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META Predicts Linux Software From Microsoft in 2004
trandles writes "According to this story at NYTimes (FRYYY), META Group is reporting that Microsoft will begin selling Linux software in 2004. It also goes on to report that a META Group study comes to the same conclusion as the earlier (MS-funded) IDC study that Linux has a higher TCO than MS solutions for some applications." Remember, this is speculation on the part of META, and has to do with back-end software, not Office. (But if Microsoft wanted to, they could become the world's biggest producer of Linux software.)
All they need to do is create a free (as in beer) X-semi-compatible, but faster GUI. Then release Word for it.
Embrace, extend, control. After a while, everyone will write software for Microsoft X# or X++ or X-Windows(tm) or whatever they call it, and MS will call the shots.
Microsoft is already planning to keep Office 11 on Windows 2000 and the XP platform only. It may make sense for them to actually market MS Office 2000 for Linux. After all, they make a helluva lota money from their Office suite. It's a product, it's an MS product and it's widely accepted. Ofcourse, that MAY encourage more users to jump to Linux, but atleast they will be generating revenues from the Office suite sales. The other questions is - will Linux geeks touch Office for Linux ? The point here is - if you are paying for Star Office, why not pay for MS Office, especially if it runs on Linux ?
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I think it is rather obvious. As they must by 2004 have realized, that they cannot kill Linux as an OS - they will just have to start making money with it - by SELLING their products ported and tailored to run on it. It is just so easy to actively forget, that Microsoft is much more than just the operating system - they have multiple products that could actually benefit many - even (and especially) if people want to keep running Linux. I could easily name some Microsoft products, which I would like to see running on Linux - ones that would enable myself to stop running two operating systems at work, for example.
Microsoft already produces a version of Office for a BSD-like operating system - MacOS X - so the skills are clearly there. Explorer and a few other products are produced through their "Macintosh business unit" which has a supposedly healthy relationship with the rest of MSFT.
Actually, if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense for MSFT to have a "Linux business unit". Just like MSFT likes to keep Apple on a leash to provide them with cutting-edge ideas on user interface and applications, they could do the same with Linux in regards to security and server software.
Xenix is a 16-bit unix. It was written for the 286. :-)
:)
:), but its certainly not under open and it's probably under their standard EULA.
Well, I don't mean release the last version they had in the boiler room in Redmond HQ, holding the door closed
They already did release Office for BSD i.e. Mac OS X.
Good point
Well, if they wanted to release a new *nix variant, all they would have to do is go with a BSD system, like MacOS has done. Maybe even create their own windowing system like Apple. The BSD license will leave them free to do whatever they wish, to make a commercial BSD flavor without any IP/patent problems.
why run from Vincenzo?
Admittedly, if Microsoft thought that OpenOffice or any other office suite on Linux or other OSes represented serious competition to Microsoft Office, all they would have to do is port Office to Linux and they would own the office suite market, but at the expense of their OS monopoly. The only reason Office for Macintosh exists is to keep the DOJ, the FTC, and the courts off their back.
My journal has hot
Windows Solitaire was written by the well-noted eccentric Wes Cherry when he was an intern at MS in the 80s. He wrote it while goofing off one day, a manager spotted it, and said "we've got to put this thing in Windows!"
This is refreshing - I've been saying this for a while now. I'll even bet MS has Office running on Linux in a lab somewhere in their unbelievably-secret-R&D department. Have you ever known MS to *not* hedge their bets? They'd have bougth Linux outright several years ago if that were possible.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Is this likely? The question we need to ask ourselves is, could Microsoft profit from doing without hurting current cash cows?
We all know that MS Office and the "Microsoft tax" (the price we pay for buying Windows desktops and servers) are by far Microsofts main sources of revenue. Could Microsoft support Linux and maintain these cash cows? I believe they could.
Firstly, there is no reason why Microsoft couldn't sell their own version of Linux for the server, and charge the same as they charge for their current Windows server software. I am quite sure that it would sell well, and could reduce the numbers of people migrating to Red Hat, for example. Secondly, I see no reason why they couldn't come out with a version of MS Office for Linux and charge a similar price for it. This might also prevent people migrating to OpenOffice.org or Star Office.
If they did this, they could also try to use their considerable muscle to sway people away from technologies they don't want people to use. So for instance, the MS Linux would probably not include MySQL and PHP, and perhaps not even Apache.
I don't see any reason why they couldn't do this. Of course, they still have the long term problem of the erosion in value of what they offer as free competing solutions improve, but there's not much they can do about that other than try to fight off the inevitable.
-- Some people say they can tell the time by looking at the Sun, but I have trouble seeing the numbers.
As more and more of Microsoft's software is built on top of .NET it will become increasingly easy to move that software to other operating systems.
It looks like most people didn't read the artical.
.......
.NET, so no room for M$ there either.
'SEATTLE (Reuters) - In a major strategy shift, Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) will introduce software based on the Linux (news - web sites) open source operating system in 2004 for Web services and server software, market researcher META Group predicted on Monday. '
; this will gradually include the major Microsoft back-office products, such as SQL Server, IIS, and Exchange," META Group said.
So there going to sell insecure web services, over say Apache, web services is M$'s weekest market, and IIS i can see people buying IIS on Linux.
SQL server, hmm... why.... Oracle, DB2, anything else except SQL server is already on Linux, they havn't a hope.
There only viable Server port would be Exchange since there isn't a non-windows variant, but that would be dangerious for M$, since there are a few companies who only have windows boxes for Exchange.
MONO are already doing
I think there talking shit....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
As for secure, well, who knows...we'll see what the next big MS security holes are.. and as for price and open-source-ness, still a long way to go there.
In terms of usability and stability, MS has really come a long way from then Windows 9X days...the latest Windows seems to, in my opinion, have caught up to Linux in terms of stability, and is close behind in terms of speed as well... Of course, the argument of MS being an evil monopolistic company with equally evil business practices still certainly stands
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
Microsoft's argument against Linux sounds strangely familiar. Didn't Apple use this same tactic against Microsoft back in the 90's?
"It's initially cheaper to purchase and install a [insert competitor here]'s hardware and software, but more expensive in the long run with regards to administration and people."
Could this be a sign of desperation?
Anyhow, the chances M$ will come out with a GPL'd version of Linux are like nil. Now, a proprietary version of Linux... that is more likely, especially if the level of desperation rises!
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and I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you lousy kids - Amusement park operator
Well that's already happened, anybody that wants to can run MS Office on Linux via CrossOver. Running an app under Wine is pretty much the same as running it on Windows integration-wise, the only difference really being themeing (or lack of it). But somehow most of use all use OpenOffice. Perhaps because, good though Office is, it isn't worth the price they charge for it?
The real problem with the .doc format is there is so much junk inside! Instead of being smart and making a clean file format for documents, .doc ends up including a lot of useless junk and redundancies. Not to mention some of the versions I have used of microsoft editors instead of removing old codes, insert new ones to to cancel out the old ones... bad programming. So I guess the problem is two fold, with a portion of it being that the primary editor is sooo bad. Personally I always used WordPerfect when I worked in a Windows environment. Now that I use only Linux, I stick it LaTeX.
Microsoft's not yet ready for the "join 'em" part of the "If you can't beat 'em..." argument - especially as today's Wall Street Journal has a very long, detailed article on Microsoft's efforts to lure national governments away from open source software, using carrots and sticks familiar to many /.ers. It's worth reading, and good to see the mainstream press like the WSJ taking an active interest on how Redmond deports itself.
... so here (for review purposes only) are highlights of the article - well worth the time:
It's a good piece, but it's subscription only
Microsoft Wages Campaign Against Free Software
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY and REBECCA BUCKMAN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sometimes it seems as if Microsoft Corp. doesn't want government to save money -- at least not if it comes by using free software. Microsoft is waging a major lobbying and public-policy campaign to stop government agencies in the U.S. and abroad from embracing free, "open-source" software, especially the Linux operating system, which poses a growing threat to Microsoft's Windows.
In the past year it has argued with the Defense Department over the content of a report extolling free software. It has organized a world-wide lobby to oppose laws that mandate using open-source software. It has persuaded some congressmen to ask the new Office of Homeland Security not to fund research that uses certain open software.
But even Microsoft is having a tough time persuading governments from Washington to South Africa that getting software free is a bad thing -- especially when rivals like International Business Machines Corp. are telling them that open-source software works just fine.
Open-source software is software whose source code, or base layer of commands, usually can be copied freely and then modified, unlike most proprietary software, which is generally controlled by a profit-making company. It is championed by a far-flung community of programmers, researchers and companies who share their work over the Internet.
Open-source software has grown in recent years to become a full-fledged rival to Microsoft, used by companies, universities and others in their computer rooms. Many open-source programs are free, or nearly so.
The best known open-source software, Linux, increasingly is being embraced by computer companies including IBM, Dell Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. as a way to sell more hardware and services. According to International Data Corp., a technology-research firm, sales of server computers that use Linux grew 6% in the most recent four quarters, while sales of Windows-based servers grew just 1% in revenue.
Microsoft says it isn't against the concept of open-source software. But it is working hard to prevent government researchers from adopting software covered by the general public license, or GPL, that governs reuse of much open-source software, including Linux. The GPL requires anyone who copies the software to freely share any improvements or additions they make to the code.
Because commercial companies often adapt programs written by government-funded university scientists, Microsoft argues that wider use of GPL-licensed software would stifle innovation. Commercial companies, it argues, would have no incentive to sell "free" software derived from the research. What's more, Microsoft worries that its own developers could inadvertently combine Linux or other GPL-licensed programs with Microsoft programs, which could potentially make the Microsoft programs subject to free-sharing as well.
"The GPL, in my view, is bad in all its dimensions," says Jim Allchin, the Microsoft group vice president who heads the powerful Windows group.
In some cases, Microsoft has leaned on government agencies directly. The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency, an arm of the Defense Department, says that last spring it granted a Microsoft request for an exclusive advance look at a report by research firm Mitre Corp., Bedford, Mass., on Pentagon use of open-source software.
After Ira Rubinstein, a Microsoft lawyer, detailed Microsoft's objections, Dawn Meyerrick, chief technology officer at the agency, says she asked Mitre to make changes in the report. Among them, it dropped the conclusion that open-source software was more secure, and it added cautionary words about the GPL.
Open-software advocates also perceived Microsoft's influence in a letter from a group of congressmen to Richard Clarke, who heads cyberspace security for the newly created federal Office of Homeland Security. The initial letter urged the government to continue past practices by "explicitly rejecting licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption" of software developed under federal contracts.
But as the letter was being circulated, Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat -- who receives the most donations of any representative from Microsoft's political action committee -- added a "Dear Colleague" letter to further explicate the original. That letter said that "licenses such as the General Public License (GPL) are problematic and threaten to undermine innovation and security," and suggested such open-source software shouldn't be developed by the government at all.
That echoed Microsoft's position. A Microsoft spokesman acknowledges that Rep. Smith met with its chief technology officer, Craig Mundie, before the letter was sent, but only for "informational" purposes. Mr. Smith's press secretary says that the "dear colleague" letter was meant to clarify the original because "we believe in innovation."
Open-source fans believe Microsoft is bringing its political power to bear because it sees a market threat to its desktop-software monopoly. But in some cases, Microsoft's appeals have fallen on deaf ears. Last year, according to people familiar with the situation, Microsoft objected "vigorously" when the super-secret National Security Agency developed a secure version of Linux and then posted it on the NSA Web site for anyone to download. But NSA didn't back down and the software is still available.
In the developing world, where free software like Linux may have its greatest appeal, Linux advocates say they have "noticed that Microsoft has made a substantial portion of their quote 'gifts' to developing nations that have indicated a strong preference for open-source software," says Mark Webbink, general counsel of Red Hat Inc., a Raleigh, N.C., company that sells versions of Linux.
In India, where at least one state government endorsed Linux recently, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates last month announced a $400 million gift of donated software and business-development aid.
In South Africa, a Microsoft offer to provide software for 32,000 schools came just days after that country's National Advisory Council on Innovation called for the government to adopt open-source software to build local programming skills and avoid sending hard currency to the U.S. to pay for Windows. Nhlanhla Mabaso, a government chief information officer, says that while the free software from Microsoft is tempting, "Personally, I believe this is not good for South Africa."
Bradford Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, says any donations "are made to meet a social need" and not to counter Linux.
Microsoft concedes that its opposition to open-source software has sometimes backfired, and it says it intends to move the battle to more straightforward commercial issues.
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You are correct, I remember when Microsoft was pushing Xenix adds around the time of Windows 3.1. In fact, my employer still uses Xenix and SCO Open Server (another Microsoft product).
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
"Inferior/superior" are such loaded words. Let's try to be a bit more objective. The design of NT is more "advanced" (incorporates more recent design concepts) than the Linux kernel (which holds to older and more "traditional" systems software designs). It is more "sophisticated" than the Linux kernel (again, a microkernel design where the "monolithic" part of the kernel handles only processes and interprocess communications) and thus permits a more modular OS that can be transformed, expanded, changed, with theoretically much greater speed and much smaller chance of unwanted side effects from those changes.
All of these advantages are theoretical. They also carry some disadvantages, notably in performance.
People have argued for years that traditional monolithic kernels must reach the point where network effects in the code make every change too expensive to make (too much chance of side-effects). So far, this hasn't happened with the Linux kernel. I'm only an amateur kernel hacker (working on reverse engineering an old framebuffer video card so I can make a kernel driver for it) and I don't claim to know much of the Linux kernel code (apart from the framebuffer), but it sure looks to me like the Linux kernel has managed to acheive a similar level of code independence by using good structure programming practice.
As for the superior "security" of the microkernel model, this comes from that same separation of service processes. Compromise a microkernel service and you cannot (in theory) leverage that into a compromise of other services. At the service level, this is true. A Mach or NT microkernel has this feature. The problem is that the Windows kernel isn't the Windows OS. The Windows OS is the gigantic flabby shared APIs written as DLLs. These are the things that are attacked and compromised. These sit on top of all of the sophisticated kernel plumbing and they provide a path to blithely leap between unprivlidged and privledged user space in the stuff that matters: network, file, and directory services. You don't need to compromise any kernel service to own a Windows box because it the is the Win32 APIs that have the holes, not the kernel services (Yes, I know I'm making rather broad generalizations, but the point is still true). Much of "Windows" privledge/authentication/authorization is in "user land" code. Microsoft emphasizes the sophistication of their underlying microkernel architecture. And I agree. The trouble is they have carried over the top much of the cruft from the design of the win16 and pre-NT win32 APIs in the name of backward compatibility and this has carried forward fundmental design weaknesses from those systems.
To be fair to Microsoft, these weakenesses weren't particularly problematic when they were introduced. At the time, each machine was an isolated, single-user device. Little or no networking was done with them. Also to be fair, Microsoft really didn't have a choice but to be backward compatible. They never would have got any users for NT if it didn't run all or nearly all existing software. I'll go further: they never would have got ISVs to switch to win32 if they hadn't done Windows95, marketed it like the second coming, and required ISVs to use win32 if they wanted the "Works with Windows95" logo. The much-maligned Windows 95 was the only reason every major piece of Windows software came to run well on NT.
So feel free to bandy the words "inferior" and "superior" but I defy you to provide and objective criterion by which you may fairly apply those words to the two kernels. "More advanced" v. "Less advanced", yes. "Sophisticated" v. "Simple", yes. I don't buy "superior" v. "inferior," unless you believe that newer necessarily means "better," which, obviously I do not accept.
I also do not buy the statement that these weaknesses "are a thing of the past." They have done a great job of cleaning up many of the holes, but the DLL hosted APIs are still a bridge that just circumvents the good kernel design. They have plugged thousands of holes, but the system design is still subject to them, just as the Linux kernel is.
I do agree that 2000 and XP are vastly more stable than any previous versions of Windows, but this is a product of API cleanup, not the inherent "superiority" of the NT kernel. The "NT" kernel has had these "superior" features from day one and it conferred no magic "superiority" or stability on early versions of NT.
"MS is currently trying to become the world's biggest producer of game consoles (or at least a serious competitor), and it doesn't seem to be working very well from what I've heard."
A few years ago people were saying the same thing about WinCE in relation to Palm.
We're now starting to see news indicating PocketPC is outselling Palm in many markets.
If Microsoft feels they can't do well in the market, they'll dump out of it like they did with UltimateTV, Bob, etc. That's one of the key reasons why Microsoft is successful, they'll admit their mistakes frankly and either improve the product or abandon it. Right now MS feels they have a chance with XBox and based on their sales performance I would agree. They're the #2 seller of game consoles right now, which is not a bad position to be in.
We have made a bet on Windows, and we believe that customers are getting value from the bet we made,'' said Houston, ``and we're going to continue doing what we've been doing for customers.
Is that so, Mr. Houston?
No this is not flamebait.
Your point is taken. The control of X# would be easy, and would not need to be GPL to conform to partial compatibility. Or at least temporary compatibility.
Its simple. Take the desktop over by offering the XP look and feel to Linux users. Review XFree86, but code it yourself. Offer compatibilty to existing Win products. Close the source (of course everyone will hack on it), and give it away (IE style). Gain the desktop market share. Move slowly away from compatibility. Stop publishing the API. Voila, Windows and Linux Kernel. Cripple it later, or even in all irony, keep using the kernel and move the windows dynasty to linux-under-the-hood instead. Why not? Costs less, less filling.
In all seriousness, its not a bad strategy to extend and embrace Linux. It would work!
we should all sit up and take notice.