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Cringley on Microsoft and Linux
brentlaminack writes "Time for this week's dose of I, Cringely. This week the Cringe talks about Ballmer's Orlando comments from this week. He compares Ballmer's comments with Linus's. Nothing new here for the /. group, but a good read for the non-technical."
I liked the part where he describes how most bad open source projects die in a darwinistic fashion while most bad microsoft projects limp on forever.
Read a similar article at OSNews today: http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4898
Cringley's article is a good non-technical explanation of why freely developed and freely distributed open source software can and often does work better than Microsoft's commercially developed and commercially distributed closed source software.
There may be some technically oriented people who want to inform their non-technically-oriented friends, relatives, and acquaintances about what's been going on in the World of Slashdot, but cannot simply forward their acquaintances the original slashdot articles because they wouldn't make as much sense to someone not familiar with all of this already.
Cringely is useful for this purpose, if nothing else, since he is good at taking technically-oriented "stuff" and presenting it in a manner palpable and coherent to totally non-technical people. Which makes good e-mail forwards.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
So in UPNP the people that worked there were C-Class players... ok, but then, where are the A-Class players for Microsoft? In the NBA? Because they don't seems to be working on Windows neither.
First off, I'm not defending Ballmer. He's an idiot. With that said...
I agree with holding back Open Source releases 'until they're ready.' Personally, no software SHOULD be released until it's ready. The tendency to ship software out the door as soon as it boots has given us a market full of buggy, slopped together code and numbed the public to what amounts to poor craftsmanship. All in the name of the Holy Schedule.
The one thing Open Source lacks, and despite the holding back -- clearly needs, is structured testing. There is no real testing of Open Source. No Test Plans, no Test Matrices of test cases. Pre release versions are dumped to the public to use as they will in a blind, shotgun approach to testing. Exceptionally sloppy QA at best. The frequent patch history of Open Source is testament to this weakness.
Unfortunately, I don't have a suggestion as to how to solve this problem. Open Source by it's very nature doesn't lend itself well to any form of centralization, which is necessary for structured testing.
On the other hand, you have Microsoft and others that USE structured testing, but they ship based on schedule, not the number of P1 bugs still open. End result? Garbage.
Open Source at least is a labor of love. I'd just like to see SOMEONE commit to solid testing so that in the future people wouldn't have to put up with such bug ridden software.
At the risk of being labeled a MS apologist (I try to be rather neutral), there are in fact things that a corporate entity like Microsoft provides that open source may or may not: - Reasonably consistent consistent APIs across products (at least in recent .NET times)
- Product cohesion across the platform
- Great documentation
- Simple installation (sometimes)
My experience with open source has been that the "bazaar" of Open Source is indeed a noisy, dirty one, and that it takes real effort to separate the wheat from the chaff re: product quality and completeness. Even if you argue that MS products are of lower quality (which is improving because of competition), some customers are willing to accept the quality hit because of the reasons listed above.
That's the sound that Open Source makes as it screams at high speed over your head...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Nothing new here for the /. group, but a good read for the non-technical.
/. readers. But thats irrelevant. What is important for Microsoft is keeping the non-technical with them.
Isn't that the group Balmer addressed in the first place? My guess whould be that Balmer perfectly knew that it would be a clear to the
"When Ballmer talks about rears being on the line, what really counts at Microsoft is meeting shipping targets -- meeting business goals -- not quality targets. It is all about revenue. And there is nothing wrong with that if we all just say it out loud and admit the truth. But we don't."
He's right, Microsoft frequently gives away "Ship IT!" awards to managers who get the product out the door on time. This is the reason so many products that could have been great, are not.
UPNP is a decent example of Microsoft failure. But nothing is more fun to pick on than...
Microsoft Bob!!
If C-level players did an Open Source project, nobody would ever see it.
Cough cough Sourceforge cough cough...
So much stuff there is untouched by human hands its incredible.
Open Source at least is a labor of love. I'd just like to see SOMEONE commit to solid testing so that in the future people wouldn't have to put up with such bug ridden software.
Ask and ye shall receive - ever hear of this place? They employ a few really good programmers, BTW...
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
No, they were both invented by SCO.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
"There is no road map for Linux, nobody who has his rear end on the line."
Right, why does Ballmer think Microsoft includes an EULA with their software? To void them of the responsibility for the trillions of damage their software has caused through security vulenerabilites and generally poor design.
Yeah, trillions. We've all seen the way damage is estimated each time a virus grinds everything Microsoft to a halt. Usually in the hundreds of billions, and it's probably happened at least a dozen times. This let alone unrelated individual incidents companies around the world have on a daily basis.
Oh, and don't forget about the kids that get locked up for writing viruses and other mischevious software that exploit said vulnerabilities. They're an easy scape goat to relieve Microsoft yet again of any responsibility what so ever.
I'm tired of this bullshit. The day Microsoft gets hauled in to court to take responsibility once and for all is the day I go skiing in hell. I bet I'll see Gates running the resort.
-kidlinux.
I like what Cringley said, but I don't think he goes far enough. The argument becomes more lopsided in linux's favor when you take into account the ways that linux has changed microsoft's products.
When I started to use linux, people who worked with windows pretty much accepted that you'd have to reboot several times a day. This wasn't just because of the need to preserve backward compatitibility with DOS. Even NT 4 was pretty buggy before sp4 or so.
I remember telling people that sun servers often stayed up for years without reboots -- no one believed it. Computers crashed, that's what computers do. Microsoft, and to a lesser extent apple, convinced most casual users that's the way computers worked.
But obviously, this wasn't something that was caused by an immature level of technological development, because other companies, like sun, were shipping machines that didn't crash all the time.
I believe that linux is responsible for a huge percentage of the core improvements that MS made to windows. They never felt it was a problem to ship OSs that crashed until they saw an alternative that didn't crash, on the edge of their radar screen. An alternative that people could install on their existing PCs, an alternative that people running ISPs could use to do server work.
Linux's quality, for the most part, doesn't come out of competition. There are efforts to make linux better at doing certain specific things, efforts that are driven by benchmarks. Most of the time, these little competitions seem to be waged with FreeBSD. But it's a historical fact that people wanted to make linux more reliable way before windows had any stability at all.
Microsoft *needs* linux to push it. If linux wasn't out there, does anyone think they'd be trying to tighten up security? Does anyone think that they would have delivered stable versions of windows without the pressure of competition.
My point is that even if you don't use linux, you benefit from it in a big way. In fact, I would say that most of the real benefit that linux brings to the world comes in the form of competitive pressure on microsoft, and those benefits are seen by windows users, not by linux users. Who knows how much they'd be charging, what the net would look like, how often windows would crash, etc., if it weren't for linux.
It's hard to get this across, but every discussion of open source vs. commercial development ignores the effect that open source exerts on commercial developers. The discussions are simplistic for that reason.
If you were going to compare open source development vs. monopolistic commercial development in a realistic way, you'd have to talk about what a horrible job commercial developers did before open source developers started to hold their feet to the fire.
Consider the software marketplace, and the two feedback loops that drive it. One is the Almighty Frogskin* the other is the quasi-academic pursuit of excellence for its own sake. **
I'm increasingly bemused by those who try to see these orthogonal motives as somehow overlapping. They just ain't. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.
*They're no longer purely green...but neither are frogs
**because a shot o' sake, like jogging nude, puts color in your cheeks
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I know this is barely on topic, but why doesn't the title of Cringley's latest article show up in the slashbox any more? I liked having a new title appear to remind me to go check out his latest musings.
Perhaps, I'm just dreaming and the title was never there... it's been one of _those_ days...
Conventional wisdom suggests that the people who had been paid more would be more apt to change their minds, but actually, the reverse was true. The explanation is that the people who were paid could resolve the conflict in their mind between the beliefs they held and the contradictory statements they were writing by saying "heck, I still don't believe this, I'm not writing it because I believe it or anything, I'm writing it because I'm being bribed to." But the people who didn't have that "out" had to resolve their own cognitive dissonance another way, and for some of them, at least, the way was to realize that maybe there was something to the counterargument, after all.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I was eerily reminded of it while reading Ballmer's arguments that Microsoft's commercial software is "obviously" better because it's written by professional programmers who are paid for it.
But if you're getting paid to write code, and the code is (for whatever reason) crap, that you can't take pride in, you can at least feel good about all the lovely $$$ you're being paid. The open source programmer, on the other hand, who is doing it for love rather than money, doesn't have that out, so has a much higher incentive to write code that's not crap, because feeling good about it is the only reward.
If you are a good programmer, you program for a living because that is what you're good at. This is something that economists and Ballmer/Gates understand. Might as well get paid to program if you're good at it and enjoy it.
That's what's confusing about open source/free software--what do the developers do for a living? Are they students? Are they unemployed? Are they underemployed (e.g., working McDonalds)? If under/unemployed, why? If you are a good enough programmer to contribute to open source, can't you get a job with MS/IBM/Apple/Adobe/Oracle/etc.? Why would you program for free, in your spare time, instead of getting paid to do so?
he didn't mention the best case of 'just ship it' in history, WinME. What I've heard is it was a discarded code base revived just so they'd have something to market that year (WinMe is a pretty catchy name after all). That's about as low as it gets.
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Microsoft is producing the software to make money; that's a given. And it's often stated that Bill is driven by a Borg mentality to beat the other players in the industry and to own everything. Which makes a lot of sense; a lot of the evil illegal things they do can not be explained just by a motivation to get money, they already have the money.
And it stated in this article again that open source software development is based on a desire to make this software free. And personal reputation of the developer. And other motivations. But here's the one major driving motivation to Open Source Software that no one else seems to be willing to state:
Open Source software is largely driven, and will continue to succeeded, because of a hatred of Bill Gates. It's as simple as that. People hate Bill Gates so much that they are not just willing but glad to donate tens or hundreds of hours of their time to anything that would make projects that Microsoft competes with better. And the more illegal things he does to try to destroy other software and to take over the software world, the more this will continue to be true.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I have my own opinion on this matter. It seems even open source develpers don't understand their development model. Many - possibly the majority - of open source coders are not writing code for purely altruistic reasons. They are writing code because it doesn't do what they want it to do. Since the developer is the customer, the developer has a vested interest in making a good product.
Linux people are geeks, inherently technical people, that focus on technology. I'm not even mentionning that they might be professionals themselves. Microsoft people are professionals, driven by marketing and other business objectives.
Hence:
All of that is obviously not only true for Linux. Apple did understand that. There is a bunch of people doing a nice OS, and giving it away for free. It is not polished as we would like it to be. Ok. Let's polish it!
The point is that Apple did a nice economy of scale with relying on a nice kernel that they don't have to maintain or pay!
I think as OSS as some kind of "Public domain for software." It's just that enough people has an extensive knowledge of how a well architectured OS such as a UNIX work. When the critical mass of people is reached, an OSS software such as Linux pops up and it just reflects the materialization of the public knowledge.
A multi-task OS is so basic nowadays, ther is no way Microsoft or any one else will ever be able to make money off of it. Microsoft is still resisting because they have this huge userbase, but it is just a matter of time.
To resume my position, it is going to become very hard to make money off of a "Generic" proprietary software. By generic, I mean anything that has been around for a while and is understood by many people. OSS will represent a very nice basis for every software. A kind of public domain toolbox.
Companies will have to find their added value on top of that.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Ballmer didn't write glib and that's a fact.
as far as I can be the judge on this, I don't care what Microsoft thinks about Linux. They see Linux as a danger, we just want stability in our OS. Linux isn't around to compete with Microsoft as far as i know.
As long as Microsoft doesn't boycot Linux, I'm fine with whatever Balmer is saying. I'm passed the Linux is better then Windows thing.
If Windows would fit my needs, I would have used Windows. If people using Windows have security problems, don't look at me, I'm not going to tell them to make the switch. (I'm not the tech support kinda guy, because that's what you get if you urge people from Windows to Linux, it's another level of thinking. Just try to explain why you have to mount a CD before being able to see what's on it)
42 + 1 = 42
>> Imo, I will never understand why people keep bitching about an operating system they were never *forced* to use. [emphasis added]
You've never had an office job have you?
The day Microsoft gets hauled in to court to take responsibility is the day the flood gates are opened on software liability in general. Say goodbye to open source. How do you think Linus or R.M.S. would fair against a volume of lawsuits that wouldn't even make Microsoft flinch? How many developers would risk open source development if there was liability involved?
I don't remember the details, but the software industry tried to get a law passed that would've voided EULAs without a piece of paper to back them up (anyone remember what I'm talking about?). Microsoft was all for the idea. I think it died (fortunately). Just remember, liability is a double edged sword.
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Robert Townsend, author of "Up the Organization" and former President of both Avis Rent-a-Car and American Express, always refused to look at "presentations." He felt that if you couldn't just talk to him and lucidly explain what you were on about in one minute it wasn't going to be worth his time in the first place.
Richard Feynman held that if he couldn't explain a physical phenomenon to someone with no scientific background in plain English in a minute it meant he didn't really understand it himself.
While this may rankle some of the peanut gallery here I'd suggest that if you can't explain the most technically archane subject you deal with to a nontechnical person in plain English (or Russian, or Chinese, or what have you) in a few minutes you don't really understand it either.
Cringley's pieces may contain far more depth than they can appear to have on the surface, even if sometimes he's a little slow to "get it."
So was Feynman, for that matter, but when he got it, he got it.
KFG
Meow. Now!
Seriously: Has anyone ever been fired from Microsoft for writing insecure or buggy code? I don't think so.
I live and work near Redmond and know many Microserfs.... Both blue badges and permatemps. I've never heard any of them saying anything about anyone being fired for quality issues.
Sure there was the guy who offed himself in the 911 on highway 522 because he didn't get promoted (taking out some elderly tourists in a motor home as a bonus). Then there was the guy who stole/resold a few mil $$ worth of software that then died... of "mysterious causes."
But actually *FIRED*??? Not yet.
I think that would be a great motivator to assist "Trustworthy Computing" to live up to its name. Take the bozos responsible for the latest RPC vulnerabilities and FIRE the whole damn group in a very public fashion. Of course a public execution would be even better, but Microsoft doesn't have *that* much political clout here in Washington State. I'm sure the current administration in "the other Washington" would allow it under some provision of the Patriot Act, but as far as I know, only Boeing and the penitentiary in Walla Walla have the authority to actually kill people around here.
C'mon Ballmer! Live up to your promise and SACK SOMEBODY NOW!
Why would you be a starving actor or artist, working poor-paying jobs to live on and doing what you love in your "spare time"?
Programming -- good programming, anyway -- is a creative process, and creative people love what they do, and will do it whether or not they get paid to do it. Heck, they'll do it even if it costs them.
Simply put, open-source programmers program for love rather than money. And it turns out that this has a whole lot to do with the quality of open-source software.
the article was good, but he missed mentioning the biggest difference of all, and the most important point. probably because he thought it was obvious.
:)
but anyhow, the largest reason open source is better and more secure than closed source (or commercial software like microsoft) is because you have millions of people around the world looking at it, testing it, not just coders, but everyone.
If there is a serious flaw, it's going to be found, and very quickly, and what's more, lots of those people are coders, which means they submit suggestions and sometimes even patches and improvements to the developers. and not only that, he misses the whole culture and ideas of sourceforge, where anyone and everyone can review any project, and also development of open source projects for the ones we know most well, are not single person developments, but a team, and that team is reall cohesive, it has to be.
anyone in the world can stamp out an email to the developer(s) of an open source project and say "hey dude, there's a bug when you do this, this and this", even a novice computer user can do that.
ballmer just doesn't get it, and never will. M$ can never beat the sheer magnitude of good coders around the world, 24 hours a day inspecting the code.
the only way M$ can beat open source would be to try to open source windows themselves. but that wouldn't work. M$ has lost the respect of decent coders, and their "cool" factor a long time ago.
My bet would be open source coders would look at their code and end up vomitting the rest of the day. it really is that bad.
"I hardly think anyone would require all articles on slashdot to be written such that non-techies will understand..."
And I never suggested anything of the kind.
In this particular instance I think Cringley was a bit slow in his enlightenment. This peculiar dichotomy of society's view of the "professional" versus the "amatuer" is one I've been dealing with, and conversant with, since as long as I can remember.
To me Microsoft's position is patently like that of Starving Artists Inc. claiming they make the best art because they employ thousands of professional artists. Not like those disreputable independants Picasso, Mondrian and Matisse.
Still, it's interesting to see someone go through it, and to do so in this public manner. It can be instructive to both the technical and the nontechnical, even if only as a reminder to the technical that this is where most people's perceptions are hovering around.
While you may be someone who understands your field well enough that you can explain it simply it also has to be remembered that sometimes you have to.
KFG
All of that only goes for boxed software that is bought like product. MS, Oracle, etc all assume that the only solution to a problem is buy some product. For a techie, that's the easy way out. It is often expensive and not a very good fit for the problem either.
I'll give you a for-instance. We use a troubleticket system called IRM to handle IT inventory and helpdesk tracking. It did almost everything we needed it to do very very well. The only thing it cost us was me learning how to set it up. The one thing it didn't do is spit out of a list of machines that have a particular software package installed. I made a module for it that did it and made it available to the rest of the IRM community.
As downloaded, IRM was a better fit than anything we would have cared to pay for. A very small amount of tweaking on my part made it exactly what was needed.
Hopefully /. picks up nontechnical readers every day like me:)
Justification enough.
If Feynman was slow, the rest of us are moving backwards.
I can tell you one thing wrong with working for pay: you don't get to do what you want. If you're a professional programmer, you have to work on whatever your company tells you to work on, no matter how stupid an idea it is. Even worse, you have to do it their way: you have to use development tools, OSes, etc. that they've chosen for some reason, not what you would choose. And worse yet, you have to deal with all kinds of typical corporate BS: stupid and annoying coworkers, endless meetings which kill productivity, the cold lifeless cubicle environment, people stealing your food out of the refrigerator, etc.
Not only this, but in the real world, people don't always get to work on stuff that interests them. You may have a deep interest in audio codecs, but how easy is it to get a job working on that? Not very. But if you want to play around with the source code for Ogg Vorbis, there's nothing stopping you.
The idea that stupid economists hold that people will take jobs they're best at is BS, because real economies don't work that way. Finding someone else to pay you to do something you love is hard to do, as many starving artists will vouch for. Or, you could become an entrepreneur and start your own business doing something you like, but then you'll find that you have to waste a lot of time doing all the business crap, and not the fun stuff.
Open source changes all of this. Anyone who's interested can get involved on an OSS project in their spare time; sometimes they can even turn it into a job function if their job has a need for it as some others here have mentioned. You don't have to find some company to hire you to do it, and thanks to the internet you can easily collaborate with other people on the same project. And best of all, none of it is like working in a corporation.
I think in reality, a lot of OSS programmers are also professional programmers, but the stuff they do at home is much more interesting to them than what they're paid to do at work.
The day Microsoft gets hauled in to court to take responsibility is the day the flood gates are opened on software liability in general. Say goodbye to open source. How do you think Linus or R.M.S. would fair against a volume of lawsuits that wouldn't even make Microsoft flinch? How many developers would risk open source development if there was liability involved?
You usually have a lot more liability if a) you're selling the product and b) marketing the product as having specific qualities.
So would I, putting a piece of code under the GPL, have liability for anything? Highly unlikely. If Red Hat takes it into their enterprise server and sells it as "the safest server ever" Red Hat might have some liability for my code, but not me.
I'd much rather be signing a piece of paper, like a contract (that can be rejected) *before* I purchase anything rather than the current "come home and find out what I bought (or didn't)" scheme with EULAs.
For the GPL, it wouldn't be a problem, because it is NOT an EULA that restricts rights, it gives rights. Yes, without a written contract you may claim that you didn't not accept the GPL and so it has no force, at which point you'll get slapped with copyright infringement law.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's some of it. I know that as a programmer I consider myself more of a hobbyist than a professional, even though every job I've had has been in the software industry.
The problem I had at work was that once my projects got beyond a certain point (ie. the parts I found interesting, or the point where I've solved the "hard" problem, or a proof-of-concept of an idea I was trying to push), I lost all interest in working on it further. It was like pulling teeth to get me to finish anything. My co-workers were frustrated, and I was frustrated. Eventually I quit.
As a hobbyist, that's not a problem. I can develop something until I get bored with it and stop. While that doesn't necessarily seem productive in the normal economic sense, that's how I operate. If I find a piece of an open source project that interests me, I can work on it, no matter how small it is. Once that piece is done, I'm done. I don't have to work on other bits that don't interest me.
But here's the best part: If I don't finish, no one loses. If the feature is important to someone else, it will get done. If not, no one will miss it. In a commercial setting, I would have been forced to finish, which would probably involve some half-assed implementation where my motivation is getting my boss off my case, rather than producing a quality product.
I'm not saying that's how all commercial software efforts are done, but I'm sure that's how some of them go.
blog
A couple of points...
First, Open Source projects tend to be pretty up front about the state of their code. They'll warn people when the project is lacking in its early stages. And bug reports / tracking tends to be done on a fairly open basis. There is no marketing group pushing glossy brochures trying to paint a rosy picture of bulletproof reliability and infalability (not even touching on EULAs and business deals that forbid negative product reviews).
Secondly, if I'm supposed to be a permament beta tester for someone... why do I pay hard cash for the privilige? Open Source involves a trade in time and effort. Commercial software should be a finished product.
Not all coding goes in to a shrinkwrap. I know a good number of coders who are paid for customized code that largely stays within the confines of their employer's enterprise. In most cases, what they want to code on their own free time would never compete with what they're working on for their employer.
Meanwhile, some have created Open Source projects out of a few untilities they threw togeather to handle some internal situation - with Corporate blessings. And there's talk where I work right now to put some manhours (either from existing employees or hiring in additional help) towards extending an Open Source application management has become particularly endeared to - but doesn't quite do everything they want.
For these people, Open Source software is not a threat. I could see that if your entire focus on the industry is niche products or shrinkwrapped OS' and applications, the whole Open Source thing could be a bit troublesome. But then - if people doing something for no cost ruins your industry... you have to wonder about the viability of that industry.
Sure - the views of people like RMS may make some view Free Software as a threat to their livlihoods. But honestly, is RMS' ultimate vision really going to come to pass? Will all commercial software be replaced by Free altenatives? Look around. For every product being esentially commoditized, I bet you can find a few more that haven't been touched. That's not even mentioning how many commercial products sprang either directly from, or due to the influence of, Open Source projects.
One final thought. Competition is competition. Any given commercial software house has no guarentee to profit and success. It is just as likely that another commercial outfit will produce a killer product as it is that an Open Source project will eliminate the profit in it. And at that point, you're out of a job no matter what.
If that worries you, look in to another career. But then - don't expect much more stability elsewhere either. The world is a rough place like that.
Can anyone confirm/disconfirm Ballmer's comments concerning the number of critical security updates required for "Windows 2003" versus the number of critical security updates required for Redhat 6.0? I think Ballmer said Redhat had several times more than Windows in this instance.
Also, one thing I believe Ballmer overlooked in his discussion of security vulnerabilities was the fact that if 98% of computers run Windows, a serious and malicious worm/virus using a new and common vulnerability could potentially disable 98% of computers. If the operating system distribution is spread out more, there may very well be security holes in other operating systems, but 35% of the world's computers disabled by a virus is much more preferable to 98%. Hopefully the EU will consider this when they decide how to regulate/punish Microsoft in the very near future.
PJ at GrokLaw is assembling a "Press Kit" of hard questions to ask of Darl & Company. I suggested the following but it is equally applicable to the folks in Redmond:
Both Microsoft and SCO tout the fact that they indemnify their customers as an advantage of their products over Linux and other Open Source Software. The American Heritage Collegiate Dictionary defines indemnify as:
1. To protect against damage, loss, or injury; insure.
2. To make compensation to for damage, loss, or injury suffered.
This definition of indemnify seems to be at odds with the Disclaimer of Waranties, Exclusion of Damages, and Limitations of Liabilities sections of your products' end user license agreement (EULA). Please explain your meaning of indemnify when you say that you "...indemnify your customers while Linux does not," or, if you are using the dictionary meaning of indemnify, when your EULAs will be changed to incorporate the generally accepted meaning of indemnify.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I am a linux advocate as much as the next guy (RHL9 and Debian), but I have to give Microsoft credit for what they do. They don't write the world's best or most reliable software, but here's what they do.
First, they provide a (de facto, not internationalized or official) standard operating system for users and developers of consumer-oriented software. Their market share ensures this and also ensures that people won't have to fiddle with all the settings of their operating system. This of course also means it is much more vulnerable to viruses and trojans, but that's also partly a byproduct of their initially somewhat flawed design in DOS and along the way so many years ago.
Second, Microsoft is a BUSINESS. Yes, linux can be a business too, but Microsoft has been around longer. They're defending their assets using negative publicity and FUD and predatory practices. We've had this type of stuff before in the airline industry with the oligopolistic airlines forcing out smaller potential competitors. We've had this type of stuff with Standard Oil and AT&T. The question we have to ask is this: if you were Microsoft, wouldn't you think what they're doing is a good idea? Would you actually be idealistic and release your source code to the developer community and sing Kumbaya? Given that you're a corporation that has to defend both its employees and shareholders, wouldn't you attack linux and let a few excess projects run on for the sake of all those families with parents working on them?
C'mon.
> The point is that Apple did a nice economy of scale with relying on a nice kernel that they don't have to maintain or pay!
Ohh I really hate nitpicking, but I just want to point out that OSX uses FreeBSD userland, not kernel. They actually used the NextStep Kernel developed by NeXT.
You do however make a lot of good points about the structure of Linux and what holds Microsoft back.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
While this is /. and many will disagree, I doubt that the heads of Microsoft are dumb. The author seems to think that they are, but I disagree:
Microsoft is a company - its objective is to make money. It does this by selling software and associated other things (part services and hardware, (Joysticks Mice etc...))
The objective of Open Source (Linux in this example) is to make the best software possible it just so happens that this model also believes that open code is the best code.
This is pretty simple. Now, the heads at Microsoft understand this - but it is their job to promote Microsoft. That is what they get paid to do. They work for Microsoft, they have Microsoft stock options - they make their living by selling Microsoft. The heads of these companies (and all companies really) are salesmen. They work to sell a product. Now, it is important to believe in your product to sell it - and Microsoft exec's clearly do.
But really, can you blame them? They are clearly worried by the Open Source model because it presents a direct threat to their Cash Flow. Buggy software requires upgrades - this is good for business because you can sell the upgrades, and make money. That is their objective. With Open Source, buggy software is bad, because the objective is to make the best software possible.
Microsoft does not want to make the best software possible - otherwise people would buy it, and once they bought it, they would never need to buy it again. Their sales would go up - and then plateau.
Linux developers want to make the best software - because that is what they set out to do in the beginning.
There are totally different perspectives at work here. If you want to understand Open Source, and Commercial software you have to understand both ideals. I think Balmer understands totally - but he can't start disparaging Microsoft. It goes against his mandate.
I think MS is scared - and rightly so. They are hitting a plateau in sales, and Open Source is a serious threat to their server sales. What comes out of this will be interesting. That much is certain.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Against this, let's look at how things are done at Microsoft. I'll use as an example Universal Plug and Play, which was/is Microsoft's initiative to make your refrigerator talk to your PC.
Too many people get this wrong. UPNP is a standard that lets you transparently open up holes in your NAT. So if you want to run a game server or direct video chat behind your UPNP enabled router (many are) on WinXP, you can do so transparently. UPNP uses a protocol based on HTTP and XML to automatically configure port forwarding. It has little to do with a network enabled refrigerator.
That's the Big Lie Microsoft keeps telling over and over again, and not even Cringley called them on it: Open Source developers are "enthusiasts" who write software as a hobby after coming home from their 9-to-5 jobs at McBurgerBucks.
I saw a survey a long, long, time ago (5 years? more?) that showed that most contributors to Linux (or was it BSD... or some other project...? I've forgotten the specifics) were computer professionals in their mid 20's to 30's, who had full-time jobs. A lot, but not all, were software ocntractors... others were involved in IT, etc. But these weren't burger flippers or bored undergrads. I couldn't find it after a quick Google... and I haven't seen anything similar since. But my gut tells me this is fairly accurate.
So, why would anyone want to write software and give it away, especially if they depend on writing software for a living? Well... why do many lawyers do pro-bono work? Why do doctors sometimes volunteer their skills in times of emergency, or at free health clinics?
Simple: they realize that it benefits society. It's along the same lines as any volunteer work. Why does anyone do anything without getting paid for it? Because there's something other than a monetary award. They also realize that it helpds themselves... it gives them a chance to perhaps use their skills in ways they don't in their day-to-day job.
In the case of developers, giving back to the community directly helps them. If you write a piece of Open Source software, and someone, somewhere wants that software extended somehow, to fit their own needs... they can often be convinced to hire you to do the work. If you're applying for a job or contract, how much of an advantage do you think you'll have over other candidates if you can show the company they already rely on software you wrote?
Just look at Linus. Is he flipping burgers? Nope. Sure, he was an undergrad when he started Linux, but since then he's worked for Transmeta, and now he's working for (umm... I forget who... Red Hat?) on Linux full time.
Well, I hope everyone understands that Microsoft probabably hasn't misunderstood anything. Not as much as it might seem. As has been stated before, those guys aren't dumb. They probably understand very well why open source works so well. But that isn't something they're telling openly. What they say is what they believe their customers will believe, what arguments will hurt the open source movement. It's all about spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Remember how it went when you were 13? That's this.
To be precise...
Mac OS X uses a kernel derived from Mach 3, but all that that code does is allocate RAM and processor time. Most of the kernel code in Darwin comes from various BSDs, including the IP stack, a lot of the file system code, the process model, etc.
If you want to see exactly what does what, and where it all came from, check out the darwin code at http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's apparent that he was talking about free as in beer... what I wish he would have added was the fact that people actually PAY for software they COULD have had for free because it's so good they want to support it VOLUNTARILY! Now that's enough proff that Linux is a superior operating system.
;)
Compare that to Windows which most people have only because it was bought by the computer manufacturers and came with the hardware
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
According to this, Apple was first to market with their first version of MacOS. I think Microsoft's success stems more from poor early marketing decisions by Apple combined with questionable business tactics by Microsoft.
- b
Cringely remarks repeatedly that Torvalds and other open-source developers are "giving away software for free". This view is all too common among those who comment on business and open source. It implies that every kind of software is some soft of product, which you can (and should) package and sell. Most open-source software can be more accurately described as "evolving entities" rather than products.
Cringely says that Ballmer has misunderstood open source. But by using the expression of "giving away" things, he doesn't really contribute to a better understanding of open source himself.
When scientists publish theories in a widely available scientific journal, it would be absurd to say that they are "giving away their theories for free".
I think the analogy is appropriate, because scientists and open-source developers have roughly the same goals when offering their work "to the world". They want peer-review (although not exclusively, of course).
So, the correct answer to the question "Why should I use your software?" is: "It has been severely tested in all areas it is expected to work, by people all over the world, never failing a test even once".The personal conviction that your software is functional and bug-free is not in any way an argument that it is. Holding the opposite would be confusing psychology with logic. That is why scientists and programmers need to expose their theories and software, respectively, to critique from others in (and outside) their field; to find flaws they themselves are unable to discern.