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Bill Gates On Linux
King-of-darkness writes "USA Today had an interview with Bill Gates on june the 30th. Gates seems to be considering Linux as a passing thru competition just like OS/2., and That Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies."
"passing through" technologies don't last as long as Linux has already.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
This is the guy that managed to overlook the internet when he wrote The Road Ahead in 1995.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Silly Bill, did he forget that Microsoft and IBM partnered on OS/2?
Off to RTFA to find out....
He is right. Windows is pusing the technologies. Pushing them in the way they desire. nevertheless, they are. Linux has a long way to go for smooth MultiMedia usage.
Nevertheless, he is only right for now. Linux is a locomotive, and its only picking up steam.
OS/2 was once a joint product between IBM and Microsoft. In fact, I have an old OS/2 book with a foreword by Bill Gates himself where he refers to OS/2 as "the future of computing". That is why NT originally had an OS/2 subsystem and supported the HPFS filesystem from OS/2.
With Linux, Microsoft has never had its hand in the pie. They have never had any control over its development. Linux bears no similarity to OS/2 as a competing technology. To suggest it is just wishful thinking on Bill Gates part.
The magazine with the widest readership in the nation. It probably has the lowest reader-IQ-average as a direct result. The last thing Mr. G wants to happen is for your PHB to read USA Today and think, "Huh. This Linux thing is a big deal."
So, here he says it isn't a big deal. I'm sure that in real life, he cares a great deal about it.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
> Gates seems to be considering Linux as a passing
> thru competition just like OS/2.
Well, what would you expect him to say? That Linux may (if people get their act together) start threatening Windows on the desktop, and that people are really not fond of Microsoft's draconian licensing schemes and forced inclusion of DRM in their products?
A newspaper interview with a businessman is nothing more than an opportunity for free advertising. You don't think Bill knows that?
We bet on graphical user interface.
Funny, I seem to remember that someone else had already proven the GUI in the market when MS "bet" on it.
I gotta agree with Bill's reaction on that one. The interviewer lost all credibility when he said that. He's one of those people that thinks he knows the technology market because he uses technology, which at best only tells you about consumer technology.
None of his friends used OS/2 so nobody used it. I guess nobody uses mainframes either, and the Internet was invented 10 years ago.
In the article, he basically says that few companies have the guts to innovate, and that Microsoft does this constantly...
Surprise: Xerox did that way before Microsoft ever thought about it. And Bill himself only thought about it when he saw one of the first demo model of the Apple Lisa (if I remember well). And that's just one example among many.
Microsoft never innovated: it just latched on all the good ideas. GUIs, ACLs, www browsers, spreadsheet, heck, even the mouse was invented by somebody else.
So, what kind of "innovations" has been created by Microsoft? Maybe Clippy. But that's it, and we all know how helpful that is...
And for those who may believe that Microsoft improved on all of these, I have just four words for you: Blue... Screen... Of... Death.
Whew! Enough ranting. You can start modding me down, now.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
> They keep bring us new stuff like MS-Bob.... and Clippy...
Of all the stuff they've released in multiple markets over the past two decades, all you can find to troll with are Microsoft Bob (an application from 1995) and Clippy. Seems to me they might not be doing so bad after all. Why not compare modern versions of MS apps to versions of Mac OS or Linux from 1995 then?
I love Linux, but the Microsoft Bob troll is so crusty, like no mistakes were made with Linux or OS X over the years...
Several somebodies had actually.
Microsoft was the LAST person to the party when it came to the GUI. The same thing goes for "NT" technology. Billy is still trying to effectively replicate both MacOS and OS/2.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Let's be serious. I mean, we've had to bet the company many times on big technological advances. We bet on the 16-bit PC. We bet on graphical user interface. We bet on the NT technology base. Now we're in the process of betting on a combination of technologies called .Net; Longhorn Web services go along with that.
.NET and C#)
Let see:
- IBM bet on the 16-bit PC.
- Apple bet on the graphical user interface
- Netscape bet on the web.
- The NT technology base (thats "new technology" technology for those don't know) was forced down user's throats.
- Sun bet on the internet and Java (MS calls this stuff
Yeah, MS took some big risks there
Gates: Who has the guts and the willingness to do risk-taking to get ink into the standard user interface?
Me: Apple
Gates: Who else has the guts to get speech, get the recognition levels up, get the learning levels up in the standard interface?
Me: Apple
t'nera semordnilap
Yeah, but it does make me really curious about a few things.
I think the mere fact they talk about Linux in a USA Today interview with Gates says a lot. Besides, in the interview itself he isn't completely dismissive about Linux or OS/2. He said that OS/2 was serious competition because it had the weight of IBM behind it. If he's publicly saying the same thing about Linux then they are saying in public that it's a major threat.
Personally, I hope they misunderestimate Linux right until it kills them. I stand by my belief that once non-windows home computers have around 20% of the market share, MS is doomed. At that point, hardware manufacturers will be losing serious sales if they release products with only Windows drivers. Software manufacturers will either release only for Windows, or make the software multi-platform and increase their potential market by 20%. Game manufacturers will be in an even better situation. If they release for PC only, they hit a small market, if they make the game multi-platform, not only do they get the additional computers (Linux, OS X, etc.) but additional consoles as well. If MS loses the monopoly on Windows machines as game computers, and Apple decides to break their monopoly on Office by doing what they did with Safari... at that point MS is dead. Let's just hope they don't know it yet.
Who cares how long it's managed to be around? How could it be called the passing fad? It hasn't passed yet and is obviously doing very successful so.... where's the interesting point here? So what. UNIX has been around for 40 years and Linux for about 12 to 13 compared to 32-bit Windows' 8. Neither Linux or Windows has died out yet so none of them are passing fads. One's merely younger than the other *shrug*
-Shippy
Linux suffers from some of these problems, but incompetency and bad marketing are hopefully not amongst them. The one thing Linux absolutely has to do however is start loading up with consumer features. This means making stuff easy, be it installing new drivers, supporting graphics and sound properly, playing games. At the moment Linux sucks unless you're prepared to put a lot of effort into it or never intend to change your hardware ever. At present I'd say that the big boys have just about mastered producing a reasonable desktop, but there is a long way to go yet.
By definition, CEOs are cheerleaders to the general masses. The article was written for USA Today, bought mostly for its 4 colour weather map.
Of course his answers are going to be biased. Of course they are going to be "MS NUMBER ONE!" in tone. It would be irresponsible if he didn't.
A CEO is a part sales person. He is selling MS. He and all sales people will streach the truth.
Move along, nothing to see here.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
(From the article)
> For any project, if you look at communications
> costs, hardware costs, personnel costs, all that,
> software licensing ranges -- the highest you'd
> ever find is, like, 3% of any IT-type project.
Wow. Not my experience, to say the least.
To me, this is indicative of exactly where Linux does and will continue to shine. The above statement is probably true for Chase Manhattan, and I doubt we'll see Chase switching to Linux anytime soon (although I don't doubt that their big iron is still a commercial UNIX).
Most of the people I deal with, though, are either small research groups or small businesses: Five guys with three computers and a world to conquer. This is where Linux is already excelling, and I think this is where it will excel for the immediate future.
That is why Gates is wrong. OS/2 had some advantages over Windows (such as the 'IBM army' as he puts it), but it was competing with Windows for the same goal. Where I see Linux being really successful is in places where the Microsoft Barrier-to-Entry(tm) is just too high. Unlike OS/2, Linux isn't going to be driven from these places. Linux is not going away, although it may not be going to the foreground, either.
And as more and more small businesses and contractors and researchers use Linux to do cool and interesting things on the cheap, bigger businesses will start to notice.
Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies.
This is quite consistent with what Bill Gates has said many times before, that "freedom to innovate" was endangered by any action against Microsoft, despite it being officially judged a monopoly.
Alongside this use of doublespeak is the recent lobbying by the "Institute for Software Choice" in Australia for government organizations there to avoid free and open source because of the economic harm it would cause to MSFT, a corporation based in the United States.
As a U.S. citizen, I've already enjoyed the benefits of free and open source software developed in Australia and look forward to seeing more of it. Likewise, a lot of free and open source software has been developed in the United States that could be of great benefit to Australian users in government, industry and at home. I don't see why the Australian government should be especially restricted from making the kinds of command decisions on IT infrastructure that companies all over the world make every day - you know the kind - the corporate standard is to run Windows and to use Word, etc.
The hue and cry about freedom of choice and innovation is only raised when there is a palpable danger that the choice might be other than one designed to further bolster the financial interests of Microsoft, or that innovation might result in a potentially lucrative new technology being developed outside Microsoft.
People like Bill Gates who, with his money and fame, enjoys instant access to government officials and the media across the world to promote his point of view (aligned to increase shareholder value at MSFT) is able to get an audience that common people, or even average knowledgeable IT people, simply cannot hope to get.
The fact that free and open source software is making inroads through grass-roots word of mouth based on its own merits, devoid of such a heavily funded marketing organization, and despite this lopsided point of view being propagated by Gates at the highest levels and in most public venues, is a remarkable testament to Lincoln's adage that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time".
It gives me hope.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Linux truly runs the gambit of support from zilch (but completely free) to 24x7 support for mission-critical applications. This is great when you have development and test environments where you don't want to pay licensing/support for something that customers will never see. You're lowering overhead which nowadays is very important
On the technical side, being able to modify Linux means that it can run in a number of environments from the desktop/workstation (where a larger, less efficient kernel that has more stuff compiled into it doesn't matter) to a server (where stability and speed are more important) to very small devices (where a small memory footprint is important).
If you're talking stability, security, and speed and other *nix features/functions, then yeah, Linux is not a very compelling product. But merely copying *nix isn't what made Linux popular in the first place!
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Bill's view of the world is predictably MS centric.
Who cares what some corporate director thinks of Linux? Linux and OSS do not have to compete in the market as they are not of the market. They cannot be bought or sold, or controlled, driven out of business.
OSS is not another Pepsi for the masses, its for coders, and people that want an OS that was created to be useful, not filled with stupid sh*t thought up by a focus group.
Bill goes on about all of the hot new "technologies" that MS is creating, all with suitably meaningless code names, "longhorn", "lance", "infinity", "big sleek cat like thing". Who knows if any of these things will be useful. Most MS technologies seem to be focused on locking their customers in to their platform rather than providing any useful functionity. Paladium, Doc scripting, passport, the paperclip, need I say more?
Commercial software is increasingly becoming a platform to get you to buy other stuff. Personally, I get enough advertising stuffed through my eyeballs already. Its like movie theatres, remember when you used to go to a movie pay your $2.50 and NOT be showen 30m of commercials before the movie started?
In a nut shell, commercial software producers think a great enhancement is a talking paperclip whereas OSS producers think a popup blocker is a good feature.
Just be happy, and grateful to OSS developers, that you have a choice.
I think Bill's interview is typical PR material; anyone from MS's marketing group could probably give the same interview. But what scares me, is that every time Microsoft "innovates", all they really do is make stuff that is incompatible with anything non-Microsoft (and sometimes their own products aren't compatible!)
That in mind, it seems more important to me to promote open standards than Linux itself. Of course I would love to see Linux have a respectable desktop market share for better OEM support. But what good is my Linux machine if I can't even surf the web because too many web pages are written only for IE? How much of a pain is it if I have to tell everyone to resend their MS Office documents in a format I can read (OOo won't always cut it)?
And now we're seeing some cases where the US and/or state governments' are officially blessing Microsoft's otherwise incompatible data formats---this should be criminal! Public information that is avaialable electronically (either through the web or some other means) should not dictate which software is used to view, edit, modify or interact with that data.
If you go to a "IE only" government website, you're effectively seeing a tax funded advertisement for Microsoft. Your taxes paid for the software purchase, for the staff to setup and maintain that system, and now you're effectively taxed again by being forced into purchasing some (very expensive) software. And people call open source communist?!
I think we need to put some effort into a strong "inform the masses" campaign. An easy first step is to write editorials to your local paper brining to light the dangers of proprietary data formats and vendor lock-in. I was thinking about pre-scripting a lot of these letters and posting them on my website for all to use/borrow/steal/whatever. These letters also need to be sent to government representatives.
The article should contain proposed solutions. As much as we love Linux and friends, we can't beat it down peoples' throats. Some other viable thoughts:
Finally, I think it's important to have some good, strong analogies or metaphores to illustrate the negative impact of the Microsoft monopoly (and their use of proprietray, non-compatible data formats). The most obvious analogy, to me, is as follows:
What if Ford Motor Co. owned all the roads in the U.S.? Surely they would design the roads such that only Ford vehicles worked on them. And furthermore, they would hide behind IP laws to make it illegal for anyone to make a car for their roads. What if Ford only offered one or two models of cars that actually worked on these roads? And those cars were their most expensive?
If the above scenario were true, public outrage would be rampant. Most people simply don't realize that this contrived situation is the case with Microsoft. Worse, people don't understand the implications of Microsoft literally owning your data.
Welcome to the United States of Microsoft, comrade.
"If Microsoft built cars, the Linux community would make a car that was powered
by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive, and
available freely - but only 5 percent of the people would use it."
The car would have to be assembled at the home. There would be a steering wheel which is only used to navigate the car some of the time. There would be 47 pedals that each respond to varying levels of pressure. The manual would contain no illustrations and only cover half the functionality. A passenger seat is available to add to the Linux car, but the installation procedure requires new tools that you'll have to research how to use. The headlights and blinkers work, but the windshield wipers are still in development. (Nobody thought to copy that functionality until MS did it 4 years ago.) The Linux Community would bash MS for their wiper addition, claiming that one of their modes work only intermittently. However they'll cheer on the Linux team when they finally figure out how to copy that function they thought was useless and would make the users stupider. You'll be able to get a moon roof for free, but once you install it you'll find that you have to replace a component in the engine because suddenly the tires won't turn anymore. There's no automatic transmission, only manual, and it's got 19 gears plus 3 seperate modes.
Despite the well known fact that consumers want easy to use products that do what they need them to without much fuss, the Linux Community will act stunned and surprised at every turn that only the few people with the interest and the time will want anything to do with this car. Meanwhile, the Microsoft car still sells quite well and people drive quite happily with it. They've even got a large selection of games to play.
"Derp de derp."