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Ballmer on Windows Server 2003, Linux
no_demons writes "Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, has given an interview to CNet about Windows Server 2003 and Linux. He claims that 'our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us than they have seen from that [open-source] community'. Discuss." Also in the news: two critical security vulnerabilities (MS03-014, MS03-015), and this piece about Windows 2003 mentioning that Microsoft is trying to develop a command-line only server.
In typical parlance this means make money go further, however in this context it means 'spend money, spend more money, keep spending money', until the budget snaps like an rubberband when its elasticity has been exceded.
Well, our budget has already snapped, like the rubberband. Funny how budgets these days aren't elastic and don't stretch. Perhaps setting up a demo MySQL or Postgres Linux server might be in order to convince the powers that be that we can get along just fine without.
BTW, I love how Steve blathers on about having a corporation behind their product. Like support from that has not pricetag. We're doing without MSDN because we can't afford that. Google is my friend. Lastly, a customer can go to Microsoft and request a feature? Really? Even one as small as us? Yeah, right. Time for a little off the end?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'd be very impressed if Microsoft actually came out with a command-line only version. The fact that "it's a very tangled subsystem" makes me wonder how possible that would be.
.NET CLI. But if they shipped an OS based on just the CLI, it couldn't very well be called "Windows," now could it?
I could see a version of Windows shipping without the GUI enabled, allowing administration only by remote desktop. But for the entire OS to ship with no GUI libraries would be very unlikely.
On the other hand, they've already done it (sort of), look at the
Mirrors:
com.com link
zdnet.co.uk link
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Yep, Microsoft has definitely made advances in way to snatch away the rights of those who use their products. Well done guys! Can't wait for palladium....
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
'our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us than they have seen from that [open-source] community'
.net "innovations" seems to have a lot in common with the stuff Novell was doing several years ago with single sign on and single vendor application development etc etc (NDS / Btreave / groupwise / wordperfect suite / ZENworks etc )
Perhaps he is commiting the cardinal sin of confusing market share and marketing speak with innovation and creativity.
As has worked for the majority of M$ innovations, they put a pretty gui on things created by others, and leave the real details to registry entries and third party plug ins.
the
In terms of innovations, Microsoft truly leads (agaist open-source). Microsoft tries to hire people with ideas, for the sole purpose of designing better interfaces and new concepts. I really, honestly, haven't seen much innovation from Linux.
I think this might have to do with the premise of open-source. OSS does not really have profit. It is easy to recreate an existing idea, because you know what you have to do and how. It is far harder to create a new idea and implement it, and your chances of success are far lower. For this reason, paid employees are more likely to try and innovate. I'm not saying Linux doesn't have anything new - just that I haven't really seen anything.
webpage
Yeah... NT was created about 10 years ago which was a clone of Windows which was created in 1981 and was derived from DOS which was stolen from QDOS.
I hate Balmer.
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
Actually, other than the GUI, it is based heavily on the VMS architechure with huge influence (and growing) from Unix.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you compare the 20+ year history of Microsoft to the much younger open source movement, I think it may be fair to say that there's been more technical innovation from Microsoft. Of course, the whole open source model is quite an innovation in and of itself.
The first 5 years or so of Linux were mainly focused on replicating funcationality that already existed in non-free Unix OSes. Likewise with the apps. It's only in the past year or two that we're starting to see a good deal of innovation in the form of apps that aren't just clones of non-open-source apps.
Open source is starting to really move, and we're starting to see some truly novel apps and innovations, but I think it's completely understandable that the first decade or so of open source was devoted to bootstrapping our tech to be equal to or better than closed source stuff.
I'm no Microsoft fan, but they *have* introduced some real innovations. Cheap, shared-SCSI-bus clustering comes to mind, as does Active Directory (although AD is certainly inspired by NDS). While Microsoft certainly followed Apple into the era of the GUI, they've made notable improvements to the GUI. There are others, of course; only the most rabid anti-MS zealot could claim that they've *never* done *anything* innovative.
Of course, it says something about Microsoft's insecurity that Ballmer is playing the "Historically, we've done more than open source." Open source is still snowballing -- if Microsoft had a new closed-source competitor that was starting to gain market share, everyone would laugh at marketing material that said "Historically, we've done more than this new competitor."
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
It's not a bad thing to go back to the drawing board every so often and ask if there's a better way to do it. But be willing to accept No as an answer, instead of starting over for the sake of starting over.
They have the Internet on computers now?
I quote Mr. Balmer:
" Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old. That's what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 20-year-old system. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition."
So just because the basic design is old, it's not "innovative?" I think this guy needs to spend more time with his programmers!
Hmmm...Windows 2003 is based on Windows XP, which is based on Windows 2000, which is based on Windows NT, which came out in 1993 (?) That's 10 years old, except, wait! The internals of Windows NT are based on VMS! Which makes Windows 2003 a clone of at least a 20 year old OS!
BTW--Linux is not a clone of the original 20 year-old OS. It's a MODERN Unix clone. It's based on POSIX standards which is actually quite a bit newer.
My journal has hot
anyone notice in the bottom link that in 2003 that the listener portion of IIS was moved into the kernel?
Am I the only one that that strikes as a poor idea?
so incentive as in being pure hate? So what happens if microsoft disappears?
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
NIH = Not Invented Here.
/. joke, Microsoft is dying, being swallowed by their own need to swallow everything.
This myopic view of their business model:
1) Prevents Microsoft from embracing (in the traditional sense, not in how we usually think of MS doing with this concept) the point that UNIX operating systems are tried and true technology, given that they HAVE been around for a very long time in computer years.
2) Prevents Microsoft from generating products that sell to users of UNIX families (Microsoft Office X for Mac OS X is the only UNIX family product I am aware of), and, as a result, generating additional revenues.
3) Leaves Microsoft in a sacrificial lamb situation when businesses have to look at the bottom line in a tech solution where a competing *NIX product simply does the same task for less money or less complex or proprietary technologies and with less licensing hassles.
Microsoft has beaten the dead horse of The Operating System as the Hub of All You Do paradigm for too long now. Operating systems are still important but now revolve around two camps: Microsoft Windows technology, and *NIX technologies (BSD, Sun, Mac OS X, Linux and its many distros, et al.). What many businesses now need revolves less on what you run your apps on, but the apps themselves.
I see Microsoft losing more revenue due to their licensing model, which still presumes that it's the 1990's and money is everyone. Businesses are finding it hard to justify yearly OS or application suite upgrades. IT managers are just moving to Windows 2000 Server right now, and aren't going to figure in Windows 2003 Server anytime soon.
Meanwhile, many *NIX operating systems are free or lower cost than a Microsoft solution, and does much of the same, if not more. Further, Microsoft tends to develop their software proprietarily, so that third-parties can rarely adapt an MS product to their own product.
Such attitudes killed many a computer company. Usually people think of Apple when pondering NIH, but even Apple is far from those days, with their BSD hybrid OS, stock industry standard ports and protocols, yadda, yadda, yadda.
To use an overused
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
I don't agree with this link 100%, but I like to play devil's advocate. It's not totally accurate to call the Mac a ripoff of Xerox, just as it's not totally accurate to call Windows a ripoff of the Mac.
Care to be asshole buddies?
"We're seeing crazy uptime numbers now, like three months, six months. I fully expect we'll see a year of uptime when Windows Server 2003 is finished," said Jeff Stucky, senior systems engineer on the Microsoft.com operations team.
Shit - I have workstations up for over a year, and these people are impressed with a server staying up for 3 months. My fucking Sharp Zaurus PDA aparently has more "crazy uptime." than this peice of crap.
No wonder Microsoft can't get any traction in the server room - if 3 months is considered "crazy uptime."
(quote swiped from theregister.co.uk)
(please excuse my swearing, but this is silly - Windows belongs on the XBOX, not in the server room)
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
"A lot of the tools depend on having the graphical interface. Printing, for example, requires all the graphics subsystems because we have the "what you see is what you get" model. You need to have the whole of the display stuff to render it. It's a very tangled subsystem."
:)
So tangled that this makes no sense. Printing is a really dumb example, Steve. No one needs WYSIWYG on their print server!
Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old. That's what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 20-year-old system. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition.
20+ years old hrm, Windows 1.0 was released on November 10, 1983, making windows just 6.5 months short of being 20 years old.
Of course, the internals are totally different now, but then so are the internals of Linux to the original UNIX code...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Basically, I realize I am not an IT department, and the company I have purchasing influence at wouldn't even qualify as a wart on the ass of a company MS cares about, but hear me out:
:)
The Licensing bit is really all that matters to me. I don't 'license' software, I don't 'license' any media. I buy it.
I refuse to accept the legitimacy of EULAs or any other licensing terms. Because of this I will ignore them when I have to until I am forced to otherwise.
Since I think its ridiculus to buy a product and then post-purchase agree to terms that are restricting I try to avoid it at all costs. In the few cases that I don't I'll use the software as I see fit and wait for a court to force me to do otherwise.
This is why I like the GPL. This is why I use the GPL. No one is asked to accept a license agreement, regardless of its validity, unless they want to do things that require extra permissions. Simple easy to remember concept, basically "I can do whatever I like and consult the GPL when common sense tells me I need to"
I know what you thinking, that this "common sense" isn't common, that I should accept licensing terms for all uses of all media. I contest that its an obvious boundary from running Visual FoxPro (or whatever) on any hardware/software combo I see fit, to giving away copies to other people. This boundary IS common sense in my view, and an added bonus of the GPL is that in dealing with this extra rights it wont let someone curtail future uses with a changed license (again regardless of the legitimacy of said license).
This doesn't even touch on the available source issue, which, while I personally have only used the source from a small percentage of the software I use, gives an added security knowing that in all likely-hood at least a few other people have glanced at the authors code and not publicly complaigned
So to sum it up, I don't agree to the legitimacy of licenses tacked on to products I purchase. Because of this I will A) Aviod having to use products with them, B) Ignore them where I see fit in a minor act of 'civil disobediance' - not to be confused with violating any common sense applications of so called 'copyright'
...and dang, it was decent money but I just despised it. All the uber leet sales guys talked just like this Ballmer guy, whatever they are selling, it gets to be so "cultish" they can't see the forest for the trees sometimes. Their manure has no odor and the other guy's is covered with flies.
I think when you get to the point you are as brainwashed as this guy that you need serious therapy. He may be a billionaire,but it doesn't mean he isn't rubber room crazy.
He's desperate, suffering from paranoid delusions of grandeur and megalomania, you can tell that from his sentence structure and tone, let alone the words.
What I got out of this interview is that microsoft has seen the light and is now seriously running scared. It didn't seem like it before to me, but now I can see it. They won't intellectually admit it, but their actions speak otherwise, it's like someone living in a high crime ghetto and not moving when deep down they know they should, but thinking they will be safer with another lock on the door, when they already have 5 of them installed. The race is still on, but they are dragging butt now. They are having to resort to tricks like lobbying to make open source illegal, or get countries and corporations and governments to not even look at it. That's a serious desperation move. It wouldn't even be attempted by them if they weren't scared, and I mean scared.
Even his demonization attempts are transparent, using the obvious buzzword "communism" sure to get the appropriate knee jerk reaction from jerks who allow their knees to get thwacked.That word was carefully picked, no other word like that strikes fear into any CEO, no way does he want his golf buddies to even *think* he might have once even read it. I bet microsoft sales people use that word constantly in all their raps now, probably under orders. Bet one dollah on that. I'm surprised he didn't just say "terrorism", seems to be the new 1337 speak from scandal plagued politicians and CEO's when they want to quick change the subject.
People talk about open source being a "cult"....well, if you want to see cult like behavior, re-read that article. That's a serious dangerous cult true believer, absolutely no doubt of that. Makes the next ayatollah or TV preacher look like an atheist.
Free and Open source is the BEST idea to come down the computer pike EVER. Can it get better? Sure! Is it perfect? No! I doubt you'd see many proponents say that. Does it kick butt on closed source, and is it catching up fast in most areas, and will it over take it and change paradigms? Yes,yes it will, unless it's actually made *illegal* by these rich cultists using bribes and threats and buying governments and mandating what is in essence "microsoft solutions" and disguising it as "security" and "trusted"..
The net and computers and IT are not about one company being the dominant player for ever and ever, that has NEVER worked in any other industry ever invented by mankind, and so far, what they have done just goes to show that that universal principle still holds true.
Rome never appeared stronger until right before it collapsed, when they so much believed their own hype they couldn't see "heathen" reality staring at them. They even resorted to the same sort of demonization efforts.
It's too bad to see what happens to people once pure raw greed takes over their lives, and becomes in essence their religion.
I am certainly way down the list on slashdot for "yearly income", but tell ya what, I would not trade my life for this ballmer guy's, despite his power and money. There's more to life than greed, too bad he never learned that lesson when he was a kid. And greed coupled with insanity? I feel sorry for him in a way. Not a lot, but some.
The problem with talking about _LINUX_ innovation is that Linux is just a kernel. When talking about Linux innovation, KDE and GNOME don't even count, because they aren't part of Linux - they are add-ons.
Now if you are talking about free software innovations, well, you've got the entire Internet infrastructure. You've got GUILE, which is really cool. Emacs, which is amazing. Anyway, I could go on if I had the time, but you get the point.
Of course there's a general problem of determining the "newness" or "innovativeness" of an idea, but that's another topic...
Engineering and the Ultimate
According to this news story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the local Seattle paper, the Seattle Times is for the suburbanites), Microsoft is in severe danger of losing their shorts to Linux with their release of Windows 2003.
...
Maybe Paul Allen was right in diversifying out of Microsoft stock
> --- All Of The Above --- >
"Innovation" is coming up with something new and useful. None of these things you have listed qualifty as either; they have been done to death, and Microsoft is just catching up 20 years later. (Java was hardly the first VM. And yes, other VMs have attempted this at the OS level, including Java, and even non-VMs, like Lisp.) "Catching up" and "doing things you haven't seen from us before" seems to be the MS definition of "innovation," but it's not the well-accepted one.
Perhaps, perhaps not. We see the fact that people do not comprehend the reasons for X and its design, and rather look to things like having transparent windows as a more useful "feature" than network transparency. Standards like X and OpenGL are misunderstood; there are mechanisms for extending them with the fancy new features. There is no need to replace them, particularly with poorly-thought-out designs by people who don't truly understand windowing systems.
People who do understand them realize it's a lot easier to extend X than implement a new system. ;-)
It's better to stick with X than be subjected to an inferior attempt at a windowing system.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Last time I checked, many different entites controlled the remaining parts. Such entites include those who own Red Hat, those who own Debian, those who own Mandrake, etc. In respect to the parent, it is filled with garbage, and therefore should be ignored. Besides, there isn't any re-education being done by Linus, nor has there been such activities.
Thank you, good night
Support Israeli punk bands. Man Alive.
It seems to me that the interview contained some very interesting questions and got fairly lame answers.
1. The cost of systems is going down, and Office can cost 1/3 the cost of a physical system.
It seems crazy to me that consumers are willing to pay $800 for a $300 computer with Windows and Office. Eventually consumers will figure this out too. Ballmer basically sticks his head in the sand and claims the two things aren't related. But when the price ratio of going Linux/OSS + PC vs. Windows/Office + PC goes up and the utility of the systems approachs par, this has to be bad news for MS.
2. People selling Linux-based PCs in developing nations and installing pirate copies of Windows...
Obviously, this is an ongoing problem for Microsoft. The real problem will be when the users don't immediately install Windows on the computer, and are happy with Linux. Indeed, this is the acid test for desktop Linux.
That's pretty much an unfair comparison. It's not MS vs ALL opensource or even ALL commercial vs ALL opensource. To be fair you'd have to admit that many commercial programs come and go just like opensource ones do. Tons of commercial software fails every year regardless of how much money gets thrown at it. The good stuff sells and continue to be improved on but the same thing happen in the OSS world.
Opensource is not just one big company, so if 10 opensource projects cease development it really doesn't have the effect your implying since they are not all from the same group.
Your also bringing up the myth that all opensource programmers are drones and should all work on the same projects and not make competing ones. As has been pointed out a billion times, opensource programmers are not a single pool of resources to be pushed into whatever project YOU feel they should be working on.
Your right about MS having a lot of money so they can "afford more time to develop" a particular project but that's about it. When a really good OSS project comes along its going to make it regardless of how much money MS has. The advantage goes to the killer app.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
The real incentive for open source is saving money. Saving money is the same as earning money.
This motivation will most likely be felt by large companies, many already have huge IT departments. If the large banks (each has thousands of coders) adopted OS, they could save hundreds of dollars per desktop across the entire company. Missing features (such as a media server) could be implemented by all those IT people who would otherwise be trying to come up with workarounds to Microsoft forced-upgrades and other marketing BS.
Microsofts patience and tenacity is an asset for them. However, they have been shown to abandon projects over the years (MS Bob anyone?). So it is worth noting that they do not always stick with it. Also sticking with a losing dog cannot always be a wise move (I think they realize this generally).
From an OSS perspective, 20 different "Gnifty" apps may show up, but as long as at least one succeeds; then all is well for OSS. I don't really consider this idea that many will fail as any different than from the closed source world. Many companies have put out word processors...Where are they? Is that a blemish on closed-source software as a model?
Also OSS does not have to win every battle to win the war (if we want to use such an analogy).
In fact, losing a battle seems to have no effect on OSS at all. They just keep coming...
Use a linux client to smbmount the SMB shares of both machines. Run a filesystem thrasher like bonnie++ on both using a 2GB set. That should give a slightly better idea of a comparison against the two. (I still have my money on the linux box.)
Forget all of Ballmer's statements. I'm more interested in the questions asked by the "reporter."
Did it seem odd to anyone else that these were all predicatable, softball questions? "How come you're going to beat Linux?" doesn't lead to an answer that qualifies as news. A real question would be something like "If an organization is moving an app from a Sun/SGI/HPUX server to x86 equipment, why would they move it to Win2003 Server instead of Linux?" Make him think and/or squirm.
Down with the Press-Release-As-News publishing paradigm.
All valid points, but from a business perspective, you've just given several reasons not to use OSS.
Well, damn, then I'll go to the pool of resouces that CAN be pushed onto whatever project I feel they should be working on.
Example? Microsoft customers wanted Internet focus. Microsoft pretended the Internet didn't exist. They pulled a company-wide about face in a YEAR. Full 180.
I'm not anti-OSS; I just finished setting up a pop toaster with qmail, vpopmail, qmail-scanner, spamassassin, clamAV, courier IMAP, squirrelmail, and MRTG to monitor it all. But I can't help but think that most of that is built into Exchange 2000 in a neat and compact way.
Microsoft is a different way, but it's not inherently better or worse than OSS. However, Microsoft's way very often coincides with the way a Business thinks things should be.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Okay I have had this beef with Microsoft for a long while now and have even posted the feature request about a dozen times over the past three years.
/trash" so why can I not do the same simple thing in Windows.
How difficult would it be to change the Windows File Server's interpretation of a connecting Client's "delete" command to translate as "move." As head of an IT department for a very large company with a lot of corporate executives and administrative staffers I must get close to 100 requests a week for file retrieval due to accidental file deletion. It some times takes an hour to recover a single file from the backup tapes. I have three simple words for the Windows Server development team "Network Recycle Bin."
I have tried third party software like "Undelete" but it is just crap and never seems to work the way we need it to. Why is this simple to understand pain in the butt for SysAdmins of a Windows box not available and continually overlooked on the release of every Service Pack and new version? My staff and I have much better things to do with our weeks than file retrieval from backup tape.
I have been personally using UNIX for years now and I can easily change a users profile to redefine the "rm" command to mean "mv
"Help me Obi-/.-Kenobi,your my only hope!" -$
Slowly phase out the MS stuff and slowly introduce OSS.
And that's exactly what most organizations are doing: First, Linux is only used as the webserver and nothing else. Later the fileserver, later the printserver. In the meantime OpenOffice is introduced and when it's time to replace hardware, the switch to Linux is done.
It takes a long time, maybe 10 years to fully make the transition, but it happens. 70% of domains (actually 75% of active domains) are already running Apache
Yeargh.
RedHat can't market the software they sell as a general purpose OS yet. Not because it's simply not appropriate, but because the software isn't ready.
My perspective is this; Linux itself doesn't need to work better as a workstation, it's fine. It needs applications now.
As a server there is no competition, Linux is among the top performers in the industry, and any inroads Microsoft makes will certainly be due to management making poor decisions.
On the workstation side, groups of people spend thousands of man-hours working on KDE and GNOME, Mozilla and OpenOffice.org, and various other workstation applications. Among these selections are a set of laudable starts, but they fall flat when it comes to actually working.
OpenOffice.org can't transfer clipboard selections to Mozilla and vice versa. Gaim is incapable in its current version of sending or receiving IM images without crashing. Licq doesn't understand the concept of a serverside contact list.
XMMS is aging and is unable to edit ID3v2 tags. GNOME's panel application for organising the desktop is crash prone. Customizing the GNOME menu requires a restart of the environment in order for things to show up. GNOME's print system is sad and has no configurator because that team 'doesn't believe in it'. KDE doesn't obey fontconfig properly.
Okay, so we have all these little tiny points, which are superfluous to you an I, because we either work around them, don't like desktop environments or user applications, or avoid using X entirely.
The thing is, these applications were DESIGNED to be userfriendly. KDE, GNOME particularly are examples of software whose express goal is to make life easy for a user who has no experience at all with UNIX.
This is the aspect that annoys me. They fail to acheive stated goals because of numerous issues, including as mentioned above the fact that people just don't want to do the dirty work of making the glue happen.
I'm on the phone as I'm typing my thoughts out, so I'm probably digressing all over the place here.
The replies I've been receiving so far with regard to my concerns are mainly 'so? we don't care about userfriendly!'
That's all well and good, but for projects dedicated to this goal, and integrated into major Linux titles like RedHat, who are marketed as easyto use and indeed easy to administer, there's a certain level of self-respect that should be accompanied by higher quality software, rather than the presently poor user-experience people have.
Oh damn, my browser segfaulted when I tried to print. Shoot, X died on me when I tried revising my resume. My NIC won't initialize! I can't check my email!
That's where I'm coming from, mainly. That's the angle from which Microsoft is going to come and attack Linux, too. They're going to present Linux as though it tried and failed miserably to appeal to the userbase.
And it may be a strawman on Microsoft's part, but still, it looks bad and the community could probably do better.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
Not true. Capitalism is about self-interest in economic matters. Laissez-faire economics is a type of capitalism and does not call for "hands off" governmental regulation but careful regulation. Therefore, capitalism is not about a lack of centralization, it is about keeping the means of production and distribution in private hands. Ideal communism is about there not being a government to regulate anything because the people giver everything they have to the common good.
Those who create most open source software projects do it not out of altruism, but because they receive something valuable in return, which is often an aspect that is neglected by the average onlooker.If the value they receive is not monetary, then it has no place in an argument involving economic models.
When someone creates a project, they do it out of a desire for certain functionality. They feel, however, that it is more than a fair tradeoff to relinquish much of the central control offered by copyrights in order to attain the far better quality, innovation, and speed at which open source software is developed. (emphasis added).Is this not altruism?
Other beneficial factors involve credit for work and experience.Still not talking about economics here.
Many open source projects are started when somebody wants to learn about a language, a certain type of program, or the hardware it runs opon. Hell, this was Linus' rationale for creating Linux in the first place.Beginnings do not entirely explain the ends. Marx's vision of communism did not include the brutality that was employed under Stalin and Mao, even though their proclaimed desire was to 'liberate' the slaves of capitalism.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
you must have an interesting idea of innovation.
here's what m-w.com has to say:
1 : the introduction of something new
2 : a new idea, method, or device : NOVELTY
apparently to use, innovation must be a brand new product category that has never been thought of before.
well gosh, when microsoft comes out with "MS Velvet Toy Unicorn Stuffed with BirdShit and a Large Green Salamander Tatoo", you better be first in line to praise Microsoft for coming up with a brand new type of thing that nobody else has done before (or do you know of some prior company working on shit-stuffed toys with tatoos ?")
Alternatively, you could make the argument that innovation is taking an idea that was poorly executed on, analyzing its shortcomings, fixing them, and really delivering on the possibilities.
Let's take the Xbox
Complaint: Developing for custom processors with shitty dev tools is hard; lack of ram makes games look like Shit (PS2)
Solution: Use industry standard hardware, use volume to keep costs low, use industry standard programming tools and libraries; add a boatload of ram
Result: XBox is one of the easiest platforms to develop for, one of the easiest platforms to port to, and visually and sonically crushes PS2. I'd call that innovation.
Let's take Excel.
Complaint: Lotus 1-2-3 is slow, doesn't take advantage of any kind of graphical environment, and is difficult to use
Solution: Make a spreadsheet that takes advantages of the new Windows graphical environment. Work solidly on making it perform fantastically, so that instead of letting macros run OVERNIGHT they can run significantly faster. Make writing formulas easier so that more people can use it. Do away withthe idea of "spread sheet programmer"
Result: Lotus who ?
Consider Windows NT
(which, first off, your comment about it being os2 is bullshit. MS was working on OS2 for IBM, not the other way around.)
Complaint: OS/2 was hard to setup and install, had no applications, had hellacious system requirements, had poor hardware support. Getting users to adopt it was impossible. Home users couldn't enjoy the benefits of modern computing that a modern OS could provide.
Solution: WNT introduced as a server only solution. Initial adoption rate extremely low, but core tenets of high reliability and integrated security architecture and SMP support are there. Prove the architecture, evolve the platform slowly, provide a Win16 and Win32 execution environment out of the box to run existing apps. As the platform matures and stabilizes, grow the installed base, add support for more commodity hardware, do more testing with applications starting at the high end and working towards the end-user. Continue to refactor and add functionality until you've got a viable desktop platform built off of enterprise quality internals.
Result: Server class features/operating environment brought to the average home desktop. NT 4 Workstation, W2k Pro, and XP Personal are the first desktop operating systems built off the guts of a server-class system. Mac OS X is the only other contender. Arguably, Linux is not currently a desktop contender, and DEFINITELY was not when NT4W and W2k Pro were released.
If you want to go innovate some shit-filled stuffed animals and beat MS to the next big innovation, be my guest.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
That's where I'm coming from, mainly. That's the angle from which Microsoft is going to come and attack Linux, too. They're going to present Linux as though it tried and failed miserably to appeal to the userbase.
This and your other points are valid concerns of the GPL phenomenon.
But the one thing that Open Source has that a For Profit doesn't have is time. Time is an endless resource. It allows a programmer to design a system correctly the first time (and if not keep working on something until it works)
Open Source doesn't have to answer to Stockholders and isn't rushing to put out a product. It can do what all programmers want to do...release code without bugs. I want perfect(TM) code. And if someone then takes my "pefect code" and in typical UNIX fashion mixes it with other tiny pieces to build another application, that programmer has the guarantee that my program does what I say it does and if they find a bug (s)he can fix it.
A problem with a lot of people and businesses today is that they want the quick fix now and won't invest for the long term. As with sports, you have to focus on fundamentals and if the fundamentals are strong, you'll succeed.
Investing in open source will always give you back what you put in and most often it will give back many times as much effort as you put in, as others see a benefit in what you are doing and want to help.
Investing in MS will give you software for 2 years that (historically) has been buggy and takes the control away from the user. You're burning your money.
>Name an application, or a feature of the operating system, that is truly innovative?
Tough question, the desktop model of computing was concieved of in the 50's and in the 60's there were working demonstrations with mice, cut-and-paste, word processing, etc.
Innovation is now just a business buzzword like proactive or synergy. For a short time I worked for a company whose full name was Proactive Inc/Synergy. Innovation is what you say to the jury when you're going to ream an industry.
I have a pretty modern computer, but here I am at a keyboard, monitor, mouse, etc attached to a loud beige box. Why doesn't it integrate with my TV/Entertainment center. Why can't I just tell it to do something or have it read me my email in the bathroom? Why isn't it on wheels roaming around the apartment?
I'll be screaming "innovation" from the mountaintops when someone produces something other than the further tweaking of the 50 year old desktop model. In the meantime its a code-word to appease those in the know like "family values" or "tough on drugs."
The real forefather is probably SmallTalk Interface Builders that Xerox PARC was playing with back in the 70s. Don't forget that MSFT had plenty of PARC people working there.