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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."
Michael Tiemman (sp?),CTO of Red Hat spoke to our LUG last night. He said that Wall Street is starting to use Linux to run custom number crunching software and I think Oracle. Big computational farm sort of things.
Free and low-cost alternatives to Win32/Office like Red Hat's imroving desktop and OpenOffice.org are being looked at seriously now.
Linux may have gotten alot of hype and speculative investment in the 90's, but the current economy is where its price/performance potential becomes evident.
Not only is Ballmer scared, but Sun announced 4,400 layoffs today. The demand for commodity operating systems is kicking them in the pants, and their quality, but proprietary hardware seems less of a bargain as commodity hardware improves in price/performance.
FWIW, open source is sending some proprietary UNIX employees to the unemployment lines already. Next, it's Redmond's turn as the desktop improves.
> ``I don't know what you do [...] except
> to out-innovate the Linux community.''
Hmmm - usually M$ has the reputation to out-innovate competitors by
a) including the same features "for free" in the next release of Windows
b) buying the product/company.
Where Do You Want to Go Today?
How much of the development of Linux is being done by for-profit companies like RedHat or IBM? It seems like most of the new development is being done by people that are getting paid to do Linux development. I think this idea of thousands of developers working in their spare time to make Linux is overrated.
In which case makes the battle between Microsoft and Linux more of a battle of business models than some overhyped free vs not free battle. And I seriously question RedHat and other Linux company's business models. Pay alot of money to develop software, give it away for free, hope people are kind enough to buy the boxed version? I know they sell various support services too, but will that actually be enough to pay the rent? And if the margins are that good, why couldn't Microsoft eventually just adopt a similar business model?
Bigger companies like IBM and Sun may have a better chance with Linux since they have other revenue streams (hardware, services) that give them much bigger margin to blow money developing Linux. However, what happens when times get tight and departments get cut? Will they cut the non-revenue generating departments first?
Brian Ellenberger
Well, first of all, I`ll nitpick out that Linux is a kernel, not an OS, and that while it may contain some low-level innovations, it certainly doesn't innovate. In any case, I'd like to point to Liquid War as an example true innovation. In fact, this is probably the most unique game I've ever played, and it's GPLd. Most games are just variations upon simple themes, and the simple games are usually clones of games which are very old. However, Liquid War shows that innovation on a fundamental level is still possible, and can be created by the Free Software community.
true && more || less
i am starting a small business....privacy will be one of the top concerns of our clients.
i want an email server, a file server, a printer server, a web server, and a small database server....
can you give me one reason why the FUCK i would want to pay you...
-for the server software
-for the email server software
-and THEN - for every single person that wants to connect TO the server on TOP of the stuff that you already charged me for? And then want me to keep paying you every year?
good Lord - many small businesses don't want to keep paying your ass at every turn - our money is precious to us, because we don't have a lot, and so if we can save a buck or a few THOUSAND - we're NOT going to give it over to you when there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to do so.
AND... the lawyers tell me, like the medical folks are finding out - that if we are going to guarantee security and privacy AND be on the internet too - then you must think i'm wearing an ass-hat to go with software that hasn't fully told me
what data it collects
what data it sends back
what software it may or may not install
what software or data it may or may not watch
what format the files are in so that i can get at my data if i chance vendors later....
The reason that you are losing to Linux is because i get all of that for the supremely expensive cost of $0. TODAY.
If i don't want to be a linux geek, but still have the same kind of stability and software choice - i can hand Apple Computer $1000, and click my way to almost command-line free blissful servers.
And if you think that Palladium, Trusted Computing, and Licensing 6.0 are reasons TO RENT your software - you must be a gran mal ass choad.
Let me tell you what i DO want...
i want my privacy and i don't want to keep paying your ass, okay?
I don't keep paying the furniture guy, i don't keep paying the painter, and i don't keep paying the guy that i paid to run cable in my office.. so why the fuck do you think i should keep paying you after i've gotten what from you?
YOU ARE STUPID and YOU DON'T LISTEN TO US. And it won't be the DOJ or a bunch of lawyers that bring you down..
its your arrogance in thinking that i can't live without you...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Ballmer, in the article, says:
"We have told our sales force to really understand that this is kind of job one. 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.""
Awful nice of Steve to admit that it's true now.
My
Limekiller
It's kind of a shotgun effect. Sourceforge and freshmeat are perfect examples. At freshmeat you just need to filter on popularity to see what I mean. The well run projects that are tools community finds useful and stable will tend to be at the top. But you will typically have a choice among several project. You don't have to take the top one.
Microsoft can't do that in public. We've seen proof of that time and again. Their closed source model has gotten them in trouble time and again.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Let's see, 20,000 inboxes times about $6/seat is $120,000 -- versus -- free. Yeah, Exchange does more than just e-mail, but for that kind of cash in a cash-strapped educational institution, it's just insane. Add in the need to retrain some of my unix systems administrators or fire and rehire (not easy in a government institution) and it approaches an impossible scenario...
There was a study shown on Slashdot a few weeks back about the number of lines of code between Microsoft releases and Redhat Linux releases. The Linux code is growing almost exponentially (or let's say just really darned fast, for accuracy's sake) and the code for Microsoft is stunted. That's because there's no focus group to tell us to re-write the way something works and start from scratch. The longer code lives, the less bugs it will have, due to maturity.
There will come a time where Linux will be comprised of so much code that it would be impossible for any corporation, even Microsoft, to compete. Linux starts from a mature base and improves; Microsoft starts over in areas. Even though they're hideously tied to the DOS-days and such.
Sure, they're gonna have (mostly) functional drivers for the spiffy new hardware, but we get it, too, after a fashion. I just know this; desktop OS's increase in complexity, not decrease: at some point, no one will be able to start from scratch and start competing on the closed-source side, it's just too expensive...even if we're just measuring the price-per-line-of-code yardstick. Even with cool new programming environments.
Be afraid, sweaty-freak...be very afraid.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Unless I live in a different Canada than you, I would have to say that "integration" is not the hallmark of Canadian immigration policy. It never has been. We're not the melting pot, we're the mosaic. Remember highschool social studies?
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
This is a very shortsighted attitude. I'm working on a project for a small consulting firm that is developing software for a couple of big commercial conglomerates. We're doing almost all of our work on linux, with Windows and a few Macs around for testing from the user viewpoint. The free and open nature of linux means that we can get quick answers to questions (or read the source and figure it out ourselves). As a result, we can deliver much faster results than people working on proprietary systems, where they often can't get straight answers to critical questions.
With a closed, proprietary system, our clients are at the mercy of a single vendor. With linux (or the BSD clones), GNU, and other open source software, they aren't at the mercy of anyone.
But, of course, the DP departments in the big conglomerates are your typical bumbling bureaucracy who can't program their way out of a wet paper bag. So they hire a small team of hotshot linux hackers to do the job.
Computers will always need programming, for far longer than any of us will be alive. Most people will never be programmers, just like most people will never be mechanics or accountants or surgeons. There will be a lot of work for a long time, unless the economy goes totally flatline.
Having a quality OS and libraries that are open to study and modification is nothing but an advantage for everyone, both the programmers and the people who pay them to program.
Microsoft makes shoddy software, and hides the details from users and programmers so they can't fix problems. They survive solely because they still have a humongous marketing budget (and the power to bribe politicians and top management). They deserve to fail.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
-
China is a communist country. The government controls the majority of the chineese economy and can mandate standards and shared cost allocation. China may ban Microsoft products from all state run businesses and government functions, although I doubt they would interfere with sanctioned, entreprenual computing systems.
- China has unreliable relations with the United States. China needs control over its critical infrastructure, including its computing systems. A sudden change in relationships with the United States, e.g., an invasion of R.O.C. (Taiwan), could cut of imports, upgrades, and technical support from Microsoft. It is as prudent to mandate self-determination of operating systems as of electrical power.
- China can take a long term view. China is the Middle Kingdom, with thousands of years of continous civilization. China, unlike the United States, could decide to embark on a path and resist pressure until it pays off.
- China is large, really large. The factbook states China is 1,200,000,000 (1.2B) people with a GDP of over $5,000,000,000,000.00 ($5T). China is the only country that could easily decide to commit a million people to full time Linux development and support.
The nighmare senario for Micosoft is that China makes the Linux operating system and open source applications a national security priority. Think of the effects of this quadrant of the planning grid:China leverages support for open source to build tighter relationships with countries besides the U.S. Open source authors are invited guests at massive conferences in Beijing. X-windows is replaced in two years. ChinaLinux preconfigured desktops surpass Microsoft in terms of reliability, ease of support, and scalability. Attempts to foster opposition in China due to massive revenuse from 100,000 person export-only support center.
A good future.
Cheers,
Chasm
I'm concerned that there's a more subtle and devious plan at work here. In recent months, MS has made several veiled concessions about the open source software movement and about Linux's market share. "Linux is our biggest worry." "Open source is enemy #1". "We're almost competing with Linux as we should."
*Maybe* (paranoid speculation follows), the strategy is to give OSS/Linux/etc. just enough of the limelight to put those entities on a seemingly level playing field with MS, and THEN go after them like rabid dogs.
In other words, right now, MS is having trouble fighting an enemy that they can't easily put a face on for the average corporate suit. If they raise that awareness & give shape to that face just enough so that their "torn" customer base knows what they're talking about, then they can get more bang for their buck when they attack.
Maybe their thinking is "the best way to get people to keep/start using Microsoft, is to let them taste a little of what open source/Linux has to offer, and THEN show them the benefits of staying with MS. It's easier to get folks to hate the new kid in town if the new kid seems cool at first and THEN lets you down bigtime.
Of course, all the OSS/Linux community has to do is whatever we've been doing. Microsoft is on the offensive, and while they may have a bigger, stronger team...they're showing up at the totally wrong playing field.
It's amazing how you can ramble when you're exhausted.
Or perhaps they'll fight the war by shifting the battlefield from the too-open PC platform to a tightly locked down console - the XBox or the consoles that follow it. If they can get enough "average" users onto such a platform - where they can control what software is run - they won't have to worry about open source. Obviously this only applies to the client, but then if their client software won't communicate with your open source server what kind of market will there be for that server?
I think that's how Microsoft will really try to take over the net.
I don't understand why you guys keep pinning your hopes on China. China has a long history of ignoring IP rights. Why should the GPL be any different? Is the source code for Red Flag out yet? (Has anybody looked at it to see what it's doing while it's booting w/a totally blank screen? Installing a keystroke logger, maybe?)
They're already pirates on a grand scale, so what revenue would Microsoft be *losing* if they switch to Linux?
And despite all warning signs, the US government sucks up for the
communists. They believe that China will fully open up their markets
for American goods, but forget it. China wants to be self-sufficient.
That's why they build their own Linux version, their own CPUs, their
own motherboards etc. The communists doesn't see the west as a reliable
partner, and just as you stated... they want to be able to say fuck off
to the west if necessary.
I make a big distinction between the Chinese people and the communists.
(after all, the Chinese communist party just have 50 million members.
The Chinese people are in general very nice and hardworking people, but
the communist regime is a bunch of unreliable liars.
The DRM thing could be a problem too, but I really think it will be such a disaster that it will be completely rejected by consumers. The sticking point is not the basic erosion of fair use copying, but that it is going to be so broken in implementation that it will keep people from doing what they are supposed to be allowed. Average comsumers don't have a lot of patience for bogus technology that won't do what they want, and DRM is likely to screw them over and over. At least the single function DVD player will play the DVDs they rent and buy reliably, and a DRM enabled PC will fail to do this often enough to make them royally pissed off. Put that in your business model and smoke it!
I've seen more than a few companies that simply will not run Linux (or BSD, or Plan 9, or BeOS, or whatever). My wife's company is going to bankrupt itself because it *has* to get on the MS license subscription bandwagon. Which is fine. If MS can sell that bill of goods, then bully on them. But the people at my wife's firm think that they can't even run Linux. They don't even consider it. I don't know why that is.
If they need to run Exchange, then so be it. Does that mean their web server needs to be IIS? Not at all. They don't know that.
You're right: MS is competing with Linux. But there's a lot of room to move in the small server/edge network/whatever area; it's a huge playground, and they choices don't have to be mutually exclusive.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Software piracy is enemy number two.
The enemy isn't Linux as a compeditor but open source as a method of develuping software for free.
Just as software theft hurts the ability to sell software open source makes it difficult to make commertal software available.
People are not willing to buy what they can have for free.
What makes open source a greater enemy than piracy is simple.
Piracy is theft: Somebodys hard work is used with out paying for it. This is moraly, ethicly and legally wrong. The software is not free but taken as much so as one who steals from the store.
Open sorce is a free gift given in good faith to be used by anyone who will have it.
A way to prove your skill. Co branding may be done eventually. "Download Kelloggs Linux from our website or get a CD free with Kellogs brand cereals".
Oh I see your using Pepsi Office.
AOL gives away millions of CDs to keep the AOL name in our faces. Coke, Pepsi and other companys do put a great deal of effort into the same. Free software keeps odd names in our minds all the time. xmms, ogg, gimp all household names in the Linux world.
Plus the job potental for a graduated OS develuper improves with the success of his software.
Transmeta got lucky Linus didn't want to be a consultent a strong posability for populare OS develupers.
Software has become like air. You can buy it or you can get it for free.
Even if it's better quality when you buy it you'll only do it when the free stuff won't take you where you want to go.
(Under water or some new FPS game)
Microsoft makes it's money making the kind of software anyone can make. In the future commertal software will do things that take years of R and D to make possable. Stuff thats not going to come from a team of hobbyests.
Microsoft dosen't make that kind of software. Not yet anyway.
But excluding cutting edge games the mass market dosen't buy such software. They want stuff thats relitively easy to make.
Microsoft is facing the fact that the alternitive to software theft isn't buying software but downloading open sorce.
I don't actually exist.
Computers will always need programming
Clocks will always need winding.
Sewing machines will always need treddling.
Locomotives will always need coal-tenders.
At some point in the future, we will have the canonical set of computing applications that have been meticulously audited. At that point, they will all be Open Source because economics dictates that in the long run firms tend to make zero economic profit. The source will be open, but the point will be moot. Virtually nobody will find a reason to mod. Programming will be primarily the undertaking of postgraduates, who will produce truly novel applications about as often as difficult proofs like Fermat's are proved. Undergraduates will learn about the basic algorithms and study the canon source much as engineers now learn about circuits such as the superheterodyne radio circuit.
Now, although we are in an economic downturn, I don't think we are quite at this level yet. The current reduced need for programmers may be part of the process I'm describing, but it's in the early phases. However, I dare say Mommas don't let your babies grow up to be coders because if they do, there may not be any fences left to ride by the time they hit the job market.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This has been up for a little while at OSNews, but I think it's really funny that this new Unix Code Migration Guide suddenly appears at roughly the same time Bloomberg runs an article in which Steve Ballmer says, "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."
I guess they're doing their best to make sure that that's "untrue."
Yep.. Indeed, everyone keeps saying the XBox is a test for Palladium. I think perhaps they are correct. In fact, all evidence supports this rationalization. MS has patents in the works for their DRM operating system. Intel's working on the hardware, and AMD is playing follow the leader.
That's precicely why I'm scared; once all new computers are hardware secure*, open source will have to relegate itself to older platforms (or ones that have no hope to run software designed to be run on a secure platform). It's a sad state of affairs, and a future I think could come about.
*As the XBox has illustrated, hardware security is a laughable--unless one is willing to take extreme (and expensive) measures. Anything short of strapping a small block of C4 on the motherboard, and rigging it such that any attempt to circumvent the hardware causes it to blow the thing to hell, will fail. Hardware will be cracked; it's a function of how badly it needs to be done, and how many people are working on it. Though, in all practicality, draconian legislation like the DMCA will criminalize anyone attempting to distribute that knowledge. Freenet may be our savior after all.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Eventually someone very visable is going to point out that the OSS community is a giant, loose-knit volunteer organization, among the largest in history.
It won't be this year, next year, or the year after that, but politicians around the world have already noticed the movement.
That's where I think the 'Then you win.' comes in. Someone makes a speech that encapsules Microsoft's position in two or three easily understood sentances, that sends public opinion through the floor.
I am a science fantasy fan
Jeez... are you serious? Come on, Unix is one of the more important platforms for research, if not the most important. It is flexible, it is reliable, most of the scientific community is familiar with it. And these days it is also free!
Just talking about Linux I could point you to Berlin, some guys with rather interesting ideas for building user interfaces. Or the Beowulf Project, for massive distributed computing. Or RTLinux (and KURT), for full featured real-time operating systems. How about ReiserFS, that takes database-like balanced trees to the filesystem level. Or SELinux, a research prototype of a high-security operating system.
And the list goes on and on (forgive me for not looking up links, go Google for these ones): SPIN (a dynamically extensible operating system written in Modula-3, runs on Linux), all the research stuff at Mosix (including distributed shared memory, grid management, network RAM and more), the Hello Project (an operating system in Standard ML atop Linux), all the emulation stuff which hardly needs to be introduced, and all the kernel work for supporting different processor architectures.
Also note BDS's Kame Project, an advanced implementation of IPV6 and IPSec; the evolutionary scheduler for Linux; the networking kernel stuff, including the QoS work; OpenBIOS; the User-mode Linux kernel. Look up also the "C10K problem" for an interesting paper on server performance, (and while you're on that, khttpd and TUX kernel webservers).
Unix gave you the Internet, for root's sake. How much more "innovative" does it needs to get?
I saw this quote from someone working for the state of Utah and found it rather interesting (not surprising of course) "We buy Microsoft products, and we have this sort of love-hate relationship with them like everyone else, I suppose," said Phillip Windley, chief information officer for the State of Utah. "Last year, they forced us to conduct an audit, which was very painful. And it turns out that the bottom line was that we have overbought. They didn't offer to refund any of those overbought licenses. But if we had underbought, they certainly would have required us to pay more money, I trust."
But they wont do this; the Chinese Government will understand that by obeying the GPL and releasing the source the American economy can be radically altered, if not disrupted as everyone switches over to "Free Chinux".
This will be nothing short of a revolution.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
I beg to differ. People don't contribute to Open Source. Only the minority do.
One thing that is often forgotten here on Slashdot is that majority of people do not care about 80% of the freedom that the GPL gives you. As far as they are concerned, a product is "free" if
Thats it. The whole idea of being able to view, edit, update, add, fork off and release may be great for those that want to do that.
But bare in mind that the average Joe considers Internet Explorer to be just as "free" as Linux because of the two points above.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
This is going to hurt a little for all of us that make our living off of software, particularly system software, but:
.NET important? Hint: it differentiates the MS Windows platform from open source OSes. MS understands very clearly that developers write software, sofware dictates platform, platform determines hardware infrastructure and therefore they are gunning for the only real points of control. First, software developers then business owners. If the business owner demands .NET, the developers develop for it. If the developers develop .NET software, business owners will buy it.
.NET or the .NET tools.
* The OS is a commodity now. It should be priced accordingly.
* Networking software is a commodity and should be priced accordingly.
* The relational database is a commodity now. It should be priced accordingly.
* Basic productivity applications are a commodity, and should be priced accordingly.
Why do you think MS is moving into the enterprise software market by purchasing Great Plains (Accounting/ERP) and developing a CRM package? Why is
MS's lone hope is that their "bookend" strategy of generating end user demand and developer affinity will keep the market from seeing that there's nothing that you CAN do with Windows that you CANNOT do with another less expensive OS/development tool/platform.
I think MS will loose long term: the enterprise software market is very, very specialized and therefore there are smaller segments. There are no "universal" markets like desktop and server OSes that everyone needs. Interoperability is happens fine without
Can't wait for the market to sort it out.
$G
-- $G
Most popular unix apps:
- Mplayer (playing windows media files)
- SAMBA (comunicating with Windows machines)
- Apache server (serving http documents to 98% of IE users + the rest)
- OpenOffice reading and saving MS Word/Excel compatible files
- GICU or GAIM: comunicating with Windows IMgrs.
- WineX: playing Windows games
- Mozilla 1: at last being able to see the web IE users see it.
We may not like it, but the most popular unix applications are the ones that "are suited to fulfilling a set of needs" of which is having on Unix what we had under Windows.
I mean, ok you can do other stuff that does not involve Windows compatibility, but why then are these the most popular applications. Take away those apps, and our Linux dies in a month (my bet).
unfinished: (adj.)