Slashdot Mirror
Ballmer: "We'll Outsmart Open Source"
An anonymous reader writes "Micorosofts Steve Ballmer is spouting off again in this ZDNet UK article. To an audience of Most Valued Professionals in London, he says 'We'll outsmart open source.' Among other things, he also says 'Linux is a serious competitor.' We've known ever since the Halloween Documents that they have been running scared, but this looks like a prelude to a whole new round of dirty tricks. It also looks like damage control for the statements of Microsoft's Sr. VP Brian Valentines last week."
Interesting: they aparently are abandoning their whole total-cost-of-ownership argument. Balmer states, "We cannot price at zero" and "We can't beat them [Linux] on price" - thus implying that Linux's price is zero. Quite the opposite from "it costs you more in the long run!"
My guess is they want Linus to write linux for a palladium system so they can send him to jail or sue and end up killing linux. If linus never ports it to palladium related hardware, then linux will effectively be dead on x86 and will scare IT managers away from Linux because they do not want to invest in another os/2. Very clever strategy. Since palladium will be in the cpu and bios itself, I wonder if it will even be possible to turn it off?
http://saveie6.com/
It would be nice if there were more coverage of linux in the public eye. I generally liken Linux to a boy-genius 6-year-old that nobody takes seriously, but would run circles around the world if given the chance. It's difficult to take a 6-year-old seriously, no matter how smart/funny/good-looking he/she is.
I am positive that Linux will eventually see its day. You are very correct that the current perception of linux is that of a college kid's senior project. However, this attitude has been slowly changing for the better. What will take Linux to "the next level" will be a major catalyst.
There have been a few small revelations along the way, like IBMs open-arms acceptance of Linux. But, M$ seems to be able to buy most of them away (Dell no longer offers computers with no O/S because of an illegal licensing agreement that requires them to pay M$ for each computer they sell. The bad thing is that this happened since the judgement, but nobody seems to care. This is another thread entirely). Maybe the world government adoption of open-source software models (not necessarily Linux!) will be key in this actualization. I sure hope so, because I don't know what could come after that.
This is an interesting perdicament.
You see, open source does not compete with proprietary software.
On the other hand proprietary software does compete with open source.
Now, there is no reason to get up in arms. The best open source can do is to keep on what its doing. Make good software.
There is no point spending cash to fight against MS. Open source won't die, because, as you all know, its done for free on developers free time (with exceptions).
So, there is no fear of open source being ousted by MS. The best they can do is try to prevent companies from going the open source route. Now, does that truely harm open source?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
My personal opinion is that if they're running scared, then they will be with regards to servers. Not the desktop.
Disagree with me all you want, but you don't see vast numbers of people jumping the Windows ship to run Linux with Gnome or KDE.
However, you do see them moving off IIS and onto Apache. Which is what I think they'll target with their campaignes.
"slapper" springs to mind. Yes, IIS has plenty of its own, but Microsoft's advertising budget is far higher than that of Linux's and therefore they'll reach more people with their voice.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Does anyone have a good collection of copies of and/or pointers to good Microsoft quotes like Herr Valentine's? I've been thinking that it could be very useful in the coming FUD war to have lots of their own words to use against them.
A year or two back, some MS exec was widely quoted as saying something like "Our products are designed for functionality, not for security." I've since been very sorry that I didn't keep a copy. Anyone know who, where, and when this was said?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Asked by one lateral-thinking MVP whether Microsoft planned to offer applications software on Linux, Ballmer said no. "We do not anticipate offering software on Linux. Nobody pays for software on Linux." Even StarOffice, sold by Sun, was originally a free product, he said. And IBM, arguably the No. 1 player in the Linux market, promotes Linux to big users, but does not actually sell Linux: "It's weird! IBM says 'Hey British Aerospace! Buy Linux.... From SuSE."
a) What's wrong with SuSE?
b) What's wrong with IBM using another company to push compatable hardware/software? MS doesn't do the same thing with Intel/HP/anyone else?
c) Nobody pays for Linux stuff? I paid for my distro and if a suitable BASIC/Office/Exchange/Development clone came out for Linux, I would be using it in a heart beat. Further more, if I had something that I could reasonably create in Linux, I'd probably release my stuff as open source whether or not I paid for the tool or app or program.... Linux has to go to the masses and not play catch-up - free or not free.
d) Considering MS is usuall morally bankrupt, I'd rather be financially bankrupt for a change.
I wonder how much he was chuckling when asked whether MS would do anything for Linux.
This is one man who will die of chronic assholism.
This space for rent.
Consider this:
From an MVP
If you read some of the code you will notice that there is the ability to run SQL of your choice on the page.
For those not ASP literate the line is this:
The problem is the "Request.QueryString("id")". He is injecting what he gets from the querystring right into his SQL and then running it. That is a HORRIBLE security flaw, because a bad person could inject some SQL to destroy his database.
Its kind of ironic because how to remove this type of attack was the topic of the Security column
There are two main thoughts that run through my mind when I think about competing with Open Source and the IBM model. The first is that, the main problem with competing with Open Source is that it's always faster to copy than to innovate. It may take years, multiple focus groups and millions of dollars to produce feature X or behavior Y in some commercial product but after that it usually takes a fraction of the time for that feature or behavior to be replicated in competing products. This is much compounded by Open Source which is also typically free (as in beer) thus undercutting the original innovators. A good example of this is commercial Unix and Linux.
In such an arena, it seems inevitable that the only way to slow the inexorable march of Open Source is to resort to Intellectual Property. So far no one has done this to any significant degree (the MP3 patents don't count because they are a different issue) although there has at least been discussion amongst Linux kernel hackers about patent liability which will only continue given the proliferation of software patents and the more features that various Open Source projects copy from their proprietary brethren. It is food for thought.
The second thing that comes to mind is that Open Source is shifting the balance of power from software developers to software consultants. For companies like IBM with huge consulting divisions (their Global Services division is at least thrice as large as all of Microsoft) this a great boon which they are willing to sacrifice a lot of software development to gain which explains their intense support of the Linux and Apache projects. To compete with this, I believe large software companies will have to use similar tactics including providing more source code to customers, making more software available free of charge and providing more extensive consulting services. Of course, this would significantly change the landscape of the software industry. Open Source and Linux would indeed have changed the game.
Disclaimer: This post is my opinion and does not reflect the thoughts, strategies, intentions or opinions of my employer.
When will Microsoft 'get it' that people (with authority to make purchase decisions) are getting tired of the dominate-the-world B.S.?
Microsoft (or any other company, for that matter) will never be able to provide the solution for every IT need. The right solution for each need is unique for each customer, so interoperability is the name of the game. These blatant and often arrogant anti-interoperability campaigns just sour the audience and remind us of how difficult it is, and will continue to be, to integrate some Microsoft products with other non-Microsoft products.
Its amusing to watch Microsoft struggle with its mid-life crisis. The market is now so big and so broad, yet Microsoft can't get past its prepubescent experience dominating a much smaller, less savvy market. One day it'll smack them in the face (as it does all of us) that they just aren't capable of doing the things they did in their adolescence.
Right-o, because, as we all know, no communities based on shared interests and goals ever existed before the open source movement came along.
Too many open source advocates have the bad habit of overestimating their own signifigance and underestimating everyone else. That's probably why most people don't even know what Open Source is.
I crack up when I see the "Developers" line. Let me compare thee to Linux (which will represent the open source community as a whole), MS development environment:
COMPILER:
Linux:
Many compilers for many languages. Free. LCC and GCC for C, G++ for C++, Eiffel, *ML, more than I want to go through. If you want, you can also buy commercial compilers like icc.
MS:
Killed most compilers for their platform (except the oddball ones) by squashing them with their own. Visual C++ generates pretty tight code, but you're just screwed if you run into a bug with it. Oh, and it costs lots of money. Most compilers commercial. Mingw/cygwin exists but not supported well (MSDN support bitterly hates both).
DEBUGGERS/DIAGNOSTICS:
Linux:
memprof, debauch, debug mode on malloc, gdb, strace, ltrace....many, many, many more. These were the ones I used on my last small project. All these are free, and there are many more.
MS:
Um...ntinternals put out regmon and filemon. Apparently MS puts out WinDBG for free, though I haven't used it and apparently it isn't too popular. No free high level debuggers. Few diagnostic programs for already compiled code.
DEVELOPER SUPPORT:
Linux:
Email the developers for the kernel, libc, SDL, XFree86, or whatever library or kernel bit you're working on if you find a weird corner case or bug. Get response, bug fix, patch. Most exchanges between core developers documented on publically available (and searchable) mailing lists, so usually you don't even have to email. Lots of IRC channels of developers who are interested in talking about their work.
MS:
Guess at what's going on underneath the covers, most of the time. No source to look at. Some newsgroups, mostly for higher level problems. Can purchase extremely expensive (though usually effective) MSDN incidents.
SAMPLE CODE
Linux:
Tons. Usually, if it runs on Linux, you can see the code. If you're using a library and you find an unclear bit in the documentation, you can take a look at the source.
MS:
A fair bit, in certain areas. Game developers, in particular, have built up some web sites that have lots of snippits. Usually hard/impossible to get library source code.
GENERAL DEVELOPER COMPETENCE:
Linux:
Many new programmers, but most are interested in technology for its own sake and doing cool things with it, so learn the system inside out. Some accessable very skilled systems developers.
MS:
Many, many Visual Basic coders. MS dug its own grave with Visual Basic. Very low barrier to entry, very difficult to scale above a certain height ("Well, you *can* do this advanced thing in Visual Basic...you just need to also know how the underlying Win32 API works and how Visual Basic chooses to interact with it"). Some contractors that should be shot before calling themselves developers (I remember an expensive contract with a GUI-coding-tool using developer at one company...). Some competent ones, as well.
APIS:
Linux:
Some UNIX cruft. Usually, APIs are pretty clean. Emphasis is on keeping things clean for the many developers -- if something is unclear in gtk1, fix it in gtk2.
Windows:
The most godawful APIs in the world. Win32 is so full of cruft, poor conventions, inconsistent conventions, and unnecessarily complicated *crap* that it's amazing. Most advanced MFC programmers end up having to interact with Win32 as well to do certain things that MFC can't do. Has some great snippits on MSDN, along the lines of "Do not use this argument, as it represents a security risk and has been obsoleted. Some developers may wish to use this argument for backwards compatibility with Microsoft CSPs."
OS CAPABILITIES:
Linux:
Pretty much if you could want it in an OS, it's there. I've yet to miss something (well, Linux *does* need disk priorities on processes for scheduling, but Windows lacks them as well).
MS:
No fork()? Damn, that was a pretty convenient syscall. How about file deletion...can I delete or move an open file? No? Nuts. As for the registry...well, it's one ugly, giant unregulated hack that lots of programs directly modify and end up screwing up all sorts of stuff. The number of times I've seen borked file associations because a program was writing straight to the registry and prevented Explorer from reading or coping with the file association is ridiculous.
I could go on, but the point is that any MS claims of being ahead on making life good for developers are absolutely ludicrous. The *worst* thing about Windows, easily, is doing development for it.
May we never see th
If I were running Microsoft, I would focus on the ability to produce finished, refined software that results from having massive numbers of developers on payroll - control over goals and marketing-directed development allows a large corporation producing closed-source commercial software to produce certain kinds of results faster than the Open Source slowly-rolling-ball approach. In other words, it takes time for major Open Source undertakings to gain community momentum, and even longer for Open Source projects to develop user-friendly polish, when more common, non-developer users get involved and start driving development with feature requests.
Microsoft also needs to deal with the fact that they sometimes put consumer demand in the back-seat to their own interests and big business interests in general. NOBODY demands DRM. Pushing it down people's throats is a major mistake. No endeavour yet has been successful at getting people to adopt a technology with DRM capabilities or any such non-feature "security features". In the future this may become a drag on the bottom line with Palladium et. al. losing popularity. It's hard to convince Joe Sixpack right now that Linux is cool and he should be using it. If Windows becomes so crippled by DRM and "security features" that Linux (or some OpenBeOS-alike or other Open Source OS) can serve as the basis for a fully capable operating environment for desktop PCs, the bottom line will suffer.
Outsmarting Open Source is really more a matter of keeping in touch with what people want. Frankly, MS has done a good job of this in the past, cutting many corners, and infuriating many developers, but they have gradually improved the Windows platform - with Windows XP they have started down a path of backtracking on their advances, getting a bit too high off the hog with their monopoly. If they are trying to outsmart Open Source, they need to go back to thinking about what users want, and not what the MPAA and RIAA tell them they need to get securely in bed with them, so they can jointly 0wn the set-top box market and media-on-demand markets they have their greedy eyes set on.
In a parallel story by InfoWeek:
Microsoft pushes on in server OS market
By Stacy Cowley
September 24, 2002 9:18 am PT
LINUX IS THE only serious threat to Microsoft's increasing dominance of the market for server operating systems, according to new research from IDC.
Microsoft's share of new server operating environment license shipments grew from just under 42 percent in 2000 to nearly 49 percent in 2001, IDC of Framingham, Mass., said in a summary of its recently released "Worldwide Client and Server Operating Environment Market Forecast and Analysis: 2002-2006."
On the client side, Microsoft's already overwhelming 92 percent share crept up to 93 percent in 2001. IDC analyst Al Gillen attributes the company's continued growth to its licensing programs and to customer transitions from older Microsoft products to its current software.
Click Here for the rest of the story.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Read...we do not want to be bound by an open source license...that Linux Zealots will try to interpret anyway they feel proper to steal our IP...in order to do serious work in the open source world we need to use open source tools(and Libs) which would then bind our products by open source license rules...
Before you Mod me down I don't agree with him, but thats what they are thinking after all...
I will say however that they are right in a way...
if the OSS licenses were a little less restrictive and the community a little less over zealous there might be a bit more commercial initive. Unfortuantely, the way the community seems to see tihngs is, you used and open source lib, or other tool, to make your software...we demand the software be open sourced....
Sorry if its unpopular to say so, but that is how they think, and damn it I think they are actually justified...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Internet Explorer is the best browser today? Do you not use any sites that produce popups or something? Do you never block cookies or ads from a site? Are you not concerned about any of the holes that keep being shown in it?
As for Office beating LaTeX, Office has always been much easier to use and LaTeX has always produced higher quality output. That won't change unless Office moves to a whole new font and layout architecture. Knuth is still years ahead of the competition in quality.
You like Visual Studio? It's really slick editor is a joke to people that use emacs, its "world class" debugger may well be good but not *that* much better, and it has a decent compiler, but lacks lots of other supporting development tools like the whole GNU suite.
May we never see th
Considering that it took Malda 21 attempts to supply his Windows XP installation with his correct IP address and time zone.
Yeah, it will be real tough to outsmart him.
If I were a Microsoft employee I'd be a bit worried that the #2 man in the company has such an appalling grasp of economics. Open source/free solutions are nothing but added value. You start with a box of electronics which is worth nothing on it's own (unless making irritating noises is worth something to you), you install linux off a CD you downloaded for free, and presto, you have a system that can be used for work and recreation. Value value value.
The only way Microsoft products will have any value compared to open source/free is if they can do something that open source/free products can't do (crashing twice a day, taking 15mins to boot up, and having more security holes than my underpants aren't exactly unique selling points). Microsoft would have to start innovating to sell their bloatware (today, pretty coloured GUIs != innovation). How likely is that?
Personally, I reckon open source/free software could clean Microsoft's clock in about a decade if more work was put into educational software and entry-level programming tools. Get linux in schools! Schools'd rather be spending their money on library books and heating than licenses. They are the softest targets in the world for increasing the mindshare for open source/free software, but the effort going into office productivity apps (a market Microsoft has got sewn up tighter than a gnat's chuff) dwarfs that spent on educational gubbins.
Microsoft only exist because of kiddie hackers who could transform Windows 3.x into a working system and install hardware for nothing as a favour. Otherwise all the refunds to users forced to return that unusable heap of shit would have killed the company like the MSX fiasco should have. If all the kids who keep PCs running around the world for nada were brought up on linux, rather than windows, they'd be selling those solutions to the grown-ups and bringing them into the workplace as they grew up themselves.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
The Shared Souce Initiative has gone worse than expected. Microsoft seems stunned that noone wants to look at thier source. Perhaps it is because any enhancement you make to the source code, Microsfot owns... the company gets stronger and better, by things you do. If your a Database Vendor are you going to make Microsoft more dominant, so they can put more money into MS SQL. If you are a media company are you going to enhance media capabilities so they can put you out of business with Media Player?
I support and encourage competition. Apple ships homegrown products with thier OS, but they in no way try to use an unfair advantage.
It is more than Source, and it is more than "creating" a community. You need to have a real community of people who trust the company/code/operating system they are working with. Capitalism is divided by the Landowners and those that do the labor. Who is willing to do Microsoft's Labor to have thier own fruits crushed?
The first is that, the main problem with competing with Open Source is that it's always faster to copy than to innovate. It may take years, multiple focus groups and millions of dollars to produce feature X or behavior Y in some commercial product but after that it usually takes a fraction of the time for that feature or behavior to be replicated in competing products. This is much compounded by Open Source which is also typically free (as in beer) thus undercutting the original innovators. A good example of this is commercial Unix and Linux.
I'll disagree (partially) with the statement that it takes millions of $ to innovate. It can be done, but it takes more than hacking code. You must understand your users and what they actually need (not what they think they need). In general this is a hard process and it is not surprising that it takes a business so much money, they are driven by marking and rarely by what the users actually need. And just because it takes a company so much money that doesnt mean it needs to be that way. That is like saying it must be expensive to get into space, look at all of the money NASA spends. It doesnt need to be that way.
A small group of people can do a rather good job of figuring out what is needed. Once that is done you have a good idea of what features your software should support (the things that are currently broken in your user's work process). Take a read through Beyer, H & Holtzblatt, K. (1998) Contextual design: Defining customer-centered systems. This gives you a process of going from start to finish of figuring out what should be innovated.
Given this process, there is no reason a couple of open source people couldnt go and figure out what to innovate on, and then actually build it. You wouldnt need to copy other companies applications.
Microsoft has 90% of the desktop market, but enough just isn't enough for them. Their hunger to assimilate every last person on the planet is insatiable. If your tastes or working styles disagree from theirs, there is just no room for you. Microsoft's hunger for market domination is pathological. I suspect that they really do know deep down that their software is just an incoherent collection of marketing-driven features inplemented in a haphazard manner, and it scares them to think that the public at large realize that; that's why everybody with a brain needs to be assimilated before they can create resistance.
What Microsoft just doesn't get is that different people have different preferences. People use Linux not because it's cheaper in some absolute value metric, but because they like it. To Microsoft, "value" means more features, more buttons, and more conformity in terms of appearance. To many Linux users, "value" means fewer features, fewer buttons, more configurability, and standards compliance at the API level. Microsoft can't add that value to Windows; to achieve it, they'd have to subtract stuff from Windows, a lot of stuff, and they can't do it.
Sorry, Ballmer, but unless Microsoft gets the government to mandate Windows, you'll have to be satisfied with 90% market shares. And they may even go down as Linux (for better or for worse) steadily and unstoppably adds your kind of value--as an option for those who want it.
It is hard for microsoft to lock out open source with the product mix they have. They only succede now because they were early and managed to win, but they no longer can compete on features, price, or IBM granted monopoly. (Though they can dictate hardware specs, something that is worrying to me)
Once you have a working version of a word processor nothing much changes. Once in a while the spell checker might need an updated dictionary or import filters for you compition, but open source can get them too. What new useful features can they add. There might be a few, but most fail the useful qualifier, and the rest are useful only to a small group. If you are in the latter group there is a chance that only open source will consider it worth the bother to add your feature, and then only because YOU can hire whoever you want to add it. (your choice to open source it or not unfortunatly)
Remember software is easy to copy. When an architect draws up house plans carpinders need to build it, which takes a team of four, 2 or 3 months, each house. With software once it is built, copies can be made easially. Open source is even easier than closed because it is free so they don't have license keys or the like. Open source: one person can put it in the default install CD, and once it works put it on all workstations in theory, closed source takes just a little longer because you have to handle license keys and legal issues, but still nothing compared to the house.
Once something has the features you need and is free, it has a compelling argument to switch. I do not see how Microsoft or anyone else can keep coming up with new features that are compelling enough to be worth the cost.
I have already switched to Kword. I admit that it still isn't nearly as good as MSWord, but it is good enough, and free. Many computers are coming with WordPerfect installed because it is cheaper, and most home users won't see a need to switch so long as the import/export filters work right.
It may take 100 years, but I suspect that for software that everyone uses, you will soon find that only free software is used. Only the software that is used by few people, or changes often will survive. (tax preperation for instance)
Hell, I'll bet there's a lower percentage of Linux users pirating *any* Linux software than there are Windows users *pirating Microsoft Windows*! The only reason anyone pays is because MS does aggressive business audits and has OEM deals.
Speak for yourself buddy boy. Some of us pay for software because we want the company behind the software to continue to exist so they can do 24x7 onsite support.
Coming from a company that paid for Oracle on Linux (well over $60,000), I can assure you that companies have no problems paying for software on Linux.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
... that they cannot and will not change:
#1: They cater to businesses, not to people.
Linux is the exact opposite - it caters to people and not to businesses. Considering that businesses are outnumbered with people by a few hundred million to 1, I see this as their biggest problem. Granted, they are trying to buy legislation that will level the playing field (make it illegal not to be *for corporations*, and Linux will have to change), but for now, they're in deep trouble.
#2: The *need* to make even more money.
Overcharging their customers year after year will eventually catch up to them.. most likely within the next 2 years. Linux is becoming even more user friendly, and continues to gather mind share among college students (who can't afford the cost of (or won't pay for) Windows' systems, even at the student rates). Today's college grads are tomorrows CIOs.. and they will talk with the CFO's about the massive savings that Free Software brings to the table. This doesn't bode well for Microsoft.
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
Hotmail's back end is still FreeBSD.
Do what Apple did with OS X but use Linux instead. Ignore X-Windows and any kernel development that is made you release under GPL. Now Windows will still be a proprietary system (like OS X) but they will have a system that scales, is secure, cost them next to nothing to develop (the base OS like darwin) and will be very competitive with any Unix variant free or not that is thrown at MS/Linux (no GNU necessary as there is no GNU/Darwin/OS X) or better yet just call it MS Windows/NX.
If MS did this it would kill, Linux, OS X, Solaris (and all the Unix variants). Granted this is just my opinion but realistically there is nothing to stop them from doing this. Hell even better yet just take the Linux code out there, freeze it and make your own MS Linux Kernel fork and that will REALLY piss some people off, but there isn't a damn thing they could do.
Being an OS X fan I hope to hell this never happens but beware of your fears (as this is one of mine!).
Here's a gem:
While Ballmer stopped short of advocating Microsoft's old "security through obscurity" policy, he pointed out that publicly posting bug fixes often prompted attacks. "The hacker waits till a fix is posted, then writes an attack and sends it out," he said. Such attacks are based on information in the fix.
Attacks are not based on information, they are based on vulnerabilities. Open source information is freely available, this hasn't started an avalanche of attacks on systems that use open source software. Only vulnerable software can be successfully attacked.
The answer is to make sure that fixes are easier to distribute an implement so the user base is up to date, he said.
Translation: We'll download our bug fixes without you knowing it. Trust us.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
someone will code it up because that's what they're paid to do. As opposed to the open-source problem of finding someone who wants to do it.
But that in fact is one of free softwares greatest advantage! Self Selection
Consider this: people who like to do something are generally better at it than those who dont like to do it. (they like it because they are good at it, and they are good at it because they like it)
In a salaried developers time he may find himself working on pieces that hes not thrilled about. In a free software environment, the developer is always working on whatever grips his interest.
When someone comes around to wanting to do a spellchecker for free software, its damn likely theyll do it as well as they can, with no mind to deadlines, manager politics, or the other things theyd much rather be working on.
I'm not a business. I'm a person who uses computers. I don't care whether or not a business can make money off of Open Source. All I want is software that:
1) Works correctly
2) Is secure
3) Is affordable
4) I can alter to suit my needs
Open source gives me this, Microsoft software does not.
An exercise for the AC...
... but most estimates put the proportion of all code written in-house at companies other than software vendors at over 75%.
Here are my points:
---
OSS doesn't make sense in the reseller market (the one Microsoft is in)
As said previously, why spend millions making software when it's out there for free. If Microsoft makes the best product in the world and sells it for $300 with the source under an open source license, someone will just take the code, maybe modify it a bit, and derive their own product, presumably selling it for less.
---
but it makes sense in the support market.
Read.
---
Example is Red Hat. No, they're just under being profitable
From Red Hat's website:
"In an increasingly difficult IT environment, Red Hat delivered a profit and generated positive cash flows for the first time," commented Matthew Szulik, President and CEO of Red Hat.
I conceed, I was a touch out of date.
---
but they aren't catering to the large market
From Entrepreneur.com:
"Linux was the primary OS for 27 percent of the server operating market at the end of last year"
Again, I'm a little out of date, but 27% is not the kind of market share that Microsoft has (41% from the same website). I phrased "catering to the large market" incorrectly, but I think you get the point.
---
I should also add that it's estimated that over 70% of development occurs in-house and not for resale.
From opensource.org:
---
Programming will collapse if software has no market value
Very unlikely. Code written for resale is only the tip of the programming iceberg. It used to be said that 85% of all the code in the world was written in-house at banks and insurance companies. This is probably no longer the case
----
I know, I know, don't feed the trolls, but I figured that someone asked for links, I might as well offer them for those who show a real interest (and don't have their heads up their asses).
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
As an interested observer (I use OS X instead of Windows *or* Linux) this seems like good news. While many posts here were getting into religious flame-wars, I noticed this:
"Linux is a serious competitor,"
"We have to compete with free software, on value, but in a smart way."
"Linux isn't going to go away"
In just the first paragraph, we have the CEO of the worlds most powerful technology company acknowledging, for all the world to see, that Linux is a serious competitor that is here to stay!
Congratulations to the Linux community for doing what no private company has been able to do - if M$ is serious, this can only be good for computer users in general.
That is what I thought OSS was about, choice and competition in the marketplace driving all participants to create greater value for the user. Please keep in mind that it is NOT about the obliteration of Microsoft - thousands of men and women, and *their children and families* work for or are supported in some way by that company - they can't all be demons from hell! Can they?
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
Accoring to the Tribune piece about Comdex not coming to Chicago any more, it also mentioned Comdex Canada/Mexico as well.
As for Vegas Comdex, thats been shrinking for years, but was at least worth going too. I can't see that lasting either. Before the internet/email the were useful for product launches, but now you can get you info to the people who want to know for practically nothing, instead of frieghting a bunch of people/product/booth to the shows.
Comdex is pratically dead in ALL it's forms, suspect CES will assume it's roll as we migrate closer to integrated consumer products.
"There's no scarcity of spectrum any more than there's a scarcity of the color green.", David Reed