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Ellison: Linux Will Soon Decimate MS Windows
cioxx writes "Speaking to a few-hundred ISVs at an Oracle-sponsored event in New York, Larry Ellison made a bold prediction , also covered in Infoworld, stating: "(Microsoft has) already been killed by one open-source product. Slaughtered, wiped out, taken from market dominance to irrelevance [...]", referring to Apache's displacement of MS IIS server. He continues on with a claim that battle for datacenter dominance is looming with a clear advantage on the side of Open-Source platforms, and desktop would follow once Star Office becomes completely "usable" to compete with MS Office. "And it's going to happen to them again on Linux." Newsforge also has a related article on Oracles ongoing linux efforts.
I think it will be quite a while before StarOffice becomes completely compatible with MS Office - it's in MS's own best interest to keep Office separate just to keep the installed base in place...
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IIS never had a chance. IIS came late. Everyone wanted a web site so they learned/ran Apache. IIS was never and has never been dominant. I do agree that Open source will take over for alot of things and Microsoft will be relegated to either another Linux distro or a application and hardware only company.
Gorkman
I think Mr. Ellison has found his latest trendy technology crusade... Let's hope his predictions fo Linux are better than for instance:
* Network Computers
* Netscape
* Sun One
* Java (it's a success, but not so large as Ellison wanted)
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate his support for Linux BUT this guy will say anything to make a buck.
$G
-- $G
well I guess he must have meant we can expect Linux to take 10% of MS' market share. Hey that's quite plausible!
You should study language a little more. Definitions change, and the real meanings of words are defined by their usage. Meaning is defined by language, not the other way around.
Just as an example, the word car is no longer used to describe a two-wheeled Celtic chariot. That doesn't mean you go around sneering up your nose at all those people who oh-so-incorrectly use car instead of automobile.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Q.: What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
A: God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison
Lets face it- Allison likes to needle MS and make outrageous claim. He can afford to, since he is one of the richest men on Earth. But before we all stand and cheer "MS is dead! Long live Linux!", let's remember that Apache is one of very few open-source projects which can compete with MS products in terms of market share. And you can bet your pants that in any of those areas, including web servers, MS is doing all it can to reverse that situation.
So don't applaud Ellison's high words- they may do your ego good, but what the open-source world needs is better software, better marketing and less fragmentation. We are still a long long way from beating MS, so don't rest on your laurels just yet...
Just my 2 cents worth...
on PostgreSQL and MySQL.why should the market forces that apply to MS not apply to Oracle? Build those yachts while the sun shines, Larry!
At a conservative estimate, MySQL is 25 years behind the state of the art. No, I'm not even kidding or trolling, it's a fact - compare the state of relational databases in the late 70s to where MySQL is now. According to the press release, MySQL last week got features like relational integrity, row level locking, transactions and caching that products like Oracle and DB2 have had, quite literally, for decades. MySQL still does not have subqueries, stored procedures, or procedural constraints. And neither Oracle nor DB2 are standing still, they are continually adding new features. Larry has no need to lose any sleep over MySQL.
>Its not trying to be an IIS clone.
>Other OS products are trying to implement tomorrow >what Microsoft did yesterday. You can't beat someone in a >race if you're trying to follow in their footsteps.
Then explain Windows Vs. Mac
If we can't fix it, we'll fix it so nobody else can!
remember that Larry Ellison has always made these kind of claims -- but I've yet to see Database-based filesystems or Sun's "dumb-terminal-esque" network computers take off in the mainstream. though supposedly Microsoft is working on the former.
you can't extrapolate the success of Apache to the desktop market. Webservers have no problems with incompatibility and user-friendliness is less of a concern since the users usually are computer technicians.
The desktop market is a whole different ballgame; Microsoft software is abundant and currently the only competitor in terms of ease of use is Apple and not the Open Source movement.
I have limited experience (managed to install and set up RH 8.0 as a router for my home network) with linux but here are a few thoughts.
Linux is not ready for the dsesktop. The recent discussion about mozilla incorporating smooth scrolling illustrates a fundamental problem within the linux community. Most *nix users who want to see linux replace windows on the desktop aren't willing to compete with MS in the areas which really matter to a non techie user. Many people here laughed and scorned the screenshots of the recent longhorn builds where you had lots of new UI features, admittedly most of them will probably not amount to anything but the UI does matter.
For a non techie user the choice at the moment is windows which is very easy to use but is prone to crashes amnd viruses, alternatively they have linux which is very difficult to get the hang of when coming from a windows background. Reliability means nothing if the user can't get anything done with linux. I'm no MS fanboy but I do beleive that they have gone in the right direction with the XP interface, and I also don't think you can really argue with the fact that games, multimedia and simple office apps are all easier to use for a non techie user on a windows platform.
Now whether MS dominace is down to a genuinely more instinctive UI or whether people are just more familiar with it (and hence more productive) is down to debate. I'm sure many linux advocates will dismiss the idea that MS's windows UI is "better" that any of linux distos but they are reeally missing the point.
If you want linux on the desktop then linux developers need to compete with MS. This includes making sure there is support for all types of multimedia, improving choice of games, improving window responsiveness, and all the other little MS UI elements that most *nix users would probably consider frivolous.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So it wasn't that MS' dominance was ever 'beaten', its just that they cannot beat the dominant methodology for web servers, which is Open Source.
That's a hell of a leap in logic there. Unless you're some kind of super market analyst, complete with surveys, research, etc., I think about all you can say is that more people use Apache now and in the past than those who use IIS. There's not necessarily any connection between IIS/Apache and OSS/non-OSS..
True, definitions change, but it's still reasonable to encourage people to use a more appropriate word instead of morphing the meaning of a similar but different word. An example is the American adoption of the word "momentarily" to mean "in a moment" when it really mans "for a moment". When an American Airlines hostess announces that "we will be landing momentarily" I always picture us doing a touch-and-go!
I don't think Linux will have a chance among gamers until the newest releases can be installed with ease (read: no dependencies, loading wine, or other backwards thing to make it :seem: like its on windows) and played right away. Until that time, I'm going to play some Generals.
this is my sig, there are many like it, but this one is mine.
Following your argument, microsoft hadn't a chance when they (finally) got into the internet hype and launched Internet Explorer. They were very late to acknoledge the importance of internet, and netscape had by then achieved a pretty dominant position. However, they did succeed in displacing Netscape, and didn't succeed in displacing Apache. Obviously, there are other reasons why IIS never really got any foothold, Apache being open source and a really good product being the most import one, I think.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Agreed. OTOH, you should ask yourself in how many places you really need nothing less than the state of the art. Probably less than the 50% of the total.
My guess is that such percentual is going to shrink as more people become aware of free RDBMS (I'm thinking more about PostgreSQL or SAP DB than MySQL), but Ellison has nothing to worry, since absolute numbers of RDBMS users will go up as well, and some of them are going to need Oracle sooner or later.
In other words, a small percentual of a large number may still be a large number. I'd say there's plenty of space for everyone (everyone that does not stand still, obviously).
Apparently OO v 1.1 (now in beta) is going to have PDF as an output format. This is something MS has always avoided because they want Word's .doc to be the universal format and can't afford to promote PDF. If they have to then users will really have a win on their hands and it'll be due to competition.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Larry Ellison has about zero credibility. Remember "Network Computers" and how they were going to take over the world? Sure, Larry. There have been many other examples over the years. His crystal ball is more tarnished and cracked than Miss Cleo's.
Larry is just being a cheerleader because he sees economic benefit in the vision of a Microsoft-less future. He'd also like to see Bill Gates take a hit. That's it. No facts here, move along.
You people _really_ lack historical perspective, by and large.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I think it'd be interesting to see the number of times Ellison has come up and claimed 'this or that will kill Microsoft' over the last few years.
I seem to remember something about network computers. As far as I can tell that was the biggest bit of vapor hardware ever. I've never seen anything like that in the enterprise.
Were there any others?
But not to say that I don't think that LInux has a chance. From where I sit I see lots of 4 Way Xeon MP servers coming along that are being at least tested against a Sun box. I've seen them save some companies over $2.0M a year in just hardware maintenance costs alone. So it can be done. However, they're moving Sun out of the datacenter with these, not Microsoft. Mainly because Microsoft was never in that space (yet).
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
As I recall, one of the reasons Larry's Network Computer failed was because you could buy a PC, (even with Windows pre-installed), and buy an X server software (and Office) and it was *still* cheaper than his Network Client, without having to shell out for the Oracle software you'd need to run it properly. And it had a rubbish processor.
'course Larry (and Scott) want to sell you the server hardware and software you'll need to do this - and it won't be anything other than stupidly expensive. So much so that it'll easily wipe out all those TCO 'savings'.
and you won't have sound either. Sorry, Larry doesn't have a clue then, and he still doesn't.
I'd much rather there were an open vector animation format out there for OOo to use, but that's not necessarily OOo's fault; if there is one, it doesn't have widespread acceptance and prominence.
Did you not get the memo about SVG?
I wonder what Ellison has to say about the future Postgres and MySQL. Will they ever become viable competitor and "slaughtered, wiped out, taken from market dominance to irrelevance" Oracle?
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
In contrast, through bundling and other anti-competitive practices, Microsoft has been able to exploit their desktop OS monopoly to control several other sectors. People have written arguably better operating systems, but Microsoft has managed to set things up such that the cost of switching away from Windows is very high.
I have no doubt that if Ellison were in Gates's position, he'd be no better. I doubt, though, that Oracle is in a position to fill the power void should Microsoft lose control. They might get bigger, and they might exploit their market dominance to a greater degree, but their abuses would still not affect the average computer user as much as Microsoft has.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
MySQL is a lot faster than Oracle on comparable hardware and it's progressing quickly towards including the more useful features of big db suites like Oracle. The majority of the websites that use a db use MySQL. Oracle is way to expensive for small websites and doesn't provide what most large websites need. That's a big market Oracle is missing out on.
PostgreSQL isn't bad either but MySQL tends to be the favorite of web developers. They compete with each other and help drive each other forward.
I don't think either MySQL or Postgres are a challenge to Oracle in the data center but as they mature they will be more so. They have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight too so they can mature much faster than products such as Oracle. They are missing features but they are adding those as demand grows or someone is willing to sponsor the addition.
Everything said about Apache vrs IIS and Linux vrs Windows does also apply to MySQL vrs Oracle. It's all a matter of time. I think Oracle may bite the bullet a lot harder than Microsoft though because they are less diversified. Unless of course they open source Oracle and manage to adapt to the change. They have more time to adapt than Microsoft though sense they are more specialized.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Nonsense, in most enterprise environments your big smart Windows clients are completely blocked if "the server" or "the network" is down. You can't login, can't use outlook, can't access your documents etc etc etc.
What people hated was the lack of GUI capabilities of old terminals. And yes, some people hate not having any control over their "own machine". I fear however there is no place for such people in todays enonomic climate: those are the ones playing all day with windows settings, new programs etc, I think todays CIO shall be happy to get rid of such people.
Quoting [Referring to IIS and Apache] :
"(Microsoft has) already been killed by one open-source product. Slaughtered, wiped out, taken from market dominance to irrelevance [...]"
According to the Netcraft survey, IIS use has gone from a peak of about 30% market share to their current level of about 30% market share?
Yes, Apache has overtaken IIS. Yes, Apache is now and has been for several years dominant in the web server market. But it is at the expense of almost all the other web server suppliers, not at the expense of IIS which is holding market share admirably. IIS was never dominant in the web server market. It looked briefly like it could be in the late nineties, but IIS use peaked while Apache use continued to grow.
Anyone who honestly thinks IIS was dominant, and has since been "wiped out" is clearly a bit of a loon.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
I agree that Ellison is a major showman, and thrives on the media and exposure. You don't get that rich sitting around. Controversy, media exposure, grand visionary statements are all good for him and his company.
;-) ).
.02
With that said, i still think it's a good thing when huge players in the tech industry bring up linux. No one who *really* matters is redifining how we think about IS and Microsoft based on slashdot articles/postings (unless of course it was an interview with Larry Ellison on Slashdot
If there is any chance whatsoever that Linux and open source are going to fundamentally alter the way Microsoft does business and the products they create, Linux needs to be in the public eye, every day, all day. IS operations people can run all the linux servers they want behind the scenes and out of the watchful eye of IT managers, but it does nothing to really put the screws to Microsoft. For that to happen, major players in the industry need to be constantly extolling its virtues.
Is that Ellison's goal? Not likely. Like you point out, his platitudes are publicity driven and come from his desire to be wealthier than Gates. But regardless of his motives, I think its good nonetheless.
my
jeff
I don't know about you but I've never seen anyone at work ever write a virus in an in-house app to be used in-house. I don't think one would need to be worried about that.
When the majority of Slashdot readers get their way and Microsoft is blasted from the planet and ALL software is open source and free GREAT NEWS, %70 of the high paying tech jobs will be eliminated as well.
Be careful what you wish for because it might actually come true.
But what do I know, I haven't used their products for years. I'm sure they have only improved during these years!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
> At a conservative estimate, MySQL is 25 years behind the state of the art.
But state of the art isn't what's important with OSS. OSS is about the commodity market and relational databases *are* a commodity now. True, not all the features you need are in both of these databases and it's easy to come up with a feature list where Oracle looks great. That's not the point. When you need a database for a project odds are one of these two (PostgreSQL or MySQL) will give you what you need. A lot of programmers don't like the idea of learning how to code against these two because they already know Oracle and with that knowledge they can tackle any project. The problem is the guy next to you who knows these two OSS databases can tackle that project for $10K less. Who's more valuable as a programmer? The answer isn't always going to be the OSS programmer but it will more often than not.
These databases are especially important for commercial applications that need a DB back end. It's one thing to have a $2-$10K db license that you can share among multiple applications but when you are selling a product that relies on a database backend, using an OSS DB can save you the cost of the comercial database hundreds or thousands of times over.
Ellison will still make money for years to come just like Apple has and Microsoft will. Being relegated to the non-mainstream doesn't mean death, it just means there is a new set of rules. No more rolling in wheelbarrows full of cash by charging big money for commodity software.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
And that link was 5 years old? Wow, you are up on the technology....
Word has (and was the first document technology) to have font embedding of Truetype fonts to ensure the document does not have formatting or font inconsistencies.