and I will write another long winded pointless letter to Slashdot saying how much you rule!! There ya go, that should be motivation right there. Because windows isn't evil, Windows should just be with Linux. They are ment to be together. Don't ya think?
(hehehe... Bring on the spam)
As a software vendor, how can you use open source to be more competitive? A few ways come to mind:
1. Use it to reduce cost for producing base SW on top of which you sell your value adds. Example: Sun GPL'ing tomcat.
2. Use it to stay in an unprofitable market so as to add credibility. Example: IBM stays in the OS/Hardware business with Linux.
3. Use it to undercut a competitor in one of their strategic markets. Example: hmmm, help me out.
Keeping in mind that Open Source works best when user=developer, point 3 suggests a plan: contribute massively to open source efforts where SUN, Oracle, IBM and Apple compete, but Microsoft does not.
So, MS could contribute to Open Source JAVA on non-Microsoft platforms, undercutting anyone trying to make a buck. Of course, if JAVA succeeds wildly, without anyone making any money off of it, it could still result in competing substitute products for MS. Risky.
How about if Microsoft releases the source to a previous version of Windows? In other words, once they release a new version, the old version is given to the world, minus any code that they don't own.
Think about it. Microsoft ships a new release, Windows XP. They put the source up on their site for anyone to download, and in theory, use to release their own windows.
Now, its going to take at least a few weeks/months to get that source code compiled, libraries replaced, etc... so the OEMs have no choice for several months about what they sell.
So, 6 months later, a smart OEM can now offer the latest Windows, or a somewhat cheaper machine, with an older, non-Microsoft Windows, or a Linux with a really good Windows compatibility layer. Some consumers will go for it, but many, many will elect to get the Real Thing.
The next release? Again, MS has a long window (no pun) to sell the Real Thing, while an OEM can elect to sell a 2-generation old Windows until they catch up.
It gives choice. It give MS a revenue stream and instant competition.
It's the rapidly changing, undocumented, and proprietary API's and protocols than need to be opened up, to stop their anti-competitive behaviour.
Whether or not the source is available for Word, is less important than whether or not the format (with the monopoly share of the market) can be used interchangeably on different platforms by different vendors, or whether Microsoft keeps it closed and changing.
I really don't ever want to see Microsoft's source.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I think Eric Raymond's predictions are correct, but I have always tended to disagree with his timing. Sooner or later, Microsoft is going to have to face a reality that the market seeks to treat common infrastructure as common. You cannot sock someone for a user license for the redness of a stopsign. In the movement and manipulation of digital data, you can try for a while, and Microsoft, with the assistance of infamous pranks, has done an amazing job of it. At some point, Microsoft will find itself heading toward the left in a de facto scramble. That will send an "Enron signal". People will start to perceive something along the lines of a bubble or "house of cards". A bargain shopper will buy up the pathetic shares. Who knows? Maybe it will be IBM.
I did not literally mean "will" in any of that. Joseph Schumpeter works in mysterious ways, and I believe that there are enough smart and savvy people in Microsoft that the fire sale will only be theoretical. A transformation will have to take place. Microsoft could very well turn not quite on a dime but on a semi truck and find itself peddling services. I don't buy this "Microsoft currently has no service wing," logic. That presumes far more inertia than is there.
It is far too easy for a person to presume Microsoft's Unix illiteracy. I would bet cold cash that MS Honchos and Microserfs could spend at most two months and commence good work to lay the foundation of a viable alpha release that would host binaries native to Linux, SCO, Solaris, and even AIX, all in one shebang. Of course, that alpha release would be called 2.0. ;-) That's hardly the point.
Look at the respective histories of GNU Hurd and Windows NT. Before versions 3.whatever, Windows NT and GNU Hurd, circa 2002 were philosophically similar. The message queue is the center of the MS Universe, and it is also there for Hurd. Both initially aim (as did Linus amid mild and esoteric controversy with his monolithic kernel) toward POSIX conformance. Modularity almost goes without saying, which makes the recent antitrust testimony a pathetic joke. Now if Microsoft smelled money in leveraging its not-forgotten Xenix knowledge with open source at what Eric Raymond would call "the crossover point", Microsoft could use its immense wealth to flush out and perhaps even to buy OSDN itself. Microsoft dabbles in all kinds of things as "escape hatches", and its products are, in my estimation, about 1000 times dumber that it is. Expect surprises.
That's my thesis. Expect surprises.
Forget the source code. Opening up windows source code gets you a big fucking mess, and not much more. The thing that would make the most difference is full documentation on the file formats for their office suite. Once these are available, then people can write a better word than word. It's interoperating with microsoft software that is the kicker. Who wants to fix their bugs?
as I sit here reading through comments, one of the biggest things I see is that most people are suggesting things like "MS can't survive in an open source world" "open api's" "open source is the best way to improve code" "build an os around the freebsd kernel" and stuff like that...
... not work 15% faster and use memory 20% more efficiently, and definitely not have to remember anything that they'll have to type in to update their system. Most people are point-and-click users, don't care that their kernel has been the same for the last year and like the ease of use to just download a driver and click on it, or better yet not have to download or click on anything but have the OS just recognize the hardware and just work.
Well, the way I see it, MS can and does survive pretty well in a market with open source, and not because they are a monopoly practicing unfair business practices but because they make an easy to use solution that satisfies most people's expectations.
As a regular user of all of windows 98se and 2000, debian linux, and freebsd, I have to say that the windows paradigm is damned easy to get around in. I don't see freebsd as ready to be a common-man desktop operating system, nor do I see any of the linux distros I've tried as there yet. Some of them are getting pretty close, but from an install standpoint, and configuration changes, and software installs and support, OSS OS'es demand more understanding than the tired-cliche-joe-sixpack will ever want to put into his OS or his computer. He doesn't care about monopolistic practices, he wants to turn it on and have it "just work"
Anyway, to stay on topic, I think windows should lower prices when OSS OS'es and software actually offer a threat to them in the desktop realm, and maybe should admit defeat or strive to improve and put out a decent product in the server market. Maybe MS should just pick their battles a little better, attacking OSS'es soft underbelly (the desktop) and not touching their armored shell (the server market) until they can actually compare with it, if they ever can.
But what do I know?
It's not a weak attempt to look like Open Source, it's subterfuge, Microsoft teaming up with Unisys (who should actually watch their back, seriously, M$ has a long tradition as a backstabber when it suits them) with their We Have The Way Out marketing program should make it quite clear they're aiming at not just Unix servers, but Linux servers which are highly popular.
Microsoft is painted into a corner, without actually being a 'solutions' company they have to have some sort of product, which means they have to protect the source to anything they 'innovate' Embracing Open Source wouldn't fit their business model, period. They'd have to sprout a new arm which provides service, and though that would provide further opportunity to extend their apparent favorite hobby, recent remarks about the evils and shortcomings of GPL, Linux, Open Source, et al, would be a considerable about-face and require some explaining to maintain credibility.
A word so misused and overused it makes me want to vomit everytime I see it.
Embrace, extend and cut-off the air supply of the real innovator(s).
Backstabbing their business partners and stealing their livelihood as they lay bleeding on Wall Street.
More commonly in their tongue known as bending the truth into a pretzel or outright lying.
Among gullible PHB's the world over.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Curl up and die.
Liberty in your lifetime
Microsoft makes deals with government, big business, ISPs, Journalists and schools on good price breaks and the idea that their stuff don't stink. In turn Small Businesses, Parents, workers and students buy MS products to keep in sync with their school/business, etc. (i.e. "I *need* Office to work on that BLT report at home...")
A few years down the road...
when junior leaves college and starts a software company he will have the MS way (and $$$) imprinted in his neurons...
If anyone is going to make a difference they need to work toward government, big business, schools, etc. In essence make it "ready for day work" and document the hell out of everything to also make it accessible to Joe College Grad programmer at mysoftwarecompany.com.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
How about BSD or X licenses? There are a lot of BSD-style licensed, famous and very good software: BSD itself, PostgreSQL, X11, Apache, Tcl/Tk, Alexandria, Castor, Webmin, Gauche, JaxMe, INN, Darwin, libxml, teTeX, NAS, xterm, xscreensaver - you name it.
M$ can easily use software based on that license and I don't think it will hurt BSD-style OSS, it swill just help distribute software based on open standards and utilized skills grown on OSS. And what's wrong that M$ would make some cash on it?
Imagine Apache in the core of IIS or MS Word supporting TeX with teTeX and Xml ith libxml :)
No networked desktop? No problem - it's not a big change in Webmin to use for NT administration. Good GUI bad DB MS Access? Use Jet with PostgreSQL!
Of course it may open the road for competitors to traditionally protected fields (compatibility is easier than simulation), but at the same time it would be easier to play on a competitor's field: Apache-based IIS would work naturally on Mac OS X or any Unix.
Conclusion: the court should force M$ to use OSS software instead of own proprietary solution and that would be not a punishment, that would be to save M$.
I repeat, FedEx and UPS should not exist. Or they should always be on the verge of bankruptcy, cowering and resorting to useless lawsuits against that titan of paper-based correspondence, the almighty United States Post Office. There can be nothing worse than a government-sponsored monopoly, as there can be nothing worse than government. Ayn Rand said so. BTW, that egomaniac charlatan Alan Greenspan needs to be flogged on his naked fanny for daring to intervene in the free market. Down with the USPS! Death to Alan Greenspan!
MS is not in a position to exploit open source. None of the strengths of open source work in tune with MS strengths.
The open source model works best in two situations:
1) Obscure, slowly developing technology. Think of BSD. BSD represents the cutting edge of OS work and it's elite technology. Some of the improvements the BSD movement develops will become standard for the masses down the line. Many more of the improvements will remain useless to the average user.
2) Commodity products. Think Gnome. They've done an exceptional job creating a word processor, a spreadsheet, imaging software, etc, and making it all compatible. In the long run though what Gnome really did was drop the price dramatically on essential software for the average user. Whether or not the average user will ever know the product is out there is another question.
Yes, I know there are a lot of exceptions. MS works on billion dollar budgets, though, so most exceptions don't count.
Linux is interesting because it's moving from development to commodity. Where servers act as commodities Linux does very well. Linux on the desktop will only work if companies treat Linux as another commodity to bring prices down.
MS strategies are NOT based on:
1) Obscure, slowly developing technology. MS follows innovative companies into areas that it knows will be profitable, such as gaming consoles, and spends its money improving existing technologies (well, sort of). MS does not spend millions on pure research hoping to invent the mouse (like Xerox did).
2) Commodity products. When the consumer realizes s/he's in a commodity market s/he'll usually switch to a different product if the price is better. That's why Red Hat sells. Unless you want to do something difficult, Red Hat will do the job just as well and cheaper to boot. By convincing the consumer that s/he's not really in a commodity market, MS can continue to keep prices artificially high (the infamous MS tax).
IBM sells commodity products which is why they bought into Linux. Sun kept Java shared source (almost open source) to develop a secure foundation for their other products and services (they just didn't execute very well). None of the strengths of open source mesh with the strengths of MS. Hence why MS wants to smush open source - they can't co-op the strategy.
It reminds me of "Independence Day" the movie....
President of the USA to alien:
"what do you want us to do?"
Alien to President of the USA:
"Die"
Please Microsoft, pull your OS from the market and close this chapter on killing every innovative company that doesn't sing the Microsoft Corporate song.
:?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The thing which fundamentally offends me about Microsoft is their unethical, anticompeditive practices.
What Microsoft SHOULD do, if it were a good corporate citizen is this:
1. Stop abusing its monopoly.
2. Port Office to Linux
3. Stop changing file-formats, rather find other problems to solve (the Office s/ware problem is pretty much solved at this point). And produce software that solves these other problems.
4. Make its software interoperate with all other systems on the market.
5. Stop trying to make the computing world into a homogenous entity, but rather develop lots of different software solutions for different problems.
Microsoft has software that will sell. They do not NEED to monopolise the market to make a darn good living out of producing software. That is what fundamentally offends me.
Sun Microsystems, Macintosh, Word-perfect, Symantec, Borland and a host of other similar (proprietary software) companies have managed to stay afloat quite happily without stooping to M$ tactics. By producing software (proprietary or otherwise) they have an business model that works.
I think a great many people would be satisfied if Microsoft would simply keep their interfaces, configurations, and standards open and reasonably constant. It's the hidden stuff that makes my applets and programs break. It's the secret "upgrades" hidden in dll libraries amounting to only a few bytes code change but which also happen to completely break a competitors program, that irritates people.
Who really CARES about microsoft code? Get the API and hooks out in the open so we can SEE when they're deliberately forcing you to replace that "win95 only" application that still works fine but somehow doesn't run under win98 or XP. That's the "open source" I want.
No, this isn't flamebait. I keep a collection of system files archived because about once a year microsoft releases an "update" that breaks one program or another. I've seen this since MS deliberately broke netscape with a small dll file and Netscape support was forced to redistribute that dll file as a fix. Get the standards in the open and we'll be happier than we'd be with the actual code.
This is not truly offtopic--did anyone else notice the italics in the story title? I've never noticed this capability before, is it something that's been around and simply ignored or is it a new feature? I'm quite curious, anyone who knows, if they could respond here.
Moderators--Offtopic would be a waste of time and resources. The italicizing occured for this story, so it is on-topic.
Thank you,
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
Microsoft should just go out of business and put us out of their misery. That would be an excellent open source move on their part. But that's my biased and non-objective opinion, so feel free to mod it down to troll.
-Rob
Great Plains Business solutions...don't you keep up with the news?
How can it work with the Open Source community, leverage its resources, and still make a buck?
The answer? It can't. The reason? Because M$ knows that open source is the only real threat to it's monopoly. The second M$ does anything to help out the open source community, it is weakening it's control. That is why we will NEVER see IE for Linux. MS Office documents will never be in an open standard that Linux can open easily with no problems. I don't know much about Samba, but I am waiting for the day that MS changes something so that Samba doesn't work for file sharing. Open Source is MS's biggest enemy and competitor. Asking this question is like saying "how can coke help out pepsi". It's not going to happen.
just my $.02.
Microsoft's successful business model depends on products tied around their Windows platform. A Windows platform means a Windows license, other products that they sell that runs on that platform (resulting in more licenses), and keeps people who have invested in becoming Windows developers in business, who will in turn produce software for the platform which increases its value to Microsoft. They have certification programs based on this, and work very hard to get this one platform into as many markets as possible (X-Box, for one example).
Instead of complying with open standards, it's much more advantageous to Microsoft if you use their standards. A ubiquitous Microsoft standard platform means all kinds of profit potential.
Microsoft will never forgive itself for missing the opportunity to take a cut of every credit card transaction initiated from a Windows platform. My guess is that they're hoping that one day Passport/Wallet will be the way to reclaim this dream.
So why would they give up a major cash cow plus endanger a future cash cow motherlode just because some hippies are whining about source code? They won't. They'll pay it lip service, they'll do what is required to make them sound hip, but don't expect them to open source Windows until their monopoly foothold is completely gone.
They are not a typical software company, and things that make sense for many software companies do not make sense for them. Therefore open source is out, unless it's for technology that really doesn't matter to them if people can reproduce.
The fact that they're now speaking highly of open source and alternative .NET implementations leads me to believe that they're not directly a core to their plans, and may even be assisting their world domination plans. Be so afraid. :)
Who will loose such war? Commercial Unix systems. Wintel is easier and cheaper now and it would be easier and cheaper with OSS. The rest of companies migrate to Wintel, Sun will be bought by Dell. IBM will shutdown AIX in flavour of Linux/PPC and take the rest of non-PC market from collapsed SGI, DEC, HP and Sun. There will be only two platforms: Wintel and PowerPC.
Everybody cry.
You are absolutely correct except for one small thing.
MS is a predatory monopoly. This isn't just rhetoric, it's been the case of an earlier consent decree and the recent criminal conviction.
Predatory monopolies are the free market equivalence of singularities (black holes) in physics. They change all of the rules around them.
E.g., let's say I'm an OEM and I know that 5% of my customers want a non-MS OS. In a free market, I could offer the alternative at a reasonable price (including overhead for the cost of maintaining a second product line) and the alternative will sink or swim on its own.
But since MS is a predatory monopoly, it has written contracts that say the sale of a single non-MS system puts the OEM in a new category and ALL licenses cost an extra $10. The price of this license has nothing to do with the what's offered for sale, for volume, or any other purpose of any economic value to anyone. (MS does not gain from it since it never expects the clause to be enforced.)
No - the sole purpose for that clause is to artifically raise the entry barrier to the competition. It's the difference between a natural monopoly because, gosh darn it, every time we hear that Windows chime we have spontaneous orgasms because the software is such an incredible joy to work with and a predatory monopoly where the software is universally condemned as one of the worst products on the market yet it's impossible for most people to find alternatives.
The problem, of course, is that this is no longer a free market. A free market may have a Gateway offering a Linux box for 50% more than a Windows box because of the need to avoid the cheap win-hardware, and to cover additional overhead costs. A free market would never tolerate an OEM being forced to pay a third party uninvolved in the transaction in any way tens of millions of dollars in penalties.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
"Give Microsoft a valid reason to use the GPL that benefits them instead of just a community of greed and you will have a friend for life. Otherwise get off your freeloading ass and get out there and create clones of the software that Microsoft makes, but licensed under the GPL."
No doubt. I'd like to see successful GPL'd code too. I'm not saying it's not out there, I'm just saying I've never heard of it. The reason MS isn't using it is because their current business model works and people pay for it.
What incentive do they have to change? How could they possibly make even as much money with it as they do now?
Call MS evil if you like, but they are a business. Their job is to make money. They picked a strategy and they're playing hardball. If you want GPL to be successful, then you have to find a way to make it profitable. When somebody makes insane amounts of money using the GPL approach, then MS may change their tune.
"Derp de derp."
Unfortuneately, their OS is their big money maker, and it's how they beat around competing software vendors. Unfortuneately for them, making money selling OSes probably can't last forever.
Basically, instead of fighting to the death, they could be a bit more conservative and not bet everything on their own inferior, proprietary OS, and develop for other OSes as well.
IMHO, it simply makes better business sense to embrace other OSes, in the long term they are currently risking becoming obsolete.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm a FreeBSD user myself, but UFS+S does not equal ext2fs in speed, let alone "blow it out of the water"
Maybe your usage is non typical, but I never found
one single application where UFS+S outperformed ext2fs.
Isn't it the same as their usual new market share acquisition plan?
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!
What incentive does Microsoft have to "work with the Open Source community"? They've built a rather successful company around Closed Source software, absorbing (much) smaller competitors, backdoor shenanigans (I just like to say that whenever I can), and having licensing schemes worthy of The Devil Himself. Want to see the code? You can: for the right price and under very restrictive terms. Microsoft understands this market and can make money with its well known "embrace, extend, control" methodology. Open Source is a new threat and they haven't figured out what to do with it.
Just as they first dismissed (or missed) the Internet, they dismissed Open Source. But, Mr. Gates turned the company around on a dime and went after the market very quickly. The same is now happening with Open Source (albiet with the closed fist, rather than the open hand). Be afraid... be very afraid!
Give them an inch and they'll take a foot. Much more than that, you won't have a leg to stand on.
The business practices of microsoft are vile. Perioid. Dealing with microsoft is contributing to the further destruction of of freedom/values/justice/honor/integrity and that just about sums it up.
No one should be that powerfull.
And thats my opinion.
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
I'd just use all the BSD-licensed code I could to make my OS not suck. Notably, the networking portions. I don't know how incompatible that would be with WDM, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Besides, we'd have one less thing to bitch about on
> To me, that begs the question of what we think would be an "appropriate" reaction ...
Definition
For instance, if someone asked you why Microsoft software is of such poor quality, and your replied that it was because the software was no good, that would be begging the question.
Browsing at +3, and seeing no responses that really answer the question: What should Microsoft do? What would be the "right" thing?
.NOT. It might be their "database" file system. It might be their "subscription" model for Win XP.
As others have noted, while Microsoft put pressure on its competitors, now found to be illegal pressure, much of the demise of MS's competitors has been their own dang fault.
For example, MS did everything they could to get IE as the "default browser" that it is today, but who here has used any recent version of Netscape and been happy with it? 4.x sucks, 6.x is worse, and IE is quite usable. Throw the politics out - which would you prefer?
Mozilla will hopefully change the story, but it's YEARS too late in an industry that works on Internet time.
Word Perfect didn't come out with a decent word processor for Windows for YEARS after Win 3.x became popular.
And so on.
If Linux takes Microsoft, it will be because Microsoft makes a fatal mistake. We don't know what it will be. It might actually be
Whatever it be, it will be when they make a mistake, bet their farm on it, and lose the farm. So far, they've avoided the big mistakes, and the small/medium mistakes have been offset up by strong-arm tactics and backroom deals.
But, if MS sticks to making products that generally work as expected, and don't charge too much for them, and don't hassle their clients too much, it would be damn near impossible to beat 'em.
How would MS beat Linux?
1) Charge reasonable prices for Windows.
2) Make sure it works reasonably well.
3) Make their products inter-operate.
MS has our fury because they have consistently tried to lock the user in. If they were to follow the above three, they'd be no worse off than google, which despite approaching a monopoly on Internet searching, still has our good will. The boys at google have shown time and again a staunch and admirable "stick to basics" approach to their business that inspires trust and confidence.
MS, on the other hand, lies openly and repeatedly to anybody who will listen about whatever suits their fancy.
I don't know what it will be, but MS will make that fatal mistake - and after making it, they will either go the way of DEC (which was once a titan) or learn from their mistakes like IBM. (who now has our love and grace)
So, my advice? Back off Bill! Take it easy a bit, and work WITH the industry forces, (Internet and related, like Linux) inter-operate, and for once, show some ethics!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
MS should take linux and design a proprietary UI just like apple did with their darwin. Then MS could release "MS Windows/Linux 2004" and capitalize off the linux fame plus keep their Windows brand going. They could so easily design the UI as a window manager that users wouldn't even know the difference, and all us open source nerd would have our 'open hooded vehicle' of an OS so we can have good security and stop it from crashing. Additionally, more UI's can continue being integrated from the linux world for those who want better UI's, and then MS could just rip those ideas off too.
All microsoft wants anyways is to have their windows on every machine in the world so that all the companies keep up support contracts with them anyways, and so that Bill Gates can keep everyone beleiving he has all the power in the world. The whole thing is a big nike swoosh. Just change the engine for all us people who actually care, and let MS keep their fame. Everyone wins.
The reason MS won't do this is because they are worried about that chance that it could loosen their hold on the desktop, and the truth is, is that it will. But if they don't start opening up their software to evolution, they are going to loose EVERYTHING.
Darwin runs on x86 as well.
The interesting thing about Apple is that MacOS X is *not* open source, although the Darwin kernel component is. The Quartz graphics engine, the Aqua gui layer, and all of the traditional MacOS apis, are not open source.
Microsoft has a product called Interix, which consists of a Unix subsystem that plugs into the Windows 2000/XP kernel, plus a large set of Unix utilities. Microsoft has open sourced their versions of gcc, gdb, etc, because they have to, but they haven't open sourced the BSD based utilities that come with Interix, even though they'd lose little by doing so.
If Microsoft open sourced the entire Interix product (utilities and subsystem), then their operating system would be like Apple's, with an open source Unix component, and a larger proprietary component containing all of the APIs that are special to Windows.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
The GPL is not something invented to keep people from making money. Comercial use of code is part of your software rights. It is your right to use your softwar in anyway you see fit, so long as it does not infring on the rights of others. There is plenty of money being made configuring, servicing and making software. Making that software free will not stop people from making money that way. Doctors, lawyers and engineers make a living without selling a restrictively licensed "product" and programers can too. In fact, most programers do this.
Yes, some of them might even have fun doing it, and others like me might not ever expect a dime from their efforts. If Corel can't make money the M$ way, who stands a chance? Better to jump on the new superior model and have good software than to try and be an ass for no reward. As free software becomes better known and more widely deployed there may be less of a chance even for M$ to make money selling closed source binaries that spy on you, blare adverts at you and suck in general. Microsoft has disgraced themselves and all closed source companies by association. A free market eliminates waste like that and M$ is on it's way to the trash can. How should M$ open their code? Fully and imediatly! The longer they wait, the further behind it gets. I won't use their crap as is, and it will take years to make it suck less.
Now for a few words in the defense of Red Hat. While, I'm not versed in all of the nice things they do, besides WRITE and DISTRIBUTE FREE SOFTWARE for everyone to use, they also provide a home for the GCC project. If that's not Red Hat's money finding it's way to major coders and contributors to free software, then sure Red Hat keeps all it's money to itself. Hmmmm.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
MS should take the source code of an older version of Windows NT that they no longer support (I'm thinking specifically Windows NT 3.51, since that was the version before MS integrated the GDI into the kernel), and RELEASE the source code for it..
That includes the tools used to compile the source code itself, so you get not only an older version of Windows NT, but also an older version of the C\C++ compiler used to compile the code itself.
He's not a troll. He just has the balls to admit the truth.
The story was posted at 08:00PM.
The parent was posted at 08:01PM and contains 493 words.
Only trolls can type 493 words/minute.
It's not about how can Microsoft play fair. Open source people are one of the few groups who care about fairness.
Microsoft got where it is today by realizing what things they needed to do TO MAKE MONEY - PERIOD. Look at the track record - they make decisions based on money, not law, ethics, or kindness.
So they will only cooperate if it makes them money, which is not of interest to most of us. There is no point in helping guide them to "the right way".
this is an old troll...i've read this at least 3 times.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
First, start with a dismissal of this asburd court case. Make it clear that unless the case is immediately dismissed, Microsoft will no longer sell or support any product in the USA. Delist MS from the American stock market (or threaten to) and refuse to sell product to the international operations of any company that continues to list on an American stock market. Losing (or the threat of losing) every major successful tech company causes a market crash that makes people remember 1929 as blip. This means the elimination of all major American PC producers and the elimination (or elimination of expansion) of any business that depends on MS technology (almost all of them). Make certain the it is known that when the American gov't buckles, any PC company that sold alternate OS's will never sell an MS product again. Likewise with companies that flirted with alternate solutions are to be denied access to technology.
:-). If it actually look like somehow someone's making some money on the non-intel based systems, buy them and burn 'em. After that, only fanatics willing to pay 5 or 10 times what an Windows machine cost will be running them. (By this point, non-MS companies have no economies of scale to subsidize Linux sales.)
:-).
Once the USA is looking at a depression to make the 1930's look like a walk in the park, we can assume that the gov't will see reason. (Of course, this costs MS a pretty penny, but they can live on international sales alone for as long as it takes.)
Once that's over with, it's time to party. First, buy Sun and Apple and immediately kill them. Make it publically known that any possible competitor that starts rising through the ranks wil be bought and their customers orphaned. It will only cost you a lot once or twice. After that, nobody is going to bother buying from a competitor. If it's any good, your assured of buying an orphan-to-be product.
Now finally we come to the open-source strategy... *phew*. Make a deal with the hardware manufacturers. CPUs, chipsets and motherboards are modified so that they either run MS Windows only (MS Win ROMS anyone), or you can never run Windows. Hardware companies can choose: either MS alone, or never. If they don't like it, there's a dozen others ready to take their place. Good luck living off the Linux market alone
Large company licenses require companies to justify any non-MS tech investments or face double or triple costs. MS will of course, approve of tech investments in fields where they don't have offerings.
Finally, modify Windows so that it will not run non-approved software, except for high-priced development systems that require strict licensing and some special hardware. A software redistribution license requires strict approval by MS, $100,000 testing fee, 15% royalties and a right to allow MS to purchase the software at an agreed upon price.
Lastly, once companies are used to renting their software yearly, make the cost of an MS license (for public companies) 1-2% of outstanding stock in lieu of payment. Those that wish to forego the expense of course have the option of ceasing to use computers.
After 50 years, MS stock is a rather more real currency that the US dollar and Open Source software, it a weird memory from a time when individuals programmed.
Oh, you meant what would *we* like to see MS's OSS strategy be. Oops
so microsoft operating systems can be run by mindless bafoons?? oh wait they all ready are??
please that argument is so lame. Most companies pay top dollar for MSCE people to run there microrosoft networks on top of the cost of the operating system expenses. That argument is totaly ludicrous most fortune 500 companies and major companies will be paying high prices for admins to set up and watch there windows based networks dont't forget how many times a day these high paid employees have to reboot there mission critical servers that run their networks
bottom line... windows computers don't run themselves there is a lot of upkeep and your going to have to pay top dollar for someone to admin your windows networks as like wise with *nix systems etc....
I've been complaining about this one for years now.
Outlook can be used in one of two configurations (that matter): "Internet only", which has IMAP and POP capabilities, and "Corporate", which has Exchange and POP capabilities. This Hobson's choice is an anti-competitive barrier they've put in place to keep people from using IMAP servers for e-mail.
One way to transition away from Exchange is to move the mail to an IMAP server and leave the contacts, calendar stuff, etc on the Exchange server...... Except, of course, for the fact that Microsoft has made that impossible.
Another way that Microsoft could fix this would be to allow Outlook to store non-email content as MIME attachments in IMAP servers. That is, a particular IMAP folder could be designated as a Contacts or Calendar folder and Outlook could store that type of information as MIME attachments to e-mail messages. But, of course, that would make it possible to get all of the functionality of Outlook without an Exchange server, which is something Microsoft Can Never Allow.
I know this is completely off topic but seriously, how many of you that run a properly configured 2k box ever have a BSOD or a crash that takes the system down. I loose apps , even explorer once or twice as i remember but have never not been able to hit ctrl-alt-del and run explorer agian. I think I have only got a reset (2k's version of a BSOD) once and that was when i was testing early beta drivers for a dvd card, something that could take down any machine.
See GPL vs LGPL and RMS.
There is a very simple reason I use Linux. It's the same reason that I just installed Linux on yet another company server today.
It works!
Windows doesn't.
It's just that simply. Screw an 'Open Source' policy, that's not what MS needs. MS needs to worry more about delivering good software first and foremost.
I'll bitch as much as the next guy about MS's unfair bussiness practices because we got stuck with shit because of it. If they had delivered quality software, well, then I probably wouldn't complain.
I can't stress this enough, it's not that MS is evil or bad or not free or whatever, it's just that there software sucks. So for god sakes stop using it and then trying to figure out 'What MS's OS Strategy should be.'
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Something greater than the democracy/capitalism of today?
I don't fault Microsoft for wanting to sell software. It's a respectable business and if there are people who want to buy packaged software, that's fine.
What Microsoft should do is play fairly. All they have to do is make an effort to adhere to standards. Document the protocols. Publish the API's. If there's a standard way of doing something, do it that way instead of building a black-box clone.
Microsoft says that they have the best software. If that's the case, why put so much effort into creating lock-in? They should simply create the best software they can, and play fairly like everyone else. They'd continue to make money and they wouldn't have everyone hating their guts. They wouldn't be able to hold a monopoly that way, but the customers they did have would be loyal and happy. And some real competition would force them to actually listen to what customers are asking for and deliver it to them, instead of the current "we know best" approach.
I'm convinced that this won't happen for as long as Gates is in charge. He has a "god complex" and wants to own and control every molecule in the universe. Perhaps a post-Gates Microsoft of the future will see the light.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Embrace and extend. What else? Or were you wondering what their strategy should be if they did NOT want to dominate the whole freaking world? That's kind of academic.
In fact, the strategy they have is a damned good one. It'll be even better if nobody clues to it in time, which is why I particularly delight in outing it here. This is my interpretation, and they may possibly phrase it differently- or not. Maybe in the NEXT antitrust fiasco this will come to light.
MICROSOFT'S OPEN SOURCE STRATEGY
This. Is. What. They. Are. Doing.
Note that it plays to their strengths, including the strengths they've learned in the antitrust trial, of barratrous lawsuits and dragging things out endlessly, and note the brilliance of embracing and extending, not the openness of collaboration, but the concept of a viral license. This is brilliant conceptual work on their part, it really is.
But it does not have to succeed- because they really need people who are KNOWN to have agreed to their license. They can't really go around suing everyone who writes open source and dragging them into court and saying, "You DID agree to the Shared Source license, didn't you? Everybody does! You had to have!". That won't fly- people who can legitimately say they've never agreed to that license are in a position of strength.
However, people who have in fact agreed to their viral Shared Source license, EVER, are fucked. And can never be allowed to participate in open source or free software development- because of the legal exposure.
Given this state of affairs, why would Microsoft ever need to find another open source strategy? This is unquestionably the best one for their goals. Yes, it's evil. And your point is?
Oh, the heady scent of freshly mown Astroturf.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
F*** Off and Die.
The reason the troll is offtopic is because it was written before the topic existed.
It is not in the purview of the citizenry to determine the strategy to help Micro$loth continue to make money.
The perpetuation of a corporate entity is the purview of the officers and directors.
If the question is more along the lines of "Can't we all just get along?---" then simply stay focused on making Open Source products provide an example of how to give customers a reasonable product. Some people buy brand name (I buy HP Scanners and printers historically) some people buy according to price.
Open source development should stay focused on what it does best. Let the corporations find their own way to maintain a profit.
It's true that Apple's end goal is selling more hardware. The particular way in which open source has done this, however, it to make their hardware more attractive by raising the quality of the software that it will run.
So, Microsoft could use open source in manner parallel to Darwin (and Apple's treatment of Apache, SSH, Perl, etc etc) to improve their software. Whether or not they're a hardware vendor, improving their software should make it more attractive to customers, and thus Increase Shareholder Value.
Actually, I suppose that competing on the cutting edge of quality is a novel strategy for MS. But heck, if they wanted to start doing that more more often....
Any conessions Microsoft would make towards the Open Source community would be an enourmous mistake. It would only succeed in showing their customer base "The Microsoft Way" is not the best way, which is what they are paying to hear.
In 2002, the IT industry is going to have to take sides in a war. Traditional versus Innovative, Closed versus Open, Agressive Development versus Passive Development, Cathedral versus Bazaar. No matter what you call it, you're going to have to firmly identify yourself on one side or the other.
The Microsoft Way says that there should be one company to spearhead development, and lead everyone else down a primrose path. Not only should you follow your shepherd Microsoft, but you should shell out gobs of money for the mere opportunity to follow this shepherd, as it tends to be comfortable inside the herd, and youre surrounded by other sheep you can point fingers at in the event of a catastrophe.
The "Other" Way, or, more clearly, OUR way, goes something like this: I am personally accountable for my actions. If I assume responsibility for something outside my sphere of competence, I do so at my own risk. Professionally, I will chose what works best for my company, regardless of platform affinity. My preferences often do not extend to encompass others. I know Mildren over in Accounting doesnt know what "grep" is. If something goes catastrophically wrong, its a lesson that would have been learned anyway. I dont care where the herd is going. I am the Sheperd, not the sheep.
Take your pick.
Bowie J. Poag
I've seen this exact message before.
I'm sure that, just like you, the poster would not advocate Windows 98 as a "professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability..." nor would any business looking for those qualities choose Win98. Those businesses, if they were to choose a Microsoft OS, would choose Windows 2000.
Please note that all of this comes from someone who is decidedly not a Microsoft fan. I'm just providing a fair interpretation of the poster's comments. I'll leave it up to you to decide how many minutes you want to spend in the barrel.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
And with regard to Linux file systems, I think XFS is a good cool punk rock solid journaling FS. Though their website seems to be down now.
Hah, whatta joke. MicroSoft is simply incapable of interacting with open source in any kind of meaningful way whatsoever.
Here's why:
1) Rather than extending a hand they would rather you extend your butt
2) Why tell the truth when a lie will do? (Doctored video at DOJ trial)
3) Control, Control, Control...not possible with open source
4) Honesty is absent even in the face of incontrovertible evidence
5) Complete arrogance in conjunction with ignorance
6) Bill has a god complex (cathedral)..we are bazaar (bizarre?)
7) All Bill's minions are yes men...a complete 180 degrees from what open source is all about
So what can M$ do for a successful open source strategy? Not a damn thing but die.....They are incompatible.
Amazing you moderated your own troll post up with parallel user accounts. Congratulations for demonstrating that Slashdot is still a joke this long after "the Signal 11 incident".
Your post is still a troll however.
Are you new to Linux?
Well, this argument has been something that has been whispered about but seldom brought into the open. Linux is a powerful tool, but at the same time, its a private toy for those who got involved before the "L" word was a buzz word.
The Linux community needs to decide what they want....to keep their toy the way it is, or to seriously make some changes and try to take the market.
If people dont want to make the changes, thats fine with me, but no one can then go and complain that MS has the desktop market in its pocket. Windows is poor in a huge manner of respects, but one thing that everyone seems to miss out on is the people its designed for. It is designed for the average user. The average computer user is the kind of person who think a cd rom drive is a built in cup holder (you people in tech support know what im talking about). A person like that will not be comfortable or use Linux in its present state.....period.
Things that we take for granted as being over simple and easy or out of reach for most avaerage users. Those people are the market, you want to win the desktop war, you have to win those people.
Another aspect for winning the desktop war is games....Loki's gone, what now? The PC has quickly become the most common gaming platform and is no longer seen as a work tool, its your new entertainment center. Until Linux gets a decent library of games and new games, not just old converts of windows games, Linux winning the desktop war wont happen.
---------
As for the actual topic of the thread, whats the big deal about open source and why does everyone hate Microsoft? I hear Linux fans praising Mac all the time, they arent open source. This seems very hypocritical to me. The key to for a future business model in this arena in my opinion is open spec. Why not? If a company's entire lively hood depends on their code base and they want to protect it, whats wrong with that? What do you or I care if we see the code, if its open spec, we can still work with it, talk to it and everything can play nice together. Thats what matters in the end, from what i hear, thats the root of most beefs people have with microsoft products, not being able to work with it correctly. Before you bash microsoft for being close source, think about how you were talking about how cool the G4 is just 10 minutes ago and for just a moment, try and side step your own hypocricsy.
--this is a general argument, not aimed at any one person.
You can't please all the people all the time, but you sure can piss all of them off all the time.......
That's such a little to do but would began to mean true compatibility across various system. Microsoft dont need to be split or to open their source, they just have to behave so other OS could achieve compatibility with the big guy. That is how much of 'open' I can see in microsoft, but it aint going to happen unless a judge force them to do so. To me, that's what the fight is all about.
Classified intelligence secrets about the CIA and NSA at : www.fastaxs.com
Post and repost this URL - it will be covered up quick!!
1. Release all source for obsolete and no-longer-supported operating systems. Why can't we find DOS to run those machines that need it? Why should Windows 3.x still be proprietary? This type of open source would allow the curious to tinker and allow teaching without worrying about "can I copy this stuff for my students" stuff.
Though this could be a good public relations idea, I don't think Microsoft will ever do it, because too many skeletons are hidden in the codebase-- DR-DOS FUD, anyone? Anyone? It would also act counter their sacred-cow "all PCs must have a licensed OS or be declared as EVIL" stance.
2. Allow some of their prominent developers to work on and support useful open-source projects. The type of project would be the nooks and crannies that MS doesn't care about and that won't eat at their current market.
Again, I don't think they would ever do this, because MS developers don't have any real-life time anyway. They'd also be paranoid that they might lose out on some proprietary opportunity that would bring them an extra $3.95 to plonk on their fuzzy balance sheet. As far as they're concerned, there are no niches in the market.
Unfortunately, it seems obvious to everyone that Microsoft has no conception of goodwill. If it can't be seen to bring in immediate profits, it's considered worthless. Notice they never gave anything to the education community until it presented itself as a way to entrench their monopoly further? But people might actually start to like them if they treated developers and users like worthwhile partners instead of paranoid enemies. Taking some of these steps would change our perception of them, but it doesn't seem they consider that of much value.
Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
"What would we like to see Microsoft do? How can it work with the Open Source community, leverage its resources, and still make a buck?"
The real question is "Do we care?"
There are enough alternative operating systems out there. I for one couldnt give a rats a... if MS folded over night because it couldnt make a buck in the open source world..... and I run a couple of MS Windows boxes.
Microsoft will do whatever it wants - always has, always will... and as usual, in the eyes of the media, it will smell like a rose.
"If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4... " -- Wil Wheaton
I would defintely disagree with you here. I have 5 Redhat 7.1/7.2 systems at home and one Windows 98 system. I spend more time working on the one 98 box than on the 5 Redhat systems combined. I will admit that I made my living for several years as a Linux admin and have considerable knowledge of those systems. But I also work regularly with MS systems and have a great deal of knowledge on them also. The W2K admins at work ask me (a lowly programmer now) for assistance quite frequently.
As for the learning curve, I again would have to argue with you (and the parent to your post). My wife and children used to use the 98 box, I recently converted them to Linux (RH7.2) and within a couple of days they were as productive with LInux (KDE 2.2.2 on RH7.2) as they were with 98. As a matter of fact within a week my 9 year old son was doing much more. It took my wife a little longer as she doesn't have the time to spend on the computer as the 9 year old. But the real catch is my 3 year old daughter, she is the one that really argues against having 98 on their machine again.
While I will agree that there are a few things that "need" to be done to Linux, they are not show stoppers from it being usable.
Now for the on-topic portion, Microsoft would be wise not to alienate the Open-Source community, however, I believe that they are a little late. If they had started a few years ago, there very well might not be such a large Open-Source community that is oposition to them today. The Open-Source community very well might have been on their playing field instead. They got greedy and charged too much for development tools, and "upgrades" (that were really bug fixes). That is one of the reasons that I ran to the Open-Source community, I needed stable development tools that were affordable and with Linux (or *BSD), I got a free C/C++ compiler, Perl, and others that allowed me to continue teaching myself more on my own time. If I could have bought a copy of Visual Basic and Visual C++ for less than a few hundred dollars, I very well might have stayed in the Microsoft world.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
My experience with running linux under load is different. Where I work we run Linux on our production machines where we do heavy duty GIS image processing.
My development machines I picked out the configuration myself (mostly). I have two dual 1GHz P3 systems with Asus mobos. I decided to go all IDE with these machines to keep the cost down, I have dedicated cards for doing Raid 0 to get up the drive speed and capacity. I HAVE been getting up times in excess of 60 days, although that definitely wasn't the case before the 2.4.x days. My own experience with non hardware/power related crashes has been problems with the freaking NVidia drivers locking up X. Solution for that was to yank the NVidia crap that that fixed the problems. I have 2 other machines in my care, both duallie P3's, one with a megaraid card, the other with a symbios controller, but again, commodity motherboards.
Now we have other machines in production that were built by the IT staff that has what I consider "exotic" hardware, Serverworks mobos, fibre channel arrays (no drivers for it in the kernel, support from the manufactuere), some DELL servers, stuff like that. Now those machines I don't consider to be stable, random crashes, not wonderful uptime either.
So my experience is, you pick "exotic" hardware, expect low stability and tons of crashes. Stick with commodity hardware and your stability should be awesome.
The deal is, Linux works awesome on commodity hardware.
The simple fact is that MS will never have to even acknowledge the open-source movement if they don't want to. Why? Because they're focused on the war (total technological presence), not the battle (Linux vs. Windows). That is why MS wins. Because people get hung up on minor issues (Netscape vs. IE, Java vs. C#) when they're really just pieces of a much larger and more elaborate puzzle. MS wants to bring you the digital universe. From CD players to refrigerators to microwaves. They want a slice of every pie. And they'll probably get it. Simply because they're pushing these areas. Behind the scenes, a lot of their work goes toward the future and future uses of the PC. Windows will become less and less of an important characteristic. In fact, the underlying operating system will become less and less important in the future of computing. Much in the same way that BIOS's are now (fairly) standardized. Eventually the OS will reach it's theoretical design "perfection" and will be relegated to hardware or flash ROM. The money is in providing a truly digital lifestyle to the average consumer at a reasonable price. That is MS's war, and they have a long way to go. But don't get so caught up in the current battle, for it will soon be distant history. For reference, just go back to the early 90's and read some of the articles on Windows & OS/2. See what the opinion of the future of *NIX was back then. All it takes is one breakthrough or one consumer craze to change the entire way the industry works. Don't think for a second MS isn't eyeing the *real* prize.
At first I didn't think this was a troll but upon further review I am convinced. It is either anti-Linux FUD from Microsoft or a pro-FreeBSD argument.
I am not sure where you get the idea that Linux requires a lot of maintenance. I've found that it just keeps on going and going and going.
I have a couple of servers that have been up for 292 days. Prior to that they were up for about 180 days since I first installed them. They have served my clients quite well and earned us a good reputation with them.
As for "childish and unprofessional messages", anything is better than "unexpected error, quitting" and "Netscape engineers are weenies".
Coding Blog
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Microsoft's top-down, rigid control model is completely at odds with the way things are done with open source software. Furthermore, Microsoft is a business, and as such, its main goal is profit. Microsoft has been extremely profitable with its current business model, and it is quite clear that most open source-centric business models have not experienced that level of profit. It would therefore be a grave fiduciary misstep on Microsoft's part to deviate from its current business model.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
Why should m$ move away from Embrace, Extend, Extinguish...
Thus far it has worked very well...
for those of you that didn't know check out this link and learn about Microsoft's "Shared-Source" Rotor project based off the .NET CLI and C#.
But I though Microsoft had always been open source.
Why do you keep reading it?
Well, whether its a troll, you just made a point in his favor. Your....server....has been up 292 days. And since you run a server, its a safe bet you know alot more than average joe smith who uses the computer to check his hotmail and look at porn(average comp user). Linux is undeniably great in server market, the real war that going on is the desktop war, and thats where Linux is falling short. These issues arent brought to the forefront in a attempt to bash Linux, but more to push the people involved to fix them.
You can't please all the people all the time, but you sure can piss all of them off all the time.......
Personally, in 6 continuous years of running Linux with ext2fs, I've never had a dataloss problem.
Maybe this is one of those "then you don't use it right" things. So what am I doing wrong?
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Now where have I heard this before... This post is cut-and-paste identical to some FUD that's all over the net.
A solution to the problem with music today
People shouldn't write things if they don't know what those things mean.
Microsoft's goals and the goals of Open Source are directly opposite each other. At first glance, but I'll get into that later.
Microsoft aims for profit by charging for programs. Open Source software doesn't aim for profit, though some have tried (And mostly failed) through selling support with that software.
Microsoft makes money because their source is closed, and cannot be used by anyone but Microsoft. Open Source software cannot make money by this route, as obviously, the code is there for the taking.
Microsoft, if they continue making money off of software, will fall in the end. Why? Humanity. Just as they seek to profit, so do consumers, and consumers do not profit by giving their money to other people. Thus, they must fight to ensure that open source software is not seen as a viable option. And, frankly, if you look around, it's all but too late for them to do that. The word is out, and it will be all but impossible for them to get it back in.
Now, there are some who will scream 'free as in speech, not as in beer'.. Linux is more like free beer than 'free' speech. I can download a distribution without giving anyone a dime. (Well, aside from my ISP..)
But where's the freedom of speech? And how is freedom of speech really free? I can say 'In my opinion, Microsoft sucks.', but I can't make wholesale accusations and lies about them without fear of legal reprisal. Likewise, I can't stand up in a crowded theatre and shout 'Fire!'
Is that free? My speech is restricted. In reality, we don't have 'freedom' of speech, and perhaps rightfully so. (Shouting 'Fire' in a theatre isn't fun for anyone, really.) So how then, with the GPL, a license that places restriction upon code, is open source software free?
Don't delude yourself. Open Source software usually isn't free. That's probably a good thing, though. I don't want people using my code to profit while I gain nothing. But then, either does Microsoft. They're certainly not 'evil' for not subscribing to the idea of open source, no more than any Linux vendor is.
by not calling the license of the most popular and to their standpoint threatening products a threat to american civilisation.
They could stop leveraging their monopoly to maintain 15-25% growth anually.
They could stop changing their interfaces and publishing existing ones so that other could interoperate instead of using the interfaces as a lock on a customer base.
They could stop using their monopoly to force hardware sellers to include a copy of windows, and permit dual booting.
They could contribute some of their infrastructure to an open license, even their own, which they would get vetted by the open source people.
In other words, they could give in on all fronts, and resign to be a company about 25% smaller than they are.
My real question: Is this question real? If so, it either means a change in tactics or a capitulation.
Derek
But, you see, it is profitable for a company like Microsoft to reinvent the wheel. Making a proprietary, non-interoperable kernel interface or web server ties people to their platform and it saves Microsoft the expense and uncertainty of actually having to come up with innovative products.
They'll open up a restaurant.If we take software as recipes and service providers as restaurants. We're gonna see a lot more .NET cafes out there serving the special C# brew...with XML of course. Let say stoves and ovens are your pc/server, the M$ special brew would be too costly compared to GNU's free beer.
May the best man win. If it's Windows, so be it. I'm not going to use Linux out of a pointless sense of blind optimism. But if Linux is going to be the winner, someone needs to get cracking soon, because Linux as is just isn't cutting it for home use.
Got Rhinos?
...is when there is no longer a market at all.
When there is only one vendor, that is not
a market. It's a monopoly.
Monopoly is like socialism but without the pretense.
The fact that it is perfectly legal and easily doable for you to buy a computer without MSWin is why Microsoft does not have a monopoly.
A predatory monopoly only continues if it has government backing, such as a "national oil company" or what AT&T was in the US, or if it produces a better product than anyone else.
Whether you like it or not, Microsoft produced a better consumer operating system than anyone else for a few years. That is how they became big.
By abusing that market position, and alienating people, they are now losing mind share. Not market share, not yet.
The turning point was the Microsoft rebate drive.
Microsoft's further alienation of their potential markets, with their BSA hired thugs, has led to such marvelous developments as Red Flag Linux! Good bye, possible 1 Billion users!
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
It has been my main browser from version 0.9.3 and it is very good.
I waited a bit myself due to the very poor NS 6.0 release. That was disappointing.
anyway...
A license should entitle the holder to a full copy of the sources to the software. This would be a win-win situation for all involved.
MS would gain by drastically increasing their testing/development force as we could pinpoint the bugs we report and possibly even propose patches for them. They would also place themselves above antitrust reproach (except possibly for past actions) as they would no longer have any unfair advantage - percieved or otherwise. Anyone could take a look and see exactly how/why a particular module is used/required.
The code concepts/algorithms should still belong to them - they can draft any sort of license they like. As such, a drastic departure would be required to free a derivative work from licensing requirements.
MS would certainly not lose any revenue to piracy as those who are going to steal their software will do so regardless. As a byproduct, MS could reallocate those developers devoted to the protection schemes that simply antagonise the more capable thieves who, in turn, make their exploits readily available.
Users would benefit from the higher quality of applications as developers are enabled to write better code and provide suggestions for securing the operating system. Our applications could only improve with a better knowledge of the internals of the OS and not be limited to the published/supported APIs (while running the risk to ourselves and our users of using features which may disappear in later releases). In fact, we could even distribute patches to properly licensed (it would be a derivative work) MS users (which MS would be entirely within their rights not to support).
In fact, the only entity that could be hurt in this scenario is MS, and that only if their code is absolutely attrocious (which, frustrating as they can be at times, I find hard to believe).
"I'm sure that, just like you, the poster would not advocate Windows 98 as a "professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability..." nor would any business looking for those qualities choose Win98. Those businesses, if they were to choose a Microsoft OS, would choose Windows 2000."
That may be. Certainly I have done so, when I have built high-end non-linear editing systems. I've also recommended Win2k to my father and others.
However, the post (troll?) didn't mention Win2k. It specifically did mention both 98 and ME, and compared them semi-directly with Linux. IOW: I didn't bring them up, he did.
I honestly don't see how you putting words into his mouth is more fair than me answering specific comments that he *did* make. But hey, I was never on the debate team. Perhaps I should call the cooper right now.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
did i just catch the bonus phrase of the day? BILL GATES and ETHICS?! riiight....
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
Superficial thinking.
If the alternative OS can really "swim," a retailer can open which does business only with the alternative, and doesn't deal with M$.
The problem is that Linux can't swim. Deal with it. M$ is a scapegoat, nothing else.
Instead, I think MS would pay attention to the process some other really successful software companies are following:
- Release closed-source software
- Rake in profits
- When profits flatten, create a new stir by releasing the source
That's called "Having your cake and eating it too" and I think a lot of people would think better of MS if they adopted that strategy (as long as they release things other than, say, MS Bob or MSDOS 3.0)Those businesses, if they were to choose a Microsoft OS, would choose Windows 2000
Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but what did these business' do for a desktop OS before Win2K came out? Win98 was the "desktop" standard for many business' for quite a while.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Bottom line: You can't always rely on consumers to make the right choice. Even if you could, it would still be essential to make sure that they always *have* a choice.
Talk about arrogant! Who the hell are you to be telling consumers they're making the wrong choices?!
i wonder where you get your idea of free market. how are you defining "free", here? free to follow coyote-san's certified rules of economic practices? free to place themselves out of business because coyote-san doesn't like their products?
if you mean free in the way it is usually meant: free to make whatever economic choices they want to, then m$ is behaving in perfect harmony with the free market system, since the economic choices are its own. by what right do you tell a company that it must deal with people it doesn't want to? by what right do you set the price for the goods being sold by another?
if you had a sweet shop and you gave a nephew a lollipop but charged others a dollar for one, are you a predatory businessman? the answer is "no". you're just excersing your right to set whatever price you want for your goods. to think otherwise is empty rhetoric and re-defining "free" to mean "subject to coyote-san".
alex.
"indicating that they were created by 14-year olds with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude."
No, no...I'm pretty sure Bill Gates is older than 14.
Basically, they should admit the deffiencies in their model
of development, licensing, and all other issues they're being
criticized. Beg the public to indulge with "corporate practice"
and start being nicer to the OSS community.
The point is, what Microsoft really pisses me off is that they're
basically trying to strongarm innovation, integrity, justness, etc.
on to their side through FUD campaigns
(talk about fabricating prestige....).
I just can't stand the whore trying to claim a virgin.
This very interesting support article speaks for itself. I dont know if i should be pissed, or laff at how sad they are...
[alk]
"I hear Linux fans praising Mac all the time, they arent open source."
.NET stuff).
Not entirely, no. But they play nice. Their OS supports true, honest-to-god, standards. I can plop down on a Mac and ssh into my machine. The things do NFS and apache. Apple doesn't really "embrace and extend" anything. Their mp3 player/ripper plays and rips (you guessed it) mp3s! Not some Apple-only music format. Microsoft's built-in music stuff only rips to wmfs. It'll play mp3s, sure, but if you want to rip music you have to use wmfs. So many other things work in the same way with Microsoft too; make something compatible with a standard and then add extensions so that only Microsoft users can access it.
As for open source, Apple's OS is mostly open source; the GUI isn't. All the devel tools are free, too, and the reason you'll find Linux people praising the Mac is because it really plays nice with open source. If you want you can download all the GNU utils and run GNOME apps right alongside close-source Apple apps. You can sorta do a bit of that on Windows with Cygwin, but it's not nearly as nice.
Finally, if you look at the source code available from Apple, you aren't essentially barred from participating in other, similar, open source projects (like you are if you look at the shared source
So there yah go: just because Apple makes some closed source stuff does not make them synonomous with Microsoft; there are a lot of differences between the two companies, the primary one being that Apple is willing to cooperate and is willing to embrace (but not extend) standards.
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
on a side note: are you related to Jeff K?
Man... This sounds like a guy working in Microsoft asking this community how to go about approaching opensource. Don't answer him! hahaha
Open Source is a strategy, not a solution.
I think that brings the point home for this and a number of other discussions above.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
if you are a company and you're satisfied with not owning the world, you end up being owned by one who isn't.
modern capitalism is a hot dog eating contest: you gotta be the biggest and the fastest, or there's no point in even sitting down at the table.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Traditional versus Innovative, Closed versus Open,
I don't see the link between Innovative and Open Source. Most of the innovative work done in software engineering is done in company-funded researchlabs, not by Open Source hackers.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
One problem that MS faces is mindshare.. they are after all a VERY high profile company who is publicly traded. This of course translates in to "Everything we do has to turn a buck."
Now, Apple seems to have done this very thing and still make money, but, they have a few advatages. First, the bulk of the underpinnings of OSX are of course, on some free liscense. Second, people now expect Apple to so wild and crazy things, ever since the $1 ceo steped foot back on the Apple campus.
Microsoft, unfortunatly, probably has more conservative investors, who for MS not spewing out small upgrades, (i call it printing money) would read something crazy and revolutionary as a "sell NOW" sign.
Now, if somehow MS get sover the hurdle of not making something that directly generates revenue, you have to consider what they would actually do. The web has forever changed the windows hodgepodge. Updates to drivers, IE exploits, and the ilk can be had the minute they are ready. This brings up some interesting possibilities for MS. Lets look at microsofts key techs:
Visual Studio
DirectX
IE
Office
NT(2k, XP, whatever else)
First, a developer would need access to the following for opensourcing anything to be worthwhile: directX, parts of visual studio, fileformats from office, and at least 'some' of the core os.
Developers need hooks to the UI and other parts of the system, of course, in the long run, though some may disagree, Apple did it right - "hey, why DO people buy our product over someone elses? UI, Quicktime, Apple only apps, integration." Ok, keep our money makers next to our hearts, and open source the rest."
This is what microsoft needs to look at. What do they sell that people are buying windows for, what makes it uniqe, and will keep people buying. Take that, opensource the rest(its all VERY debatable, so, debate =).
Im rambling now, but after carefull thought, if MS needs to go opensource, its pretty much got to be the core os, dev tools, tie-ins for UI and other high level things.
Financially, it will jhurt them no matter what, buit that would be the point if this was handed down as a DOJ punishment. In the end, windows would be scads better after it happened.
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs
Microsoft: stop fucking us programmers around
So what do these people do all day?
Ah, this:
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
This has already happened long ago. However, most companies that I know of tend to have one vendor that they buy from. That enables them to build good relations with their vendor, getting good deals and good support. With your reasoning, people would have to migrate their entire business onto Linux in one go.
M$ is no scapegoat. Ask BeOS, Mac, Sun, IBM, DR. They don't compete on an open market, they compete through litigation and intimidation (that is what those OEM licenses really are). If you get that $10 penalty on every system you sell, along with lower priority whenever you have a request for your main OS vendor, well - that amounts to a serious business disadvantage that does not compensate for those additional 5% you can do business with.
Stop the brainwash
Since 'Astroturf' is a term to describe fake advocacy, and the parent-parent post isn't advocacy, I have to assume you're calling the Linux shill the Astroturfer.
Or is 'Astroturfer' just a general purpose attack term these days?
I can throw together a handful of Red Hat machines, too, if I want to be able to say 'I do less work to take care of them than the Windows 98 machine.'
Of course, since I already have a few server boxes (Slackware or NetBSD, thank-you-very-much, though) I don't think I will.
Linux machines are stable because there just aren't that many things one can do with them to place them at the kind of risk that you can with a modern multimedia-enabled OS installed on a machine. As the old farmer used to say 'as stable as that big rock out there in the middle of the field.'
Consider the following things:
1. Windows and MS's major OSs are pretty unique, but at the same time are'nt nearly as advanced at the core as other major OSs, meaning a) nobody would want to steal it, and b) if somebody did, it would probably be easy to catch anyone if they did.
2. All the software outside of the base OS really does'nt provide MS with income. Media player, IE, directx, et. al. are ad-ons MS uses to get market share in those realms. If open, the worst that could happen is somebody makes it better and MS steals the ideas.
3. With thousands of programmers pouring over source code, security issues could be identified much quicker, allowing MS to (eventually) shed one of it's major banes
4. Somebody might actually figure out a way to make windows stable. MS buys the rights to include this in their Windows.. wow, they have improvements at a very marginal cost.
5. MS actually does something that makes geeks happy.
The Internet is generally stupid
No, you're wrong.
Windows 95 was the 'desktop' standard. Many businesses stayed far away from Windows 98. And the Windows 95 used as a corporate desktop was a 'hardened' variety. The networking from Microsoft cored out and the Novell client installed instead. It made (it makes) for a fairly servicible box for business. They generally create a ghost image and just punch it out on all the boxes in the cubes.
Many of us remember Apple Computer as the Closed Computer Company, not just a closed computer company. Perhaps they've changed, or perhaps they're just on the ropes.
They adopted what they're now calling MacOS 10 (OS X) after spending hundreds of millions of dollars on failed 'next generation MacOS' and really it's just a retooling of the NextOS after they gave up.
Apple is so closed they won't even allow people to run their OS on alternative hardware. I'd hardly call that Open.
NT, moron.
Oh, and remember that the apostrophe is possessive, you were using a plural. The plural of 'business' is 'businesses' - 8/10 for effort though.
Why?
.net and put some of their apps on it they can have their key desktop apps on any platform.
The OS markey is sort of dead commercially.
If they do a good job polishing
They either have to move that way or burn money to maintain a monopoly. Because with out that they won't do well at all. Yes I know Windows is still, in some areas, better than the free alternatives. But the time is here where you have to say "exactly why do I need windows?"
I suppose truly freeing the Win source would slaughter all opposition. As once it was free as in freedom only the devote would bother with minority operating systems (except for reliability, stability, general hunky doryness, etc...)
I think we should all consider the impact of microsoft on open source software.
Isnt MS the reason we have open source alternatives?
Their involvement would just muddy the water, although i am all for more windows based open source alternatives.
why should they "still make a buck" and not just shut down - a very popular business strategy for opensource companies ;-)
You can fit seven copies of Texas into Western Australia alone, with no folding or overlap. Yet idiot tourists still climb into taxis here in Perth and ask to be taken to Sydney (two days' drive, non-stop, no sleep). Australia is not small. Just Perth-Broome takes a full 24 hours at the speed limit (110km/h).
We do have some small islands, but they're fast becoming unavailable; for example, Christmas Island is becoming a spaceport, and already has a good income from
Australian OTH radar can track aircraft taking off and landing in your home town, even though you're on the other side of the planet, even stealth aircraft. Australian rocket technology delivered three finished and operational destroyer-decoy systems for $AUD2M, the US spent $USD70M just getting a tethered rocket to hover. When I say `operational' I mean the US armed forces had to fly over and look to tell which was the decoy. Australian troops have often invaded and held places that US Marines, good as they are, couldn't (and it's worth adding that crew like the Ghurkas are even better). Australian agricultural innovation keeps American crops alive. This `small island' does a lot of stuff for Canada's Far South (that's the bits below the Great Lakes and above Mexico) with very few industrial resources.
Give us an American budget and there'd be no looking back. Fred would be finished by 2004 and a working SPS system in place by 2010. Putting our politicians in jail is only one of our many special methods. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Debian gets around this lack of .debs by providing a source package, which downloads the nvidia.tgz (or asks you to, I can't remember which) and takes it apart and automagically builds it into a .deb on your machine. This way it is almost like installing a real .deb package. I thought this was pretty clever when I encountered it.
"I suppose you expect me to talk now?"
"No, Mr Bond - I expect you to die!"
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
If you are a MS shareholder it is pretty clear: crush the hippies of the OS movement. Declare Stallman and Linus terrorists, antiamerican, etc.
If you are a user: document your damn formats and protocols.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Die, or Live. Sink or swim. ON THEIR MERITS. Their attitude should be to reject "embrace and extend" and open up all their API to standards conformance, and use standards for any future development. Then the excellence of their programs will allow them to gain the effeciencies that result from being driven out of markets where their products _actually_ suck.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
MS's business model is too deeply entrenched in commercial software (they invented the desktop OS as a commodity) for them to make a buck out of open source. To do that, they'd have to backpedal out of alot of their existing business.
Perhaps the only way for them to benifit is through code reuse i.e. using existing kernels, servers etc. that the open source community have produced. (or parts thereof) and honoring the GPL while doing it.
That may also be the only way they can compete with open source alternatives to their products. The team of 30 core kernel dev guys working on 2000 server can't really compete with a community of developers and testers the size of Linux for example.
I suspect this is why we'll see a move by commercial software vendors (Apple, MS, Oracle and friends) to enhancing the shrink-wrap e.g. tasty GUI front ends and feature rich administrative apps, rather than focusing on stability, performance and all that other difficult and more expensive to do stuff.
~mark.
http://www.workzoo.com/
Why would they want an open source strategy? They seem to be doing fine with their own business model.
Sig is taking a break!
I don't care about M$ as long as they support open standards for formats and protocols (and don't try to break compatibility).
I totally agree. We always keep saying that Linux is about choice, so why do we keep wanting to force everybody-and-their grandmother to use Linux? Linux is an OS, and a great one at that, but it is not a religion... therefore I don't feel any urge to convert anyone who doesn't want to be converted... what do we care how much marketshare Microsoft has? It's not like Linux can go bankrupt or anything when not enough people use it...
;-)
I know that more people using it means more apps, but apps aren't written by my grandmother... they're written by hackers, and people who enjoy screwing around with computers... exactly the people Linux started out with, and the people who will keep using it simply because they enjoy it.
I really don't see why we should slay the MS dragon... why can't Linux and other systems simply coexist?
*insert message about peace on earth and end to war here*
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
this blows.. like winblows.. only open..
/. at 5 a.m.
i can only imagine what it's going to be like..
brr.. i shiver at the thought
the win blows the winblows open
girlfriend: warm in bed.
me: on
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=1, Troll=7, Insightful=4, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Underrated=4, Total=18.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Microsofts profit is record-high. Why would they care about linux?
Be.
What is 'appropriate' for MS is to maximise their profits, and compete hard as they can. The most ruthless and effective way to do this would be:
1. Lobby hard to get SSSCA passed.
2. Work with CPU manufacturers to create CPU's containing a builtin 'secure BIOS' which only loads bootstrap code signed by an authorised software vendor. The public-key would be different for each CPU, hence also acting as an ID tag.
3. The 'authorised software vendors' would have to pass strict SSSCA-mandated anti-copy requirement before gaining access to private keys for _each_ customer CPU.
4. The authorised OS will not allow you run unsigned (ie unauthorised) code. To gain such authorisation you must meet similar requirements.
Note that RedHat, etc could still sell GPL-licensed code and provide the source. You would even be able to compile it, possibly even run a compiled version of the unmodified (ie signed) source RedHat distributes. However, you would not be able to run a program you have written yourself or a modified OSS program, since it might be doing something illegal. I suppose you may be allowed to run your own programs chroot such that no network I/O is available. Without network I/O you cannot write a file-sharing program for example.
This would make individual programmers unable to work except in an authorised big-corporate environment. Academics will have to make do with the limited sandbox environment. Consumers will not notice. Hobbyists, branded as hackers and pirates, will be hunted down and incarcerated in maximum-security jails.
Hence the bazaar model is defeated courtesy of the government. What remains is the proprietary/commercial model where MS knows it will win easily.
This strategy is actually quite realistic for MS to implement, they just have to avoid being over-greedy in the first step by trying to exclude other commercial vendors in the first step. If they try to use the SSSCA to explicitly exclude everyone except them, nobody will be fooled.
Of course the immense damage this will do to the US economy will not be apparent until it's too late. The upside is that the rest of the world gets a chance to catch-up with the US and, having thus seen the problem, hopefully avoid a similar slide into corporate totalitarianism.
if you mean free in the way it is usually meant: free to make whatever economic choices they want to, then m$ is behaving in perfect harmony with the free market system, since the economic choices are its own
Gee whiz, you really thought this through didn't you? Doesn't it even bother you that the same economists who thought of the term "free market" also defined monopolies, and why they're bad? Whoah, in fact, steady on now your brain might hurt when you read this; isn't the thing that's so BAD about communism from an economic point of view that the goverment is a *monopoly* controlling the means of production? So maybe government isn't inherently evil, but monopolies are?? Woah...
"People in the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but a conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices," Adam Smith , "Wealth of Nations", 1766.
A free market's most succesful companies are its worst enemies -- that's a quote from some-one as well, just don't remember from whom..
A lot of pro-M$ comments today BTW, unlike normal karma-whoring -- astroturfday?
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I totally agree with you. The linux community seems to be clouded with arrogant geeks and a "holier then 'thou" attitude. This stuff needs to go. This superiority complex is incredibly annoying and something that leads to ignorance.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Interoperability.
Think SAMBA with the last buglets gone. With full Active Directory support, Primary Domain Controller support, etc.
Think full support for ASP on an Apache box for migrating those legacy apps over or for web hosting outfits that would like to take money from M$ victims without becoming one themselves.
Think DirectX games running flawlessly under WINE.
Think of what the Cygwin folks could do if they could get access to the real internals of Windows.
Think full and accurate Office file import/export.
In short, think seamless interoperability between UNIX and Windows. It would be a beautiful thing.
Of course every one of those things would result in less sales, therefore lower revenue. The only possible upside would be happier customers, but I really don't think they give a damn if they have happy customers, only that they have captive ones who pay and pay.
Democrat delenda est
It's like asking what policy should KKK adopt to accommodate blacks' complaints about it, or how should gangs operate to be acceptable -- the whole design of Microsoft business model is incompatible with anyone's else goals, it is designed to have everything controlled by it, or fail. I would rather help it fail.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Basically, there are two main complaints when it comes to Microsoft:
1) its products are generally of poor quality
2) despite (1) it dominates the market through unscrupulous and sometimes illegal business practices
The only one that has the right or responsibility to change (1) is Microsoft itself. If it does this through adopting a more open development model, fine. If it does it by better training its developers and Q.A. personnel, fine. If it does it by hiring another company to find and fix its bugs, fine. And if it doesn't do it at all, that's fine too. People can vote with their feet and with their dollars and simply get their software from somebody else.
Except they can't, because of (2). And this is where antitrust law comes in and this is the thing that people should really care about.
People who want to see Microsoft compelled to reveal their source code are only distracting the issue. It's not as though Microsoft is the only company or organization that is capable of producing the kind of software people want. Ask any developer that is trying to write software for Windows and they'll tell you they don't want to know how Microsoft's software does what it does, rather they want to know how how to be able to make their software do what they want it to do. For this they need complete and accurate documentation of Microsoft's APIs and the information they need to be able to make informed decisions about performance, compatability, security, etc.
It's not as though the only way that anyone else can compete with Microsoft is by copying from its source code like some lazy student, who hasn't been coming to class all semester and only now realizes that the only way (s)he can finish the assignment is to cheat off the smart kids.
Most of the smart people always work for someone else, and this is as true of Microsoft as it is of any other company. If competitors are given equal access to the interfaces then they will make great software, and Microsoft knows this this. All this talk of forcing them to open their code simply obscures the issues, which I would summarize as follows:
1) Microsoft monopolizes information about the interfaces of its operating system, putting application-level competitors at an unfair disadvantage
2) Microsoft uses its dominant operating system market share to coerce hardware vendors to withold support for other operating systems, putting OS-level competitors at an unfair disadvantage.
Compelling Microsoft to divulge bits of source code here and there will do little to remedy (1) and nothing at all to address (2). But then again, neither will any of the proposed remedies from any of the antitrust suits.
I don't believe that any company as aggressive as Microsoft can do anything positive for any arena it gets involved in. No matter what you do legislatively, they operate much like a virus does. Embrace -- Extend -- Extinguish. I really do not believe that their involvement can result in something Good.
SecondAssuming that we have to play nice with them, the only thing that they could do and should do is to open up the API interfaces between their OS and the Applicaitons. That way, it would allow others to understand how it works. With the knowledge people would be able to synergize to create better products.
But that cannot happen. Because in many cases, there is no API Interface between the Operating System and the Application. Without that interface being clean you cannot replace any alternatives. You cannot create anything that will run as fast since Interfaces have a Cost associated with them. They just do.
ThirdThe best thing that Microsoft could do is to provide the following three things to happen:
I would settle for a Microsoft that would stop embrace and extend everywhere they go.
If they do something about their document formats and make them fully compatible with open standards that would satisfy me. Then they do away with all the marketing strategies they want for all I care. As long as they don't seperate me from me friends in the windows environment that mess up our communication.
Then each of us can choose the tools we like.
A way to solve this chaos is to establish a general standards body organisation such as W3C or similar, just in order to establish a protocol for document formats and interoperability. I know XML is moving up fast, but I hear no guarantees about document support from MS.
Also it would be nice if MS would stop abusing their monopoly for excluding java from that MS OS that would do me fine.
If they are in position of a monopoly they must provide equal oportunity for all and not abuse it for personal gain and exclude competition.
my words. I guess I have more.
http://sophistic.com
.. but will any words I say ever matter to Microsoft?
I'm afraid Microsoft only thinks of their "Open Source" as "Sample-code" that would only work on Microsoft platforms. E.g. Visual Basic and C# code examples may be "open source".
Which market? It's all very well citing the success and quality of Linux, a mainstream development that is useful to many people and has many supporters. But in the grand scheme of things, the open source and/or free software world has few such widely applicable and high quality outputs. Most of the other major results -- the office suites, for example -- are in the "good but not great" category, and MS has no need to compete with them at present, nor is it likely to any time in the near future. Just because something is open source does not automatically make it better, and MS knows this, and MS' customers know this. Remember, most of them are businesses, who care far less about privacy or a few dollars than they do about having a well-known product with a great-looking support contract.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Lycoris Desktop/LX
Easier to install than Win2k, and easy to use.
Since everyone seems to be having trouble getting through, here's the Google cache.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Write software that coexists well with open-source free software, and is enough better to be worth paying for.
(end joke for the day)
But if you are a multi-billion company that finds just writing software that _works_ to be a major challenge nowadays, you have to find a more, errrrr, creative solution, such as:
1. Lie a lot. Spread the FUD widely and deeply with massive advertising campaigns. Hope no court ever holds you accountable for advertising high reliability in your server software, when your "server" software is actually barely reliable enough for the corporate desktop...
2. Send lots of b^r^i^b^e^s campaign contributions to Congress and try to get laws passed making it difficult to legally write open source. Form an alliance with Disney, which appears to own at least two senators...
3. Cash in your stock before the Wall Street morons figure out that your company is doomed. (Well, not really doomed. Worst case MSFT will still sell some $billions/year to businesses that have locked themselves into MS proprietary data formats so it takes 10 years to convert -- it's just that it takes some $hundred billions/year of sales to justify the present stock price. I'm not a stock analyst, but IMO the present price seems to assume that next year every starving Chinese peasant will somehow come up with enough money to buy a genuine Windows CD as a wall ornament -- they don't have power and can't afford batteries so what else would they do with it?)
What the hell's this doing here? I was reading slashback when I hit reply :-/
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
In my mind Microsoft doesn't really need to do anything to accomodate the Open Source community. If it keeps making badly flawed software it will end up killing itself. Office XP costs 800$ if you arn't an academic that means it should be at least 160 times better than Open Office in terms of functionality, installation, use of system resources, etc. Or 10 times better than Star Office 6.0. It isn't. Viva EMACS!
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
I would like to see Microsoft Corporation completely acknowledge, and make full restitution for, their abuse of their customers, and their disrespect for the law.
This is a company, which, when the US DOJ prohibited them from continuing to bundle Internet Exploder as part of their Windows 95 operating system, decided that the simplest way to continue doing business as usual was to rename the next interim bug fix to Windows 95, as Windows 98 -- and pretend it was a brand new operating system, to which the DOJ prohibition did not apply.
We should settle for nothing less than complete acknowledgement and complete restitution. Heads must roll. Microsoft has behaved as if it above the law. Every senior manager, whose actions or statements has proven that they will break the law again should be considered unredeemable. They all have to go. A public trustee should take command of microsoft until ever last weasel is exposed. Those who committed serious crimes should have the evidence against them turned in to the authorities. The big boys should be hit with fines large enough to hurt and humiliate even a multi-billionaire.
And if it is proven that they compounded their offense by repeatedly ignoring previous judgements against them? Hard time, serious hard time. Let's not see the Microsoft conspirator get put in country club jails, like the watergate conspirators.
And write an OS which is stabile and secure. Every time they open their mouths about open source they stick their foot in it. Stupid bastards.
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
Ask any marketing person. I believe, if you can catch them in an honest moment, they will tell you that it is totally unnecessary to provide a product that "provides significant worth", or even one that is any darn good at all, and doesn't harm the consumer. Perception is everything in marketplace. The only thing that is necessary is to convince the consumer you have a superior product.
Now, one approach to convincing the consumer you are offering a superior product is to actually work hard to provide a superior product. Unfortunately, this approach seems to be falling out of favor.
We know how Microsoft convinces consumers their product is superior. FUD. Lies. Buying dishonest "independent" research outfits to prove whatever new lie they want to propogate.
Letting Microsoft get away with lying and cheating will encourage less brazenly dishonest companies think they can get away with this kind of abuse too.
> Besides, Darwin won't run on anything else
> *but* their hardware
Erm that's not true.
Darwin runs on x86.
Or it could be that I'm *halucinating*, but then it's been a while since I took any mind altering substances, so I don't think so.: P
Well he did attack Linux's professionalism.
When I set up the these servers I was a new Linux admin. All I knew was that I didn't want any extra services listening on the network. Prior to this I had only installed Linux on VMWare machines and 1 fileserver that also ran for months before we had to take it down to install a hard drive.
As for issues, there is one issue mentioned. The ext2 filesystem. It is a good issue and worth addressing. Although for servers that have uptime of nearly a year it isn't an issue but for a desktop user that shuts down their system nightly it could be. The other items mentioned are simply bashing attempts. Phrases like "badly coded", "low performance", "childish and unprofessional" are just bashing phrases.
Of course this was posted anonymously both on here and on comp.os.linux.advocacy. No reason to take it seriously. It is more than likely posted by some 30 year old with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude.
Coding Blog
I propose that Microsoft hire out of work Al-Queda terrorists to fly 747's into each of the buildings on their main campus.
Seriously though, I don't really see how this is an honest question. Its on par with asking what neo-nazis should do in order to get along wtih the jewish community yet still be neo-nazis. Microsoft's corporate personality is a direct reflection of the personality of Bill Gates- paranoid, greedy, and ruthless to the extent of being nearly sociopathic. Before Microsoft can peacefully co-exist with open source, or any other source of technology outside of itself, it would have to undergo a fundamental change. That isn't going to happen anytime soon. Not that I care all that much. Open source is nothing more than a natural response on the part of the market to a force that inhibits the freedom of that market. Without a Microsoft to stifle innovation and prevent other companies from flourishing there would be little reason for end users to embrace open source. It is the lack of choice created by Microsoft's near complete dominance that has led to things like Linux growing into a real OS as opposed to a curious toy. The more Microsoft tries to squash Open Source and maintain and expand their monopoly, the more the rest of the industry and world is going to attack and undermine them. Like Scientology, they are becoming their own worst enemy. I for one hope they never realize this and that the company eventually goes the way of Apple, a has-been pining for its long-gone days of glory.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
They are the most closed company of all. They own the hardware AND the software
Oh COME ON! That's clearly not true.
Firstly:
Sun Microsystems own the hardware and the software!
And Secondly:
Sun no longer freely open source their OS.
And Thirdly:
Darwin runs on x86 and is avalible to all while Sun no longer provide an OS that won't run on their hardware, never mind make it open source!
How are Apple worse than Sun? This really makes you sound like you just simply don't like Apple and are looking for an excuse to justify your position.
The OSS Community will never see a scrap of benefit from Apple.
That's just wrong.
What about the Darwin Streaming Server that is generally considered to be one of the best (beating commercial offerings from Real and Microsoft)
What about MkLinux and what can be gained from the OSF and Mach work on it?
What about they fact that by taking it seriously and by hiring Jordan Hubbard they are lending validity to the whole open source movement?
Perhaps Microsoft should start a consulting arm. Whatever they might have currently doesn't count. I mean significant effort, strong marketing of it, and generating substantial percentages of overall revenue. IBM does, Sun does, Oracle does. And so on, ad nauseum.
Then again, there'd be a few gajillion certified partners that'd scream bloody murder if they did. So step two is to hire the good ones. After all, having a phone list of candidates worldwide can't hurt when trying to come up to speed as a consultancy. The rest will calm down when they see their own rates ligitimized and increased because Microsoft charges 3x or 4x what many mom-n-pop consultancies are currently stuck charging.
Once the consulting arm is alive, start tiering software. Open source and give away the limited/educational level software, and charge for the standard and enterprise grade stuff. Exchange server: costs. Enterprise-grade exchange server: costs lots. Wait, don't set that checkbook down. You'll need help setting things up correctly. And MS will do it for just $300 per hour. Support contract? Another kilobuck per year per dozen employees. Etc.
Hmm, that sounds a lot like Oracle, IBM and Sun. Why is it I read daily that the future is in service, yet Microsoft doesn't have a significant service or consulting branch? It chills me to guess that Microsoft doesn't because they're too happy making 96% markup on their software-only business to waste time picking up the pennies left over on consultancy margins.
OK, so maybe somebody has already thrown this question back to the questioner, but if so, they're buried somewhere below mod-3 level (not that my comments ever escape there with my newbie-ized lack of karma.)
--If early cars were like software, we'd all have gone back to horses.
Any company that wants to work with free software has the option of only making compiled binaries available to paying customers. The GPL only requires that the source accompany the binaries. It does not even require that the source be freely available on an ftp server.
Microsoft (or any company) could easily release code under the GPL, and only release binaries and source on CD. No code on microsoft.com. Or, code on microsoft.com only by subscription. This does not violate the GPL.
Yes, Joe Q. Hacker will put the source up on Warez.com, but Microsoft is under no obligation to support it.
Many consumers will gladly get legal source and binaries from downstream sources. But these are the same consumers who are currently getting illegal warez copies. They are lost revenue anyway.
Some consumers will not trust these downstream binaries, and they will gladly pay for certified binaries. These are the same customers who pay for Windows now.
But here is the important point: The enterprise will not touch downstream binaries. They will only get their binaries from the source. There are too many liabilities involved in possibly tainted code. Since the enterprise is the source of the greatest revenue, this protects an important revenue stream.
Support issues are a little messy, but they tend to boil down to: Microsoft does not support altered code. Basically no different from today, where Microsoft does not support OEM versions of Microsoft products.
Are there already companies doing business with free software following this model?
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who know binary, and those who do not.
Is anybody curious about who JWinterboy is and why he's asking?
Hmmm... High uid, no comments. Could it be that MS is asking Slashdot for it's opinion?
Or indeed, of him taking a shower.
Oh, but my machines play games, surf the net, stream and play mp3's (I have icecast streaming to every computer in the house on demand from one machine and the others use XMMS to play the mp3's on demand). One runs our in-house web based (Java servlets and JSP with Apache and Tomcat) home management (addressbooks, menu planning, etc.) system. I have Star Office 5.2 installed with the calendar server (yes I really bought SO 5.2 to get the calendar server) and have scheduling to keep up with everything for a busy family of four.
My wife uses the system for quite a bit of our sons schooling (home schooling). I dare say that we stress most of these machines as much as we would stress a MS machine.
Yes occassionally, but very rarely anymore, X just goes away, but that doesn't cause the machine to have to reboot and recover filesystems. That is one of the things that needs to be fixed. I have never lost a file, nor a part of a file. I have never gotten a system into a state where the only option was to do a rebuild from scratch.
On the other hand, the 98 machine I have is only used to view web pages (to verify that they work in the MS "standard" browser) and to play a few games that aren't available on Linux. And I usually have to rebuild that machine every couple of months because it becomes unstable. And then I have to apply all of the security patches to it from updates.microsoft.com, and some of them can only be installed one at a time with a reboot required after the install. That usually turns into about two evenings work to get the machine rebuilt. If I do install a linux machine from scratch, I stick in the CD, do a little configuration stuff, wait for it ask for the second CD, do a little configuration stuff, reboot to the HD, install all the patches (except new kernels) with one simple command : rpm -Fvh *.rpm : off my own local mirror of redhats updates directory. Install the latest kernel and recompile it (might do this over night on a slower machine), install the kernel and modules, and reboot the system. I then do system configuration depending upon whether it is a server or a desktop machine, but the whole install and patching only took the machine down twice (once to boot on the install and once to upgrade the kernel). I don't usually upgrade to the latest kernel every time one comes out, so I don't spend a lot of time doing kernel compiles and reboots, my systems just run (assuming that the electric company doesn't drop power for too long (yes I have UPSs but they only last a few minutes, this is home remember).
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
Mr. Microsoft, I expect you to die.
Apologies where they are due...
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
...for a Klondike bar?
Edith Keeler Must Die
They need to stop there Windows is the only way and start making software for all operating systems. I just don't get why they ignore alternative revenue streams. They owe it to there share holders (the non-employee ones) to make software and sell no matter what the OS.
DVD?
---
"Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
It's been 19 seconds since you hit 'reply'!"
I gather you've never had a run-in with Microsoft Consulting?
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC
the first thing that needs done is the policing of their predatory practices. this has to be done simply because their market share allows them to dictate absurd contracts to their OEM's et al. secondly i think that while they dont have to release source per se, i think they should release specs on their file formats and protocols such that other OSS projects may be able to interoperate with microsoft products seamlessly. this im certain would also have to be policed simply because they cant be trusted.
Microsoft is beyond salvage. I want to see other companies and nonprofit orgs dividing up the personnel assets and software that used to be Microsoft so they can be put to some productive use. I want to see Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer financially broken and personally disgraced and humiliated.
I will have nightmares about that statement for years to come.
Given the type of company Microsoft is (a single goal, to make money, and lie, cheat and steal to do it) I think their open source strategy should be exactly what it is. The more Microsoft bashes open source and the more people see how bad Microsoft is, the better open source looks.
However, what I really would liked to have seen from the anti-trust suit is a judgement forcing Microsoft to put oh say, 10 billion dollars or so into a trust fund for the purpose of open source development. Then, instead of an oversight commitee for Microsoft, have an oversight "commitee" (i.e. organization) to administer the fund (something along the lines of SourceForge). Have an open source project? Make an application to the organization, get some money. The more viable/serious your project, the more funding you can get.
This isn't really my idea, by the way. I read something like this somewhere but don't remember where (maybe Cringley?). Anyway, it sounded like something with some merit to me.
Failing that, getting out of the OS Monopoly business and concentrating on just standalone (NOT integrated) applications would be nice.
Pick One: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.html (Note - disable Javascript first!)
You still bit on it! hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
They're not changing their position, folks, no matter how much we beg and plead, unless there is a business reason to do so. M$'s ultimate weakness is its hubris. They really believe the spin their marketing people and strategy people pump out: that their products are better, that Open Source is anti-competitive, that they aren't a monopoly, etc. They also believe that customers will continue to pay a premium to be a part of their endless upgrade cycle, a belief that will be shattered as XP gets shot down as a solution for more and more corporate desktops, and ASP's look toward lower-cost alternatives to .N(Y)ET in their datacenters.
I say go on and let them go about their business. More developers and users will get abused, surely, and that sucks. But we've seen that Open Source is a movement, not a revolution. Expecting it to cause instantaneous upheaval at the world's most successfuly company is arrogant, short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive.
In the end, only Microsoft can bring down Microsoft. And it will. Just not in time for supper.
Let the flaming begin.
"Don't matter how New Age you get, old age is gonna kick your ass." - Utah Phillips
I would love if they LGPL'ed Visual C++ 6.0. We use it a lot, but it is missing template features and has language and optimization bugs and incompatibilities with STL and the Standard C++ library which cannot be fixed with a new set of template files from dinkumware.
These defects are documented, but VC6 is now basically unsupported. So any more work is unlikely.
Then we would see bugs fixed, and they could take the fixes and apply them to the new cash cow, VC.NET. We win, they win! Borland gives away BC5. Why not M$?
Just to point out (because I keep reading otherwise in a lot of other posts) that Darwin *does* run on x86. It has done so offically (publicly) for ~ a year.
:)
:(
a q.html
:/ Lame! :P
OS X comes from Rhapsody (which ran on x86 and PPC) which came from OpenStep (which ran on x86, amoung other platforms). We can go further back, but it's really not relevent
Suffice to say that it ran on x86 _long_before_ it ever got to PPC (the whole stuff about them releasing the PPC version first was either about (a) cleaning/organizing up the code on the x86 tree or (b) an utter lie). Either way they were *definately* at the very least _stretching_ the truth about it "not running on Intel" initially.
The've certainly limited the Intel version when loads of functionality from Rhapsody on x86 is missing now..., so they are definately *deliberately* limiting it (though it could be a just a code re-org...)
I don't want to break my NDA, so I'm not going to say more about this.
Anyway, from the Darwin FAQ:
Q. I heard that Darwin runs on Intel processor-based PCs. Is that true?
A. Yes
More at: http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/f
PS: That " " in "fa q.html" shouldn't be there, bug in Slashcode!
First, I'm not really an anonymous coward, more of a lazy bum I'd say. I'm certainly no more anonymous than anyone here not using their full legal name. As for the coward, it's very easy to see that the use of the word coward is intended to srike fear into the heart of the poster and make him want to register so that he is not branded a coward, which in turn would actually make him one for caving in to peer pressure. I just wanted to point that out.
You can see a glass as half empty or you can see it as half full. You can see MS charging a penalty fee to OEMs for selling systems with OSs other than Windows, or you can see MS offering a discount to OEMs who sell only Windows systems. A practice used by many companies.
It makes a lot of sense too. If I sold belt buckles and you made belts you would in effect become my parter in the industry if you sold your belts exclusively with my buckles. If you sold my buckles on your belts in addittion to 5 other brands of buckles, you would be just another customer. While I would value all my customers, I would of course want to make sure I took care of my customers that took care of me. By giving a lower price to my customers that used my buckles exclusively I would be helping them generate marketshare over other belt manufactures who sold many different brands of buckles, which in turn is beneficial to both of us.
What we have here is a double standard. If Redhat were to make a deal with Mom'n'Pop Computers, a ficticious OEM, where if they sold systems exclusively with Redhat Linux they would get a 10% discount then all the MS haters here would be applauding. Yet if MS makes the same deal with Gateway they are evil. Gateway has every right to turn down the MS deal. They have enough power and marketshare that they could sell PC's with Windows and Linux without the deal from MS. They might even sell enough Linux systems to make much more money than if they sold only Windows systems. If they choose not to because they fear Dell will have too much advantage over them, well, then they are just cowards. If they choose not to because they feel no one really wants a system with Linux on it and the discount they would get from MS for selling Windows systems exclusively is too sweet a deal to pass up, well, that's just smart business.
The fact is that Windows isn't the only game in town. There is Mac OS and Linux, users of both platforms proclaiming them vastly better operating systems than Windows. People don't have to choose Windows and in the opinion of Linux and Mac users people shouldn't choose Windows, therefore if people do choose to use Windows it is clearly their choice. Microsoft has no power to force anyone to use Windows.
The funniest thing is that the people screaming about how awful and evil Microsoft is, the people who state over and over again that Microsoft is a monopoly and people have no choice but to use Microsoft Windows aren't people using Windows! They are people using Mac OS and Linux. The only way they could possibly have a valid point is if they are saying that Mac OS and Linux are inferior products and they are forced to use them due to the outrageous price of Windows systems resulting from MS's monopoly. Something all Mac OS and Linux users feverishly deny, to them there is no question that Mac OS and Linux are much better.
So what is their real beef? If Windows users are happy with their choice, so be it an inferior choice, why are Mac users and Linux users so agressive towards Windows? Do they feel bad for the people ignorantly using Windows and only wish to enlighten them about better operating systems so that they can live a more productive life? No. They want their OS of choice to be number one. They want to see new applications and games come out for their platforms first while users of other operating systems have to wait for them to be ported.
They should blame the creators of their own operating systems. Mac users should blame Apple for the outrageous price Apple charges for its systems keeping them out of the reach of most people. Linux users should blame the dozen different distributions that work against each other rather than with each other. Linux users should blame the people adding geeky features to Linux improving its performance with seldom used applications rather than adding features that make the OS easier to install and use. Everyone should know by now that most people want to be able to turn on their computer and check their email, search for the information they want, chat with a friend, and play their music with as little interaction with the computer as possible, something Linux seems to ignore with a passion.
That's what all this boils down to. People want to email, they want to 'surf the net' (I really hate that term), they want to chat, they want to play a game. They want to do all this as simply and economically as possible. So far only Microsoft Windows has been able to pull this off. Apple is certainly headed in the right direction, however, their pricing policy keeps people from owning thier systems. 1300 dollars for an entry level computer to email, surf, chat and play games on? Sell the new iMac for half that and 10 companies wouldn't be able to keep them on the shelves.
The only one to blame for Microsoft having such a lead over the competition is the competition themselves. Make a better OS and people will beat a path to your door. Linux is priced right, but refuses to give people what they want. Apple gives people what they want at a price they can't afford. But it's all evil Micro$oft's fault they are a monopoly, yeah right. LOOK IN THE MIRROR.
allowed customers to be their own tech support and fix coding bugs? Wait a min, screw that! We already have Linux!
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I'm getting a little tired of this one, and I'll tell you why. :-)
When you "Start" using the computer, it's more than obvious where to look first, even if you have no idea what you're doing. Even if you've never used Windows before, you'll go push that button. At one extreme end of the menu - right next to the "Start" button in most configurations - is the option to "Shut Down". It may seem silly to put "Shut Down" under "Start", but after you get over that pedantry it's great UI design. You know where it is if you do *anything* with the machine - and if all you want to do is turn the damn thing off, you'll probably look there first, because it's a big shiny (well, gray) widget that says "Start". Not that bad an idea.
[|]
...in the world conclude that focussing on inhouse operating systems and software only provides less long run market share gain and revenue in comparsion to other buisness models (Software branding, service, consulting and 3rd party training), Mickeysoft is gonna pull out their crash programm Linux distro.
Extensively tested at the worlds largest single heap of consumer PCs (Microsoft testing center). With optional reference grade quality Mickeysoft Press Dead Tree Documentation, a rock solid one-klick Installer for x86 and PPC alike, all the plugins you'll ever want and a suite of ready made SLAs for anyone who wants them (because no one's ever gotten fired for shelling out the bucks to M$). And a nice Windows Flag in place of the KDE gear.
And SuSE, Mandrake, RedHat and all the rest are gonna be in deep shit. Trust me.
So I'm wrong? When Mickeysoft and all the rest notice that they've missed the bandwagon they're gonne wither and die? Are you shure? Rember IE?
That's gonna be their OSS strategy. And telling you the truth, I'm actually kinda curious how their distros gonna be like in real.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The problem is that Linux can't swim. Deal with it. M$ is a scapegoat, nothing else.
And you're a brainless fan-boy. BillyG will never notice you or your adoration, not in this lifetime. Deal with it.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
While your statement is certainly true of the more rabid Ayn Rand followers, Ayn Rand herself never said any such thing. She was in favor of pure capitalism, which no country has ever had in modern history, nor ever come close to. Rand herself admitted as much and blamed the government for allowing the conditions to exist which perpetuated monopolies - the antithesis of pure capitalism.
I can't see how her arguments in this regard are wrong, given the level of corporate welfare in 21st century America.
Now, it could be that pure capitalism would indeed be an evil economic system, but *since we've never had anything like it* we don't really know, do we? Same goes for pure socialism, pure communism, etc.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Sun holds no pretenses that they are an OSS vendor. Apple with their "Think Different" campaign and singing OSS/Linux love balads are portraying themselves as our friends. But no matter what we port over or write, Apple still has complete control over their own hardware. OS X will never run on x86, AMD 64-x86 or IA-64.
So every bit of code written for Apple, Apple owns because they own the platform. Thousands of Linux Hackers who once shunned the $100 Microsoft tax are now paying another tax:
$2000 for a new system that should cost $600.
$300 for memory that should cost $100.
$1000 for a flat panel that should cost $600.
Apple is sucking money and time out of the OSS software movement that we will never get back. Linux may die because there is no one left to develop for it except the people who do it for purely philosophical reasons.
The dream of Open Software on Open Hardware will die at the hands of Apple, Who owns their Platform and is a jealous (litigous) god. Remember the clones. Check Apples current specs against the old clones. Look at the advancements the PC has made in the same time. What you will find is two years of stagnation. This might change, but without competition on the platform, it is extremely unlikely.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
"One interesting point (and something I hope someone who understood the issue a bit more than I did at the time would comment on)... is Netscape claimed the W3C was going too slow. Instead of waiting for the new official standard, they simply implemented functionality that was being discussed for the new standard. The question is, did this forced the W3C to speed up their publication of new standards?"
I see what you're saying. You know what really pissed me off (and turned me into an Opera user)? It's when MS removed all support for 'Netscape Style Plugins' from IE6. Thus, anybody who makes a plugin that works on both Netscape and IE now has to make an ActiveX control.
This is a pretty clear example of MS screwing up the standards. I wish I had remembered this when I made my original post. I'd withdraw it now if I could.
The worst part is nobody really knows why MS pulled the support. A lot of people jumped to th conclusion that MS was just trying to put Netscape out of their misery. I'm not so sure about that. A friend of mine said he read somewhere that there is a patent on running executables from a web page and that whoever owns it sued MS and won, but didn't sue Netscape or anybody else. Thus MS had to pull their support. Im not really sure if I believe this, but it is interesting that MS yanked support so suddenly. Beta versions of IE6 worked just fine with plug-ins. I don't think MS had planned that all along, I think the decision was made rather suddenly.
Whether or not they did it because they're evil or because they lost a lawsuit isn't relevant at this point. The fact that MS didn't provide a single reason as to why they made such a change is what bothers the hell out of me. The most I could get was 'for security reasons...'.
I see your point guys, wish I saw it before I started posting.
"Derp de derp."
arsaspe wrote:
No, not for a developer who has been frustrated about the-not-so-intuitive 'make' command. Listen up, I've helped a couple of my friends to become Linux lovers, helping out with all this make that, config this.. but, it turns out they were becoming developers at the same time.
Not your average user, hey?
I reckon that Linux will be the Server platform in a couple of years because of the configurability. Givven a bit of usability, it will reach out to the average users and Microsoft is still the # 1 in this field. My suggestion is that more Open Source projects have two branches, just like Apache, Linux Kernel etc.
And for the lazy ones out there, you can find a shell script that does it all for you (including the X config!) on google.
This is what I mean should be in a ready configured, fully stable, less configurable branch. I'm telling you, if you've just done one course in programming and you're getting make error output, you'll freak!
The Dalek open source strategy, obviously. EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!
"Astroturfing" refers to the generation or simulation of an artificial grass-roots movement (artificial grass, get it? It's what passes for humor these days.) /.'s beloved AC's (that's you, I think).
It seemed to me to be an attempt at presenting an anti-linux, pro-windows point of view as if it had come from one of
Here's the leap - I was suggesting, politely and indirectly, that perhaps the poster's motivation was due to his possibly being employed by the sleeping giant of Redmond. Were that the case, I can honestly say that it would qualify, in my book, as a bit of astroturfing.
But then, I'm not in charge of the geek dictionary these days. I'm sure you're right, and I simply misused an attack term. What else would you have called that anonymous post if it turns out to be from a real Microserf? Troll, yes; but my suggestion (I know, I've really got to avoid subtlety where AC's are concerned) was for something more insidious and purposeful. Pray forgive me; I'll try not to tread on the sanctity of your favorite words again.
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Sun holds no pretenses that they are an OSS vendor.
That's crap! OF COUSE THEY DO! They sell Linux boxes! Do you really know anything about the industry?
They do it much more so than Apple, for Apple it's a side line they don't push at their main stream customers, while Sun push the same tired stuff at their customers.
To summerize:
Apple open source their operating system (with a rested licence) make it run on x86 (Darwin has done for ~ a year, a fact which people *keep ignoring* when it suits them), rewerite the licence when people complain an yet they are WORSE than SUN?
SUN who REVOKED their open source strategy, and KILLED OF their x86 release? And did nothing when people complained?
How do you figure that?
As for the clones..your comments about that are just retarded too. For what it's worth, everyone in the industry knows that they cancelled the clones because Apple lost major market share to them (intead of attracting more users, it just ate into Apple's existing small share). Apple were in serious danger of going under at the time, and this had to be done.
Again, how does this make Apple worse than Sun?
Your just bashing Apple. That doesn't mean they don't deserve it, but not for this, not when they have done so much more than most other vendors (the only particular exceptions that spring to mind are Red Hat, and IBM).
Apple have been working on open source projects for years. They released a Linux distribution before it became trendy the dot com era buzzword and long before vendors started shipping it on their systems.
Apple have been putting serious effort in to OS development by working with the Open Software Foundation to build a better (Mach) kernel for the last decade, more so then any other vendor.
Their work culmiated in the (free, of course) release of MkLinux - Linux on top of a Mach Microkernel. This was no mean feat and this level of work has been emulated by anyone.
And your right Linux may very well die, but it will have nothing to do with Apple (what a truly bizzare statement!) but because it will be replaced with the GNU operating system, GNU/Hurd (which is a much more advanced Mach microkernel, like the Darwin Kernel).
Which has been the plan all along (try and follow the plot!).
You are living in fantasy land if you thing that Apple is evil or some way the enemy. They are looking out for their own (Staff and & Shareholders) like a all good companies do, but they have done a lot for idea of open source.
I expect their is little point in arguing with you because you seem to be a total anti-mac-zelot (like a mac zelot, but rather than unconditionally love everything Apple do, they unconditionally hate every thing Apple do).
Try and *think* for yourself and act on what you *see*, not your mornic contemporaries have told you....
Sun must compete with SGI, HP, Compaq, and IBM for that market share. If you want Linux you do not have to buy Sun. If you want OS X, YOU MUST BUY APPLE. If I want big iron, I can get Sparc, Alpha, Mips, Itanium and even Power4 from IBM
"For what it's worth, everyone in the industry knows that they cancelled the clones because Apple lost major market share to them"
Why did they lose market share to them? Come on, think man. They lost market share because the clone makers were producing equivalent hardware, albeit less stable (probably because of intentional documentation errors in Apple's specs), at half Apple's price.
To quote the other asshole, "Developers developers, Developers, Developers". Microsoft open sources a piece of code to attract colleges that generate Developers for their platform. Fucking computer games have turned into a 9 billion dollar a year industry, as big an industry as the motion picture industry for god's sake. And Microsoft made a play for the whole ball of wax by releasing X-Box. They hoped to snare Developers from competing consoles, making them realize developing for x-box meant an easy port to the PC. They hoped all the existing Direct X developers would develop for X-box exclusively so they could take a bigger cut of the games market. How does their cut get bigger? They OWN THE FUCKING HARDWARE. Develop for X-Box and not PC and Microsoft gets a bigger cut of the 9 Billion dollar pie. X-Box II will not include nVidia or Intel. They are going to try to do the damn thing in house.
They learned that little lesson from APPLE just like everything else.
So, Apple is stealing GPL developers. How obvious is it? How about a fucking contest to port apps over to Apple! How often have YOU switched development platforms? IT'S A BIG THING. Apple is stealing our intelligence pool. The worst thing is everyone here believes their BULLSHIT. sheep led to slaughter.
Pay the fucking $1000 Apple TAX for their inferior crap hardware. Don't fucking buy into the GPL and then choose CLOSED HARDWARE. We might all own the software and share it as we like, but if the software will only run on ONE HARDWARE VENDORS CRAP, we OWN JACK SHIT.
Fuck, You are a moron, aren't you.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Yeah right, Apple is open source. (Not) Why don't you just design a theme for some application that resembles the Aqua look, then post it on the net. Let's see how fond you are of Apple after that! -or: try to manage a large Apple network with a few unix & windows servers. You'll be screaming in agony, my friend.
if the software will only run on ONE HARDWARE VENDORS CRAP, we OWN JACK SHIT.
Sun's OS is only supported on *their* hardware.
Unlike Apple's current OS, which runs on x86, a platform they don't even sell.
(technically, the only extra's in Mac OS X are the Window Manager and the Toolkits as with most vendors (including Sun, who ship their own version of X and their own Toolkits with their OS).
Fuck, You are a moron, aren't you.
Well clearly, yes you are.
More than that I'd say your a newbie (not just by your high user number) but by your choice of language and GPL-all-or-nothing attitude.
The *goals* of the GPL (more 'open' software) will fail with people like you at the helm (all hot air). I, for one, care about the big picture.
How often have YOU switched development platforms? IT'S A BIG THING
Well, erm, I do it all the time and don't even think about it. Between Solaris, Darwin, GNU/HURD, Linux and FreeBSD (across x86, Sparc and PowerPC). But then, my code is good.
I'm *currently* developing a project on my G4 PowerBook and checking the code out to FreeBSD system on x86 - everything works just the same, even all the libaries I'm using, not a single problem, different OS, different hardware. Just out of interest, I've exported to a Linux box, and it runs fine on that to, well whaddaya know?.
Developing on Darwin and running on other platforms is a no-brainer. Maybe your just not as good a develper and your code sucks? Maybe you nothing about ProjectBuilder, the history of this operating system of that developers the world over love this platform for development.
Some examples:
Despite Quake III development being started before Mac OS X existed, do you recall that the first time Q3A was seen in public was on Mac OS X? At MacWorld:SF? By John Carmack, in person? (I do, I was there).
Let's not forget that Doom was developed using this OS (older kernel, differenet hardware) using ProjectBuilder (the same project builder I am using now).
So, it's really easy is the sort answer - especially on Mac OS X. That's was one of the whole selling points of the OS as a development platform (write once, and compile for Win32 on x86, Solaris on SPARC and NeXT on 68k with *1* click [the 'Build' icon]). The same icon I click everyday (it's not changed...)
Oh, to drop names, Internet Explorer *still* contains code created by Apple's/NeXT's ProjectBuilder (check the credits, Mosaic was developed with ProjectBuilder, runs just fine on Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris...).
I also notice your a Network Adminstrator for a School, not a Developer, Engineer, Systems Analyst or Academic, so I wonder what makes you think you know so much about this topic? You _really_ don't (just have a big mouth). Try talking to some developers first.
For all your talk I bet your STILL run Windows like most so called "supporters of the GPL" (who wimp out when it comes to games, or some other imagined "critical app").
Real men don't dual boot to Windows, real men don't even run Linux, real men run the GNU operating system.
I've been running it for about a year and a half, maybe nearly 2 years. What about you? Or do you not run the GNU operating system and are you just a full of hot air (i.e. A Windows and Linux dual booter)?
Unlike Apple's current OS, which runs on x86, a platform they don't even sell.
This really interests me. I like would love it if this happened. But the only references I could find for it were April Fool's day jokes and a story on slashdot from late January. Where are the vendor supplied drivers and extentions? Where is the retail boxed CD? Where are the gloating screenshots of OS X benchmarks on dual Xeon systems? Where is the review on Ars Technica, who would absolutely, without question post this as HUGE NEWS?
Show me. _Post_ _one_ _fucking_ _link_ _you_ _troll_.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
What's with the " Show me! I'm too lazy, or stupid to look for it myself, do it for me! ", you've not even bothered to look.
. 4/release/darwinx86-141.iso.gz
Well I already did tell you where to get it, I posted the address of the Darwin FAQ. If that's too difficult for you to follow, the address is below.
Note they don't sell it, they *give it away*. You can download or just show up at any MacWorld and they will give you a shiny CD you can take home.
Go to www.apple.com, click on the tab "Mac OS X", the click on "Darwin" on the toolbar to check it out for yourself.
Or if your really lazy, just get it from here:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/1
File size is: 230 MB
MD5 Sum is: 6610cc775144bd8ddeccf5bf194c1945
You can get GNU software from here: http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/x86/
FreeBSD Ports work just fine on Darwin too: http://www.freebsd.org/ports/
Are you honestly so ignorant about this you don't realise that Mac OS X on PPC is a port of OpenStep on x86? It's like everybody knows but you....
You don't get Apple's Window Manger for free of course but then you dont get the Sun's Window Manager unless you pay them for it, and you don't get SGI's Window Manager unless you pay them for it - and neither of *them* give their OS away for free.
So, the only part you'll miss that's not in Darwin on x86 but is in Mac OS X on PPC will be the Window Manager (Which is called Quartz), but XFree86 works just fine and you can run Gnome 1.4 for a pretty desktop.
No, she likes to watch the screen savers on Linux better. It might not be a reason that you or I would argue for an OS, but it is a valid reason for her. After all there is only so much that a 3 year old can do on any computer.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
That's funny, I don't remember having to register to download any other "free" as in "freedom" open source software. Apple has sold my personal information before. They'll not have the chance again.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Good god, every time I point out your mistaken, you think of another excuse...
- darwin-cd-beta2.5-x86.iso.gz
How badly informed can one person be?! You call me a moron and even a troll for saying the thing even *exists*, when it's been ON THE FRONT PAGE OF SLASHDOT.
Well *ACTUALLY* every time you use anonymous FTP you have to specify your email address, that's all Apple are asking for..
But hey, if you are paranoid then just get a Darwin distribution from someone else FFS!
Darwin bootable CD for x86...
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gnu-darwin/gnu
Look ma, no registration.
Thank you, now where did you say aqua was?
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
You obviously didn't read any of my posts properly (you keep asking stuff I've already covered).
Apple don't *give* you the window manager, you have to pay for it, it's their value added extra. But it's open so you can run your own Window Manager. They are a company (Jordan Hubbard doesn work for free), this cake is free, but the icing (the enhanced Windowing Environment) costs money.....
Actually they couldn't even give it away if they wanted to (for legal reasons, as they have various licenced technologies such as OpenGL that mean it would literaly cost them for each copy they gave away!).
XFree86 works just fine however, most Darwin x86 uses run it as their windowing enviroment of choice (like most Linux, BSD and GNU OS desktop users).
But as the OS is open source - you are free to write your own (if you don't like X for some reason).
If you pay enough you can get OpenStep with it's Window Manger for Intel.
Keel over and die. 'course that's not a strategy, that's just fate running its course..
Ah, well, I guess I deserve it for parodying outmoded European humour. Maybe something from Austin Tayshus?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Here is a neat story from today.
Make sure you cheack out the refrenced stories and their references too.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.