Ex-Microsofter Rick Belluzzo Prefers Linux

keird writes "I'm sure you all remember Belluzzo being pushed out of Microsoft earlier this year. ComputerWorld has a short, but interesting interview with him where he talks about why his new employer, Quantum uses Linux in their appliances." From reading the interview, Belluzzo seems to be pretty amicable to whatever will get the job done, and in this case, it's Linux.

Comments

Make a Change :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes for a bit of a change since a long time ago when he destroyed SGI by persuading them to drop MIPS and IRIX and move to Windows NT.

Re:Make a Change :-)

[ReelOddeeo]

compare buying Windows to Killing

I did not compare Windows to Killing. I merely used a higher contrast example of what my entire point was about. Not having any beliefs in anything. Doing whatever is profitable at the moment.

this is FUCKING TECHNOLOGY you nut
Technology is not a RELIGION
it's not IMMORAL for me to install Windows

I'm not the one yelling and screaming.

The facts about what Microsoft has done speak for themselves to anyone who has been around longer than the dot-com boom. We're talking about a company that has been convicted of criminal conduct and upheld on appeal. This is NOT about technology. This is about people and ethics.

I have these conversations with a coworker of mine who defends Microsoft no matter how indefensible the particular point may be at the moment. Is there no limit to how people should conduct themselves in pursuit of profit? Is there no low too low? A company that will sign a contract that stipulates in writing that they will not alter certian api's, and then turn right around and violate the very letter (not just spirit) of that contract in order to kill Java.

This is a company that blatently rips off disk compression technology and bundles it into DOS, and is later called on it. Settle or pay a fine. Either way it's still the cheapest technology they ever stole. In the end, a profitable venture, so it must be okay.

You're right about one thing. This is not about technology. This is about people and their behavior. <insert silly name calling and insults here> That is the whole point of the thread beginning with the top level post. Finally, you said nothing that disputes my remarks about people, which was the entire substance of my post.

In case the point is lost on you, I'll repeat it, but without charged examples such as killing. Some of us have ethics, morals and values. If I work for company XX, who makes product xx, and then promote xx as being the best solution, I would not then go work for YY who makes product yy which is a direct competitor of xx, and then trumpet yy as being the best. One or both of my statements concerning xx and yy must therefore be a lie. Black and white. Some of us see conduct in terms of right and wrong, not profit or less profit. This was the entirety of my point.

An alternative hypothesis, but not one that seems warranted by the actual interview article, would be that a person became enlightened that xx was not the best and that yy was.

Re:Make a Change :-)

[ghjm]

How do you talk when someone is crushing your balls in a deterministically ordered sequence?

-Graham

Re:Make a Change :-)

[Chris Johnson]

Actually, that would be Porsche :)

What happened there was more complicated: Ferdinand Porsche had always been hot for a 'people's car', way before Hitler. He came up with the Volkswagen design for personal reasons, because it was the car he most wanted to build, the coolest thing he could think of.

Hitler was hot to industrialize Germany- very few people owned cars, and he wanted to build roads, get lots of Germans into cars, basically modernize the country. This too was a personal reason- German industrialists did not always believe Hitler when he wanted 'cheap people's' this and that, but they learned the hard way.

Porsche had to bid for the contract to be the one to build the 'people's car' and he did it by selling Hitler on the Volkswagen design with an amazing half-jargon half-layman spiel which basically convinced Hitler that the future VW was a brilliant, unorthodox, superior design (which it was, as they learned when trying to improve it later)

Having secured Hitler's support, Porsche then totally ignored everything in politics and got back to his work- this would be the moral lapse, even though he did not actively support the Nazis. Things would happen, like Porsche getting a letter saying "The Fuehrer wishes the greatest German auto designer to become a German citizen" and shrugging and saying (translated) "Well, I suppose nothing can be done about it- see that this is taken care of" and ignoring politics again. Passive support and failing to resist in any way.

Hitler never got any Volkswagens built for the German people- the plant was bombed and the economy collapsed. The VW plant fell into the hands of the British, whose opinion of the matter was, "this is a great car, these are great workers and designers who aren't responsible for the sins of their leaders, this plant belongs to the German people and we are here to see that it is returned to them, and flourishes". With their determined support, the first VWs started coming out in spite of terrible supply shortages, technical problems (like shattering torsion bars in the suspensions) were solved, and the story of the VW was underway no thanks to Hitler (it wasn't his idea, it was Porsche's, it just played into his populist tendencies)

I have this very neat book, 'Small Wonder', about it all...

First Intelligent Post

[CastrTroy]

Wow, Linux is being used in a product that Windows isn't even targeted towards. I don't think that Microsoft cares too much if linux is used in these types of devices. Especially when they still own 95% of the desktop market.

Re:First Intelligent Post

[gazbo]

Also, the bit that was cunningly not mentioned in the excerpt:

I don't think Linux is going to be successful as a desktop replacement. But Linux is going to surround new appliances...

Exactly what the more rational and less rabid of us have said all along. Linux has its place, which for most people is not the desktop.

Re:First Intelligent Post

[ergo98]

Wow, Linux is being used in a product that Windows isn't even targeted towards.

Well that isn't entirely fair: Microsoft has made embedded operating systems for embedded and/or appliance markets for a while (at least four years), to mixed success. Personally I think they'll succeed eventually: Already PocketPC PDAs, a vision that was originally called bloated and overpowered, are absolutely storming the market (and the new ultra-low cost Dell ones pretty much ring the bell or doom for Palm and friend).

Re:First Intelligent Post

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Because most end users are cheap.

This is a common misconception. If most end users were cheap, they'd build their own computers from parts instead of buying a Gateway or a Dell or a what-have-you.

Most end users are impatient and lazy. (Not in the derogative sense; I, too, am impatient and lazy, and chances are you are too.) They run Windows or Mac OS for the same reason that they buy their computers pre-assembled: because they can get up and running faster and with less work.

Linux is not easy to use (making it unappealing to the lazy), and what's worse it's not easy to learn (making it unappealing to the impatient). Giant changes would have to happen before Linux could become any of those things. The people who work on Linux have no motivation to make those giant changes. So I don't see it happening.

I think there's one scenario in which Linux could become a viable desktop alternative. A large and profitable company could adopt Linux, base a business plan on it, and make the necessary changes to make it easy to use and easy to learn. The company would have to be large and profitable because Linux would require a great deal of work to get where it needs to be, and the company would have to be able to survive spending a fortune on Linux for a few years while they do what they need to do.

There's one big thing, I think, that will prevent this from happening: the GPL. Any company that does any proprietary work on Linux will be forced to give its source code away to anybody who asks for it, making it impossible for that company to have a competitive edge in the marketplace. That takes the wind out of the old business plan.

Of course, Apple already did exactly this. They just based their OS on FreeBSD instead of Linux. So the idea is sound; it's just that in GPL-land, there's no possibility of commercial motivation, which means no reason to invest the necessary time and work.

Server operating systems, naturally, don't have to be easy to use or to learn at all. That's why companies like IBM and SGI are shipping big servers that are built from the ground up to run Linux: they only have to make a few changes to the OS to get it to do what their customers need, and their competitive advantage is the hardware, so releasing the source code of their OS is no big deal to them.

Rocket Rick

[sql*kitten]

I'm sure you all remember Belluzzo being pushed out of Microsoft earlier this year. ComputerWorld has a short, but interesting interview with him where he talks about why his new employer, Quantum uses Linux in their appliances." From reading the interview, Belluzzo seems to be pretty amicable to whatever will get the job done, and in this case, it's Linux.

"Rocket" Rick Belluzzo is also the man responsible for SGI's disastrous attempt to drop IRIX and MIPS in favour of x86 workstations running Windows NT. He also dropped the uber-groovy SGI cube logo for the lame "sgi". His "reward" for almost destroying a competitor was a cushy job at Microsoft. SGI have yet to recover and it's by no means certain that they will.

Does Linux really need supporters like this?

Re:Rocket Rick

[Ed Avis]

The 'going forward'-ometer registers a worryingly high reading on this article. Don't employ this man.

Re:Rocket Rick

[GroovBird]

Yeah well, you're forgetting this guy.

Dave

Not on Linux for long

[tomk]

In the interview he states:

Do you think Linux will be an obstacle to an effective partnership between Quantum and Microsoft? If Microsoft gives us a better idea and a better alternative, we could change.

I'd say it's pretty likely that MS will use a carrot-and-stick approach to force him onto Windows. Quantum is looking for a big deal with MS and with a high-profile ex-microsoftie singing the praises of the competition, I'll bet there's a threat that the deal will fall through: that's the stick. MS will probably also offer Quantum a much-discounted price on embedded Windows NT: that's the carrot.

In the end, Quantum will do whatever they need to do to help their bottom line. (not that I blame them.) If the deal with MS is worth more than the cost of Windows licenses, they'll be on Windows before you know it.

Exactly

[rgraham]

From reading the interview, Belluzzo seems to be pretty amicable to whatever will get the job done, and in this case, it's Linux.

Yes, use what will get the job done. People (pro-MS/anti-Linux, anti-MS/pro-MS, repeat for Solaris, Mac, BSD...) get so blinded by their allegence to one type of technology they don't realize or refuse to accept that there might be something better out there for a given use. Sitting on my desk right now I have machines running Win2k, OSX and RedHat 7.1 all of which I use for different tasks. Could I use just one OS for all my tasks? Sure, but I perfer to use what works best in a given situation.

Does this mean we will see commercials like this?

[one9nine]

"I'm Rick Belluzzo and I'm the former president and chief operating officer of Microsoft Corp."

www.linux.com/switch

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US;

[matthew.thompson]

Visiting www.quantum.com currently gives me:

[Close Window]

We have determined that your Web browser and/or computer's operating system may not support the navigation system of Quantum.com. We recommend that you either upgrade your Web browser to the most recent version or use our site map to browse our site.

Thank you,

--- The Quantum Web Team ---

If that's Quantum's support of alternatives to Microsoft I'm severely disappointed.

Re:You're mistaken.

[ergo98]

Palm, Handspring and Sony control 81.1% of the market. Compaq, Casio, and Dell (newcomer) combined, control 12.6% of the market.

Firstly, Dell's PDAs just came out and lowered the bar to even or lower than Palms (for a much, much more feature rich system). Secondly, your numbers are a tad out of date (not really that surprizing). Here we can see that PocketPC currently has 30% of all sales (the "market", if you will), versus compared to 48% for Palm. A tad different from your numbers. This was before Dell virtually halved the price of a PocketPC PDA.

Secondly, the "bloated and more expensive" is an outdated argument as well. Firstly something like the Toshiba e310 or e740 represent among the smallest PDAs available, yet they offer tremendous power. Dell's new PDAs, starting at $199, offer incredible value. And what's with the "proprietary" nonsense, Palm fanboy? And Palm ISN'T? Oh, right, proprietary=Microsoft in Slashdot speak.

Not far enought back

[WindBourne]

Rick started at HP and at point ordered 350K engines from canon. He then later went to canon and apologized to the workers who were being laid off. For that screw-up, HP promoted him to being in charge of HP' desktop computers, where he merged the unix desktop and desktop system together. He managed to kill the Unix desktop, while saying that he would build it up. When his division was headed down, he went to SGI, where he did his best to destroy irix and SGI. He left MS when their numbers are starting down (yes profits are up, but numbers are down). Now, he is at Quantum, where he has sold off half the company, and it was running Linux. MS is knocking on the door. Guess which road rick will go down? I predict that Quantum will be gone in about 2 years or less.

Some more info about Quantum

[Outland Traveller]

I just looked at a Quantum Guardian 4400 NAS device recently.

It's a 1U rackmount system with four IDE drives, a custom motherboard that sports a 1Ghz PIII and two onboard gigabit ethernet controllers, usb, a serial port, and two onboard promise IDE controllers.

The NAS boots linux (a 2.4.18 variant) off of some kind of flash chip and then uses linux's software raid and LVM to manage the drives. The drives are formatted using the XFS filesystem

You use a small self-contained java application to initially set the IP address, and thereafter you can use a web browser to administer it. It has features up the ying-yang, including various backup options, automated updates, failover, load balancing, and synchronizing with peer NAS devices. It supports a full suite of filesharing protocols and has quota support, access control, etc.

You can even enable an SSHD server and log in, although I haven't been able to find the root password yet. I don't know if quantum will provide it willingly or if you will have to aquire it yourself.

I benchmarked it's NFS performance against similar configurations we've built in house and it is well optimized for latency and bandwidth in the ranges allowed by gigabit ethernet. In particular there were no lengthy pauses that we sometimes see on ext3-based systems.

I was impressed with how well they were able to polish the box and make it appear that so many different, complex filesharing subsystems and features were seemlessly integrated.

Re:Why oh why does this idea continue?

[jmorris42]

Because the smart ones among us know that if we can't get a critical mass of users in the next couple of years the game is over. Microsoft IS going to try closing the platform which means we won't be able to 'free ride' on the commodity hardware market which built up around DOS/Windows. If we don't have enough users willing to fork over hard currency to keep the Taiwainese and Chinese board makers going we are all hosed.