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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."
to outsmart perspiration.
Developers, developers, developers, developers.
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/
That can be seen running around, screaming: "Give it to meeeeeeeeeee!!" in an MPEG file that has been mirrored all over the world... =)
Who can take anything Ballmer says seriously after seeing this movie clip? Certainly not Linus Torvalds, that's for sure!!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I said this once on newsforge but it's worth repeating:
The way to beat free software is through the psychology of value. "You get what you pay for." Us free software guys like to think that we are the exception, but business guys think it's true. And they'd rather pay lots of money for the backing of the Microsoft brand name than get an OS which they perceive as a "college kid's project" for little or no money. The reality is different, and we know this, but it is the PERCEPTION that counts.
Between Beowulf and MOSIX, Linux pretty much has low-end clustering sewn up. It's at the cutting edge. Microsoft will beat Linux at clustering in the business sector, by creating the PERCEPTION that Windows NT clusters are reliable (even if it takes a huge support infrastructure just to tell the MCSE monkey to reboot the damned machine) and that Linux clusters are somehow less reliable because they lack said support infrastructure. That is my prediction.
When it comes down to technology, Linux wins. When it comes down to people's feelings, and perceptions, and their sense of security, Microsoft wins because they can afford to hire the people and purchase the companies necessary to make it happen. In the end, it's people's perceptions that really count... not the technology.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Developers Developers Developers.... Developers Developers... Developers Developers Developers.. Ahhh, karma well spent.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Na, not that way, they are going to do it the Valentine way. "I'm not proud," Valentine said, as he spoke to a crowd of developers here at the company's Windows .Net Server developer conference. "We really haven't done everything we could to protect our customers ... Our products just aren't engineered for security."
Translation: We'll outsmart them by making them think our product sucks, then we'll surprise them with... oh wait, our product does suck.
Can all fish swim?
What's even funnier is imaging the thousands of Microtemps caring about their jobs enough to make better software than open source software.
"Old man yells at systemd"
--
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Less is more !
I always thought that one area where MS has an advantage over the typical open-source application is that their developers are all on salary. So when marketing (or whoever makes the decisions) determines that there should be an integrated spell-checker, 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.
Let's face it, lots of the little things that make an application "full featured" in the eyes of the typical home or business consumer are a drag to code.
Technology like clustering would be better in Windows than Linux eventually, said Balmer
Intimidating.
"We will beat Linux on clusters."
Good luck. There's a lot more researchers doing distributed Linux work than there are on Windows, though I'm sure MS is blowing lots of money on it in their private labs. Windows is not great for a headless cluster machine -- lousy remote administration, high CPU/RAM overhead, not the best performance, costs more.
As for their distributed filesystem beating Linux...well, might happen, but they're building on a database (overhead implied), whereas Linux has the excellent AFS (openafs and arla implementations, both free), Coda, and Intermezzo, plus some other fringe ones. All the filesystem people I know (CMU is a big distributed filesystems research place) do Solaris or Linux...not Windows.
Microsoft is considering extending its shared-source initiative
You don't get it, do you, Microsoft? Seeing the source is the smallest benefit of open source to your customers. *They* mostly care about less immediate license costs, and (the biggie) no vendor lock in in the Linux world. Open source strongly facilitates this. Your NDA and smartcard supported limited shared source program doesn't interest these types in the least -- especially the NDAs, which are designed to *increase* lock-in.
For nine years, the company has designated users with particular skills -- usually seen by how often they intervene helpfully in newsgroups -- as "most valued professionals". Currently there are about 1,200 MVPs, half of whom are in the United States
Whee. Linux never needed a formal system for this because it already happens. Stop by any of the channels on irc.openproject.net. You can get hours of real-time help...not just one lousy newsgroup post. Good luck on this one, MS.
"We do not anticipate offering software on Linux. Nobody pays for software on Linux."
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.
The big issue there [with IBM], he said, was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software.
Well, fuck me senseless. MS must be planning on accepting legal liability for their own closed source software. Hot damn. I've wasted more times fixing problems that their software has caused than I can count. Windows Updates that bluescreen and render a computer unbootable. Crashing Office installations. You name it. I've been wrong about MS all along! They're going to come through and actually support their software! Tech support will be free, not expensive "incident-based" issues! Woohoo!
May we never see th
I
don't
think
so.
I agree with you in many ways on the client side. I disagree strongly on the server side however.
This daft Terminal Services, or Remote Desktop or whatever that won't allow multiple sessions on the same username. 'tail -f whatever.log'? Impossible on Windows without extra software. Little things like that are getting vastly overlooked.
However, on the client-side I have to say I'm with you for most of the way. We part company when you describe Mozilla as 'not even semi-close', and serious technical authors will laugh at your description of Office (there's a reason FrameMaker still exists...), but on the whole I agree with you.
Visual Studio IDE integrates everything wonderfully, integrating a really slick editor, a world-class debugger, and a high-quality compiler.
Yes. And it's all going .Net. And this is where the carping about Mono and DotGNU and whatever else should cease - getting a viable .Net environment on to Linux means you can start using Microsoft's tools to target Linux platforms. Then you get the best of both once more - good client tools from Microsoft, good server tools from Linux.
Cheers,
Ian
And it's not even noon!
What are they posting next hour?
"Bill Gates mixes whites and darks in washing machine -- turns socks blue!"
Yep... we'll outsmart Open Source.
You see, we're going to order this rocket sled from Acme...
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
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!
Open Source tools than my competition can do with Microsoft tools .. ole Steve is outta luck!
My customers are not after platforms, they are after services I can provide them.
Sorry Steve,...the OSS juggernaut will roll on. Learn what you can from IBM about what it means to evolve into a company that contributes standards but no longer solely owns them.
The genie is too far out of the bottle.
"The big issue there, he said, was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software. Ballmer said"
Last i checked any software from MS it did contain a nasty EULA that prevents me to take any legal action now matter how much the product was faulty. Its really ugly to pretend that they themselves give any when the never do and use that as an argument against linux.
I think we are really in for a spin against linux from Microsoft. The bad news for them will probably be that since their trust account is completely drained none will listen to them. The more they spin the more they tend to look like bad loosers.
To lay so much effort on making all competition look bad indicates that their own products doesnt have enough value to compete.
HTTP/1.1 400
The Visual Studio IDE integrates everything wonderfully, integrating a really slick editor, a world-class debugger, and a high-quality compiler.
I'm not sure exactly what compiler you are using but the C++ compiler is truly terrible. Besides that fact that they are using an outdated version of the STL libraries, the compiler will let all sorts of crazy errors through that gcc will catch. For those of you who use VC++, I would encourage you to set aside perhaps 2 weeks where you compile both on VC++ and gcc. You'll be stunned at the number of errors that gcc will catch but VC++ will let slip through. Lord only knows what the VC++ compiled code is actually doing...
GMD
watch this
Microsoft is considering extending its shared-source initiative, currently limited to large users such as governments and universities, to MVPs. This would give them smart-card access to much of the Windows source code, he said. There will be a decision on this in the next couple of months, said Lori Moore, vice president of product support services at Microsoft. "There are many options on the table," she said. "There are many ways to be more open, and we are reviewing ideas."
Can I bum a sig?
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.
So far they have been outsmarting the linux developers. That's why Windows is still the dominate PC OS. Despite the fact that Linux is availible in every computer store, including CompUSA for less than Windows, and despite the fact that anyone can download it for free, windows still dominates. And that's because Windows has been outsmarting Linux. But not just with their own programmers, with the rest of the programmers in commercial development too. The big apps, the ones that people are buying, still aren't programmed for Linux. Untill Linux gets better commercial support as well as community support, M$ can continue to outsmart linux by sheer size alone.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
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
Aw man, how can you be a moderator here and NOT have seen the Ballmer video where he can't even keep up with himself as he chants "Developers! Developers! developers!"
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
So when marketing (or whoever makes the decisions) determines that there should be an integrated spell-checker, someone will code it up because that's what they're paid to do.
Actually, that's not really true. Microsoft doesn't code many of the nice features you find in their products, they buy out smaller companies who have already done the work. Check out the "About..." dialog box of your favorite Microsoft Office product and read the fine print. There's a hell of a lot of features in there that are copyrighted to a third party.
Since so much of the code in Microsoft's products is developed by third party sources, it sometimes makes me wonder what the hell their army of programmers actually does all day long...
GMD
watch this
If by "outsmart" he means "make more money", he may be right...
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Just ignore it. If the chips don't work with linux, buy other chips. Will the chip vendors ignore the leading server (apache) and the #2 unix (linux), leaving tons of cash on the table, just to give Microsoft a woody? I don't think so.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
Speaking as a guy who has almost finished his Masters in Industrial Economy, I still believe the biggest issue is the time that will inevitably be necessery to train monkeys to use Linux (and yes, I've seen employees that have *no* understanding of computers and need a step-by-step instruction to perform the most basic tasks.)
c e/KOffice and switch between them with no big difficulties, I get around the menus and know what I'm looking for. But I know quite a few that just couldn't grasp it on their own.
Nobody says that "Start, Shut down, Restart" is a sensible sequence to restart a machine. But they have learned it, and it's stuck (unless they just push the reset button btw). Try *unlearning* a monkey and tell them you now have to pick something else (even if the choices make more sense if you know your way around a computer), and they'll be stomped and need time to adapt.
And this goes on for a number of things that are so basic, that you would never even consider it a problem. I can change to IE/Opera/Mozilla or Textpad/Wordpad/Word/Textpad//StarOffice/OpenOffi
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Looking at NTs heritage (Dave Cutler et al) from VMS, which had transparent, reliable, cick-ass clustering 15 years ago which is unmatched until today this is a pretty sad statement.
Mind you, I'm not doubting your statement. It just shows that M$ aparently threw away all the goodies in exchange for "usability" and a string of pretty crappy lowest common denominator wizards.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
I'm in this community and I share my code with others (in newsgroups and published articles) all the time. No one is anti open source, not even Microsoft. Ballmer is just an idiot who doesn't always properly define open source. Microsoft is anti-GPL, and they also want to protect the intellectual property that they've spent billions on. However, when it came to .NET, they released the source code via the Shared Source license (not true OSS, I know). Because of the nature of .NET they felt it made business sense. And that's what it comes down to. Complete and utter OSS generally doesn't make business sense. Look at Apple. They don't open up OSX - they'd go out of business. But they did embrace the concept to an extent with Darwin. It's all about balance and not about extremes.
I just have to say again, that I'm very dissapointed in your post, the moderation of it, and the lack of intellectual honesty. You may hate MS, and all things MS, even us developers. But to make the blind assumption that the community is a bunch of closed source bigots is just as bad as myself making the assumption that Linux is hard to use without ever even trying it. We have a strong community that shares ideas and code all the time - we just don't base our businesses on that philosophy.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I really don't care is Windows dominated in populatity: Unix dominates in thing I care about - scalability, reliablilty and security.
My choices arn't in line with most consumers: Example
Consumers choose McDonalds - I choose local mom and pop resturaunt.
Consumers choose Toyots - I choose GMC trucks.
Consumers choose WalMart - I choose REI
Consumers choose Microsoft - I choose UNIX
Consumers choose surburbia - I choose the city
Consumers choose Disnyland - I choose backpacking, climbing, sailing, foreign countries.
Your choice. Make it well.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
You've got to be kidding me. SPECIALIZING in directory issues? Assuming "issues" means.. problems, it's a sad fact that there are so many issues with Active Directory that one of these highly praised MS "MVPs" can actually SPECIALIZE in fixing them. Thats like specializing in DNS administration. Wow, I think i'd shoot myself in about 1.5 days at that job.
One thing I think is a misconception about open source software is that it is done 'for free'. Certainly a proportion of it is, but if, for instance, you look at the linux kernal list, you will see that the vast majority of contributors are actually employees from big companies.
Before, I think Bill&Steve thought that Open Source software was crappy, so they kind of ignored it or mocked it. Now they realise that it isn't crappy, but they think they can defeat it because they believe that it isn't created by people who are getting paid (directly or indirectly) for it. I think this is a real misconception.
Every day is Anti Microsoft Day on slashdot! : )
You can't take the sky from me...
Business users will never take open source seriously as long as people use phrases like "Micro$hit^H^H^Hoft" and others rate it +5 insightful.
The one thing you're missing is that in 99% of the cases, Linux/Open Source doesn't have a bottom line they have to meet. Since the (vast?) majority of programmers working on OSS projects are donating time, there's no need to pay them. This translates into better project planning because they're not always worried about meeting deadlines that their jobs rest on. Not to say that OSS isn't stressful, just that you don't have bigwigs worried about their jobs because a deliverable wasn't met.
I'll admit, I like VC++ and Office for most tasks. However, after attempting to configure an NT/2000 box as a DNS/Web/FTP server that I can remotely manage, I will take Linux anyday. On my first attempt it took me roughly three days (~12 hours) to install and configure a box with 2 websites both DNS'd through the box with an ftp server and some basic user recognition on the web site. This was without ever having done it before. With NT, it took me weeks to figure out how IIS worked the first time, let alone trying to figure out how to do remote management and multi-user functions. When MS comes up with an easy multi-user OS that has literal plug and play (read: like RedHat's rpm or Debian's apt-get functionality) packages, give me a holler.
--trb
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.
1) My 9yr old nephew installed Mandrake on his computer without any adult supervision, got it on the net, and got his web server running. In an afternoon. Isn't that the very definition of easy?
One swallow doesn't make a summer.
Last time I tried installing Mandrake on my laptop, it crashed during the install and would go no further.
The same goes for SuSe 8.0.
Simon
[Reason? Oh, it just doesn't like the graphics chip. But it thinks it knows which one it is. Which it isn't. And it doesn't. So it hard crashes the machine.]
Coming soon - pyrogyra
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
Internet Explorer is -- bar none -- the best browser today.
Nope! OmniWeb beats it IMHO.
Office is so capable that even LaTeX can't compare anymore, and Office has more functionality than Corel and any of the open-source efforts combined!
i.e, it's obfuscated, it's over-featured, it's bloated.
The Visual Studio IDE integrates everything wonderfully, integrating a really slick editor, a world-class debugger, and a high-quality compiler.
ProjectBuilder works a whole lot better. It's free (beer) and is based around a world-class debugger (gdb 5.1) and a high-quality compiler (gcc 3.1). InterfaceBuilder's UI & layout beats anything VS has to offer, etc, etc
And these are all availble at reasonable prices.
And these are all available .... free! ;-)
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Looking at NTs heritage (Dave Cutler et al) from VMS, which had transparent, reliable, cick-ass clustering 15 years ago which is unmatched until today this is a pretty sad statement.
I always thought they would push harder with clustering to diminish the problems caused by hung servers. They could even have each box automatically take it itself temporarily out of the cluster and reboot itself every 40 hours or so without disrupting the overall cluster.
IOW, manage reboots if you cannot eliminate them.
Table-ized A.I.
"You get what you pay for."
But that's the beauty of Open Source / Free software -- you can pay for whatever level of support and brand name you want. You can choose to get everything for free, or you can get a million-dollar support contract -- or anything in between. This is the truth, and I think we've done a fairly good job of getting that perception out there -- and of course IBM's advertising dollars help too.
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.
How do those tail lights look, Steve?
Does this have some value or purpose that I just don't see? Letting people look at your source code doesn't have any magical effect.
Do they think people will squash bugs for them? Make other improvements? Finally start using some of those undocumented APIs that don't exist?
What's the deal?
-Peter
Internet Explorer is -- bar none -- the best browser today. Mozilla doesn't even come semi-close.
Excuse me? Does IE have tabbed browsing? No. Does IE block pop-up ads? No. Does IE have mouse gestures? No. Is IE infinitely configurable? No. Is IE slower than Mozilla? Yes.
What can I do in IE that I can't do in Mozilla?
The fact of the matter is that M$ has hardly added any features to IE since they won the browser wars. Mozilla has added tons of new features in each release and just keeps getting better.
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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.
Just try and tell a [entrenched MS employee] to code up that really dreary bit! That's what temps are for!
Heh, MS is becomming more and more like the government.
Table-ized A.I.
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
but aren't infrastructure things like TCP/IP stacks that are highly reliable across various OSs a conter-argument?
I'd argue that open standards and open source are great for market enlargement, at the possible expense of market control.
Let's discuss an approach to licensing that is as flexible as approaches to programming language selection.
Otherwise, you risk looking as cartoonish as the film industry kvetching about VCRs, and other practices which have enlarged their markets in the face of arguments that said practice would kill it.
And let's admit that his Majesty Satanic has brought a lot of stability to the chaotic PC platform, for all his gestures may be Stalin-esque at times.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Look last time I checked, it was the Open Source movement who was trying to pass a bill to make Open Source software mandatory.
I continue to wonder how well windows would do if people were being charge for the real cost of the software up front when they bought a computer. That is, would a consumer pay $600 for a computer and then pay and addition $200 to get window or would they take the chance and save the money and go for $100 for a copy of Linux? As it now stands windows just comes with everything and people don't really think about how that impacts the price. Would be interesting to see how they'd react if they actually had to pay for it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I'll bet you that some Microsoft programmers support Open Source and even work on it for kicks in their spare time.
Of the four people that I indirectly know that work at Microsoft, three prefer using and developing for Linux (one has a Tux doll in his cubicle at Microsoft), and only the least competent one doesn't know or like Linux (but he's also a Visual Basic programmer, as opposed to the others).
It's hard for MS to *find* competent developers that dislike UNIX. UNIX was designed to *be* a developer's baby.
May we never see th
I wonder if Ballmer also finds it odd that IBM does the same for Microsoft. That quote could easily read, "It's weird! IBM says 'Hey Company X! Buy Windows.... From Microsoft.'"
I'm going to assume that you've tried Linux and its apps for more than 5 minutes before posting your message. I'm sure it didn't cost you a dime to do so.
.NET costs over $1000 for retail licensing. The company I work for spent about that much for the set and they even get a discount.
What trust fund do you live off of to be able to afford the 'reasonably priced' apps you described. You mentioned the following classes of products: OS, Office Software, and IDE.
Windows XP, Office XP, and Visual Studio
Out of the pocket, you can't compare apples to oranges here. For the features MOST PEOPLE use in an OS (surfing the net, games, etc.), or Office package (write letters, balance checkbook in spreadsheet), or IDE (whatever they feel like doing if they're technically inclined to do so) only comprise the basics of the functionality. Why should I spend $299 for Office XP just to write letters if Open Office will do what I need?
I would wager to say that 80% of the home PC owners with an MS Office package don't use more features than is outlined in a beginner's training course (some people need training for Microsoft products, too). With that knowledge, they can use Open Office effectively.
If the highly advanced portions of the MS software is 'better', then I say go ahead and buy it. But if you don't use those advanced features, you wasted a whole lot of money. All you've done is made a decision that lacks common sense.
I'd rather spend my $1000 on a new PC or a vacation.
From first hand experience, XP did little for me after an upgrade. I was required to have 2GB free space to perform an upgrade from 98. The upgrade used ALL of that 2GB of space. I had to get a new hard drive because 2GB was all the space I had left. Great value, huh? XP plus an additional cost of a new HD. Although I notice a newfound stability in the OS (about time Microsoft), all I really see from the 2GB of junk that got installed is a bunch of eye candy. A 2GB installation of a RedHat or Mandrake installation gives me a plethora of software to play around with to discover the many things a computer can be used for.
I'm just glad I didn't spend any of my money for the upgrade. This was on my work PC. I support an existing application within the company, so I have little choice. But I can do without the upgrades, and instead, use Linux at home.
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
I didnt understand where breaking the law and smart got together? Microsoft has been able to hold their monopoly by deceptive and sometimes even illegal practices. If anyone calls that smart then go thank your local drug dealer for being so successful in snaring youngsters into drugs.
Where did our society start mixing the terms sucess and smart up? You can be smart but not successful and vice versa.
The sole reason linux is even popular is the fact that something completely free and protected against slaughter by stealing code by the GPL is the only thing able to compete in this monopoly market.
Had the market been healthy we would have had something completely different for an OS and probably different hardware too. x86 is really lame hardware that should have been scrapped in the 90's.
HTTP/1.1 400
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.
Thanks, Steve, thanks a lot for focusing on a worse product instead of innovation (known to the civilized world as: Making a better product)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You do want him to go away right?
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)
from the article: 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.
In related news, I've noticed that the more dishes I clean, there more there are to get dirty, so if I don't do the dishes, then there won't be any clean ones to get dirty, and I'll be saved a lot of work.
c-hack.com |
He's saying
"We'll outsmart open source"
and not
"We'll build better software than open source"
or something like that.
Like Cringley said in one of his pulpit pages a while back. It's all about winning, not providing better value for customer.
His choice of words is a slap in my face as a customer, and I'm not even an open source activist like most of you guys seem to be.
Open standards (HTTP, Web Services, etc.) make a ton of sense. OSS, in certain cases (see: Apple) can make sense. Hiring 40,000 programmers, UI designers, Human Factors specialists, etc. at an average salary of $60K to produce code that get's published for free to the world does not make business sense.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Uh, Microsoft was dominant on the PC long before there was Linux. However, every year Linux use grows. So far this growth has been moderate on the desktop, but it will continue to grow just like it has on the server side.
Microsoft has always been bigger than Linux, and yet Linux continues to progress at an amazing pace. And since Microsoft can't buy Linux out, nor can they bankrupt Linux, they can't use their standard tactics. Total World Domination :) is only a matter of time, and Linux has plenty of that to spare.
... 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
Wow, strong words, how bout "huge head start". That's why Windows is still the dominant desktop. How about "appeals to the lowest common denominator" that's why Windows is still the dominant desktop.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
I'm no fan of Uncle Steve, but unless I'm missing something, he himself didn't use the word "outsmart". He said "We have to compete with free software, on value, but in a smart way." ZDNet inexplicably translated this to "outsmart", and the anonymous poster takes this one step further to "We'll outsmart open source."
Sloppy and dumb. Keep right on lowering your standards, everyone.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
[mini-rant]
BTW simple enough to fix your problem, just because the autodetect doesn't work doesn't mean it won't run, fix it manually and stop complaining.
[/mini-rant]
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Take a look at DRM. Microsoft has already won.
1. Build DRM into operating system, and patent operating systems with built in DRM.
2. Convince content providers to ( hollywood, music industry, government, service businesses ( health care providers, insurance companies, etc ) ) to protect their IP with DRM.
3. Lobby government to make it illegal to manufacture computers without DRM built in.
4. Threaten computer manufacturers until they build DRM into their CPUs (as Intel and AMD have already both stated they will. Apple will follow when MS threatens to stop making MS software for them if they don't ).
5. Lobby government to pass law to make it a jailable offense to possess tools to allow you to get around copy protection ( DMCA ).
Worst Case Scenario:
--------------------
All online media is protected by DRM. Computers can not view any intellectual property on the internet without running a DRM compliant operating system. Running a non DRM compliant operating system on a computer with built in DRM violates the DMCA. Microsoft owns the patent on DRM in operating systems, so any competitor has to pay microsoft for the right to include closed source DRM code in their operating system.
A lot of the things necessary to make the above happen, are already in place.
It doesn't matter if Linux can compete with Microsoft on a technical level. Microsoft has billions of dollars to spend on lobbying the government for new laws, and with their monopoly power can threaten other businesses to support their DRM standard. They also have powerful allies in Hollywood and the RIAA, who both want microsoft to succeed with this vision.
Time to wake up.
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!).
Well come again when you speak swedish like i speak english.
Du är ett litet missfoster som inte har egna argument och istället klagar på stavningen. Skriver du brev till böglordtidningarna när de stavat fel också ditt növel? Ringer in till din lokala tevestation när de råkat sända ditt favorit program (elefantbajs 2000) för sent?
HTTP/1.1 400
It's just too funny that they think these tactics really work for them. Since they are sharing source with trusted partners, they can get beyond the "several thousand employees", but they just don't get what it is all about. The question is, what is the motivation? The profit motive is central to everything they and their partners do, and it shows.
It is really dangerous for them to share their code even in this limited way, because it is likely to get out when they do. Since it is a given that security is never perfect, it will get out, and possible make their code even more vulnerable. They still try to say that Linux has just as many security bugs, while freely admitting that they have not designed for security in the first place. I find this statement particularly humorous:
With the launch of the initiative, Microsoft halted production on new code in all of its products and charged employees with scanning through every line of existing code in search of vulnerabilities.
That's from the Valentine article. I hope he isn't as clueless as this statement suggests. The idea that you can find security holes with this method would suggest he is not competent to hold the job title. Security takes a systematic approach starting from architecture, and including a lot of theoretical work to back it up. Only then can you expect to find security bugs by looking for hazards in the code. If they had done this in the first place, there are a large number of features that never would have gone in.
Admittedly, the open/free source community is a bit smaller than "the rest of the world", but they have the right motivation. Just how receptive do you think MS will be to reported problems? Is MS going to give your company a discount on licenses for some future product, or more likely will they attempt to minimize the importance of any flaw because it means more work for them to fix it?
When commercial companies embrace GPL practices, they are motivated to solve the problems that relate to their own products. This only works because you can't get without giving. GPL means that your competitor can't get the benefit without giving back the enhancements they make as well. Unless you are big enough to do it all yourself, there is always way more that you get from GPL than you give. If anyone attempts to cheat, it's all out in the open.
To close, I'd like to point out the FUD line that closes the article:
The big issue there, he said, was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software.
I guess we are to assume that they will be replacing all those standard disclaimers with a statement of fitness and accept liability when they fail to deliver.
Consumers choose Toyots - I choose GMC trucks.
Sure you don't have this backwards?
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Yes, open standards do make a case for having an open sourced reference implementation to use as a basis. You see this all the time.
But you'll also note that these open sourced implementations are not licensed under the GPL. The prime example for this is the gzip library used for HTTP 1.1 compression, they had to come up with a non-GPLed implementation specifically because of it's use as part of a standard.
I see a lot of intellectual dishonesty on the part of the GPL bigots. They frequently reference non-GPLed open source software as success stories(Apache, BSD TCP/IP, BIND, sendmail, etc), and then imply by inference that this same success will also apply to the GPLed software.
Oh, just read your last sentence. I thought you were being serious in your reply, but I guess you were just being a troll. Sorry to have wasted my time responding to a child.
It would be most helpful in the future if you would only comment on those things which you have some knowledge of.
Obviously developing on the Microsoft platform is beyond your capability.
I know, we'll dig our way out!!!
No stupid, dig Up!!!!
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!
Very true, but how else are you going to get someone with a philosophy degree to program? The same fool would be out of his element on Linux.
Heh. I have a BS in Computer Science, and minored in Philosophy. They don't seem that related, but you'd be surprised. It was a weird deja vu to walk out of a compsci class discussing Noam Chomsky and into a Philosophy class discussing Noam Chomsky.
Linguistics, aesthetics, logic.. there is a large and healthy overlap between the two. I agree that a lot of philosophy majors seem to be more inclined to the liberal arts, but I think that is because a lot of the technically inclined are missing out on part of their education.
We've known ever since the Halloween Documents that they have been running scared
I think it's pretty clear that Microsoft is unconcerned with Linux and rightly so. When you run Linux, you have to be very paranoid about what scanner or digital camera or video card you buy. We've all been there. There have been slashdot stories about it. The bottom line is that the fundamental differences between Linux and Windows and MacOS are very few, when it comes right down to it. But switching from Windows to Linux, assuming you do more than just download MP3s and browse the web, is a big pain in the arse. The restrictiveness that comes from not being able to walk into Best Buy and get whatever it is you want--application, game, new video card--is frustrating. It isn't worth dealing with unless the alternative gives you something that's way, way, beyond what Windows gives you in a tangible way. And speaking as someone who runs both Linux and Windows, that isn't the case.
wasen't microsoft just at the linux world convention to prove to the liunx community that they weren't against them?the only "dirty tricks" that linux pulled was being cheaper, faster, better, and more efficent.
who cares
;)
MS's business model shouldnt exist.
They let use a piece of software that you purchased, only under their conditions...giving them as much control as they want to claim in a EULA...and of course without owing you anything by way of merchantibility.
I wouldn't mind software licensing if companies were actually held responsible for holding up their end of the bargain.
Personally closed source is useful for a couple things: custom applications on strange platforms for strange devices that some company may have already developed and is selling that meets your needs. And, extensions of that idea.
A whole lot else can be met with opensource. Almost every small business can be run with an entirely opensource setup. Small business is the major brunt of America's economy. Personal users are even more dificult for the penetration and learning curve...but as the young computer saavy grow up and the old computer illiterate die, we will have a mostly computer literate society.
Personally I think any small business can do very well and save a boatload of money by hiring a consultant to setup some boxes, install required software and go. No more licensing fees. None of that crap. Got a problem? Bring back the consultant, hell youd need a few fulltime MCSEs anyways. Need an app not made? I vision a work-for-hire opportunity for programmers, maybe with some sort of middle-man.
Who knows. Anyways, I'm all for copyright, Im all for protecting your created code...but I'm also all for customer service. And MS dicks its customers, and shouldnt be allowed to do that with the leverage of their existing monopoly. Companies should have 0.00000 rights.
NEWSFLASH: Automakers unite! Now one conglomerate of a company, they buy the propane industry and switch to propane. Refuse warranties on older vehicles claiming its lifecycle is over. Now what ya gonna do? I hope the govt would step in eh?
We've bested Steve's Ballmer's spaniard and we've beaten his giant. Like we didn't see a battle of wits coming....
Compare and Contrast
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
The big issue there, he said, was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software.
You know, I find it thoroughly amusing that they're "reluctant" to accept liability for OSS, but they don't have a problem avoiding it for their own.
Especially when you've got your EULA that says that you don't own your software....
Karma: Non-Heinous
In open source if somebody notices a bug, they either don't know how to fix it, so they ignore it or they post a notice to the bug traq or mailing list and it is ignored there (anybody claiming they are not ignored is challenged to find one that was really fixed due to the bug report rather than claimed "we know about that and are working on it"). Or the *do* know how to fix it, so they fix it. They might, just maybe, try to tell another person how to fix it, but by the time they are finished it is so frustrating (because they know the answer) that they say "screw it, I'll fix it".
In closed source if somebody notices a bug, they either don't know how to fix it, so they ignore it or they post a notice to the bug database and it is ignored there (anybody claiming they are not ignored is challenged to find one that was really fixed due to the bug report rather than claimed "we know about that and are working on it"). Or the *do* know how to fix it, so they fix it. They might, just maybe, try to tell another person how to fix it, but by the time they are finished it is so frustrating (because they know the answer) that they say "screw it, I'll fix it".
So "Fixing" is the wrong term. However it is true that "adding features" is different in closed source. It is possible to hire somebody to add a feature, and this is done all the time. Features are treated like bugs in Open Source. You can make an argument that this is good because it avoids bloat, but that is about the only argument for it.
Eventually, these same people that are using and are beginning to use Linux at work will want Linux at home, to be consistent with what they use at work. So that is part of the tide.
For Linux to finally put the screws to Windows, and to truly start the death toll for Microsoft, two things need to happen:
1. An AOL Client for Linux
2. Native Games for the hardcore gamers
(Unreal Tournament 2003 is a step in the right direction)
Unfortunately for Microsoft, it's not a matter of outsmarting Open Source Software, it's a matter of not being able to remain relevant. Microsoft has nothing coming in the pipeline outside of *ahem* "security" and Palladium. While users will clamor for security, no one outside of the RIAA and MPAA are really clamoring for DRM and Palladium, and people (and companies) are realizing that for security Linux is the better choice for your OS.
Granted, Windows will probably never go away, and I don't think it necessarily should, but the days of the Windows Monopoly are coming to an end, if you ask me.
If Microsoft put as much energy into creating quality software as they do trying to "outsmart" the competition, Linux wouldn't be such "a serious competitor."
The fact that /. won't run an article from yesterday which discusses Linux server marketshare in unfavorable terms is more than proof enough of exactly who is "running scared."
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-959049.html
This is a nice idea. The only problem is that the users of Linux 'LOVE' their OS. I've never met anybody that 'LOVES' much less 'LIKES' Windows in any of it's forms. That's one big hurdle to overcome Monkey Boy!
So, because two of your classes discussed Noam Chomsky, that makes people who major in philosophy qualified to program?
No, you're missing the point. Majoring in philosophy and being qualified to program are not mutually exclusive.
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.
dare, I do not agree with your assumptions, and hence with your conclussion.
.NET features state of the art innovations for large XML document handling, and in Mono we will have an extremely hard time implementing your XPathNavigator-based XSLT. Even with reference implementations (like Daniel Veillard's), this is a truly advanced piece of code. We can emulate it using slower, more inneficient mechanisms, but we wont be able to perform as well as Microsoft's .NET XML implementation.
Linux is just starting to make inroads in the enterprise and critical application markets, say it became useful in 2001. This is the area that has been dominated by Unix since 1986. So it took us "only" 16 years to duplicate the enterprise functionality of a Unix operating system.
Sometimes copying is easier than innovating: but achieving total compatibility -which can not be ignored- is a massive task. Wine has been cloning the Win32 API, and it is one of the most ancient projects from the Linux community: it was there back in 1996, and we have still not managed to clone the entire Win32 API. Yes, copying certain things are easy, but achieving the compatibility is a completely different matter.
Am going to give you another example which must be closer to you: the Xml implementation in
I rather see Microsoft stay on the innovation track, than go into a legal battle against Open Source projects.
Proprietary software has some advantanges, and open source has different ones. Open Source is making some inroads into a Microsoft-dominated world. And I do not see anything wrong with having more than one operating system in our day to day environments: it promotes open standards, it promotes well written and well documented reliable solutions, and ultimately, it allows the consumer to choose a solution that is right for him.
Miguel
does this mean they're going to stop trying to profit through anti-competitive monopoly abuse and try to sell software based on merit?
i'm not going to be holding my breath waiting for said 'product'
I think Ballmer really meant was that Microsoft will outspend open source, purchasing politicos, FUD campaigns etc.
The only way to do this is by attacking the GPL directly, via legislation outlawing "unsecured" OSes. This IMHO is the main reason that Microsoft is really pushing DRM compliant media players and Palladium.
By supporting these restrictive policies, they can then point to open source/free software and say: "GNU OSes like linux encourage piracy." Another case that will captivate the sheeple will be a statment such as "Most (pedophile|pornagrapher|hacker) sites run Apache on Linux." Of course they will fail to mention that most sites of very type legitimate or not, use Apache, but will Joe Sixpack be able to sort out FUD from fact?
Congress being for the most part clueless/paid will agree and legislate DRM compliant "Digital Rights" to be mandatory on all OSes used in the US. Also look forward a direct legal challenge to the GPL itself in the near future.
Its time to really give a shit, contribute to organizations like the EFF, politicians that aren't stupid like Boucher, and stick up for ourselves.
'tail -f whatever.log'? Impossible on Windows without extra software.
Um... technically it's impossible on Linux without extra software, too. The "tail" command is part of GNU textutils, which of course comes with pretty much every no-cost UNIX distribution. But that doesn't mean it's not extra software.
Sorry to split hairs, but let's at least be honest here.
> No guarantee of binary compatibility between
> versions of GTK?
Different patchlevel versions are guaranteed to be binary compatible.
1.2.8 is compatible with 1.2.10. 2.0.0 is compatible with 2.0.7.
An increased minor level most likely means binary incompatibility, but mostly source compatible. An increased major version means major changes and only partially source compatible.
But it's not a bad thing that GTK+ 2.0 breaks compatibility with 1.2. Not at all. If the API can be done better, then it should be done better.
As a project matures, compatibility will break less and less often. Look at KDE 1 and KDE 2: huge changes! But take a look at KDE 2 and KDE 3: although binary incompatible, they are mostly source compatible, because the 2.x API was good enough to be left mostly intact.
In closed source if somebody notices a bug, they either don't know how to fix it, so they ignore it or they post a notice to the bug database and it is ignored there (anybody claiming they are not ignored is challenged to find one that was really fixed due to the bug report rather than claimed "we know about that and are working on it"). Or the *do* know how to fix it, so they fix it.
I know how to fix bugs in C and C++ applications that use the Windows API. I have noticed a bug in Microsoft Outlook Express. So, I should be able to fix it right? Umm. Guess what? I can't. I don't have the source.
See the difference?
However it is true that "adding features" is different in closed source. It is possible to hire somebody to add a feature, and this is done all the time.
I'm a business and I need an additional feature in Microsoft Office. I have money and I'm willing to hire a development team to add this feature. I asked Microsoft and they said they'd think about it for the next release. I asked Microsoft's professional services and they said that they don't have access to the source either, and they dont' make customized versions of MS's mass-market products.
See the difference?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
We will outsmart OpenSource....
... (yes most of this also runs, if not exclusively, on windoze).
Read as:
We will outsmart, PHP, Perl, MySQL, OpenMosix, Apache, Audacity, Crystal Space, MiKTeX, SDL, Vega Strike, X-Tractor, FileZilla,
Or:
We will outsmart freedom and choice.
Somehow, I don't see it. Then again, a lot of money can buy a lot of laws....
moto411.com
Compare and Contrast
:)
See what I mean?
This soft of "we hate the competition" has been around since I started with computers. Only then it was Apple II vs IBM vs Commodore each camp poking fun at the others.
I'm sure buisnesses will continue to do what theve always done: and buy the products they think will work best for them.
I'm trying to picture some buisness caring about the signal to noise ratio of the linux community and I just can't at least not when we have the likes of RedHat SuSE and Mandrake providing a suit friendly place for them to deal with.
In which case the Europarliament will almost certainly have finished passing analogous laws by the time Palladium comes to market.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The irony of this statement is that Comdex has been cancelled.
Finding God in a Dog
As usual, Ballmer is either lying or deluded. I recently fielded a call for a large Wall Street company that is deploying IBM software for Linux. Considering the size of the lunch tabs picked by the IBM sales person, I can tell you this is not a small contract.
IBM sells complex, expensive products such as DB2 and WebSphere for Linux. These pieces of software are certainly not free (nor open-source) and they seem to sell very well.
Please don't start a flame war against the closed-source nature of DB2. That's not the point. The point is that Ballmer does not have a clue.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
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.
Open source developer != volunteer!
There are MANY open source developers who develop open source software because they like it AND because it's their job. Look at all the developers from Sun, Ximian, RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc! I'll name 3 of them: Keith Packard (SuSE), Blizzard (RedHat), Havoc Pennington (RedHat).
You are describing the home PC, and you are absolutely right: Linux is far away from mainstream here for all the reasons you stated.
The enterprise is another story. On the server end, Linux is already well placed and gaining installations. And why not? It's stable, secure, robust, and free from nasty licences and restrictions.
On the desktop, they're getting there too. Windows will always be a better desktop OS, but the *gap* between a Linux desktop and Windows is narrowing all the time. Add to this the advantages of customizability, licencing (again), and the fact that corporations tend to frown on users installing their own new "scanner or digital camera or video card" into their PCs, a Linux desktop looks like a great platform for a corporate desktop (after it matures a bit more).
And, of course, the enterprise is where the real money is made by Microsoft (not the home users) So, I disagree with your statement: Microsoft is (or should be) *plenty* concerned with the advancement of Linux.
Bottom line, I expect *many* large corporations will be MS-free within two years. At home, it will happen more gradually, but the increased penetration at work will slowly drive home installations, too.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
My message specifically addressed creating a propietary kernel. How exactly does that indicate I'm confusing XWindows and the kernel?
Yes what Apple is doing would work fine for Microsoft (though I don't see any reason they would choose X at all and not go with GDI).
So their future behavior (smart) is going to be different from their past behavior (stupid). That is unlikely, and we shouldn't buy it. Like a good magician, he's directing you to look over here (we'll be smarter) while he does some stuff over here (palladium, intense lobbying efforts, and much much more).
M$ plays for keeps, and they want ALL the marbles. Remember that.
No problem - I'm a hair-splitter myself.
Shall we both be content with agreeing there is no default install of Linux, whether headless server or anything else, that doesn't have the tail command in it? Whereas in the Windows world there is no install of Windows alone that does have a tail-equivalent in it?
Cheers,
Ian
Wrong. It'll compile, and will be interpretted as:
x>=1, 000, 000
In other words, three expressions, seperated by the comma operator. The rightmost expression is the ultimate compound value, so the entire expression evaluates to zero no matter what the value of x happens to be, and no matter whether the test is <= or >=. The code is SEVERELY broken.
Just a loose set of thoughts with regard to this article. I don't have time to arrange them into something more cohesive. I use the term Linux to generically apply to complete distros with a desktop environment:
;) )
The quote from Ballmer at the very end of the article may be a harbinger of things to come: software is not consistently profitable. The very fact that Ballmer considers it weird that IBM would tell a company to buy software from someone else indicates that the "playing field" is changing. Sure, IBM isn't at the top of the game anymore, but I think you may start to see more and more companies abandoning the software business for more profitable fields like embedded devices and other dedicated systems that we haven't yet dreamed of. The whole problem with computers right now is that people actually have to "interface" with them in non-intuitive ways. But that's a different topic...
In Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning there was Command Line", he says that it is the fate of software to become free. Commercial UNIX gave way to free UNIX, Microsoft Word now has a respectable challenger in OpenOffice.org, etc... Or at a deeper level (the concept level as opposed to the product level), GUIs have become so inexpensive compared to the original Xerox systems that some are free: XFree86 + GNOME or KDE. I believe his observations are correct. The OS market will continue to become less profitable if the "movers and shakers" aren't always looking for the next "great thing".
The only thing propping up Microsoft right now is the Office suite and to some extent Internet Explorer. To take this crutch down would only require the provision of a application that uses a totally new and better approach to achieving the same results. No one has done it yet. But again, I digress... (
My point is... that Ballmer's comment about "Added Value" above Linux should really be about finding the next "killer app" that Windows has and Linux does not. This ensures that more people who follow that path of least resistance will choose Windows every time.
These victories are short-lived however. As soon as a concept is out in the open, it's fate is to have reproductions and innovations built around it. Witness: Apple popularizes the GUI that Xerox couldn't move. Microsoft immediately responds with their first release of Windows. Mosaic begat Netscape who begat Internet Explorer... (at the concept level, not the business/profit level).
Look at the music industry. In 1994 the Spice Girls came on the scene and were hugely successful (opinions about their music aside). So what happened immediately after that? Knock offs. Tons of them. None with a chance of making it as big as the original, even if the original was not as good as the newer acts. To a certain extent, this happens in the GNU\Linux\Open Source world more than it should. But, undeniably, there are some ideas that just can't be improved on. So, what do we do? Look ahead and occasionally check the other runners next to you. When I say look ahead, I mean look for new approaches at the user level not the system level. These are real differences that the user can see, feel and experience. Of course, this is assuming that you are interested in moving Linux out to "Joe Average".
Microsoft can't outsmart "Linux" since there isn't any one model to take down without some heavy handed help from the governments of the world. At the moment, they aren't doing to well in that arena either... Linux will be around until something better comes along. That "something better" has to be completely different compared to Linux and provide features that Linux doesn't have. However, it should also still be free. That is where Microsoft will never be able to compete.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I remember seeing a chimp with Down's Syndrome: it walked fully upright like a human. This is one of the spookiest things I've ever seen, but Ballmer running around and shreking like a chimp comes a close second.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
His point was that if you put out software that is worth the cost for Linux, Linux users *WILL* buy it. You just happen to have to compete with the open-source developers, so in order to put out a product that Linux users will buy, you have to do a *DAMN GOOD* job.
Linux games are one example - John Carmack is a genius, hence his products tend to blow any open-source effort to compete away. Same for UT and any of the games Loki ported.
Your example of Oracle is another good example - Your company paid $60,000 for it BECAUSE IT WAS WORTH IT.
I think it's best to read what Ballmer says not as, "Linux users don't pay for software", but "Our software is such utter crap that it can't compete with the likes of Abiword and OpenOffice"
Visio for Linux might be nice though. Also, I haven't seen any presentation tools like PowerPoint for Linux that I've really liked. No point in porting Turd, though.
Ximian is a good example of why Ballmer is wrong - Their commercial offerings are Ximian Connector and their commercial version of Ximian Desktop comes with StarOffice, and they seem to be doing well.
(Note, Ximian should complement Connector with MSProxy/ISA Server support. Dante's MSProxy support is unsupported and way out of date, and doesn't work with ISAServer.)
No point in releasing Deceleration Server for Linux either, Squid blows it away. I'd buy Visio though.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
As an interested observer (I use OS X instead of Windows *or* Linux) this seems like good news. While many posts here were getting into religious flame-wars, I noticed this:
"Linux is a serious competitor,"
"We have to compete with free software, on value, but in a smart way."
"Linux isn't going to go away"
In just the first paragraph, we have the CEO of the worlds most powerful technology company acknowledging, for all the world to see, that Linux is a serious competitor that is here to stay!
Congratulations to the Linux community for doing what no private company has been able to do - if M$ 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
Invention is 99% perspiration. He delegates the inspiration to others.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
It's true that Linux wins on technology. However, it isn't technology that's going to win it for us.
... heck, think NeXT, think BeOS!
Think Betamax
What matters is ease-of-use by the computer-illerate-end-user who has a task to perform or, more realistically, just wants to play a game.
In the corporate world it's about being able to pass blame if something goes wrong. Management throwing blame downhill can make "choosing Linux" stick easier than dealing with the counter of "it's Microsoft's fault, you know how their trackrecord is."
Just generating the perception of "we've been on hold for 70 minutes trying to get through to someone who knows what they're doing" creates more illusion of 'doing something' than a Unix guru going "oh, look, it wasn't Linux afterall -- it was this hard drive that burned out because you didn't replace it when I told you to."
If I am ever going to see Microsoft code it is certainly not going to be because I have signed a contract with Microsoft. I'm certainly not going to sign any contract selling my soul to Microsoft.
Selling my soul to Microsoft might be the only way I could ever get to see their code. In that case I'm never going to see their code.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
What are they posting next hour?
"Bill Gates mixes whites and darks in washing machine -- turns socks blue!"
That would explain the reason why everything in XP has a blue tint to it.
Hey miguel,
Linux is just starting to make inroads in the enterprise and critical application markets, say it became useful in 2001. This is the area that has been dominated by Unix since 1986. So it took us "only" 16 years to duplicate the enterprise functionality of a Unix operating system.
Linux is only about 11 years old but your point is taken. Also you should note that a number of innovations in proprietary Unix especially in the area of memory management end up back in Linux in much shorter than a decade.
Sometimes copying is easier than innovating: but achieving total compatibility -which can not be ignored- is a massive task. Wine has been cloning the Win32 API, and it is one of the most ancient projects from the Linux community: it was there back in 1996, and we have still not managed to clone the entire Win32 API. Yes, copying certain things are easy, but achieving the compatibility is a completely different matter.
Duplicating functionality is not the same thing as creating exact duplicates of API functions. For example, it's one thing to create a standards compliant, fully functional web browser (i.e. Mozilla) and another to try to duplicate Internet Explorer's behavior and APIs feature for feature and bug for bug.
I rather see Microsoft stay on the innovation track, than go into a legal battle against Open Source projects.
I completely agree.
And I do not see anything wrong with having more than one operating system in our day to day environments: it promotes open standards, it promotes well written and well documented reliable solutions, and ultimately, it allows the consumer to choose a solution that is right for him.
Nothing is wrong with multiple OSes and in fact I run Linux and WinXP at home (although I could probably do with an upgrade on the Linux box once I find a free weekend).
"The whole point of GPL was to make it impossible to charge for software by flooding the market with free software"
Yep, you're right, you know nothing about the GPL or why the FSF was started. Also "no I am not about to find out" you apparently don't want to find out.
BTW If you don't like the GPL, write your own damm code. There's nothing saying you have to use GPLed code, it's your choice.
development.lombardi.com
I take it, like a Bone world rat creature, he is going to outwit us to death.
Linux, on the other hand, is fragmented by its own nature, and has no "central voice" to counter absurd MS FUD. For example, if IBM makes a statement about MS, what would the press do, but go to MS for a counter point and publish it. MS makes a statement about Linux, what does the press do? There is no single obvious place to go for the real story, so our voice is never heard, unless someone happens to stumble across Slashdot or another such site.
How about a central Linux Marketing/Advocacy Project, with a budget, and a few dedicated people on staff, to deal with MS FUD, and promote the real advantages of Linux and other open source initiatives; I'd toss in $100 a year to such an organization; if a few thousand fellow geeks did the same thing, it'd be funded enough to make a difference, and have the visibility needed.
Now, getting the Linux community to agree on a central voice might be an exercise in futility, but it would sure help stop the MS steamroller, and wake up the public a bit.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
You don't have to install linux on all the desktops. When the representative from Microsoft or the BSA comes around next week, just make sure they see and hear about your linux trial run on 10% of your desktops with openoffice and evolution!
:)
If you are backed into a corner, you need bargaining power. Even if it's not what your company needs, it's a powerful, low cost bluff, and your business associates should be able to understand that.
I suggest you call a meeting.
Oh, and do be sure and get feedback on your trial run anyway, even if it's just a ruse
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Same thing for the added features. Here I see paying somebody actually works, if you pay somebody to add a feature, it gets done.
I think the reason is that the knowledge that a feature could work involves less work than implementing the feature. That is not true of bug fixes, as it takes more effort to explain the bug and how to fix it than to fix it yourself, and saying "find and fix this" is usually noneffective because it usually means it cannot be fixed. Knowing it can be fixed requires almost all the knowledge needed to fix it, so by the time you know that paying somebody is cost-effective you can fix it yourself.
My company has been using a product on HP-UX for the past ten years to do real time tracking and interfacing with embedded systems on our our production lines all around the world. This is a mature, beautiful, reliable beast that we use with either Oracle on Solaris or DB2 on our 390's.
The policy of our company on using MS IIS and SQL Server is (and will continue to be) "not on anything business critical, and nothing outside of the intranet"
Now, the developer of our application has told us that in two years they are going to stop supporting their *NIX version and they are pushing everyone over to their new app, which is written entirely in VS .NET and requires Win2k with all the .NET server-side and client-side stuff, and hasn't even made it out of beta yet, since we spend half our time rebooting and troubleshooting the box they sent over to us.
When I asked "Why aren't we just saying to hell with their support (now very minimal - less than 60 hours per month), and keep going with what we know works?" the answer is ".NET is the future and it's what the developer is going with.
So it is perception and it is developers, and I am not looking forward to our first implementation of this stuff nex year, because I haven't seen anything yet to prove that it's better than our current workhorse.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
Sort of interesting, but not really relevant because the article only takes in to account server license shipments, which makes up only a fraction of actual Linux deployments.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Maybe true, but MinGW works quite well. MAME is compiled with MinGW. And it works just as well as GCC does on Linux.
...ever hear about Purify and BoundsChecker?
..but they do have some things going for them and Linux is not perfect.
I've used MinGW on two professional projects, and while I can say that I enjoy using it (mostly because of familiarity with gcc), it definitely requires one to go above-and-beyond because of the massive Visual Studio emphasis among Windows developers. I ended up having to learn quite a bit about Windows symbol mangling, calling conventions, and resource storage to do basic stuff like store dialog resources and build a library.
Neither are general-purpose debuggers.
Also GDB works on Windows just fine
Well, I certainly haven't had any success using it. If you have a working copy (might be in cygwin -- I use exclusively win32 native ports if I'm working in Windows, like mingw), I strongly suspect that there are some major limitations.
Very true, but how else are you going to get someone with a philosophy degree to program?
Ironically enough, I happen to have a philosophy degree, as does another close friend who's a skilled coder.
No guarantee of binary compatibility between version of GTK?
Not major release version changes, no. Same goes for Microsoft's C runtime if you're used to Windows or other libraries.
For the record, I am not a MSFT schill...
Good. I'm not either.
Oh, I agree. It's just that from the developer's point of view, the table is hugely tilted toward Linux, and seeing Balmer talking about how much Microsoft values and coddles programmers cracks me up.
Resorting to distorted "fact" sheets like this is just as bad as MSFT.
Please, if you have any major shortcomings Linux has from a developer's standpoint that MS's platform doesn't have, enlighten me.
Oh -- there is the recompile-in-place feature of VS's debugger/IDE that I've never tried -- Carmack was drooling over it, though. That's the only thing I can think of.
May we never see th
Obviously developing on the Microsoft platform is beyond your capability.
Ah? I've done two Win32 projects professionally. I think I'm reasonably qualified to make criticisms about its shortcomings as regard developers.
May we never see th
I think with proper dynamic loader setup you should have no trouble with an old libgtk+1.2 and a new libgtk+2 library around for binary compatibility. What then gets sticky is source level compatibility, though I think that's quite fixable too.
--Knots;
Anarchy$ dd if=/dev/random of=~/.signature bs=120 count=1
Carnage,
Re: the 16 vs. 11 year discrepency, Miguel is refering to the entire GNU project -- not just Linux. WRT: the Wine project, I remember that going all the way back to fall of '94. I think it started in '93ish...
Good thread, BTW.
posting as AC because I'm moderating this discussion...
Cheers,
--Maynard
Yes, you can do CreateProcess(), but because Windows doesn't have support for copy-on-write, it's massively expensive in memory and CPU time, and destroys the fork() programming model where you can spawn off copies of servers that can be done so elegantly in Linux. Instead, you're required to use threads. Now, there *are* a few tasks better done with threads, but generally, developers in Windows are forced to use threads for tasks that they really should be using processes for.
Also, while mingw does work (I use it whenever I'm in Windows), it has a number of issues.
First, there are bits of the headers that are always out of date -- I had to send in a couple of corrections while doing work with mingw. Granted, the mingw team fixed them immediately (thank you, open source!), but they're still forced into a situation of necessarily playing perpetual catch-up with Microsoft.
Second, the support for mingw with third party tools is less than good. You can cobble together a decent toolkit, but it takes work and a fair bit of knowledge of what you're doing. There's a resource compiler (and a free resource editor) that you can make work together with a fair bit of poking. You can compile libraries, after learning about Windows and mingw name mangling and calling convention issues. I could never get gdb working, though it's possible that someone else could. And snippits of source and third party tools do not tie in well with mingw.
This is not meant to be criticism of mingw -- I'm very impressed with their tool, but they're in something of the same position as the WINE folks -- they're deeply invading what Microsoft considers to be its own turf, and compatibility issues will come up unless they're on top of any changes like hawks.
May we never see th
I was and am serious. Thanks for the personal insult though - it adds much credibility to your comments.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
And yet, it doesn't seem like this is such an issue for the Linux world, since software is distributed in source, rather than binary, form.
I expect that package systems will become even simpler over the years...probably eventually simpler than InstallShield (which doesn't have the ability to get, say, dependencies).
May we never see th
A Google search on the phrase "boycott Palladium" returns no results. Not one. That's unbelievable.
We have a chance to defeat Palladium in the cradle if we, as consumers, simply refuse to upgrade to any Palladium chip. But we're not doing it. We're not even organizing an anti-Palladium movement. We're just sitting here smugly joking with each other about how much better we are than Microsoft.
Wake up, indeed.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Apple's move to OS X was in response to MS's move to the NT code base; both have an underlying unix-ish heritage (much more so for OS X). Did you ever notice how DOS gradually acquired more UNIX-like features as the years went by? Of course they did make that dumb mistake about forward and back slashes... In both cases, of course, there's a massive windowing system that's been hacked on top of the underlying "unix"; just like X itself. I suspect the next step will see MS working on a "CNT" (completely new technology) OS based on Plan-9 ...
Energy: time to change the picture.
You need to start learning to recognize Linux FUD for what it is... hogwash
I said I was qualified to comment on the state for developers. Every statement above I made is backed up by my experience, which is no less valid than your own. If you want 15 years of Win32 development to make a simple evaluation, sorry, can't do it.
In any event, if you feel otherwise, you're certainly more than free to post your own evaluation of the situation for others to critique. I'd be interested in something more than negative personal criticism, if you're up to it.
May we never see th
Quoth the article: For nine years, the company has designated users with particular skills--usually seen by how often they intervene helpfully in newsgroups--as "most valued professionals". Currently there are about 1,200 MVPs, half of whom are in the United States.
Wow, 1,200 ultra suckers, is that all? I was sure there were at least 5,000 microsoft trolls at Slashdot alone. Oh well, it just goes to show what a few loud mouths can do to a useful conversation. Has it really been nine years since Steven Barktoo? You gotta love the M$ community where advocating M$ profits is more valuable than code.
Seriously, there are no new dirty tricks here. It's the same old BS that's been used with the MSDN and what not. M$ has attempted to build a community around purchasing their software. Tools developed by those members are shared, but they are routinely broken by M$. If M$ were free, or even just open, a real community could exist. What's there instead, at it's best, is simply a loyal group of ever abused consumers. At it's worst, these folks take their frustrations out on other communities.
You can fool all the people some of the time and some people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. M$ will eventually run out of "developers". Is there realy anyone out there who develops for M$ platforms because they think it's the best platform? Most people who do write for M$ tell me that they "have" to know how to do it simply because of it's prevalance. That's not a situation that can last.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Obviously, Microsoft hasn't outsmarted hackers yet who continue to find security vulnerabilities in their products.
What makes them think they will outsmart Open Source developers? We are all people.
Every time you create a copy of your program with fork() you consume another large chunk of memory.
No, not really. You *do* need to allocate kernel data structures for a new process, but you have to do the same thing for a thread, and in Linux the two things are essentially the same, so there isn't a huge overhead there. As for fork() -- when you fork() you produce a new *process*, not a whole copy of the old process' memory. The contents of the program's memory are actually not copied. If the child process does nothing but read memory, no memory is ever copied -- it reuses the parent's memory (well...I lied a little. No memory in the *heap*, but that's the overwhelming majority of the space.). The only time the memory is actually copied is if you try writing to it.
So here are the scenerios you could have:
(1) Need to have children threads/processes alter memory. Then you need to make copies of the memory anyway. With threads, this is manual, and with processes automatic. (2) Do not need to have children threads/processes alter memory. Then processes are no more expensive than threads, and you avoid accidental race issues due to better separation of the two threads of execution.
May we never see th
Stallman: "And monkeys will fly out of my butt"
If Mr Edision thought a bit more he wouldn't have to sweat so much.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Dos adopted Unix features with DOS 2.0, when directory structures were added. Since then, Nothing.
Learn to read threads.
I was responding to smitty.
That day may be coming rapidly, but so far it is STILL possible to produce patentable ideas and put them out unfettered into the world- like academics used to do before academia became a profit center.
NOT YET! Slow down! Don't be talking 'GPL Patent' until it's really unavoidable! It may have escaped your attention but free distribution of ideas IS still possible, even though patents do exist.
This may be merely temporary, depending on just how much patent examiners expect the courts to do the work of checking to see if something's got prior art. If it's up to the courts, then everything will be patented, by companies who can afford to threaten legal battles against the true, ill-funded inventors- and that'll be real 'piracy', as in 'arrrr! give me that, no you can't have it!'
The GPL itself would not exist or have to exist were it not for copyright that was automatic. The equivalent in the patent sphere would be a legal admission that no possible idea can exist in the wild free for use- that everything was someone's property. And that's not happened yet!
Think a level deeper. Of the people you mentioned, who among them would EVER have a reason to 'upgrade', or would even notice if they 'upgraded' in name only and secretly kept running what they knew, for years and years?
That's the punch-line: Microsoft needs people to grow and become clever and program-savvy and use lots of new features, in order to sell them new software very often. The very argument you use to put down Linux is also the reason Microsoft's position is tenuous... almost nobody NEEDS to continually purchase new Microsoft software. They do so because they're begged to. It's like a favor. An expensive favor...
Their licensing for that stuff is viral, and the payload is several admissions with powerful legal implications- that you cannot use patents against Microsoft, and more dangerously, the admission that you have seen Microsoft code and ideas (some of which may be patented) and concede first that you've seen it and remembered it, and second that you don't really have any right to it. These admissions make any developer privy to Shared Source code guilty unless proved innocent of copyright infringement and/or patent infringement, and are a powerful weapon for use by the MS legal team.
Homer's gone off halfcocked (the lawyers will NOT be going 'look he stole our ifs and printfs') but the underlying point is as real as cancer and shouldn't be discounted. The lawyers will be going 'did you or did you not agree to this shared source license agreement? Here are records of you having worked with this code, your only legal avenue of doing so having been the Shared Source licensing agreement.' Kaching. End of game- and that developer remains tainted FOR LIFE!
Yes, it's that serious- as long as there are lawyers, and that agreement is legally sound. And note who is responsible for asserting that it is...
MS yelling 'copyright infringement' can be translated to mean 'shut this down!' and immediately raises issues of what the developer's rights and requirements are, on both sides.
On the one side, the developer under Shared Source does not have any right to any specific ideas- hence the yelling of 'infringement', MS could pick some patent or other and claim it's infringed. At that point, the developer is 'out of the pool': it's been proven that he or she is privy to Microsoft secrets but has no right to them, and the same tactic can work again and again. Unlike a normal person that developer's made admissions in the licensing agreement that they HAVE been aware of such secrets. For most people, it would be necessary to show that they were privy to the information.
On the GPL side it's simpler: anyone in that kind of a legal bind cannot both satisfy the other license and the GPL. If they can't fully satisfy the constraints of the other agreements and the GPL, they were never really legally releasing code under the GPL. It may look like GPLed code, and have the same licenses written on it, but if the guy can't legally release under the GPL and is releasing anyway, he's ILLEGALLY releasing under the GPL, with no rights to do so. Any code released under those conditions needs to be discarded- and the body of Free Software developers can't be held responsible for the acts of a criminal, beyond making voluntary efforts to discard the tainted code. This bears repeating- rather than instantly 'taint' the whole Free world, legally the impact is more likely to be like an oil spill- to be cleaned up as much as practical. Otherwise it's like 'the oil tanker crashed and oil spilled! Quick! Get rid of the tainted Atlantic Ocean!'
I am not a lawyer. I do think my points are valid, though. When legalisms are crazy but still applicable, that's not so much a sign that nonlawyers should defer to lawyers- it's more a sign saying that legalism is on thin ice. Any speculation that accidental mixture of SS and GPL (hmmmm, SS...) would cause instant catastrophic failure of the Free world, is damned thin ice. Law doesn't work that way- and even if it reduced to pedantic details of the SS license, the same pedantic reading of the GPL would show that the infringing developer was automatically disqualified from releasing under the GPL. Doesn't matter if they did release anyway- that would be the oil spill to be cleaned up, and you cannot hold an entire community responsible for the acts of one person who was in fact violating the primary rules of the community in their actions.
Palladium is in such a nebulous, unimplemented state that nobody's even been putting the words 'boycott Palladium' together yet. Hardly a surprise- where DO you go to buy a Palladium anyway? How do you boycott something you can't buy yet?
What you mean is, "Microsoft has already got a long-term plan". Big woop- that's their job, and that's served them well in the past. Now it's time to make their lives hell if they mean to implement this one. They'll wind up with 1/3 of their desired goals and like it. It's a time-honored technique, of aiming way high and then 'reluctantly settling' for what you would've been happy with anyway...
"Business users will never take open source seriously..."
You (and the people who modded you insightful) should open your eyes. You sound like a weatherman reporting clear skies while standing under an umbrella.
yes, slashdot moderation has long dictated the purchasing strategy of business users.
sic transit gloria mundi
Herb Sutter works at Microsoft? My heart just sunk a few notches. I kind of feel stupid not knowing that he works there.
Bobby Schmidt I don't think is a really "star" developer. He's high profile in the same way the Perens is.
Anders Hejlsberg was the chief architect of one of the worst languages Borland has ever signed on. Delphi wasn't even a good implementation. I knew people who worked at Borland who felt that way too. High up people. For the first 3-4 years that Delphi was around, it sucked ass. That isn't much to be proud of.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Flippant, yes, but serious. Regardless of who sits in the 800 lb. gorilla chair, the fact that they stabilize the market will be lost in the chorus of whining about the methods employed.
Your point about intellectual dishonesty is an interesting one. RMS is a self-described fanatic, and delivers regular jeremiads at anyone to the left of his position. The rest of the usual suspects seem ambivalent about the point, e.g. Perl, with the Artistic License or GPL deemed kosher, as you see fit.
Wired, IIRC, talked about business models that actually work, and held forth SleepyCat as a good example. You get the open source version for free and can pay them for a suitable license that meets particular requirements.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
That's ok. I certainly didn't mean to be rude to you as your post was intelligent. :)