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Microsoft's Reaction to OSS Adoption
inode_buddha writes "Eric S. Raymond has the eighth "Halloween" memo available here. It looks like Microsoft is really beginning to notice the national and corporate movement towards FS/OSS, and is reacting accordingly."
Looks to me like this has a lot to do with perception. PArt of MS' deal is that they have lots of mindshare. If the people realize that they HAVE options in terms of office and OS, then they certainly will at least explore those options. MS needs to keep people thinking that MS is the only way to get something done, so this memo is no surprise IMHO. Interesting though anyway.
The memo is mildly interesting, but ESR is growing more shrill and childish with each passing year. GOOD LORD a company is exploring how to compete with other products?? ALERT THE PRESS.
Sheesh, maybe Microsoft is good for some things, and OSS is good for other things. And to talk like Microsoft is going to "lose" with $40 billion dollars in the bank is ludicrous at best.
Fah, ESR is not as annoying as RMS (that is, of course, impossible), but he seems to be heading down the path.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Who cares any more? Clearly, free software has now risen to the point where competing software makers take it into account in their planning. Eric Raymond periodically gets his hands on some entirely routine memo from Microsoft and spins it into some apocalyptic confrontation between Good and Evil. He needs to lay off the Lord of the Rings, I think.
Actually, the memo is funny in its concern. Basically, it deals with the fact that when some government considers switching a few servers to Linux, or some legislator proposes an open-source-only policy, Slashdot and the rest of the Linux media turn it into "INDIA SWITCHING TO LINUX!" AND "NORWAY SWITCHING TO LINUX!" It's not nearly as much deliberate spin as it is complete journalistic incompetence and the inability to read linked articles, but it's an effective enough fUD technique that Microsoft feels compelled to respond to it. ;-)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
... running a normal business. Microsoft is a business that is looking to make money. Goverments and Corporations moving to Linux and Star Office means less money for them. They are trying circumvent that. Can you blame them?
This is an unusual Halloween memorandum in that it's not particularly redolent of evil.
Was this newsworthy? Microsoft definitely does not have a monopoly on servers. Also they are beginning to lose their grasp of a monopoly on the desktop. They realize this, why doesn't everyone else.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
I don't really see anything that sinister here. It looks like a typical memo defining a procedure for responding with "one voice" to a business challenge that Microsoft faces. Frankly, I'd be surprised if they weren't having these kind of discussions.
Some of the comments seem unecessarily shrill to me. Example:
Name the key contacts within the gov't
{Translation: Who can we suborn?}
Providing a list of people to contact does not imply suborning (from m-w.com "to induce secretly to do an unlawful thing") to me. How is it unlawful to contact a customer who might be going to a competitor and trying to convince them to reconsider?
Don't get me wrong - I'm excited to see governments looking at Linux and Open Source as an alternative. I just don't think it serves anybody's best interest to take a pretty routine memo and try to turn it into the Pentagon Papers.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
My question is, if Linux overtakes MacOS on the desktop, can Microsoft continue to justify to it's shareholders the reasons behind not making Office for Linux?
So, this is an interesting and obvious question that has been kicked around for some time. As a M$ shareholder I have made this argument before that if Microsoft would cease attempting to make everything fit within the Windows paradigm and start writing quality software that meets consumer demand, they would be a much more powerful and wealthier company. Hey, all one has to do is look at the profitability of the Macintosh Business unit at Microsoft which is doing quite nicely thank you, making software for a completely different platform than Windows. In fact, I find the Office X for OS X to be a superior product to the Windows version of Office given the tie-ins to OS X functionality and rendering.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
That's it. These aren't the plans to Death Star, and no Bothans have died so Eric Raymond could ridicule a misspelled word. Except maybe for the first one or two, they're utterly routine corporate memos.
The fact that much of Raymond's fan base has never had a job causes them to read a memo from a sales head saying, "Go out there and fight!" and freak out. "M$ is plotting to destroy Lunix!!! To the X-wings!" There's nothing the "opposition" is going to get out of these things.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Is Microsoft actually dumb enough to write memo after memo about something they now have admitted is their biggest threat and allow all of these memos to leak so the opposition can read them?
In short, yes, they are. Never worked at the enterprise level, have you?
Exactly how else are you going to communicate with divisions that have over 5,000 people in them in order to set policy and implement proceedures than send out memos and other documentary evidence? Direct communication doesn't work over around 30 people in an office, that is why there are entirely different managment techniques for very small buisness situations and mid sized business scenarios.
As for "allowing them to leak", when you have hundreds of people in on a memo, some of whom might have their own motives for wanting to see one idea/department/division spun a certain way, it is exceedingly difficult to keep that information from going public. Just ask the government, which is constantly leaking information, sometimes intentionally, but just as frequently unintentionally.
Microsoft used to be a sure path to making millions quickly for an employee, but the stock options aren't worth what they used to be. It is not surprising to me at least that the level of employee loyalty might drop. Further, this might actually be a case of employee loyalty. If you really were devoted to your company, but were convinced it was going the wrong direction, this might be a way to help force the situation.
I am not saying that I know that these memos are real, but thinking that Microsoft just wouldn't let this happen isn't realistic. All you need is a couple of people at the right level and it is exceedingly hard to stop this kind of thing. It can be done, but requires tight compartmentalization, which is very hard to do with large scale policies that you are implementing across entire enterprise groups.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
What's missing? What am I missing?
The ability for my wife to walk into Best Buy and purchase "Hoyle Card Games". Or "Reader Rabbit Preschool".
Or buy a digital camera and use the included picture organizing software that my in-laws bought.
Of course, Quicken is unavailable. GnuCash is not a particularly "friendly" substitute for most people either. And until I can pay my bills over the Internet, it wouldn't be a substitute for me either.
I really could go on and on, but the point is that Linux is not mainstream and you can't get mainstream software.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Her boss will find it much better that she can't use company time to play "Hoyle Card Games", organise her pictures and manage her finances.
On the other hand, not having to pay for the next Windows and the next Office on your wife's workstation may really call her boss attention.
Nobody is talking about personal machines. Those will follow in some years, with the growing demand by corporate users to have exactly the same tools at home.
I guess mileage may vary. We abandoned Citrix/winframe years ago and never looked back. As a means of sharing or forwarding apps across an international VPN, it totally sucked^h^h^h^h^h^hrefused to work properly for this corp.
I could use stronger words to describe how much I dislike all Citrix products, but I've used the word "sucks" too much recently. My New Years resolution was to stop saying
- sucks
- it's all good
- believe it
this year. So far, so good.-- clvrmnky
Yes, it is true, Microsoft actually did write these memos.
They were written by a group of individuals in the DTPOSF department (Distract Those Pesky Open Source Flunkies) and leaked to Slashdot for the purpose of slowing down progress.
By getting all of us to stop what we're doing, comment on how stupid they are and how much they phear us, they have accomplished exactly what they were organized to do - distract us.
So quit your gawking and get back to coding, we have an empire to destroy...
---
Dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with Windows(tm).
have any of these things really been creditible after the first one? ESR is once again leading everyone around in circles. ESR wants to be king of a new world order, but his problem is that there is no new world order. So he is trying to create a us versus them world, so we will all rally behind him.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Facts:
Linux keeps getting better.
Windows keeps getting better. (Technically, not counting the EULAs)
Is the gap closing? I don't think so. There's still way more software and systems being created for Windows.
But Linux is doing something else, for users that don't need any exotic software. Do you need a server? Do you need a simple browsing/e-mail/basic office pack desktop? You got it. Maybe next year I can add a couple more things to that list. Maybe a few more are good enough now already and I don't know about it or agree.
In Windows, you choose between different software with different cost. In Linux, most of the tools people use are free, and there isn't many commercial counterparts. That means that those that *do* use Linux use it because it *already* does what the users want it to do, for free.
That's what spooks Microsoft. It's not that people switch. It's that they don't really have anything to offer to get them back should they decide Linux is "good enough" as it is. Any business would. And should.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings