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Ballmer Sees Free Software as Enemy No. 1
geekinexile writes "Bloomberg is running this Microsoft vs. Linux article as a top story on the Bloomberg system. Not so notable for what it says about Linux, but rather for the fact that the financial community is starting to actually get open source."
If someone was willing to volunteer their work to replace the product that I made for a living, I would be scared too.
To a company that sells software for a living, how can free software not be enemy #1?
First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.
-Mohandas Gandhi
We have told our sales force to really understand that this is kind of job one, Ballmer, 46, said in an interview last week. People are saying by and large, It might be easier for me to move my Unix apps to Linux than to Windows, although we're pretty close to making that untrue.
Lol, what apps are easier from Unix to Windows? Viruses? that is about it.
I've switched all my companies servers to Linux and Solaris. I am slowly bringing linux on board at my full time job. When the shoe fits, wear it. Unfortunately for MS their shoe is a size too small.
Of course the financial community is starting to "get" open source software. It makes perfect sense that a group of people who are experts in money would opt for a system that is just as good, at a fraction of the cost. These people know money - and financially, it just makes sense for them to go open source for at least some of their applications.
Having worked in the financial industry, I'm willing to agree.
They're afraid of software without a final source. Yes, there are the free software developers, but they understand that linux is made by hackers.
Red Hat et al. is actually making inroads in this, because they can be a "final source".
But until the huge amount of software that an average bank uses that is seen as important for their job is available on another platform, then linux will be on the sidelines.
Dan
If Microsoft can do that, more profit to them. If they can provide the products people want and can afford, then they have nothing to worry about.
The problem is that they are a monolithic company. They have an official policy, some one decides to run a project, and throws programmers at it. They can make large scale (if not reliable) software quickly because they can afford to pay hundreds of programmers.
What they can't emulate is the ideas that come from a grass-roots community. If any one person has an idea, they can start to work on it. They have a huge body of software to research and re-use code from, and if they can demonstrate something that other people find useful, they can quickly gather programmers to the project.
Because it starts small, it may take longer to finish. But because it starts small, hundreds of ideas can be quickly tested, with the best being developed and improved by the community.
Haw can one company out-innovate that?
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
No it's not. The jump in logic may not be obvious, but it is valid. This is essentially the way that India's independence from Britain came about, by passive resistance. When the British people saw all the horrible things that were being done to non-violent Indians, support for continued colonizations quickly dwindled. So, after the British fought, the Indians won.
It works here to - as soon as Microsoft starts fighting Linux, guess what gets free advertising? Even more, anyone in the business community can smell blood when they see one company getting so worked up over a competitor. If Linux wasn't the real deal, Microsoft wouldn't have to worry about it. So essentially, Microsoft fights Linux, Linux wins (in the sense that it gains larger name recognition, and hopefully, larger deployment).
Matt
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
While I agree with your post the same could be said of linux, linux very rarely 'innovates' (i'm talking about general Unix software now) other than you know that the software will likely be secure and stable. I mean, really, what was the last 'innovation' that occured in the *nix /world? Wow, we finally got journalling databases, and we are finally starting to get user-friendly UI enviroments. Whopee. Not the most technical of people so maybe the linux kernel does do some wonderfully modern stuff but to me it doesn't look like much.
.Net which is basically a suped-up version of Java to replace MS's previous failed java-usurper ActiveX. =).
Of all the modern OS's I feel the *nix world copies the most and does the least innovation. Think of all that could be done with kde/gnome - but instead they became win98 clones until just recently. Not that *nix software is bad it just being a wee bit hypocritical.
BTW, you missed
You have to realize that Bloomberg's specialty is not quality journalism, the WSJ beats them hands down, and they probably all know that. What make Mike a billionare, is that his service provides quantity journalism. That story was probably one of 500 published on Microsoft today. Not all of them were written by Bloomberg's staff, but quite a few were, and they do this for almost every company out there. This isn't an information service for acidemics, it provides near instantanous information for large investors who might just trade a million or more shares on the info provided.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Some of the business people did yell - "do you really see non-technical people using this 'Internet'?" and when we slid Mosaic to a few people "Do you really see business people using this 'World Web' thing?" . Yes, yes I do. "That just shows what you don't know about business." I'll get back to you on that one, ok?
Everyone had Unix desktops (well, most). Sendmail for 6,000 machines run mostly by, er, me, with end admins actually tossing in the binaries and one of 4 config files that ran the whole thing. SMTP got mail from London to Toyko, desktop to desktop, in under 2 seconds.
Did we live on Open Source? Well, the infrastructure did.
Trouble ticket systems took 2 years to be selected and rolled out.
Our group compiled "req" in a day and used that while we waited for Remedy.
Monitoring systems were selected for THOUSANDS per machine. /me looks at ethernet on the NeXT and Sparc 2 "no, hubs and routers, that sort of thing - just pony up the money for each box and we'll monitor it").
We put up CMU SNMP (would now use Net-SNMP) and got better results, despite management ("see, now, snmp is for Network devices"
Most importantly most trading system software is not store bought. Sure, on windows, they use some rapid development stuff. folks I know use a lot of Java, but it's a LOT of custom software.
The Unix problem was that X and Motif were so miserable to develop for. It was like punishment for choosing Unix. My hat is off to the KDE and GNOME folks for picking up the ball that the X Consortium dropped. Mandate application look and feel. You must quit apps through FILE -> Quit. That beats the random ways that you quite in Wordperfect or XV or Lotus or XTerm or whatever.
The financial world will go to where better app development and better support are. That's been MS for a while, I hate to say. GNOME & KDE may save Unix.
Ummm, I hate to shatter your world-view or anything, but Linux was created because Minix was not able to do the job (or, more accurately, Linus was not able to do any job with Minix, but it's the same difference). The creation of Linux had nothing (or "very, very little") to do with the existence of Windows. Put another way, the two would still have been created in absence of the other; their creations were orthogonal to one another.
Call me crazy, but I just don't know why Linux and Windows always have to compete for the same space. Sure, there's a little overlap, but generally the two (inter)operate separately and nicely. Right tool for the job... choice is good, eh?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I've worked with plenty of H1Bs, and some are good, some are bad. But that doesn't matter. Most management sees employees as replaceable parts, no difference from one to the next. They literally don't know how to measure the worth of an employee other than useless buzzwords or seniority. Thus when they see an H1B with the right buzzwords but at half the cost of a citizen, they salivate at saving money. The predictable result is that more H1Bs are hired, and since no attempt has been made to hire only the good ones, a lot of crap H1Bs are hired.
Thus the resentment by actual citizens trying to get the same job. Whether you fit the crap lable or not has nothing to do with complaints about H1Bs. You are tarnished by the management incompetency brush.
Infuriate left and right
Win2k/XP is a rather nice Desktop OS. Its come a long way, finally stable, good features, and lots of applications and games. (Ya viruses too)
Truely, I dont think linux has a chance on the desktop. Hardware support isn't there, Application are not isn't there (Loki is gone). I know everyone is working thier ass off to make it, but until the average joe will want to drop Windows boxes for a Linux box, linux will be mostly a server os. (I'm not counting the slashdot crowd, most of us dual boot, and/or have a dedicated linux/bsd server.)
Servers are another questions, Unix is the only way I run my shops. After running DNS/SMTP/HTTP on unix and windows, I can tell from experience, a unix type os is the only choice. (We run Solaris) But hey m$ wins again, seems 1/3rd of all unix admin programs run only on windows or if they use a web gui, only IE is supported. (sigh/disgust)
-
Do you GLTron ?
There's one aspect of Open Source that Ballmer and his friends don't get yet. He talks about trying to adopt the open-source ideas to benefit Microsoft. That dooms him to failure right there. People don't contribute to open-source software to benefit someone else. They contribute to benefit themselves. They fix bugs and add features because they need that done. And the contribute it back because they've already benefited from previous contributions from other people. It's all aimed at the benefit of the customer/user. When anyone, whether they be Microsoft or Sun or whoever, sets up a similar system aimed to benefit someone other than the people actually doing the work, those people don't buy in and the whole thing kind of shambles off into oblivion.
If Ballmer wants to adopt open-source ideas, the first one is going to have to be "How can our users add to and change Windows to benefit themselves?". As long as "How can users add to Windows to benefit Microsoft?" takes priority, it'll fail.
Let's inform him on some of the "innovating" that Microsoft has done in the past ... shall we?
I'm not someone to stand up for Microsoft, but this comparison _really_ is too easy.
What Unix users tend to forget is that Microsoft actually did some things right in Windows that Unix (or rather, the X Windows toolkits) to this date doesn't do right consistently. Take cut&paste. It's a basic feature, but the sheer scope of deviation among toolkits is just revolting. Tabbing between fields, same story.
As a matter of fact, the thing that I hold against Microsoft is precisely _not_ borrowing successful concepts from other companies. My favorite: Apple for years had a highly successful magazine for Apple Developers, called (wait for it!)... "develop". If a developer asked "develop" a question illustrated by an example, it would be answered with regards to the technology, but equally important, UI goofs would be pointed out.
If you look at MSDN, you will invariably see UI questions answered with "sure, you can do that, here's the code". No matter how counterintuitive or outright stupid the proposed UI is.
Microsoft sucks at trying to sway developers to pay attention to the looks of the UI (and, matter of fact, the WIN32 API doesn't make it particularly easy to do screen layout right), but much of the groundwork for UI behavior is done right, and screwing it up takes a conscious effort. A shocking innovation? I don't think so. Done better than the average Unix tool? You betcha.
Of course, Apple has much to answer for after they set the Dung Standard for user interfaces with their glitzy but totally unusable quicktime player.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
Know why? Because open source never has been, isn't, and never will be in competition with Microsoft. Ask Linus - he doesn't give a rats ass what Redmond or the world thinks about Linux. He just wants to make a good product, which is the crux of the issue.
Open source is not a business. It's not an establishment. It's only a set of ideals that are suited to fulfilling a set of needs. For example, people who use open source software have a need for inexpensive, dependable, stable, secure operating systems. As a result, several such operating systems have been produced from open source development efforts. Microsoft does not, cannot, and will never fulfill those needs. Therefore, open source software and ideals will always thrive, just as they have for several decades now. (This nonsense about making software proprietary is still a relatively new one in the computer industry... and it's showing that it will soon fail).
We're not in competition with Microsoft. We can just sit back, laugh, write good code, and use the execellent software we've created to complete our tasks and solve our problems. Meanwhile, they'll run around like mad, trying to compete with an entity that cannot be competed with, spending billions in the process while we go by without burning a single cent! Sure, some people use open source software to compete with Microsoft (RedHat, IBM, et al). But in the end, we are not a business and the fools at Microsoft don't know how to deal with it. Soon, they'll go the way of the dodo and that will be that.
Microsoft will fail because they cannot identify needs and fulfill them. All this time, they'll be busy spinning marketing campaigns, filling magazines with FUD... when they could have been developing quality, open code. I suppose the customer is their last priority. This is a business doomed to fail.
Why bother.
The idea of M$ actually wanting to compete on a level playing field is laughable.
They don't want to compete with Free Software. They want to illegalize Free Software, and force any would be Free Software developers to release their code into the public domain or under a BSD-like license: so that M$ can take all of their ideas, embrace them, extend them in their own products, and then give nothing back to the community.
Basically, if it were up to M$, what's your's would be their's and what's their's would be their's too.
Btw, for those of you blabbing about the Free Software community not doing any innovating, that's bull. Let's just take WM's for the moment.
PWM -- any proprietary window manager out there that can adequately handle tabbed windowing, a vastly superior system?
WindowMaker -- better than Win9x's UI or that of OSX, though WindowMaker and OSX share the same heritage, NeXT. Sure, WindowMaker was based off of the OpenStep standard, but it was an *open* standard. Can't blame the Free Software community for keeping something alive in a viable form when its own company had abandoned it.
Those of you saying that KDE and GNOME are exactly like Windows are wrong; its similar to Windows to make transition easier for Windows users. However, KDE and GNOME each have their own unique features which distinguish them from Windows.
Xfce is an excellent Free Software implementation of CDE; original? no, but excellent, yes.
Alot of you people saying that Linux WM's and Desktop Environments are just Windows clones need to actually use these things instead of just looking at the screenshots from themes.org. They offer many useful features which aren't found in Windows or Mac. There are also areas where Windows and Mac are better. Mac gets points for their universal file menu (any hope of them allowing us to make it hide-away?). Windows gets points for allowing you to make your desktop background a web-page, and for allowing you to add "docks" to the sides of it with your choice of applications/folders on them. WM's in Linux like WindowMaker get points for their elegant look and feel, simplicity (dock); PWM gets points for its excellent tabbed-windowing feature; Xfce gets points for being a nice desktop environment.
Check out my website for some of my suggestions on what would make an ideal WM.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Most open source software is indeed completely lacking in innovation.
However, you appear to think that CEOs actually think about software...
"I mean, really, what was the last 'innovation' that occured in the *nix /world?"
zope, postgresql, jabber, rsync, http, email, ftp, tcp/ip, DNS, distributed file systems etc. are all innovations that occured in the *nix world. I just stopped there but there are tons more. Just about every single piece of technology that you use every day come out of the unix world.
War is necrophilia.
Most open source software is indeed completely lacking in innovation.
Yea, but "innovation" in Windows is simply switching around a few menu items here and there, integrating freeware, and selling it for a premium. How is that innovative? I think Ballmer throws that word around way too much. Microsoft hasn't done anything truely "innovative" in a long time. Ballmer has some nerve calling OSS "cloned" software when Windows has cloned features from many other OS's.
Microsoft will never win against Linux unless they drastically change their licensing model. Currently, a copy of Windows 2000 Professional costs AUD 685.00 here in Australia. Compare this to their server products: Windows 2000 Server costs AUD 2184.00 and Advanced Server costs a stunning AUD 7900.00. The difference in cost between the workstation and server products is an order of magnitude, but the install CDs are virtually identical except for a few marker files. They even share service packs. It's not like the Server editions have email or database functionality thrown in for free, they just costs more and have different logos.
Believe it or not, most PHBs actually believe they are getting more when they are buying Windows 2000 Server, and that's how Microsoft likes it. To be fair, it's not just Microsoft doing this kind of thing: Have any of you noticed how SMP servers always cost at least a thousand dollars more than single CPU servers or workstations? Are one extra CPU socket and a slightly different North Bridge chip a thousand dollars worth of extra hardware? I think not. Dual CPU machines are largely sold as servers, and most large OEMs have worked out that they can charge more money for server hardware, even if it is almost exactly the same as their workstation products.
Linux, and open source in general, challenges such marketing hype. There is no workstation Linux or server Linux. Any home user or small business can set up a mail or database server without having to fork over five or six digits sums for software that isn't really all that special.
Small to medium business is the largest target market out there. A small business can invest $5,000 in a Microsoft software/ Intel hardware solution, and $5,000 in consulting, and get a solution that will work. The consulting market price is low due to competition. The system will run, and there are many people that can provide this service.
Linux.. I can get the Intel hardware cheap, and the OS out of a book, or free. Not for the novice. I have to find someone who really knows what they are doing to get the apps set up and running. This takes time, and the cost can go through the roof.
Don't confuse inexpensive aquisition costs with inexpensive solutions. Until the mom and pop shops of the world can get accounting systems and small business software up and running inexpensively and easily, Microsoft will be around and making money.
They cant get into their heads that many of the people looking at linux doesnt do it because of linux superiority. Microsoft has done a great job of alienating their own customers with high prices and shoddy quality. Not to mention how they have made a clear mark that anyone working together with them get a stab in the back.
If they had cared anything about their customers they wouldnt be in this situation.
All their talk about "fighting linux" is just BS. How big part of the market has linux? I think there are enough space to cater both but MS seems to think that ANY competition is dangerous.
Why do they have such little faith in their own ability to compete on fair grounds? It feels liek they are grasping for straws. Maybe times arent so easy when there arent many companies to steal ideas from any longer. Any smart person with a wild new idea for a killer app just think Netscape and then puts it in a drawer until MS gets under control.
HTTP/1.1 400
We'll do what we've traditionally done: get paid to write software. I'd say about 80% of software is by it's nature not amenable to being widely distributed. For example, a point-of-sale system tied tightly into the pump-control, tank-monitoring and other hardware of a truckstop. Half a million or so lines of code, all told, and all of it so specific to one company's way of doing business that there's only a handful of other people who could use it without major modifications and customization. For all that, though, it's so critical to keeping the company running that abandoning it in favor of more generic solutions would be corporate suicide. It would simply cost too much in lost opportunities to have to wait 5 years for someone else to implement an idea, not to mention the costs of customizing it to match the way the company works (or alternatively changing the way the company works, but that's letting the tail wag the dog).
In that kind of situation, open-source is infrastructure. It's the generic code that handles the routine jobs and the well-known tasks so the programmers can concentrate on the critical parts that aren't generic.
Lets have a look at the facts besides Steves paranoia fud. Linux not really is the enemy, Microsoft or at least the twist the company did since Steve took over is it. Companies never really considered to switch to Unix until Microsoft almost blackmailed them with their new subscription program. I think the critical point will be around 2004 when the public support for win2k runs out. Most companies never really considered an alternative, many of them were happy to go the windows route (well the suites were, buy Microsoft dont have any issues in the management), but things have changed with the new licensing scheme. There is an alternative, a good community also is there, you can buy support if needed and it works and doesnt have all the licensing issues connected to Windows.
The next stupidity out of Redmont now comes with Palladium and TCPA, do you really want to trust a mission critical system to an operating system where somebody might nail unasked an update onto. Do you really want to develop for a system where you in the long term might have to pay an annual tax to keep a signing key alive and do you really want to have somebody else decide if your program is allowed to run anymore or not... This is simply personal computing without personal computing. I think Microsoft and all the others will fall flat on their faces in the long term with this. And at that time, non TCPA implementing systems will be good enough so that you can push them onto the average joe.
Sorry, but the people of every nation are very responsible for their own government. It's their responsibility and they get exactly what they put into the government process. Which, apparently, in the case of most places, like China, Irag, Iran, etc., is damn near nothing. It's GIGO and NINO. (Nothing in, nothing out). :{(||