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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.
...and she's a marketer.
She does so to get a little street credibility with geeks.
My point? If the marketers are going to software like this to get a marketing edge, then there is a chance Ellison is right.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Decimate means "reduce by 10%".
It does NOT mean:
"Slaughtered, wiped out, taken from market dominance to irrelevance"
chrisd, Get a dictionary.
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
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!
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
So how does that explain the chaos from Code Red?
... and the PC will be made obsolete by thin
clients, stupid boxes without a hard disk (predicted by Mr. Oracle from way back).
Does anybody remember those days?
Microsoft says windows will destroy linux,
Oracle says linux will destroy windows
Baath party says republican-guard will crush allies
Washington says guard will be crushed
What's going on? It's almost as if there is some kind of weighting to what people are saying based on the outcome they favour. I just don't understand it.
it is great news to read Larry Ellison telling nice words about Open Source Software
I had to deal only remotely with Oracles licensing habbits. Seemed even more complicated than "open license" from MS.
I had to deal closer with Oracles interpretation of SQL-Standards "we don't obey them, we set them"
I had to deal with Oracles "bundled utilities" - documentation-files running across 400 screen pages. Comments like "if you want to change a tipped command, just simply erase it and type it new (decades after GNU readline)Where is the big difference in the companies attitude to Microsoft? Am I to blind to see?
Larry Ellison gets his name in the papers!
Sorry if I sound underwhelmed, but I think this is just another example of him doing a good job at getting some publicity.
Yeah Apache's winning, on the server side, Linux is winning... but the desktop, if it ever happens, is waaaay into the future.
Microsoft isn't stupid, they won't go down that easy. And Ellison is THAT good at self-promotion.
MS wants to get people used to having a MS badged device in their home. One that just works, doesn't bluescreen etc, so that people are comfortable with it. They can then lever other services onto the platform; TiVo like capabilites, email, web browsing etc. This XBox follow up will be the hub of a home network.
Sony are aiming for a similar thing with the Playstation line. So far they have a head start on consumer trust.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Looking at the figures it doesn't look to me like IIS has gone from market leader to irrelevance. For the last 5 years - since IIS appeared - Apache has maintained a market share roughly twice that of IIS. But both shares have grown.
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.
According to the infoworld article and the computerworld article:
not staroffice, as theThe point is that Apache domiantes the server world becuase it comes with all commercial Unix boxes. And large companies are happy that this piece of open source that came bundled with AIX or HPUX or Solaris has some kind of formal support and backing (if the Apache project ever looked like folding, HP/Sun/IBM would keep it going).
Only recently are we seeing the real dominace of Linux in ISPs, and that again is partly becuase of IBM and Sun (Cobalt, etc). So I don't think there is any linkage between the uptake of Apache and the corporate uptake of Open Source in general, either on the server or the client.
Art is the mathematics of emotion
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...
I do believe that Microsoft's power will fade, due in large part to Office competitors. I can't see how Microsoft can maintain their Office monopoly when they keep rachetting up the price. Even the OEM version, bundled with a new PC, is several hundred dollars. So many people will turn to alternatives, like MS Works. Once many people are running scaled back versions like Works, then some people will start realizing that StarOffice (and others) are better, and even cheaper. Not everyone will switch, but all you need is a critical mass, which will give competitors enough money to reinvest in improving their office suites, allowing them to compete head to head with the full version of Office. Microsoft will have to cut prices for an indefinite period, which will lower profits. Lower profits in the Office division will reduce or eliminate their ability to absorb losses in other divisions, forcing a retreat from other markets. Sure, they have large cash reserves, but you'd be amazed how fast you can blow through billions of dollars when you're forced to compete for the first time in years.
The only thing that's needed, as I see it, is a competitor to Windows. I would love for someone to make Linux into something the average computer user would be comfortable using, but I just don't think it'll ever happen. I'd love for OS X to run on commodity hardware, but I don't think that'll happen either. So I'm not sure that Microsoft will ever lose the desktop OS monopoly. I can always hope though.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
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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
'Decimate' means to reduce by one-tenth. It originates from the punishment for mutiny given to a whole Roman legion: killing every tenth man. So if you think that Windows installations are 10% less than they would have been if Linux didn't exist, then Linux has already decimated Windows, at least on the server.
:-).
It's the remaining 90% that is at stake
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
What's not usable about OpenOffice.org now?
The one steady complaint I hear is "doesn't do a perfect job of opening Microsoft Office formats". THat complaint is, even if true, ridiculous. If OpenOffice.org is to replace MS Office, sure, the path to getting there is easier of people don't have to notice, but eventually the proprietary MS formats would become irrelevant. This isn't a real criticism. Might as well criticise Word for not being able to open all those legacy LaTeX files that scientists and mathemticians have all over the places, huh?
(Not that I consider anything legacy about LaTeX myself... I still think that is definitely the right way to do large and technical documents.)
The only realy complaint that I've got about OOo is the support for animations in Impress. It seems to crash on Flash animations even on computers where I've got the Flash plugin installed... and it seems to depend on the Flash plugin from mozilla, rather than from itself. First, 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. But, even beyond that, I haven't figured out how to embed MPEG or similar animations into OOo presentations, nor have I figured out how to get OOo to put its screen to the back so that if I hack in mplayer via a command line script (not the best interface for most people using Impress, but one that works for me), the full screen animation can even be seen.
As far as I'm concerned, solve that issue in Impress, and OOo is way more than anything I'd want out of an office suite like that.
Well, OK, and the equation editor is severely limited. (Only 8 colours?) Plus it's a pain... I speak TeX equations, and am resisting learning a new one. Right now, I usually use TeX and ImageMagick to put equations in my Impress presentations as transparent PNG images.
What are the things that people like Larry Ellison think are missing that make it only "almost" usable?
-Rob
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.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
PDF is an archival output form, in many cases as opaque and uneditable as a bitmap. I wouldn't call it a useful format for documents that are 'live' and need to be editable. It isn't even intended for such purposes. As such, it's a horrible choice as an interoperability format for 'Office' documents.
It's great for 'freezing' things to archive them, of course.
Not true. It's derived from the term for punishment for Roman legions, in which every tenth man was executed.
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 $2.0M a year in just hardware maintenance costs alone. So it can be done. However, they're moving Sun out of the datacenter with these, not Microsoft. Mainly because Microsoft was never in that space (yet).
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Word format isn't even a reliable way to send documents between people who use Word. If they use different versions, or different fonts installed, then the formatting can go wrong, sometimes resulting in serious problems. (Actually, that link refers to use of RTF, but I think Word's RTF files are equivalent to Word's binary files.)
Hosting apache on windows is like hosting cheerios in beer.
I just checked today these 10 top selling books in IT in one of the largest bookstores here in Brazil.
As you can see, not much for window~1 in there; people are buying books on Java, Linux, Operating Systens. And just one in 10 titles is specic to a M$ product - Excel.
-><- no
As anyone can clearly see at Netcraft, IIS never even came *close* to beating Apache, let alone did they have a "virtual monopoly". Back in 1997 when Microsoft and Netscape (now SunONE) were struggling for 10% shares, Apache was already at 40% -- and it only went up from there.
Actually it's like hosting Baluga caviar in horse-piss. ... Get it right.
Ellison's prophetic comments, much like Scott McNealy of Sun, are generally worthless: If one looked at his historical claims they would find an astoundingly poor accuracy of their predictions. At some point shouldn't someone call him on his abilities as a seer?
The most ridiculous part of his comments that immediately pointed out how uninformed and idiotic his vitriolic claims are is the statement "They had a virtual monopoly on Web servers, and then they were wiped off the face of the earth. And it's going to happen to them again on Linux.". The Slashdot summary itself points to the Netcraft graph, but strangely fails to points out the absurdity of Ellison's statement: Microsoft has never had a "virtual monopoly" on web servers. Indeed, Microsoft was an underdog, came into the game after Apache, and has grown to 28%, gaining 5% or so during a period when Apache marketshare has remained constant.
P.S. Ellison is going to have to develop a new angle to push Oracle - When SQL Server trounced them in the clustered results on the TPC-C, Ellison and friends proclaimed that clustered results don't count, getting the TPC to allow one to separate clustered and non-clustered. Well now Microsoft beats Oracle at non-clustered results too. I'm sure there'll be some new angle to defend against this.
I think, in order to really get Linux moving on the desktop, there will need to be some fairly major and widespread use of desktop security holes in Windows. I think the problems with IIS security and stability are the main factors pushing MS out of that area. We know there are security problems with Windows desktops, but there are usually not very many widespread attacks on them. Which is good, but it's not bringing the matter into the light like it did with IIS.
A combination of slow queries and frequent writes will cause mySQL to die. Totally. It can cause data to take ten minutes to save.
The solution is to rewrite your applications to use only fast queries, but if you really need to do slow queries it's a genuinely serious problem. I had it for a long time, and it drove people nuts. I eventually discovered how to optimize certain queries and the problem went away, but it is real.
Slashdot doesn't have this problem because the queries it uses are rarely complex. You can do "select x,y,x from messages where thread_id = 10445" all day without it breaking a sweat. But try to do something it can't optimize with indexes and it will die.
My problem was using:
select * from cal where left(date, 10) = '2003-01-01'
instead of
select * from cal where date >= '2003-01-01' and date date_sub('2003-01-01', interval 1 day)
The first can't use indexes and the second can.
During these SELECTs, mySQL locks the tables involved, preventing writes from happening. So one slow query on crucial databases can hang the system.
In the end, I found the problem was pretty easy to work around, but it took forever for me to figure out what it was. Watch out for those date fields!
D
I'd probably stop thinking of girlfriends as sexual partners if they'd stop getting so damned jealous when I fuck their best friends.