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What's the Business Case for Microsoft and Open Source?
Friend of perl developers everywhere, Jeremy Zawodny, has an intriguing question: "If you had to explain to Microsoft why they should change their
attitude toward Open Source, what would you say?" For more about this, read on...
From Jeremy: "If you had to explain to Microsoft why they should change their
attitude toward Open Source, what would you say? More to the point,
how can Microsoft benefit from better supporting or even adopting
Open Source in their business? (Replace IIS with Apache, for
example.) Does it make sense for them? Are there ways that they can
use Open Source as a competitive advantage without pissing off the
Open Source community in the process? Which of their products would
make sense on Open Source platforms? How can the Open Source
community help Microsoft? Or is this a lost cause? IBM has made it
work. Can Microsoft?
I ask these questions because I may have the chance to talk with folks at Microsoft about Open Source. And it only makes sense that I look to the community for input. So let's hear it. Flames won't help. Thoughtful answers and ideas very well could."
Microsoft have no intention of changing to open source, it's like trying to get someone to change their religion, not likely to happen. Why bother asking those questions, and concentrate on tackling MS head-on with quality open-source products?
Microsoft is a corporation, bound to it's shareholders, and is chartered to make a profit. In order to adopt an open source mentality, it would need to be demonstrated that open source is as profitable as closed-source projects. And, in the many years of the open source movement, I have not seen many open source projects that are highly profitable. So, therefore, I don't think that there is an argument that would convince microsoft to change their approach, other than federal injunction.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel. -
As a guy who has to support IIS in mission-critical apps, I'd have to say that it would give them a lot of credibility in the enterprise if they opened the source just for IIS, for starters. At least once a quarter, somebody in our organization asks why we're not using Apache yet, and with the IIS security problems that crop up all the time, it's getting harder to answer that question.
I know what their answer is going to be, though. They don't want to open up IIS because it will expose all of the existing installations to attacks until patches are written. They'd rather keep it closed to protect the morons who don't apply patches than to open it up to fix the rest of the holes.
What's your damage, Heather?
Well...they won't have to worry about being beaten by their opposition.
Open source will result in a better product
Even though they may not consider it now, and they have considered it before, they should start embracing open source simply for choice.
I have a laptop which is a Sony Vaio, with WinXP Home, and it has one email client and one browser, among other one things.
I also have a dual-boot desktop (Win2K and Mandrake 8.2), and I enjoy working on the Mandrake side, because there's a choice of applications.
If I want to browse the web, I have Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx... I'm not tied to one browser EVER. Even when an url is highlighted, I can choose which browser to open it into.
With email, again, there are many choices for me. I also have many security choices easily found, like do not display HTML email, do not allow JavaScript or popups, etc.
I prefer choice packaged with my OS. Not that I choose which ONE I get when I install, but the ability to choose them after install, using the best software for the task at hand.
With Microsoft, I'd wish that they'd embrace this notion, packaging not only their products, but also open source alternatives, so people can choose. And they should also take the notions that many of the open source projects have taken, and allow people to decide on their own security, and install with max security and let them open themselves as they desire.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Unlike the pro-open source evangelists like RMS, ESR etc. the whole pro and cons OSS thing is not an ideological question for MS.
The problem is that some open source program are a threat to MS market dominance. And MS gained that dominance by ruthlessly destroying all competitors. They act shark like - see, attack, kill. This made them the no. 1 in the software business. And not the quality of their products. (Some of their products are good despite what OSS zealots say.) If they give up their attitude towards OSS, they would have to give up their attitude towards competitors. And this would destroy their market dominance, making them an ordinary software company like any other.
So, "convincing MS of the benefits of OSS" is nonsense. There is no real benefit for them and they will never be convinced. And they have at least one very good argument for their behavoir - their outstanding economic success. You cannot convert a predator to a vegetarian.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
On top of that, most opensource OSes are very modular. If you don't want this piece, you don't have to install it (Win2K server is a pain for changing some setups, like the dhcp server, the dns server, the active directory server, WINS master/backup -- at least, for me it was a pain to try to change, but, I'm not a MSCE). People like modular. I know that there is some fix for WinXP that does this to an extent (or it is supposed to).
Perhaps also the idea that, for the most part, you don't have to pay $100 for your bug fixes/upgrades. Granted, the upgrade money is how MS stays in buisness (ok, I know people will argue with this, but, it have probably been said before and will be again, they license software, that is how they make money), some people can't afford all of the upgrades -- and if they can, they don't know how the bugs were fixed or how to work with some of the new things -- sometimes old programs don't work anymore.
Those are a few ideas, I know that others will have lots more.
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
At least once a quarter, somebody in our organization asks why we're not using Apache yet, and with the IIS security problems that crop up all the time, it's getting harder to answer that question.
Wouldn't it be easier to just start using Apache?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
If M$ would use the same million monkeys techniques, it too would have bulletproof stuff and nearly instanteneous responses to security goofs.Just what they would save on product testing and PR. Oh wait, that is their business model, isn't it?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Are you asking Microsoft to open their source, or are you asking for them to embrace Linux? Be careful what you ask for - if the source code to all Microsoft products were suddenly opened tomorrow, I'd have to think that Linux might suddenly lose some support. I know at least a few sysadmins who would forever abandon their attempts to put Linux on desktops if they could just get their hands on the Windows source code to make modifications.
I respect that they don't want to open the source for Windows, and that's fine. I'd be happy if they'd just embrace Linux and work more intimately with it. Just as they offered Office for the Mac, I'd love to have Office for Linux. Even better, they could sell Active Directory add-ons for Linux, and there'd be a line out the door to get in.
These are revenue opportunities that don't require opening anybody's source code, and they're a great way to solve the decreasing-revenue dilemma that MS has been struggling with lately. Plus, I'd have to believe it would get them a groundswell of support.
What's your damage, Heather?
The sad truth is Microsoft has nothing to gain monetarily from moving to Open Source, and since they are a corporation, money is all that really matters. I don't mean this in a bad way, its just the way it is. There's so many hurdles that Microsoft would have to overcome to make things OSS.
Consider how much their legal dept would get the sweats over a shareholder law suit if they OSS everything and the stock drops because nobody buys software anymore -- they just download the OSS Microsoft code and compile it!
And that's only ONE of thousands of problems. They also have the standard problem of using a lot of code licensed from other people, how do they deal with that? Even if they wanted to OSS their software because there was a good reason, it would cost the millions if not billions in legal fees and programmer time just to get rid of all the licensed code depedencies in their software!
In short, forget about it. Use your energy on something else.
I don't think Gates & co have a problem with "Open Source", but they have a problem with "Free software". Its important to Microsoft and its shareholders that they turn a profit. That means maintaining rights to their intellectual property and gaining revenue from software licences. Why not continue to do that, but include the source code with windows on the CD, and allow users, students, universities, etc to tinker at will (and learn a bit from the incredibly bright and talented engineers at MS)?
End users could care less, students and developers would be encouraged to tinker with windows more, and MS wouldn't lose any revenue. I for one would love to take a peak at the source for Flight Simulator 2002, or even 98 for that matter! Of course, Richard Stallman wouldn't approve because the license obviously wouldn't be GPL, but thats another issue...
Eric S Raymond says in The Cathedral and the Bazaar that probably more than 90% of all software will never be sold. Most software sits in embedded systems, drivers that comes with hardware or are used for in-house solutions. It serves no need, or favors none, that such software is kept proprietary. Microsofts' current business model does not exactly encourage sharing such source, or such programs. When companies build systems that they do not intend to sell, why should they close source it, and why should they not take advantage of all free software out there?
- score -1, naive
- score -1, simplistic
This is a serious proposition and about as objectively applicable as "-1, Troll""Because we're going to wipe the floor with you".
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
personally I'd be happy if MS would just adopt and adhere to open standards, even if there code wasn't open, at least then MS systems would be able to operate with other things without a lot of effort wasted on reverse engineering (is it a fault with 3rd party apps/sytems or is it an undocumented feature of MS? - most CEO's and the likes toe the MS party line so the 3rd party apps/systems are at fault, which in alot of cases is just plain wrong)
..we can help you beat Microsoft. That's the main reason other companies are interested in open source.
Linux can. Linux can .Use Linux
That Linux can! That Linux can! I do not like that Linux can!
Do you like open sourcing plan?
I do not like that Linux can. I do not like the open sourcing plan.
Would you like to free source share?
I would not like to free source share. I would not like it anywhere. I do not like open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.
Would you like it very stable? Would you like it to enable?
I do not like it very stable. I do not like it to enable. I do not like to free source share. I do not like it anywhere. I do not like the open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.
Would you use it in a X-Box? Would you use it if it ROCKS?
Not on X-box. Not if it rocks. Not if very stable. Not to enable. I would not let them free source share. I would not let them anywhere. I would not allow open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.
Would you? Could you? In your biz? Use it! Use it! Here it is.
I would not, could not, in our biz.
You may like it. You will see. You may like it if it's free!
I would not, could not if it's free. Not in our biz! It should never be!
I do not like it on the X-box. I do not like it that it rocks. I do not like it amongst our biz. I do not like it that it is. I do not like they free source share. I do not like that anywhere. I do not like that Linux can. I do not like you Linux man!
service! service! service! service! Could you, would you, as a service?
Not as a service! Not if it's free! Not in my biz! Man! Let not it be! I would not, could not, on a X-box. I could not, would not, if it rocks. I will not use it if its stable. I will not use it even to enable. I will not let them free source share. I will not let them anywhere. I do not like open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.
Say! if in copyleft? always free copyleft! Would you, could you, copyleft?
I would not, could not, in copyleft.
Would you, could you, why so nervous?
I would not, could not, I'm NOT nervous. Not as copyleft. Not as a service. Not in my biz. Not if it's free. I do not like that it can, you see. Not if it's stable. Not on X-box. Not to enable. Not if it rocks. I will not let them free source share. I do not like it anywhere!
You do not like open sourcing plan?
I do not like that Linux can.
Could you, would you use what we wrote?
I would not, could not, use what you wrote!
Would you, could you, to avoid your bloat?
I could not, would not, avoid bloat. I will not, will not, use what you wrote. I will not compete with them as a service. I will not because it makes us nervous. Not in our biz! Not if it's free! Not if it is! You let me be! I do not like it on the X-Box. I do not like it that it Rocks. I will not use it if it's stable. I do not like that it does enable. I do not like they free source share. I do not like it ANYWHERE I do not like open sourcing plan!I do not like that, Linux can.
You do not like it. So you say. Try it! Try it! And you may. Try it and you may, I say.
Man! If you will let me be, I will try it. You will see.
Say! I like open sourcing plan! I do! I like that, Linux can! And I would use it because it's stable. And I could use it to enable...
And I could charge for providing a service. And I could copyleft without being nervous. And in my biz. And still source free. For you can still charge for a service fee!
So I will use it on the networked X-box. And I will promote it because it ROCKS. And I will use it because it's stable. And I will use it to enable.
And I will use it here and there. Say! I can use it ANYWHERE!
I do so like open sourcing plan! Thank you! Thank you, Linux man!
By The Cat with the RedHat
IBM may not be the best example, since, for the most, the areas which big blue has embraced linux are areas where they stand to profit from hardware sales. Microsoft currently doesn't have that luxury.
I propose that this has to be done in small steps.
There is no way MS is going to open up the Windows source, or the IIS source, or any other major product, flat-out. Maybe convincing them that something smaller could benefit from the o/s movement could get the ball rolling - one step at a time.
Apple has open-sourced Darwin, not WebObjects, not Appleworks, and certainly not OS X, just Darwin. By most accounts, however, this has been a great success for the company, both in the enhancement of the product and in the publicity and support gained from the open sourcing of this one project. Maybe MS should be convinved to dip its toe in the water, rather than dive in. Open source the XP kernel, or Powerpoint (which isn't going anywhere anytime soon - guaranteed), etc. etc.
My 2
It seems to me that Linux and open source are classic disruptive technologies. In this case the technology is not the OS itself (anyone here who can't name a dozen OS's in one breath?) but the GPL, the development model, and the worldwide linking of motivated developers into a slightly-cohesive competing co-operating group.
The GPL has provided a framework whereby a self-sustaining body of software has come into being. The body of developers don't rely on traditional business models to sustain themselves.
If Linux and open source become at all successful Microsoft is going to lose billions of dollars in revenue. Heck, they probably already are. I'm suprised they haven't sent the boys around to break RMS' and Linus Torvalds' kneecaps or roll over them with a bus.
This is a 'company' or community MS can't fight using traditional business models. They can't lower their prices enough to beat free. Many of open source products are at least of equivalent quality to MS products.
They've tried running attack PR campaigns, but to some extent attacking open source is as hard as attacking any other community spirited organisation, such as (for example) the Scouts or Guides, and all the bad press has so far rebounded on MS, it's a bit transparent after all. And how do you effectively attack people who are giving things away for free? It's like trying to claim that "Meals on Wheels" volunteers are evil because the food they deliver sometimes isn't absolutely perfect.
As an aside, I was in the Science Museum in London a few years ago and I saw a gas-fire powered room fan. The idea was that when it got too hot in summer, you lit this gas-fired engine and it turned a fan to blow (now warmer) air around the room to cool you down. It was a last trump of the old monopoly gas companies trying to show their product was as versatile as the new-fangled electricity. It shows the lengths an old monopoly would go to, to try and preserve their old business model in the face of a disruptive technology.
So, in a possibly vain attempt to get back on topic... I'll be interested to hear what you have to say. Because I feel only one of a few possibilities can actually happen. One is that open source limps along as a permanent embarrassing cousin to shrink wrap proprietary software. The other is that it more or less displaces shrink wrap commercial software.
My money is on the latter, and for a simple reason. MS has sent many companies down the tube by the simple expedient of knowing that the other company will eventually make a mistake, and then they are dead. MS has made many mistakes too - but the synergy of owning the OS and some popular apps meant they've had the revenue to recover from them, whereas companies reliant on a single app only had to trip once and they were gone.
Now the tables are turned. Open source isn't going away. If it can survive and get to where it has now, on an insignificant market share and difficult to use products, it isn't going away now it has growing market share and great things like KDE3 and Moz and GNOME and open office and so on that stand up against MS' core products.
Now it's MS that has to avoid making mistakes.... In my view that classic mistake they are making is concentrating on their market share and revenue rather than the customers. Look at the PR and mindshare disaster that Licencing 6 has proven to be. Just goes to prove the old saying that once a monopoly finishes dealing with it's competitors, it starts beating up on its customers.
MS contains some of the greatest developers in the world under one roof, probably THE greatest number of developers working for a single company. The problem is that so much of their work seems to be directed towards a 'scam' - keeping MS on top and killing other companies, rather than just turning out great products. It's proven a very effective strategy so far, the issue is can it survive against a community who isn't playing the same game?
So what can you say to MS about open source in general? It'll either eat them or live alongside them. Either way, they lose. And it's as inevitable as what happened to the horse and cart when the automobile was invented, and nothing they do can really change how this game is going to play out economically. So they may as well ignore it and hope it'll go away.
The only difference between Microsoft and everyone else is that they use anti-competitive tatctics to push what ever they want. What Microsoft really needs to be convinced of is to play nice with others.
Everyone thinks that open sourcing MS products would improve them so they would be more usable. A more realistic aproach would be this: if you don't like Microsoft products, don't use them damn it.
The drop in security holes for Microsoft is a change in how they are counting and reporting them. Granted, they have gotten better about testing before release, but they have still let some doozies out.
I put my trust on code that has many eyeballs constantly reviewing and revising.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
.... will probably be very difficult to transition to an open-source model. Basically they are in the widget IP licensing business, they only make money by selling complex components that other companies can script together. As such they have a very good business plan in targeting the mass market (consumer ignorance + millions of units). OpenSource makes business sense for small specialised niches (where the money is in the expertise/consulting e.g. tax laws), academia where you'd want to encourage uptake of new technology (which always require more hacking), and long-term infrastructure where you absolutely must be able to access data/devices beyond the longivity of any single supplier.
So long as MS can make high margins on the components, control the "works under Windows xyz" trademark, and can buy out any disruptive upstart, I really don't see why they'd be motivated to open-source anything.
LL
IBM is an OSS advocate because:
If I were to approach it, I might challenge MS to think outside the box and compete against themselves.
Take Apple's strategy of supporting an OSS-based OS (Darwin) and adding in strategic closed source bits to productize it. Perhaps they could move some small fraction of their $40 Billion war chest into support Darwin itself. Could you imagine the boost that Darwin would get from $4-$5 Billion? (Only 10-12% of the MS Cash holdings.) This could energize their developers on their current products to take OSS seriously and spur them to produce better products.
Perhaps more importantly, this could sap mindshare and community away from Linux. How many Enterprises would field an MS-supported Open Source OS before Linux? A lot, I think.
I c# went totally open source, it would at least have that over Java. In my experience 95% of developers have a negative attitude toward M$, and making c# open might help with this. I think developer opinion is important because they often choose which products/languages to use. Personally I would never choose M$ development languages over Java because of the closed/platform dependant nature.
Can Microsoft use open source?
See the mightly lion. See the lion kill the OS/2 wolf. See the lion scare away the Borland tiger. See the lion beat up the Lotus dog. See the lion tell all the other animals what to do.
See the little mouse scurry around. See the mouse eat nuts and seeds, things too small for the lion to bother with. See the plague of mice. When the lion pounces on one, they all scamper around and confuse it. See the lion trying to scare them with its mightly roar. See the lion going crazy trying to stop thousands of them all around it.
Can the lion eat the nuts and seeds that sustain the mice?
Can Microsoft use techniques of open source?
I think it may be that one reason the M$ doesn't want to open source itself is that it would reveal that it's already using a buncha open source internally anyway. This would of course be a violation of the GPL and would open M$ to lotsa legal and pr problems. Just a theory of mine.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I work with people who use Windows, although I
use Linux. Microsoft could help me and my
colleagues by trying to make their products work
better with my products. They seem to do the
opposite now. Just to take a minor example of
hundreds. I write text files with 80 character
lines. Word does not have a way of importing
these without taking line breaks as paragraph
breaks, and it cannot make them. (Apparently.
At least none of my very smart colleagues can
figure out how to get Word to do this.)
Some scientists use Microsoft Word, and others
use TeX/LaTeX. Microsoft could HELP the former
group by making Word, for example, easily import
eps. (Another thing my colleagues can't
manage to do.)
And then there is Xwindow. Why doesn't Windows
include something like VNC?
The answer is that Microsoft does not want to
make life easy for its customers who interact
with people like me. This is an attitude they
might change without serious harm to their
business model. They are using their customers
as pawns in their struggle to crush competition.
That is a strategy thay may not even be in their
long-term self-interest.
I know it may sound radical, but why not? Imagine a Bill and co. IRC meeting:
:) ... We can discuss the details tomorrow: schedule the "creative" team for tomorrow (need to polish the idea).
Bill: ok, this Linux thing is not passing away and the DoJ is costing a lot. We need to do something.
Co: yes, but what?
Bill: i don't know, but...WAIT...something comes to my mind
Co: What?!?!?
Bill: let's just talk to the DoJ and ask them to force us to bundle an alternative.
Co: WHAAAAT?
Bill: Yes, we can then "ask" our lovely oems to bundle the crapiest Linux version ever released. You know, all versions of everything that ever had a mayor bug together. Nothing will work right. Get basic the idea?
Co: Oh my god!
Bill: Yes, our god!
Co: Oh Bill. You know we love you!
Bill: Oh yeah!
unfinished: (adj.)
I can only see MS adopting OSS in those cases where it doesn't directly affect their revenue (definition of directly will of course differ).
Take the browser market. Now that they have effectively killed commercial competition, taking a step back and looking at what they could do with IE might not be such a bad idea for them.
They are still pumping money into developing IE, but there is no bottom line gain for them. It doesn't generate revenue and none of their competitors are selling browsers anymore either.
The only argument I can see against this would be that they wish to control the capabilities that IE provides so that they can make sure their server-side subscription businesses always work best (or at all) with IE. If, however, this is their stance then I'm not sure that any argument for OSS is going to work because they do have so many pieces of software that complement each other even if some of them do not directly earn revenue.
Wiggly -- But I want to be different, just like everybody else.
Consequently there is absolutely no reason for MS to open their products unless they are forced to by the courts.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
There are a lot of comments that point toward the free distribution aspect of what we see as open source. With Microsoft being a business that builds and sells software for a living I don't see free distribution as a possibility for them.
On the other hand, distributing the source code with Microsoft programs is a good idea, at least ideally. As mentioned in court they have some serious holes that would need fixing before this would be even possible. If they cleaned that up then releasing the source would allow the nitpickers to get to work debugging, allow knowledgeable sysadmins to create their own patches and submit them with bug reports, and let us see what is going on in our own computers.
Coding Blog
But has the M$ Empire lasted hundreds upon hundreds of years yet? Maybe the worst is yet to come when Linux Vandals and Goths decend upon Redmond and sack it...
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd have a sig.
Sure, the geeks want choice, but most people want nothing more complicated than a Microwave (if that complex, they sure as hell can't manage a VCR), and they want it to not change, ever.
My Journal
I think you just justified all MS behavior. MS doesn't attack anyone until they are bothered first - at least if bothering means looking like food.
What is the market share for OpenSource software. Just how much of it is there? To approach MS you will have to come at them from the money direction. If you can prove that by not supporting OpenSource, they are losing money, they might listen to you. From what I have seen in the past, this will be the one thing they will listen to.
The negative mods are only useful for getting trolls and spammers off the list.
:)
If you consider someone's comment naive or simplistic, you can certainly post and say so (and risk getting modded down for being a troll). Or you might consider posting something more useful like explaining why you disagree (and risk getting modded down for being a troll).
I think yours was a rather simplistic suggestion. We're both off-topic.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Fact: "30% of Microsoft its revenue comes from the Operating System licensing alone."
This means they'll do practically anything to protect that.
Linux is moving quickly to 'embrace and extend' Windows with projects like wine, wineX and CrossOffice getting very good.
The Linux-Windows war used to be a kernel war initially, but soon it will be a win32 api war. If Microsoft doesn't launch it's version of Windows with a linux kernel underneath (MacOS X system architecture), they'll loose massive market share in the bigger enterprise market and OEM's. If that happens, all will be lost for Microsoft.
They currently are in a position to create a 'Microsoft Linux'; a linux kernel with their dll-base inserted with a proprietary kernel module (kernel fork needed because of Linus' policy). In that case they would be able to create the best 'Lindows' around, possibly loose some market space with applications like IIS being replaced with Apache and such, but with again a dominant position in the Intel OS marketplace.
Microsoft is afraid of such a move, because it'll be expensive and because of the antitrust suit (although, such a move could settle it: "We will make the following version of our kernel OpenSource").
BTW, Microsoft currently already sponsors certain GNU development, like with Perl on NT.
Conclusion:
- A Linux system running windows apps is a huge opportunity for the enterprise market and OEM's.
- If that happens MS will have lost their foundation. Either they try to make the ultimate mix of their Intellectual Property and the OpenSource world, or they'll face utter destruction. They have a window of oppertunity here, but wine is getting better fast!
- Getting them to understand this is quiet simple: they initially had the same fear of the Internet and the old MS guys understand the comparisation: the Internet was a chaotic and anarchistic network, Bill Gates said "they would never invest in it". Time has proven the contrary.
To beat a Microsoft Linux, we just need to work a little harder on wine and its integration in the desktop environments.
www.microsoftlinux.com
VNC illegal on XP systems
It's hard to believe that, even among "the Community" itself, so many people are barking up the wrong tree. The question asked about open source software, not free software. Obviously Microsoft can't justify free (beer) software to its shareholders. The relevant, and more subtle, question is whether Microsoft can justify releasing its source code. Releasing source code is distinct from giving away software.
Bear in mind, that Microsoft already does reveal its source code to people who pay enough. However, if it supplied its source code to anyone who bought the built product (even with side-conditions that the source could not be used to commercial advantage etc etc), that would still constitute open source software. And the advantage to Microsoft would be many, many more knowledgeable people finding bugs. And the disadvantages would be that someone might pinch some ideas from it to help a competing product and also that a million custom patches for their products would appear, and be sure to interfere with each other.
Any sufficiently self-referential snowcloned
please, stop it! you're giving me the hiccups :)
-- james
"They want choice?! If people had choice, then they'd take all of three seconds to decide they like the free stuff better than our OS". Bill slammed his hand on the table of the boardroom, waking up a grougy Balmer who had slept through the whole meeting, tired after last nights piss-up with the pretty lasses from Marketing
A young excecutive raised his hand, hesitating. "But... people who use Windows may prefer to use a different browser or e-mail client. Why not give them that choice? They...". Bill looked at him and the executive fell silent. "You assume they know what is good for them. Pah! Besides, have you forgotten our deal with the RIAA and the MPAA? They will push our standards and products, and we will put in suitable content copy protection.". He put his fists on the table, leaned forward and looked around the assembled executives. "Don't forget this, gentlemen. Soon, we will control all sides of the equation. Choice, gentlemen, is our enemy."
The devil gazed down through the clouds upon his most faithful minion, and smiled.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Microsoft has no problems with using Open Source (in the case of BSD-licensed software), Microsoft has no problems with showing their (big) clients and universities the source code to their programs and packages.
What Microsoft has a problem with, is with the GNU license.
JMHO
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Yes it's original and please Consider it as public domain, adapt and redistribute at will. Attribute to "NZheretic" if you wish.
Having MS open their source and/or making SW for free isn't going to prove a business case for them. And I'm not even sure if it's really what we (should) want them to do.
The most critical problem isn't their lack of OSS - it's their active bashing of anything that has to do with Linux and GPL etc.
What needs to be brought across is that what they are doing is bad, it's scaring people off, so in the long run it's going to be more negative to their revenues than it would be to (and here's what we *should* hope for) start complying more with standards, to allow cooperation with other software, no matter what platform and licence it's on/under.
I think the way to put it is 'respect your opponents'. They have to be told they can NEVER be a 100% monopoly. They should rather try to be 'happy' with 50% or 75% or whatever makes them smile (hopefully in the end it will be less, but I don't want a monopoly of OSS/Linux software either), and make people smile back at them by *allowing* competition. And by allowing people to choose their own solutions and systems.
This is what we should wish for, and this is what we need to bring across.
Note that I'm aware I haven't brought forward any 'proof' as to why this would be good business for them, all support I have for my statements are what I consider common sense.
I'd love to have someone knowledgeable prove me right or wrong - both would be beneficial to me AND the community.
Love over Gold.
All prior posts were beneath my threshold when I came in here so apologies for duplication, if any.
Commercial software producers have traditionally kept their source code secret. Why? They're scared that, if they release the source, others will steal it, produce competing products and damage their bottom line.
This threat is only a threat if the thief keeps the code secret as well. If the source is available for public scrutiny, breach of copyright would be very easily proven.
The benefit gained from making source available is that it can be very easily and cheaply subjected to peer review. This in turn leads inevitably to better, more secure, more reliable code which will benefit the software producer and everyone else at the same time.
The only other excuse I've heard for keeping it secret is that secret code doesn't expose security flaws thereby keeping out the bad guys. Yeah, right!
Given the number of security breaches exploited in current commercial, secret, code, it's really hard to imagine how publishing the source could make matters worse.
I don't think Open Source is for MS.
Their lock in with proprietary applications and file formats is very profitable. They get to charge outrageous prices for their software, and have lost little market share.
Their actual customers are only starting to get upset with them, if they dropped prices down a bit, perhaps more inline with video games (computer, PS2) and announced that as the market price people would feel a lot less like they are gouging.
Going to open source would change lots, they would have real competition, profits would likely drop. They wouldn't have lock in. These are good for the consumer, but bad for MS, so they shouldn't do it.
a) 95/98/ME are terrible examples of an OS. It's basically how *not* to write an OS properly.
b) Check out FlightGear, it's an open source flight sim, very much like MS Flight Sim. I'm not sure what parts you are interested in, but it's fully functional, just not quite as many features as MS.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The brief answer is that they do not need to. However, there are things that we can do. Foremost would be to write open source apps for the M$ OSes. If you want Apache to run on Windows it can be done.
....
The second half of your series of questions is a bit more relevent. I would pay retail pricing to have M$ Office (sans Outlook) on Linux. I would also pay for third party apps like Quicken. They all could profit by selling apps to the linux market. The real rub for M$ here is, IMHO, that the Office Suite is what keeps the masses comming back to the M$ OSes. We could digress off topic here and talk about the user unfriendly aspects of Linux, but
They, M$, are not worried in the near term. The Open source community has a lot of wasted effort and redundant/competing activity to overcome before M$ will sit up and take notice. Pick any Open Source application, utility, or function written for linux and search Freshmeat/SourceForge for similar software and you'll find several if not dozens of similar competing 'products'. Most if not all of these will be flawed or disfunctional in different ways. My point? M$ won't be worried until we get organized, develop competing standards, and stay focussed on putting them out of business.
Good Luck, Z
-- Instant Karma's gonna get you! [320848 = 2*2*2*2*11*1823]
Look pal, old chum, Billy Gatey. I know we've had our differences. But apparently I can offer you much superior stuff for free, something that can boost the quality of your products by leaps and bounds. I can get you already available code, some of which youve already taken and put into some windows etc secretly.
Come on! What is this fuss all about. Why the linux bashing while Hotmail runs on it?? It is time to release The next windows based on BSD4.4.This would be to counter OS-X and its incursions into x86 hardware. This would be Windix!!! The kicker ass windows with a version of Apache called IIS 6.0 and Reiserfs. Imagine the possibilities.
Come oooonnnn.. I'll be your best friend!
I give up.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
LOL!
I assume you're kidding, right?
Basically, for things shipped with Windows that are included merely to make Windows more attractive, there's no reason not to use existing alternatives. Or rather, the only reason is so they can continue the FUD about IP contamination or whatever.
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
This being said, you can't ask them to stop selling software. You can suggust that there are some places where they could lower their costs by allowing the community to help.
They're in it for the money. And so far they're doing a good job of it. Please let me know how to make lots of money with Open Source.
They can stay closed source for all I care. What I don't like is their dirty tricks. You can win without playing dirty. And if nobody can win without playing dirty then the regulators have screwed up.
Nevermind about open source. I figure the best change to the software industry would be the reduction of software copyright protection to 7 years. That way people will actually have to come up with something innovative rather than releasing a new minimally improved version and stop supporting the older version (forcing upgrades).
If 7 years is too hard then fine longer, but 50+ years is way too long.
Jesus, didn't you notice they already declared war on Open Source? Don't help them pretend to be nice guys. They're not.
Microsoft is the disease. Open Source is the cure.
Bill, do you want to go to heaven or to hell?
---
I support spreading santorum
Slashdot has the answer to your question right here. I honestly don't see how one can change the views of Microsoft when they are making claims like that.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Part of the problem when tring to get a company Using Microsoft to switch to using Linux is more of an emotional switch then a technical one. You have to realize most of the time you are talking to the people who at the time put Windows into the buisness. So by sugesting that they change to Linux will put them in more of a defensive situation. And will not be open to listening to your ideas. Also you have to realized that they were also blinded by the cost of MS products. Its a situation where they invested a lot of money and to tell them to get rid of there investment. They will try to make there investment still seem like a good bet. The trick to get them to switch to a Linux envirment is very slow processes. The first thing you should do is offer Linux as a extention to windows. Just have them put a Linux box in for a job that may be small job. Like using it as a remote backup system. Dont make them feel like your relacing windows. Just make them feel that it will just compamint windows functions. Then slowly you put move services to Linux and less from Windows. And before you do the next upgrade you show the performance of the Linux box and the Total Cost of Ownership on that box. So the company gets use to the idea of a Linux box in the company and having a second one wont be a big problems. And after a couple years you can make the company mostly Linux. But dont rush it. You will get people defensive and then nothing will happen.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Microsoft could open source their code in a way that lets them still collect royalties, and lets people make modifications, and if they resell the modifications the person purchasing the modification is required to own the software. I mean it would probably make support hell for the techies having to figure out what patches some idiot put into Outlook. But, I think they could make money and have source code available. I think bare minnimum if they showed the source they would have better security, and a better product with out loosing money. I don't think they'd ever license something GPL. But, hopefully in the future we might see some code on our next Windows CD. And releasing code would probably help get that pesky gov't off their back.
Perl is not part of GNU.
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
If you even want to remotely move any MS employee of any clout towards some type of Open Source model, you have to start small and demonstrate how it will benefit THEM, not a competing operating system. Somehow I don't think they're having board meetings fretting over how they can help *nix. Nor, contrary to some other statements here, are they in immenent danger of losing substantial market share if they don't immediatly change their ways. There are too many other MS products companies rely on that require them to be married to the operating system in one form or another.
As someone else pointed out, the argument, or the persuasion, should be something small like opening the source to IIS and pointing out that with hundreds, if not thousands of people eye-balling the code and fixing the problems, they benefit by not paying a programmer (or a team) to fix the numerous problems in an existing product, and by fixing the program, turns off a persistant public relations problem. Will it cause problems? Initially it might, until the flood of fixes start pouring in. But in the end they end up with a better product, and less admin by the end user, who probably has better things to do than check for security patches on a daily basis.
Microsoft is the only successful proprietary software product company. That is, they're the only company that can sell shrink-wrap software (or user licenses), walk away from them, and still make billions of dollars.
Every other proprietary software company must back up their products with service and support or they're kaput. These are the companies you can possibly convince to open source since their true business is supporting their products or supplying services based on them.
Microsoft going open source would be throwing away an extremely lucrative and unique monopoly.
* Games are an exception, and you may find some niche companies with a similar business model.
It's hard to know where Microsoft would benefit from Open Source (remembering that they can already, ahem, borrow BSD'd and similar code) without knowing how much each product contributes to the company financially and how much each product costs, but, if I were to hazard a few guesses, it would be these:
1. IIS==>bit bucket
IIS does not dominate its market and has a wretched reputation. IIS extensions are available under apache, and the apache license would allow Microsoft to make its own proprietary extensions to a Microsoft-supported license.
It would make a world of sense for MS to bite the bullet, declare apache their web server, and add MS-only content in the form of proprietary mods.
2. SQL Server.
Big asterisk here. If SQL Server contributes serious net dollars, I might continue to ride it for a while.
However, SQL Server faces fierce competition at the high end from Oracle and DB2. The continued visibility of Open Source is exposing it to danger in the middle from solutions like PostgreSQL and MySQL, products that conspire to take the profit out of the segment.
I can't help but think that Microsoft could learn something here from the tremendous success of Access. Nobody buys Access because it's a great database. They buy Access because it's a database they can use. Microsoft can open up SQL-Server or they could even get more radical:
base a new database on PostgreSQL, perhaps with extensions to ensure that current SQL-Server databases are cleanly supported.
Then, without having to R&D the database (and, not coincidentally, gaining a marketing point in terms of customer flexibility), focus on proprietary tools that make developing and admining the thing easier. Maybe special additions (as separate proprietary products) to help exploit the Windows platform.
3. The Access back-end.
As I said, nobody buys Access because it's a great database.
4. Outlook Express.
A little danger here, because it might make it easier to clone Exchange. However, this could be a sort of "reverse-samba": Outlooks showing up in all kinds of strange places and on all kinds of strange platforms where it never lived before. Why? PHBs. Nuff said.
5. NetMeeting.
C'mon, guys. The whole purpose of NetMeeting is to let people in remote locations participate in a meeting. MS doesn't charge for the basic client, anyway. Opening this means that Windows can communicate with anyone else using the NetMeeting softwareThis one seems like a no-brainer, especially as a revenue stream might be found in enhanced software for originating sites as opposed to mere participants.
6. Whatever MS calls it's instant messenger.
That would be a great stab at Yahoo and AOL, and, for MS, wonderful irony.
Anyway, those a re a few of my ideas.
"Consider the psychological..."
I try to minimize my involvement with Microsoft because I don't like to associate with abusive people. Personal growth comes from associating with idealistic people.
Microsoft's current strategy is based on customer lock in. Get them to use Windows, then they buy (and create) Windows-only products. The more committed to Windows products they become, the harder it is to migrate to Linux or any other OS. They may play the standards game, but they always try to hook non-standard "killer" features into their systems.
If Microsoft were to start using open-source applications, then the content and programs that people create become more portable. That is, an Apache web app will work on Windows or Linux (possibly with some minor modifications). By supporting open-source within their products they make it easier to move to a completely open-source platform. They do not want to do this, unfortunately.
At some point, I think Microsoft will have to come to the conclusion that it is going to be a player, no longer THE player, in the OS market. But until that happens, they're going to try and protect their monopoly - because even if it is not in the consumer's best interests, it is in Microsoft's best interests.
The only thing they can do is fight their customers and the government to maintain their stranglehold, grabbing as much cash as they can get away with before they are pushed aside.
About micrsoft and open source???
We need to dust off and nuke em from orbit, that's the only way to be sure....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"You're going down, bitch. Join us or die."
--
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Microsoft needs to change its attitude towards Open Source for the same reason that the dinosaurs needed a near-earth asteroid search.
Unfortunately for them, they are as likely to understand Open Source as the dinosaurs were to understand the technology necessary for a near-earth asteroid search.
Unfortunately for us, the analogy is also likely to work in that it took the dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years to go extienct, and similarly Microsoft is likely to be around and dominating the planet for some time to come....
-Rob
Why not just ask them in their own language.
How would you like to have thousands of programmers working for you for free, producing a product you can distribute afterwards?
If any bugs exist in the product you sell, you can always blame it on the programmers. Plus, you can still bundle software with your distributions without worrying about anti-trust laws.
Basically, a quick way out of all of your troubles with really very little loss for you. (Other then the complete monopoly, but who needs a monopoly when people work for free?)
Sound good Bill?
~ kjrose
I kind of like your point, but I couldn't help drawing the conclusion that...
In the future, only the well off will have Microsoft.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Corporate infastructure is more of a "yes, sir" environment that does not allow for that much original thought. While original thought is a novel idea these days, great ideas can still spawn from free thinkers. Technology is about great ideas. Open Source is about collectively implementing ideas.
entitled "Satan and Goodness, How do we convince him to quit being evil?".
If people think that M$ still has a chance to see the light, then even Satan is redeemable.
Technologies, platforms, languages does not matter, what you produce and provide with them does.
The hardware for any solution that requires the Microsoft platform will be nearly twice as expensive because of the cost of the Microsoft operating system and server software licenses.
"So... do you want this package that runs on a relatively inexpensive Linux server, or this other package that runs on Windows .NET Server?"
"I don't have the money for Windows .NET Server."
Will I retire or break 10K?
For Microsoft, its not a matter of open source versus closed source, its a matter of licensing - GPL versus whatever-license-they-can-use-to-still-make-money. If Microsoft adopted the GPL license, RMS would probably fall over dead from the shock. MS is about making money, they only share their source code when it means they can make MORE money. GPL is about sharing free, non-copyrighted software that anyone can use. Microsoft can not make more money by opening ALL of their source code, therefore, they won't. Its just that simple.
I'm not sure you could make an effective case for Microsoft to use open source. Open source works for IBM because they are at heart a hardware company, and secondly a service provider; open source means less spent on software development and more software which runs on their hardware. Further, they can help open source projects and provide support and consulting to companies who run open source applications on IBM hardware. nVIDIA benefits in a similar way: they make hardware, and more OS support for their cards equals more potential buyers.
Microsoft depends entirely on software for its existence. Contributing to open source probably seems counterproductive from their point of view. Why should they loan out their expertise to support open source and possibly help competing products to emerge? Open source means revenue loss in the eyes of upper management. MS would have to change their business model to more consulting and service rather than software development in order to benefit from open source -- a big change considering how MS has grown by becoming the biggest software developer around.
3. The Access back-end.
As I said, nobody buys Access because it's a great database.
Yeah, and they'll never improve that back end because it drives sales of SQL server. Let me make this perfectly clear: making Access a better product would cannibalize sales of SQL Server, so MS will never make it good
Making good products is at odds with market segmentation. This is one of the fundamental benefits of free software- there is no market segmentation for code so the perfect never becomes the enemy of the good, as we see in the Access situation.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I'm not quite sure who you will be talking to and what exactly you mean, but if you're talking to the programmers, prepare to be surprised at the attitude. I was a contractor at Microsoft. What language did I program in? Perl. While there, I worked alongside Linux advocates and other free software fans. I heard more Windows bashing there than I have at my non-M$ jobs. The programmers there are geeks. They're likely to already agree with you.
Now if you're talking to the marketing or legal departments, good luck. I don't know if they can even turn on their computers.
The notion that Microsoft could learn from how IBM has handled Open Source ignores the fundamental difference between Ms and IBM. IBM has cleverly decided that hardware AND software margins are nice to have, but they are primarily a vehicle for services revenue. While Ms has a non-trivial consulting organization, (minuscule in comparison to IBM Global Services, though) it is chartered as a cost-recovery group (they try to bill enough to pay for themselves) but they are not a profit-and-loss center. MCS is there to plug in expertise where needed to advance strategic goals which all boil down to selling more and more lucrative software. Even if Microsoft owned ALL of computer systems consulting business (Windows AND UNIX/Linux) worldwide I don't believe it would not begin to approach the revenues it now receives from software. From a business point of view, "doing an IBM" and moving software to OpenSource hoping to make money on services would be insane for Ms. .Net does not get walled off from OS inputs.
The best hope is to get Ms to consider co-operating with key OpenSource projects like Ximan Mono so that the future MS world of
So mayby this time we can learn from history, the CBDTPA,DMCA and ilk legisilation should be raising a few "red flags" before they can do as much damage.
Can't MS use their ever-popular embrace and extend concept for oss?
Convincing MS to make their own software open source if it still makes billions of dollars (Office and Windows) is pretty much impossible, and if it did happen I think at least a couple of stockholders would have very good reason to get extremely upset.
Instead, couldn't MS embrace the open source alternatives to their own integrated applications (notepad, calc, solitaire, etc) which do not serve any direct profit-making potential. MS could then extend the capabilities of their own proprietary OS, and possibly even extend the open source project's functionality.
This would benefit MS by:
- decreasing hostilities between oss and MS
- increase the value of the Windows OS by providing new functionality
- decrease costs associated with the little applications that take in no money
- decrease costs by allowing the abandonment of a product by open sourcing it instead (abandonment risks upsetting customers, but open sourcing it shifts the blame at least in part)
- make the argument integration into the OS allows MS to crush the competition much less effective
The benefits for oss include:
- decrease hostilities between oss and MS
- increase public exposure to open source alternatives (instant access to entire Windows installed-base)
- allow more standards (file formats, etc) to be revealed by MS (at least the ones that don't make money)
- allow better interaction between oss products since the most-used products will be known, allowing development efforts to be more focused.
- start the wheel moving. Successful integration of small products will lead to larger and larger open source adoption.
- risk MS allocating high-quality developers to the chosen open source projects
But one major question remains: is the open source community willing to embrace billg?
Just my thoughts.
Richard
I like most people agree that it would be a long road to get MS into the Open Source Arena. MS's Shared Source initiative may be as far as they go. However, I'm not ever sure that something like MS switching to Apache would be good. If MS switched to Apache, I imagine that you would have something like 80-90% of the world's websites on Apache...I think there is some value to heterogeneity in the software world. If everyone was on Apache and some devastating hole was found, you would have 90% of the world's web servers compromised (yes, yes, I know it is less likely to happen than with IIS). I personally believe that good solid standards are the best thing in the software world. Interoperation is more important than a universal code base.
Lets face it. The p
Sorry about that. Had a problem with my web browser. Let's face it. The goal of any business is profit. We would not have business without it. And open source is not very profitable. Therefore, Microsoft will probably not go open source on anything.
It is not in Microsoft's interest to change to open source. They have a tremendously successful business model making them one of the richest companies in the world. They are the sole-source supplier for the most popular computer software in the world. There is no rational reason for them to switch to selling and/or supporting open-source software.
Sure, we can all bitch about Microsoft products' security holes. We can gripe about performance and architectural issues. And many of those complaints are valid ones, but Microsoft is not in business to produces the most secure, high-performance, well-designed software in the world. Microsoft is in business to make money -- which they do very well.
The only rational points to argue are:
1. Microsoft's continued attacks on the open source movement are damaging their credibility and hurting their customers, many of whom want to integrate open source products into their Microsoft networks.
2. Microsoft's data storage and transmission formats should be opened up to allow value-added third-party vendors to produce products that use and manipulate the data. All that leaving the formats closed accomplishes is a delay while third-parties reverse engineer them.
3. Continued battles with the open source community are going to result in more public outcry for anti-trust action.
4. Microsoft has a PR problem right now due to their insistence on software audits at cash-strapped school systems, security holes, the Justice Department case against them, etc. Extending an olive branch to the open source movement might help reduce that PR problem.
Above all, remember that Microsoft is a for-profit business. They aren't going to get teary-eyed when you tell them about the comaraderie and inspiration that you feel when working on open-source products. They don't want to be part of some big, happy family. They want to rule the world.
A first baby step in the right direction would be for MS to stop its spiteful nature of wanting to control the entire IT industry, even in areas where they have no intention of offering solutions (just in case, I guess). This nature of MS is as old as the PC itself.
An archaic example that comes to is how MS used an undocumented DOS call to implement the Terminate and Stay Resident behaviour of its print spooler for DOS. MS's excuse for not documenting the function was because they could not guarantee that it would be supported in future releases of the operating system. It didn't take long for the guys at Borland to pull the print spooler apart and to figure out how to use it effectively. The result was Sidekick, a TSR notepad and calculator with a few other goodies that could be called up at any time with the push of a couple of buttons. Programmers found the notepad very useful as a source code editor, while being able to run another program simultaneously. Soon after, thousands of TSR applications saw the light; the TSR call, however, remained undocumented but appeared identically in all future releases of DOS. Notably, none of the offerings came from MS as far as I know.
This is in my mind purely spiteful behaviour and not to the benefit of the IT industry or its consumers.
If I had the chance to change MS's attitude, it would be to simply try and convince them that insead of wilfully trying to make it as difficult as possible for competitors to produce useful solutions, even though MS has no interest in, or intention of trading in the same market, they should rather consider what would be most beneficial to the industry and consumers, while maintaining their competitive edge. If that were their attitude, open source would soon rear its head in their planning, at least for some components of their software.
I think Bill would rather poke himself in the eye with a sharp stick, but hey, here's to hoping ...
I'm suprised they haven't sent the boys around to break RMS' and Linus Torvalds' kneecaps or roll over them with a bus.
"Buy 'em out boys!"
This will no doubt come off as cynical, but if I was running M$, I would adopt most of the benefits of open-source - style development while maintaining the ownership/licencing boundaries that keep the revenue flowing.
Consider this scenario: by buying a licence for some MS product... eg IIS you become part of a real user community - something more than just a tech-support level. Your bugs, critiques and suggestions are handled in an open and responsive way (like a member-accessible forum and a feature/suggestion list), rather than either being ignored or handled quietly by some faceless tech-support hack. When a user displays sufficient interest and proficiency, and maybe has the clout of managing many licences at a large installation, they gain access to an inner development circle where they can communicate directly with the MS developers, participate in early beta's and maybe even gain some limited access to source code.
I believe the majority of problems with M$ products stem from not engaging more sincerely with their users, from responding more to internal corporate goals than user requirements, and just plain ole arrogance that they think they know better than their users. This is the mindset that causes them to miss all the security holes and ignore the common-sense provided by real users.
Besides the real improvements in development, if they were to be seen as "embracing" open source at some level they would also gain a lot of PR and take the air out of much of the open-source vs MS arguments.
Asking Microsoft to embrace open source is like asking Linux developers to abandon the GNU License.
You have two distinct OS developers which fundimentally contrast on on the issues of proprietary and open.
Linux/GNU: You give and get back, it's a two way system when it comes to development. You can be a smart 14 year old or a retired software developer and still make your small contribution for the betterment of the whole community. You can modify the software any way you see fit, but must disclose your source code, and you have to give credit where credit is due, etc.
-- It's ideally the "better" system when it comes to end users and those who code for open source. You give, you get back. It's free to the point of the actual product, the software itself, which makes it more appealing to people.
To my understanding, (if i'm wrong then by all means correct me!) all the commercial distros of linux make their money on tech support, hardware (if any), packaging and distribution of the product.
Microsoft/proprietary: You spend a considerable amount of money for top notch developers. You spend money for R&D, You hold patnents for the works that you create, because if you don't another competitor who is also under the same business model will eat into your bottom line.
-- They keep their prized code close to their chest because it's they own and in a dog-eat-dog world of business this is the golden rule if you want to survive under this model. They need to recoup costs of the development of their works, and at the same time generate profit so they can continue to provide better software for their customers.
Each side has their own unique benifits. Linux/GNU's gives more freedom to developers, end users, and hobbyists, which inspires them to build on the existing product. Made for the people, by the people.
Microsoft/proprietary: The good ones make a lot of revenue. They provide a product that they feel the public wants. They judge their customers needs by how well a given product sells, and what they ask for. They give the people what they need to do to get the job done. Maybe not efficiently, maybe not down to the hardcore ethics of the computer science ideal, but they do offer a variety of good solid products.
What hurts Linux/GNU is that your core product is free and that clashes hard in a capitalist society, where money makes the world go 'round. Thus reducing your popularity among the mainstream, in market share, and revenue to make it all happen.
What hurts Microsoft in particular, is that they don't have the same level of intimacy with their customers like the Linux/GNU market has. They don't offer the level of freedom that more and more end users and developers want. They are utterly ruthless when it comes to their product, and their customers at times. You can justify this as defending what is their own, or as a bully who doesn't know what flexible means.
Linux/GNU and Microsoft/proprietary have their own unique weakneses and strengths, it just depends on where you stand on the issue, and what direction you look in.
Personally, I use Windows for certian things, and I use Linux for certian things. As an end user would. Drawing on the stregths of both products. I have a choice without having to choose. Why Should I limit myself to one, when I can have both?
Ultimately, they both provide value. If their exicution, business model, and character goes afloul with your own then so be it, it's okay. But you shouldn't limit yourself just because of it either.
People have choices, lets keep it that way and expand upon it. For the sake of everyone involved.
-------
Disclaimer:
The above posting may not be technically accruate, nor do i claim it to be wholeheartedly.
If any error was made that doesn't mean my intentions aren't good.
A penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
I was going to write a long diatribe outlining a possible MS strategy, but then realized that publishing it on /. was like open source.
So, if MS is interested, they can contact me and I will do so for an initial fee of $457 and an annual subscription of $137.95. Support is on a per incident basis at $125.
I keep seeing these "What should MS do?" questions, and it's starting to grate...
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
If practically everyone had access to MS source code, that might expose OSS to MS lawsuits, because almost everyone will have seen windows (say) source code, and thus, many potential OSS coders will be 'poisoned', MS may claim that some sections of code are taken from their code ...
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
I had the chance to talk to an individual that works very closely to the ASP.net team at MS and the scoop that this individual told me was that in a few months, MS will be releasing a light weight and open sourced version of the Visual Studio .net IDE. If anyone has seen the SDK, it actually installs like the previous versions of Visual Studio, minus the the GUI. It has the compiler, but just no pretty gui. I don't know how reliable the source of the information is, but if anyone has seen the ASP.net Uneleashed book, this person wrote the foreword....
if this will happen... who knows... we'll have to see
Do you want this built in a month using VB, or in 6 months using C?
"Do you want this built in a month using Microsoft Visual Basic, or in a month using GNOME Basic?" This will be the situation once GNOME Basic progresses some more.
Even if "you can take the developer out of VB, but you can't take the VB out of the developer", you can take the developer out of a Microsoft environment while leaving the developer in what is essentially still VB. If you want to see this happen, fund the GNOME Basic project.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Microsoft has had more than 25 splits in it's stock since it's inception. This kind of growth you get from almost no competition.
Open Source has managed to put an end to the Microsoft unimpeded rampage outfitting corporate America.
The only words for Microsoft are,..
1. Embrace Open source somehow and accept it because you can't kill it. You've tried, it doesn't work.
2. Talk to IBM and learn how to transition into a company that make valuable contributions to computing but no longer sets standards. That is where MS is headed.
IBM has changed its business model: they no longer sell software products; they sell a "solution to a problem", which they use some of their own software products to solve. They provide a service, which is what their customers need, and it provides them with steady, subscription-style income that fosters a better and more honest relationship with their clients than the hit-and-run attitude developed by salespeople who only need to sell a product once. Plus, because it's clear from the outset that they're going to be selling a service, customers don't get pissed off (as they do with Microsoft) having to pay continuous fees. Make no mistake, both companies charge continuously: however, Microsoft charges for support (which gets people pissed off -- the product is supposed to work without help!) while IBM charges for the service (which includes support when things go wrong). It's the same thing, but with important psychological differences on both sides.
Microsoft is already seeing the value of selling services rather than products (spurred by the success of subscription-based AOL) and is slowly moving to software-as-a-service. However, their legacy of selling expensive products is making software-as-a-service very unpopular with their customers, who see it only as a way of charging many times for a product they used to buy only once. By changing their model to being entirely service-based, they would be free to use open source wherever it happened to be better than their in-house solutions (e.g. Apache) without it costing them any revenue. They could then contribute to the open-source products they use just like everybody else does.
Microsoft should open itself up to some open source applications because it is the only way to keep its place as the globalleader in software.
Open source will only get stronger. Right now, people who just use their computer for net surfing/email, home finance, and word processing or for low-level business applications at work most likely do not even know what 'open source' is, and think Linux is a cousin of the Lynx.
Right now, using Microsoft makes sense for these people, who, by the way, make up the majority of the computer using cohort (it's true, accept it).
But this dominace will change when/if Microsoft starts charging a monthly/yearly licensing fee, in effect 'renting' its software. People who have all their lives been able to use whatever they want on their computer will start seeing "Word cannot open because your subscription is lapsed" and get very angry.
Word of mouth is the best advertising, and when people start talking about ways to get around paying a monthly fee to write letters to grandma on 'word'---that will be open source's defining moment. When the general public becomes aware that free software exists. In turn, open source software will become much more user friendly for novice computer users (RIGHT NOW IT'S NOT...ACCEPT IT GEEKS!!!), and will attract even more attention from software developers. M$ eventually would become marginalized.
If Microsoft wants to continue to be the leading software company, it needs to scrap its 'subscription' plans, and make windows able to run open source programs, in essence make windows an all in one compatable with everything OS. And on top of that, provide cheap tech support to users (this is VERY important and should not be overlooked). Doing this will keep Windows as the OS of choice for new PC buyers in the GENERAL PUBLIC which is where the battle will ultimately be won or lost.
Microsoft is a profit-driven enterprise that MUST continue to show increasing profits. The more aggressive it becomes, the more open source will become the method of choice. To continue to be profitable, M$ must choose...try to kill 'open source' at all costs and sink themselves in the long run, or take the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Then why don't you explain his insistence on calling Linux GNU/LINUX
How about some new mod options for Slashdot?
;)
.... hmm... how about
Score:-1,FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LET IT BREED!!!
.... at the very least it'd be good for modding down the goatse.cx trolls
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
so MS is considering open source. well, as one person before stated, MS is currently having its dominance in certain areas threatened. therefore,...
has it ever occured to anyone that MS might take exisiting open source projects and create their own version (while keeping it open source, because they dont lose anything) to make consumers/businesses feel secure because the box says microsoft. this way microsoft can still keep the exisiting projects closed source.
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[insert funny
Like me, I was an unshakeable Atheist, and thru soul searching for 20 years have become a Protestant. Weirder things have happened.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
verily, i say unto ye, i am going into that den of iniquity, the lair of the unbeliever (spit) to spread the word of our lord amongst the heathen, and the forsaken.
it matter not that they do not speak the language of the lord's fervent followers.and that to them it soundeth like binary gobbledeegook. (slobber) Surely from my demeanour and the large size and shape of my head they will surely recognize that here is a righteous man, a follower of the true way, (spittle) with much holy and important word of the ways of truth. And, surely, they will stop what they do, and learn our language at once, so that they to can hear and understand the way towards righteousness.(wipe foam)
tomorrow we can deal with world peace, starting with the middle east. Should be done by lunchtime don't you think?
slobber slobber
It's Free Software they don't like. Anything with a license like BSD or Apache can easily be exploited by MS whenever they decide it's to their advantage. The real trick would be to convince them to drop their campaign of FUD against GPL, LGPL, MPL and other such licenses which prohibit the distribution of binaries without making source available.
There are two sides to open source for Microsoft:
1. they can use it
2. they can opensource their software
The first point raises a question every company should ask: will it bring money? With a added second question in the case of Microsoft: will it make more money than our own products would?
IMHO I guess the answer to the second question will definitely be a big no, the first one remains open. Naturally they could start bringing open source software to windows to widen the opportunities for their platform. This can only be interesting if they do not provide such a product themselves.
Since Microsoft produces almost any kind of server, it will be small amount of software that could be used for this goal. Added to the obvious why waste resources on a small install base? And you have your answer why they are not doing it.
Personally I think it would be great if Microsoft would contribute to the open source market. It would improve their image amongst geeks big time.
Considering open sourcing their own software:
It is hard for a money making company like Microsoft to open up their internal info for the competition. I can really understand they don't like this.
Second, as they have stated recently, their software is so full of bugs they can not afford to share it with the rest of the world (nationla security will be in danger!).
One last point, as noted in Linux Journal: it could actually be dangerous for Microsoft employees to have a look at GPL-ed material. If they use pieces of this code in Microsoft code, it means they have to GPL the Microsoft code...
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
It's interesting to see Apple and how OS X uses an Open Source kernel (Darwin). Why shouldn't Microsoft be able to do the same thing?
They can keep closed sourced programs and user interface portion, but why not open up the kernel?
Ciryon
I would kick Bill in the head and call him an asshole.
This would not advance the case of free software, but it would make me feel good. Of course, if I kick hard enough, and with steel toed shoes...
Enough with the jokes, I think that there is nothing we can say to convince Kaiser Bill to cooperate with free software. It's too much of a threat to the Microsoft business model. It can only mean a decreased market share for Microsoft, there is no reason to cooperate. So far, all he can do is try to exterminate us, but he never will. As long as there are idealistic young people, free software cannot be stopped. They call us a cancer, but I like to think of us as cockroaches. We live in every city in the world, live off the scum behind the fridge (M$ official opinion of free software, until they can figure out how to "embrace" it), and for every one you squish there are 200 in the walls. We were poised to survive Y2K before it was even in the press.
Eventually, our community will reach a critical mass and cockroaches will taker over the world! No, I mean the Microsoft market share will inevitably shrink. Five years ago, people made fun of me for using Linux. It was barely a blip on the RADAR, nobody thought it would ever be on more than 0.5% of all systems, and now we are about 3%. As the rest of the world starts using computers, free software will be the choice (remember, only Americans enjoy US dominance). With their slow development cycles, funny licensing, and strict control, Microsoft will become a dinosaur. Maybe they will remain dominant in the US, but their grip is slipping in Asia (where more than half of the people live), and they are fighting for South America.
Finally, to answer the big question: How will we convince Microsoft that open source makes sense? We will wait. If you can code, code. I try to convince two people to switch to a non-Microsoft platform every year (argue gently, the proof is your low-maintenance system with all the necessary applications, and use a fellow geek as a shill). It is slow but steady progress.
That was my rant. You may now return to your regularly scheduled comments.
One of the reasons that MS doesn't want to share source code is so that developers creating rival applications don't copy code.
It strikes me that this works both ways, an open source alternative to MS Office will always have a hard time competing, as MS can just copy any "Great New Feature" that that is implemented in an open source app.
This does of course assume that your version of windows and office is stable enough, but credit where it's due, I have an XP box and it is very stable.
Seems like MS are in a position to dominate the market for years to come just by living off open source code.
I hate when people bring that up. The security holes listed for linux is for EVERY distubution. If Redhat has a problem with imlib, every distro may have a probelm with it. SO if SUSE, Caldera and Mandrake have an imlib problem now, that's 4 listings! And a good 90% of the security problems are minor. (Alot of the MS ones are minor too.) Should we count a Eudora vulnerability as a MS vulnerability???? NO, but a third party app on Linux is counted, why is that?
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
I'm all for Microsoft adopting open source. It would be the best thing for everyone except Microsoft. Which is precisely why it will never happen.
Microsoft OSes have historically been a technical laughing stock (I am willing to stipulate for the purpose of this discussion that Windows 2000 was their first serious contender. I actually think it's the best piece of code they ever released. I put it more or less on a par with Mac OS X, but I digress). So if they were so bad, why did they succeed? Because they had monopolistic market control that they misused (remember: A federal court has actually found them guilty of this. There's no longer any reason for debate on this point).
How do they maintain their stranglehold? It's quite simple: Embrace, Enhance, Exclude. For those of you who have not had this tactic properly explained, it goes like this: Microsoft sees an open source protocol succeed, it then adds support for that protocol to one of its product suites, but in doing so makes a very slight modification the specification for which it does not release. Microsoft uses this modification as a compatibility barrier for other products.
This is why Microsoft is so frightened of the GPL, but is not threatened by non-GPL open source. They cannot take a GPLed program and perform EEE with it, because they must release the source to their modifications. It then becomes easy to insure compatibility with the Microsoft variant.
Of course, Microsoft turns this around and claims that it eliminates their "freedom to innovate." Nothing could be further from the truth. They are free to innovate within the GPL. They simply would be disallowed from doing so in a manner whose sole purpose is to screw anyone not using their software.
Without their playbook of anticompetitive behavior, Microsoft deep in its soul believes it cannot succeed. A Microsoft that would be willing to participate in any meaningful way in Open Source would be so different as to hardly be comparable to what exists today.
Let's look at this very simplistically:
Microsoft code is closed source, Microsoft is the industry leader, Microsoft is making more money than most other software companies combined.
It seems to me that MS's marketing tactics and products are working for them so why would they want to change it?
Why would they want to open source their products if that means that some other smart ass is going to come along, build and release a "free" version of the same software on them?
The simple fact of the matter is that Microsoft source is MICROSOFT SOURCE! They own it, it's their property, no one can force them to make their property freely avaliable if they don't want to, and again, even if they did, the same exact people that are pushing for MS to open source would probably never use MS products anyway, so why do they care??
I could perhaps, understand possibly adopting an attitude of release the source for obsolete software, very much the way that Carmack does with his engines. And then again there we see the same phenomenon at work. Those engines are Id propertery, they aren't obligated to eventually open source them, that's done as a gift to the community and it's STRICTLY their descretion to do so if they wish it. But yet, there are those that act as if Id owes them something by expecting them to Open source their engines... They don't.
And then there is the opposite side of the spectrum, there are those users that OPPOSE them open sourcing the engine because it opens the games up to the possibility of cheating. Is it not possible that some smart ass out there will take the MS source and use it for no good?
And Please, no queer "MS doesn't want to open source their code because they know it sucks" responses. Such things are baseless and meaningless. If you have some valid reasonings to debate here, feel free, otherwise, don't talk.
Go ahead and mod me down now, I wasn't going to use what little Karma I have anyway.
The other place M$ can go is out of business. The only thing that can save them is unconstitutional law. Failing that, they are done. Would this be one of those lean years I read about M$ "smothing" proffits on, or have they just not had a reasonable product since 98? How many of you would recomend win2000? XP? don't make me laugh. Oh my, so many many lean years. How many can they take before the entire ponzi falls down on them? All of that anti-competitive spagetti code has told on them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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There are huge problems with making a business case for Microsoft encouraging Open Source. Their business model in which they would evaluate the case is antithetical to all but a token onvolvement in Open Source. Any business case (Open Source or not) would need to either fit into (or expand on) their existing model, or come up with enough evidence that a new business model is superior to theirs.
If you have a superior business model for a Software company than Microsoft's, your time is better spent developing it into a real business rather than telling it to Microsoft. Please do so.
The other problem is you are talking to "Folks at Microsoft". From everything I've heard it's fairly easy to convince programmers and other developers at Microsoft that Open Source software is a good thing. The problem is that their Exeuctive Management is convinced that Freedom is a bad thing. What little use they make of Free Software with such a mindest is likely to be exploitive. Bill Gates has esentially said he really likes the idea of Open Source licenses like BSD, because Microsoft can take those programs, adapt them to thier needs, and not worry about contributing the changes back to the community. In my opinion, there has been more than enough exploitation along these lines, we don't need someone encouraging more.
In my opinion, the only really tactic is to toss the "Business Case" idea aside, and convince Microsoft that a healthy Free Software community is important to Microsoft. This is a tough call, but here are some arguments:
Key technologies they Microsoft makes a great deal of money off of were developed by a healthy Free Software community:
* Email
* World Wide Web
Having further development, in the Free Commons, will expand the computer industry as a whole. Microsoft currently has 90% of the industry, if it has only 70% of an industry three times as large, it's making more money. A healthy Free Software community can help make this happen without Microsoft having to shell out significant amounts of money.
On the flip side of the equation, many industries have a healthy commons and still make money hand over fist:
* Law
* Medicine
* Engineering
The bottom line is that Microsoft's executive management needs to be convinced that Freedom is not bad for their health before it's worth getting them involved in "Open Source".
----
Open mind, insert foot.
It has a plugin for Visual Studio, and allows them to create cross platform GUI apps, allowing Microsoft programs to "infiltrate" the Unix market. Show them the slot/socket event method as an example of an innovative solution created by a proprietary company, but made available to us through open source.
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...and I still don't know why would anyone ask such a question, because the answer is obvious -- Microsoft doesn't give a rat's ass about Open Source, and Open Source/Free Software/... certainly doesn't give rat's ass about Microsoft's business. They are enemies with incompatible interests, and the last thing they need is to care about is how the other will survive.
The question, which of them serves the interests of users and programmers is a completely different thing, and at this point it's pretty cleat that Microsoft is their enemy as well. If anything may be worth thinking about, it is what will happen when Microsoft will lose its driving ambition -- it grew out of one rich kid's effort to prove the world that he is not dumb and ugly, and that his BASIC interpreter is a worthy piece of software. That rich kid is now not any smarter but much older, and much more frustrated, so he has only about a decade left of being capable of controlling the company. Soon Microsoft will have nothing to fight for -- its profits don't really depend on crushing everyone else, Gates' ambition does. Microsoft may have enough inertia to continue antagonizing everyone, but more likely it will become a "dead" company, an equivalent of AT&T or IBM, and when that will happen they may adopt some semi-evil but more or less sane strategy that all other faceless corporations have. So for now good Microsoft is dead Microsoft, and maybe Microsoft with dead (physically or at least intellectually) Gates.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I didn't realize either of us were named GNU. When you contribute to a system and the system gets credited, that doesn't automatically confer a credit to you. At any rate, I don't really care for credit anyways.
And singlehandedly?
I have been finding that all too often these people (Linus, RMS, Bill Gates among others) have been giving us fish without teaching us how to fish. That is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
1. Publicly exploiting the virtues of a few stratigicaly chosen OSS (yet still proprietary) products can help them appear to be reformed as they continue to battle the antitrust cases. 2. Exploiting programing resources for free, and helping to foster a community will allow them to offload both production and support costs. 3. By munging the meaning of OSS and blurring the line between there software and GNU software, they can reduce M$ reputation for being evil while silmultaneosly kicking the moral pedistal out from under those pesky OSS advocates. 4. If M$ is doing OSS too, then there is nothing special about it. The whole counterculture is less attractive because it common, not subversive. 5. If you choose to open source on products that have already been adiquetly reverse engineered, you lose nothing and gain all of the above. Think SMB (Samba) minus of course the new basterdised proprietary LDAP and Dynamic DNS components that makes Active Directory a MF to reverse and replace.
What Microsoft is scared of (and should be I guess) is that if you open up the source, their products will loose sales. It will be even easier to steal their features, or simply steal the whole thing.
If there were no piracy, and no one wanting to steal other peoples work, Microsoft could open up their source totally. This is not the case.
I would love for Microsoft to open up at least the most vital pieces of software (those that will help me develop and debug applications for windows), but preferable the whole thing.
So what you need to do is to give Microsoft a case where they can profit from having open source. I would say that they could profit in terms of users finding their bugs, and giving them solutions (as long as they have an organization who can do this, i.e. get the information from the users/developers into Microsoft and support them) back. They have problems with speed, stability, and security. This could be a reason to carefully open the source to give more real world testing.
The other reason would be to help developers build better applications for windows.
Other than that, why would they? If you have more good reasons, tell them;) But remember that it must be a gain to them, simply giving their work away won't cut it.
(They could always hire me, and I could show them good ways of open up their sources to the public. I am actually serious here. Gimme a job.)
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Microsoft is positioned (if they dodge antitrust bullets for a little longer, and get government help) for being the only software vendor for all intents and purposes. They're quite capable of leveraging that until it snaps off in their hands, too. You have no idea how ruthless they can become in ideal circumstances. It's like taking advantage of loopholes in the rules: you cannot beat them in fair competition, because it isn't.
That makes it Them on one side, and The World on the other. Hence, Free Software, which is what you do when you can't ever get rich (or in some cases even survive) selling software in competition with Microsoft, but you want to get your software out there, and you don't want them to use it against you. It's not about competing with Microsoft at all, it's a doomsday scenario based on the idea that people will carry proprietary software to the most obscene and ugly extreme.
The only thing Microsoft can do in relation to Free Software is try and make it illegal, or cripple as many Free Software authors as possible- it makes no sense for them to embrace the ecological reaction to their damaging presence. So, they are putting out viral licensing that makes anyone who has agreed to the terms, liable for Microsoft prosecution at any time, and vulnerable to several admissions of guilt contained in the 'shared source' license itself. I don't know if they're pushing for legislation to make Free Software illegal, but it would be an effective way of using their lobbying situation (they've dumped millions into lobbying and have in fact bought off ALL the available lobbyists so competing interests cannot get their view across to the politicians).
Your advice on the topic of Free Software should be "milk the current situation as hard as you possibly can, because unlike any previous proprietary software vendor you have destroyed the market so completely that people code for nothing now, if they're not working for you. Short of killing or disabling those people, you can't compete or make use of that, because they're doing this in direct reaction to what you've done, and there's more of them, and they're better than you, and self-perpetuating."
"So cash in now, and run like hell, because you've managed to scorch your own earth, and you have all the future of typewriter-ribbon monopolies or a ruthless guild of shoeshine boys. People will pick worse and cheaper over better and more expensive, even if you do manage to do better work- and cleaning up the mess you've caused doing 'worse and cheaper' will cost you, hugely."
"Pretend to be listening, cash in bigtime, and bail out before your company does an Enron. You've destroyed your own 'biological niche' and all that remains is a clever exit strategy."
people mention Mac OS X as a viable "open source product making money for big business". that may be true to an extent, but people seem to ignore that apple's main money maker is their hardware. they can release their operating system (or major parts of it) under open source because in the long run it helps their hardware sales. unlike Apple, Microsoft is in the business of selling the software. They sell their operating system to run on other people's hardware. with open source, microsoft cannot make the same profits as they once did, only having options such as RedHat, etc, such as value added packages or support.
why not suggest that creat its own freeware windows emulator/virtual machine whatever you call it? Basically a semi open sourced free to use product that would allow people to run their M$ products on say linux (oorm sorry GNU/Linux). that way they get there cake and get to eat it too... they get to sell software to linux users plus it would probibly lessen the whole M$ hate thing as people would now see them as offering them a range of Os's to run their bug-ridden software on. Think about the business ramifications... linux becoming a widely used office desktop system cos it now has support for accounting software X or thingy dodad Y. Whats more M$ would feel right at home as it bombs vmware/wine etc etc out of the market. but that could just open up a whole new can of worms that we havnt thought of yet. Theres probibly alot of things i've failed to consider, but i'm sure you'll all tell me what they are.
The problem is that right now, there isn't a case for Microsoft to go open source with any core technologies. Lets face it, it would cut revenues, and they do not yet have a strong services business, or many other things that are important to make this sort of thing work. At this point in time, it would kill Microsoft.
That being said, I expect them to to move more toward open source. When you compare Win 2k to NT4, Win 2k is far more based on open, established standards, and is consequently a far better product. While some of these standards have been extended, Microsoft has discovered the hard way, that some of these extensions are worth giving back to the comminity.
I think that the Operating System market as we know it is dying, and that things are not sustainable in their current state. I think that the MS execs know this, and that in a couple years will start to adopt more open source approaches to software development as they need to account for saturating operating system markets. I don't think that subscription licensing for servers will pay because I would never subscribe to a EULA with an expiration date for anything mission-critical.
So what I say is this-- not yet. There is no case, but as the markets shrink, there will be a strong case. Microsoft should start exploring this area now in small ways, but hold off for another couple years from large commitments.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
We start an open source competitor,
and make it more profitable than they are.
This competitor can beg for donations... and work to assimilate other projects (like MS) and put them under open content licences(not like MS), and ask for more donations.
This company can also provide certification/support for these products/sell individual developer time/bid.
If we provide a better product, people are likely to be willing to pay more for it.
Money will go where it is needed. (maybe those outlook replacement people, and the hurd kernel)
Out grow MS. (profit gets channeled back into the company) With some of the money, buy community projects that are owned by the community.
http://www.openproliferation.org
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
Look there is no way M$ is going to either OS its s/w or adopt OS. It simply doesnt make business sense for them to do so. M$ is primarily a software company (neglect Xbox, webtv et al) unlike IBM which is a service based company. With the whole industry transitioning to services-centric focus from a product-centric focus, its time M$ ditched its product only approach and moved to a service based approach.
What M$ should do to adopt OS is bundle OS s/w with Windows. For e.g. it need not write IIS and other s/w which do not provide way more returns. Just bundle apache with Windows. Saves them a hell lot of developement effort. Then provide support for apache on Windows and mint money outta it. Similarly, to fight the increasing trend of linux being adopted, why not release a version of Linux on Windows. Stuff like that..should interest M$.
Assuming M$ does that there are two ways it could go. Ppl will start using Linux more. So either the Linux base will increase or ppl being comfortable with Linux on Win, will ditch pure linux installs, choosing to use the M4 version of Linux instead.
Either way, M$ can always provide support and service and mint money. Whether it is helpful for the OSS community or not, is something that remains to be seen.
Microsoft is a corporation, bound to it's shareholders
If it was true, it should distribute dividends.
...in order for the technology of the computer industry, especially the software industry, to cause the long awaited and expected but yet to be delivered economic ripple effect not only does open source software need to exist but freely available, no strings attached, autocoding tools that are easy for the general user to use.
It is no more the software industries task to know all that is required to do all programming for all industries and fields then it is the task of a lumber mill to build all things that are made of wood, but rather only focus on developing and applying the expertise of milling wood or for the software industry, creating the tools and resources used by various industries and fields to do with as they see fit.
For those who think this is not possible, they have a problems accepting the self recursion possibilities of automating software code development. Odd, because the Computer software industry seems to be able to automate a great deal on other industries and fields. Where the act of automation is to take complexity that is made up of simpler things and package it in a manner that make it easy to use over and over.
For a company like MS that holds so much control due to the lack of autocoding tools, the development and distribution of such tools would certainly be the marker for the ern of ashes.
In the industry of autocoding, the problem seems to be one of bias away from doing it right, but then there is GNU, GPL and the comming of the Hurd....
Ultimately, the solution required for the economic ripple effect to be caused to happen is that of not only OSS but that software of such nature where the clear objective in producing it is to reap the direct productivity value of it's use within the industries and fields where it is used, rather than the indirect and disconnected profit of an external to the various industries and fields.
Alot of people just don't seem to get the economic big picture, even many in the so called GNU tribe. The answer to the question "why is there no real defence against GPL?" is only the fabricated licensing restrictions against using it by monopolies such as MS. Who has been found guilty of federal defined criminal activity.....that apparently many have to be constantly reminded of.
Back to basics: Do you believe lying is OK?
Pardon my naivete, but it would appear that Microsoft is attacking the GNU GPL, and the GNU Project, not necessarily "Open Source." For instance, Microsoft, in word at least, has no problem with the BSD license, because of their being able to hi-jack the code for their own proprietary uses. (I guess it depends on your definition of open source.)
Perhaps, in the interest of free software, a positive reaction to Microsoft's use of free software might have some effect; and a response to its anti-GNU position maintained, and clarified.
However, I believe Microsoft to be crooks, and question their motives these days, even with their word of mouth support for FreeBSD and the BSD license.
Apache is an obvious alternative option to IIS.
PostgreSQL can be considered as an alternative option to MS Access or to MS SQL or to both.
Mozilla can substitute IE or co-exist with it.
Jabber could an alternative option to NetMeeting/MSMessanger.
GNOME could be ported finally to win32 (or at least to cygwin. It could be an alternative (to win32/VDM) option at the boot time, like in XDM you choose a desktop manager.
Linux, as a set of the kernel and utils could be used benith propretary GUI, like BSD under Aqua in Mac OS X
Generally, all components listed above can either substitute their MS rivals or co-exist with them.
There is a very interesting question: what will be left if MS choose ALL components from the list above? You got it right - just yet another Linux distro, competing with RedHat and Debian. It would be more difficult time for RedHat and Debian. It would be less expensive production for Microsoft. And it would be more interesting time to live for all of us :)
Less is more !
If you are going to post such a statement, you should also post the process to help others... One point for those that believe the Bible is the absolute unconditional Word of God, if the reasoning given for God's confusing their language, that "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them", we should have been in trouble long ago, what with spaceflight and everything.
In short, Microsoft has no problem with open source. It does, however, have a problem with licensing schemes whose purpose is to attack and kill it. Wouldn't you?
today instead of tomorrow only because my mom got in two wrecks the other day and therefore is at a severe disadvantage to pick me up to go to church as has been her habit...
One possible theory: There is a God and he doesn't want me going to church today!
Microsoft is a consumer of R&D. If Microsoft uses Open Source, it can decrease its R&D expense.
Open source is not about business. In the long run, companies will never generate the same revenue with open source products that can be generated by just attempting to build monopolies around closed source systems.
Open source is not about money. Open source is about the fact that human beings are reaching a level where we no longer need to just drive our technology around money. As we continue to use computers to heal ourselves, defend ourselves, entertain ourselves, and so on, we will find that it benefits us all to stop letting the greed of people like Bill Gates and Co. get in our way. This isn't about silly economic systems like capitalism and communism, this is about a new social system under which we realize that sharing our technology and related information allows us all to get what we want faster and with greater ease than we ever will when we fight over proprietary systems.
Open source needs to be concerned with being open source. There is no reason for us to waste our time worrying about Microsoft; all it does is waste our time and hold us back. Stop trying to convert Microsoft, do not waste time working to be better than Microsoft, just let open source move forward on its own and open source will lead the computing world in good time.
Thus the question becomes, "How do we make the mass of society interested in the welfare of humanity" One theory is to develop a technology that creates a sort of human instrumentality.
This concept is also in Serial Experiments: Lain though not called that.
The only model that fits with M$'s corporate charter is profit, profit, and more profit. Otherwise why would the richest guy in the world still be trying to get richer. It's like a badly addicted Quake player who's already beat the game countless times. He just goes to other networks to beat other users to further prove to himself how supreme he is.
Leave them to do what they will. We all know you to be an accomplished coder: don't waste time trying to turn a zealous capitalist into an altruistic contributor to the common knowledge-base. Just keep coding...
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
Fact: "30% of Microsoft its revenue comes from the Operating System licensing alone."
This means they'll do practically anything to protect that.
That is the problem Microsoft has. Instead of focusing on growth markets they are messing around with things that is part of their traditional culture. It is obvious that the Linux heat is preasuring them and they are fighting it like Don Quixote.
Microsoft is not only afraid of free software, they are actually slowing down people coding on their own windows by not having proper API documentation and by having sub-standard, previous generation widgets in their visual studio (VS) software. In this way, any program made with this tool is immediately recognizable, and looks and feels less slick than their own stuff. A couple of years ago, I had to code an entire treeview to do exactly what explorer does. I don't think they do this at MS.
It was clear to me, it must be another way to slow down competition. Last time I wrote a line of code in windows, is a long time ago now, and it will probably stay that way.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
First before I delve into MS Policy towards OpenSource or what it could be lets go over some past background that seems to have been forgotten..
IN MS's past it has from time to time made passive use of OpenSource in either contribution towards a proejct or using the infrastructure..STOP! DONMT THROW YOUR BRICK YET!
The Unix project at MS was I belive started from some free source unix code as framework in order to guide developers..and that was a way long time ago..
Then we have the PErl and winNT example of inderctly MS making ammmends with OpenSource enough to get Perl on winNT.
In both strategies MS did not attack OpenSource as a competitor but saw an opportunity for two very different parties to work together..
And lets us not forget the MS SOAP experience..that was MS working on an open Interent Standard with the likes of IBM and Userland..
So it is possible for MS to work with OpenSource when they stop attacking and spend time on solving problems.
I think the best thing that MS can do right now is realize that all that attacking of other programming efforst has pissed off the 2nd largest customer group of MS products , the developrs themselves..
The best move that MS coudl do right now is have Gates issue a public apology to OpenSource stating "We may have disagreeemtns in what licensing and copyrights mean to our grousp but we both want to use our passion to work together to bring new applications and services to the public and we hope that we can avoid attackign oen another in the process."
This would of course have to be followed up by something extrmely big as a giveway on MS's part..
The reality is that we know that MS is moving winNT development towards a db stylized kernel. We also know that the BSd Mach Unix/Linux kernels are also moving towards this goal. My suggestion is that MS follow Apple's example make the kernel Mach Unix/Linux with their win32 api and graphic api on top.
They would stil be able to sel the product and meet their income goals while at the same time dealing directly with the security problem rather than mess around giving pr statements..
More than likely at this point this option has already been discussed at Microsoft. Anybody want to bet which way they decided on this issue?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
It is common for different compilers to have their own header files. This isn't a Windows specific thing. Have you ever used a commercial compiler under UNIX? They generally have a different ABI and header files from gcc. There are a couple of minor exceptions, like Intel's C++ for Linux which tries to be gcc compatible..But they are the exception.
its not a matter of what i would say.. its how i would say it... with a gun.
-gerbik
this guys actually has a clue..M$ is in business to MAKE MONEY, the more the better. If there was a way to support OSS, make money and do some good you don't think they jump on it if just for the good PR which they desperately need. To expect anything else but a bottom line profit motive from a corporation is naive in the extreme...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
A) Nothing. As far as I'm concerned, Microsoft can just keep on gouging the idiots who are too lazy or risk averse to switch, and open source will keep supplying to the people who have a clue.
Honestly, would you want to support (directly or indirectly) businesses that both clueless enough to use IIS and too lazy to patch it? Basically I don't want to write software that's dumb enough for people like that to use. Microsoft can keep them, and keep spoon feeding them for all I care. In that respect, market segmentation is a good thing: it keeps idiots away from open source, rather than having them drag it down with demands for it to ship with one big button labelled "Do stuff."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Are we going to go through all this again?
/. time and time again. But go ahead, mod me down again and fall for the legend that Mickeysoft can f*ck around for ever without nobody noticing. And fall for the illusion that Linux just now is so super easy to use for anybody and it's all evil Mickeysoft keeping the people from converting this very instant and without hesitation.
The (seemingly) eternal OSS vs. Micros~1 Talk wasn't a minutes conversation worth of an issue 5 1/2 years ago when Linux was some real freaky lowlevel stuff and the (by then small) IT professional scene was involved in a OS/2 vs. Windows95 debate with the n00bs (the ones on the Win95 side). And it will be out of fashion in the same amount of time from now on the latest.
It's kinda like Tesla and Edisons fight over the right kind of elctro currency in the rise of electricity times. The debate is over the world has moved on now that electricity has grown up since then and become a common thing. A debate like back then (something like a hundred years ago) would today just be plain pointless. Just as pointless as it would have been 70 years ago, when lightbulbs where starting to become commonplace.
And yes, this is still the very first steps of information technology, no matter what you think, and what is yet to come even M$ can keep under control completely. Does Ford build all the cars nowadays just because he invented the assembly line? See?
I really wonder why people just don't get it. Linux has reached desktop parity with other OSes barely half a year ago - and for that it's kicking serious ass. How long does anyone think Micros~1 can keep up with the 2 year get-and-pay-our-new-OS cycle that ensued with the upcoming of the then bizarely sized Win95? Especially in such mega-fast living times of today.
When the tide has turned against them M$ will go away from inhouse-only all by themselves. And certainly a solid Linux distro is also gonna be part of their package aswell - not only, but also. As i've said here on
C'mon folks, get real.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I have Office for Linux. Go to www.openoffice.org and download it for free. Works great, better than MS Office IMHO, and it interoperates with every MS Office file format I have tried.
Now, if they would just clone FrontPage for Linux.
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
That's true but beside the point. M$ is going away as their performance suffers from all their old sins. If they don't change anything soon, they will be gone. If they can change things up, just a little, they can then force it down people's throats with their monopoly channels.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
We can continue to wish for MS to open-source more of its software, but it isn't going to happen in the way that we want - not now, not ever. Remember that Microsoft is a public company, and thus has an obligation to its stockholders to protect certain interestes. Thus:
-- Microsoft can see that open source is a good idea, and is getting on the open-source bandwagon (for both PR benefits and for other more real benefits) in some areas. For example, HUGE portions of the Windows CE operating system are public and visible to the world. Several other MS products also have source code available. However, these are under a much more restrictive license than GNU or BSD.
-- Microsoft is in a very different position than many of the companies that have "made open source work." Microsoft SELLS OPERATING SYSTEMS. They can't make open source work by releasing their intellectual property to the wind. They can do some open source stuff, but it has to be limited by relatively restricting licenses -- otherwise, they are giving away the very thing that keeps them profitable.
-- Microsoft has to protect their intellectual property and their marketing position at all costs. The way to protect their intellectual property is to have limits on their available source code. The way to protect their marketing position is to always try to offer something that is not available through open source means.
I personally use both purchased and open source software all the time. A huge portion of the software that I have paid for is Microsoft. I would like to see open source continue on as a thorn in the side of Microsoft, spurring it on and forcing it to make higher quality products. I also hope that open source continues to provide alternatives to Microsoft for those who don't want to pay for expensive software. However, I think there is a place for both Microsoft and Open Source in the future. I don't expect either to go away anytime soon.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
If these guys want to meet you to talk about Open Source, why would you pretend you don't?
If you just give them a half-assed glimpse of marginal benefits, they would be convinced? Don't loose your time --and waste theirs! Go to the point! Full [OSS advocacy] load ahead!!!
My 2c.
HTML coding is a good example of the economic effect of open source code. Since everyone can see the code, many more can learn to do it, and the cost to create the code goes WAY down. However, for programmers this means a lower wage. As a programmer, it will be harder to earn a living from Open Source, since it progressively costs less and less to create code as time goes on.
sir_haxalot
stuff |
Convince them that no matter what they do, they can't beat open source/free software. It's only if they see that their current business model has no future that they will consider changing it.
'Cos right now, Microsoft have a very successful business model. The threat that free software/open source represents is quite distant to them - they're still making a whole heap of money doing what they're doing, and will likely continue doing so for quite a few more years.
Why would they give this up? The only possible reason would be that they recognise that defeat is imminent. The point at which they've got nothing left to lose is when you might see them shift to open source/free software, just as Netscape did.
So the strategy should be to convince them of both the inevitability of the coming dominance of open source/free software, and of the fact that it will come sooner rather than later. When the revolution comes there will be no choice but to die or join it, and if they start the process of joining it now they'll be in a much better position than if they have to play catch up.
Good luck convincing them.
OSS is inherently a collaborative effort. Microsoft has historically taken a confrontational stance in the marketplace to the point where they have angered their competitors to such a degree that they are unlikely to be able to play in a collaborative enviroment where that collaboration is based on anything other than the threat of the alternative confrontation which their partners in collaboration would otherwise face.
This historical lesson learned by Microsoft's competitors over the first 15 years of Microsoft's existance, has poisoned the waters and will effect any relationships Microsoft forges in the marketplace for many years into the future.
This situation nessecerily precludes the type of collaboration required for successful OSS development, so Microsoft can not reasonably take any position other than the one they have thus far, without creating an enviroment where they will have excluded themselves from the marketplace through their own actions.
It's almost sad, but this is the current condition of Microsoft in the software industry, regardless of whether anyone could convince them of the error of their ways.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
As a developer I need tools and libraries to make my living. I don't want to invent the wheel more then once. If I want to create something that I can sell I will use any tool or library that will save me time and effort. Microsoft should open source their system libraries because it will improve the usability and quality of their APIs. The amount of contributions they will receive will be worth it for them since they can focus their top talent on the stuff that can be sold such as applications. At the same time it will open up the possibility to run these libraries on a different kernel such as linux so programs can be ported with a simple recompile. Making libraries is often boring work but it needs to be done. The creativity and energy that is required for building a complete application is not something I like to do without getting money in return. I will open source any components and libraries I create or extend but I will keep the way I glue everything together as my added value.
Properly run corporations have a responsibility that goes beyond their share holders. Its just a current, short sighted, fashion that makes many of today's corporations act as though they didn't.
Microsoft should understand that it is in the best interests of everyone to have open standards and public domain software. At present, it might be in their best financial interests to snub OSS and keep every MS format a secret, but that does not absolve them of the corporate responsibility of doing what is right for their community.
Microsoft should understand that software will be better if there is competition on every level. Their employees will work harder and produce better, if they had to face some competition. Microsoft is in a better position to produce excellent software than any other company. They can compete successfully on a level playing field. Why not endorse open standards for file formats and network interoperability, and then produce better implementations than everyone else?
...then go one step further. The usual fate of an old technology company when confronted with a disruptive technology is bankruptcy or buyout. So goes the examples in Christiansen's book. There is no bankruptcy in the case of M$: no debts and $40b in cash. And no successful alternate revenue sources (maybe services) to switch to.
And a total inability to change. And its not like it would use any cash to buy any of the open source companies, and senators and presidents just aren't that expensive. So, the question is, how long can it possibly last, and what if not bankruptcy?
So, I predict that sometime in the near future, say 2004 or 2005, there will be a vote among the board or shareholders to liquidate the company for the value of its cash and other assets. Some company will buy Office, and presumably open source it. Some other company will buy Windows. How much do you suppose they are worth? And so on. The market gives us the breakup that Judge Jackson couldn't quite get. You can estimate what share price is likely to trigger this scenario, but don't forget to take into account the capital gains taxes. Then estimate what earnings and market conditions would make shareholders value it there. I figure it will happen when M$ has to lower the price on Office to $50 for everyone, to stay competitive.
The really interesting question for me, instead of gratuitous M$ bashing, is how will the Open Source model morph, change, expand, etc. Ten years from now, what disruptive technology (if any) will come along and change everything again?
Collaborators wouldn't have to trust Microsoft, and if MS did anything too stupid, they'd only provoke a fork.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The new MS Business plan:
1: GPL Everything.
2: Cease all development activity (--> R&D budget == 0)
3: Lay off all lawyers
4: Divvy up the $40 billion in cash thushly:
a: Pay off all debt and legal claims.
b: 30% of remainder to MS Investors
c: 30% to charity
d: 30% to FSF. Lets face it, they put the Gnu in Gnu/Linux!
e: 10% to executive level for being nice guys.
5: Any employees left could provide commercial support contracts for formerly Microsoft products.
6: A FSF-style "Microsoft Software Foundation" funded by corporate charity etc. should be founded to foster continued development on Microsoft products and technologies.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Why should they ?
Just because some nerds on slashdot don't like MS ?
MS is doing really well. That may change in the future, but for now I have to say they know what they are doing, so whatever open source policy they come up with is probably best for them and their shareholders.
Microsofts strategy is to sell packaged their software in a nice box with a nice and good manual and lots of goodies. For the more complicated products they have made some courses and certificates too.
There is some telephonic support. But that is very basic. There is no such extensive handholding as Oracle does. For that kind of support MS relies on its resellers and other service providers.
Sure MS tries to get more money from consulting. But for now it is insignificant. It is probably the best if it stays that way: otherwise they will be seduced to make their products worse in order to get more consulting.
Most companies that provide opensource products sell them as a kind of loss leaders. They make the money on the support. For a similar strategy to Microsofts only the Linux companies like Redhat and SuSE some in the picture. And even they rely more and more on closed products and consulting.
For these reasons I think that when MS goes opensource it will be with inexpensive products that don't need much support. Preferable there should be some added value from the opening of the source.
My guess: they might do something like ID software does with Doom: giving the source of old versions away and in that way stimulate developpers to develop new ideas.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The Cat with the RedHat says : if Microsoft does not learn from this "story", other will reap clients from them, gladly.
A little history: before Microsoft bought Visio Visio sold besides it drawing package also a cheap Autocad clone: Intellicad. At some point they decided to concentrate on the big market of the drawing package and they handed Intellicad to the Intellicad Technology Consortium (ITC). This consortium has developed the product further in a kind of opensource way (although I am not sure whether RMS would agree).
When Microsoft bought Visio Visio had yet another CAD package: ArchT. This is an architectural add-on for Autocad and Intellicad. Microsoft decided to license this to the ITC too and in this way.
However, support for ArchT never came from the ground. The ITC had only a license for Intellicad 2000 while ArchT only worked with Intellicad 98. Nowadays ArchT is nearly invisible on ITC's site. The latest news I could find was that Eagle Point will further develop ArchT.
So to summerize:
- Microsoft only used "opensource" here as a decent way to stop with the support of some software.
- As far as I can see Microsoft didn't make any money from it.
Yes, C# brought the power of C. It's a shame it didn't bring the power of C++. MS made some bizarre choices with the language design. Look at GC vs. Dispose vs. using (object) {}. Look at System.Array vs. System.Collections.ArrayList.
.Net.
Sigh. The only thing I've found that they got right is they used the regular expression syntax from Perl, instead of inventing their own problematic syntax.
You're right. The power of C# is in the IDE. It's a shame they crippled C++ (managed C++) for use in
I would point out that most of those involved in the Linux, Open Source, and Free Software communities are programmers of one stripe or another. It takes a hacker, or at least a decent programmer, to make use of the nimbleness that the Unices offer. By alienating entire sectors of the IT community (by attacking them or their brainchildren or by persisting in practices which run counter to their mores, folkways, beliefs, and culture) Redmond forfeits the chance to draw on that (potentially enormous) talent pool. Is it possible that Redmond produces flawed products and nasty code because they can't find good coders or the right approach? Because the best coders would never consider working for Redmond? If they made themselves more palatable, would they be able to draw in more first-rank hackers?
G. M. Manath
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both 'Yes' and 'No.'
...I did the same, for three months (Jan to Apr this year) and just as I was starting to think "Oh shit, I'm going to have to start sending out Word .doc format CVs soon", I got a job doing mostly perl work at a company which uses linux extensively through its core product range and allows me to use linux (on the sony vaio they supplied for me) as my personal desktop/development environment.
Now, that's a success story. It could have gone the other way, because money was getting very scarce in April, and I wouldn't flame anyone for taking the MS-biased job... but I thought it was worth posting a happy tale of selective job-hunting.
Good luck.
Regards,
Denny
Police State UK - news and
If this is a "common" theme for posts to address, then I guess it might well be interesting to quite a few people - all the people who post similar comments, for a start...
Regards,
Denny
Police State UK - news and