Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Proclaims Death of Free Software Model
geoff313 writes "
As previously mentioned here,
Microsoft's new wave of FUD has begun to arrive. This time it is
courtesy of Bradley Tipp, Microsoft's UK national systems engineer, who
spoke at the Microsoft IT Forum in Copenhagen. In this article
from ZDNet UK, he is quoted as saying that 'Linux is great' and 'there
are a lot of things we should learn from open source' but then is quick
to point out that 'We haven't talked to a single user who has said
they're using [open source] because it's better.' Another Microsoft employee was quoted as
saying 'At least if Linux takes off, their viruses will propagate and
we won't be seen as the bad guys any more.' I for one am happy to see that they are taking their new interest in security seriously, and I'm
sure you all are too. Most interesting is the assertion that the decision by Red
Hat to end support for its free distribution and Novell's
aquisition of SUSE marks not only the death of free software,
but actually is a validation of Microsoft's business model. Does anyone
besides Microsoft see these events as the end of Free software?" I use Free software because it's better; they just didn't ask.
Always question the person who proclaims a thing dead. Ask if they gain anything from the death. If so, assume they are full of shit.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
It may be gratis (i.e. Free Beer), but it won't be libre (i.e. Free Speech) until they let users modify and share the source.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
What makes you think the goal of the Linux O/S is to replace Windows XP?
Mozilla ... because it's a better web browser and e-mail client ... because it's a better firewall, server and router (i.e. GNU/LAMP is a better yaddayadda) ... because it's a better CLI environment ... because it's better (exchangeable data formats, no clippy)
Linux
cygwin
OpenOffice
I also think that Free software is better for humanity as a whole, but I'm not dogmatic about it.
I still use Windows on the desktop, because I didn't yet have time to move everything over to Linux (f*ck NTFS, otherwise I wouldn't have to), and because Soulseek works much better under Windows.
If you did a search for it, you'd find that there are. However they are mostly "theoretical" and nobody has yet seriously sat down to design a fast-spreading, damaging Linux virus. (As an aside: there are experimental viruses that are able to infect cross-platform -- i.e., they run on both Windows and Linux. Pretty crazy, huh?)
Microsoft's point is fundamentally correct however: there are no serious Linux viruses not because they are impossible on Linux, but because Linux just isn't popular enough yet to make it worth the virus writer's time. It makes much more sense to exploit that vast majority of Windows machines. (If you look at Google's Zeitgeist page, you'll see that only 1% of Google queries come from Linux boxes. I consider that a fairly good indicator of the popularity of Linux.)
None of what I just said should be construed to mean that Microsoft isn't responsible for the security of their operating system. There is a major difference between Windows and Linux viruses: on Windows it is very easy to obtain administrator priviledges, which makes Windows viruses much more dangerous. However, it is dishonest for people to claim that Linux is impervious to viruses. It's not true, and to boastfully make that claim is to court disaster.
If you're using the latest Mac then you are using open source software anyway, and I guess you're not using it because you think it's worse than Windows?
If that's correct then the basic premise of Microsoft is wrong... The point being that open source projects can - and often do - outperform their closed competitors in most every way. You're right that out-of-the-box, they are not as user friendly - yet. But you can have Apple or Suse package them nicely.
Mind you, the same goes for furniture: you can buy the wood yourself, put it together and make furniture. But it won't be as user friendly as a furniture building packet that you can buy at Ikea's. People who don't want to bother with all this can just buy the same Ikea furniture already put together. And you'll have people who just want nice furniture, no matter what the cost or the supplier and they'll go to the nearest retail shop. That's what happens to commodities: easy to get, lots of choice.
Here you can see a job for open source: people want choice. But of course Microsoft doesn't want software to become a commodity, it'll destroy their market monopoly.
Exactly.
Folks who claim Linux isn't ready for the desktop are poorly informed. I've been using Linux as my main OS for several years now, and for my work (writing) it is much better than Windows.
Why? Well, here's a little personal history. I started writing oh so many years ago on an Atari ST. When the time finally came to admit that Atari was never going to overtake the PC clone, I bought a Pentium 60 and Wordperfect. I kept Wordperfect through a succession of clones, since it was perfectly adequate for writing professionally.
As an sf writer and general techfreak, I was almost immediately intrigued with Linux and the open source model. Also, when the web first appeared, you had to know a little Unix to put up a site (my first site was hosted by UNC, like a lot of web pioneers.) So I experimented with a Slackware installation, but at that time, Linux really wasn't ready for the desktop.
Time passed, Windows progressed, I started building my own boxes and had to actually start paying actual money to put Windows on them. I kept reusing Wordperfect in each new box, even though I worried that someday the big box of floppies might not work. Eventually I tried Redhat 6.1 and discovered that Linux was now ready for the desktop, or at least the desktop of a writer who wasn't much interested in games. I found a copy of Wordperfect for Linux and thought I was set for life. But it got even better when I started using OpenOffice, and knew that my files would be eternally transportable to new machines.
Couple that eternal transportability with the worry-free nature of Linux online (much less danger of virii, worms, etc.) and with the flexibility of Linux (I can run an Atari emulator and access files from 15 years ago written on the ST) and with the availability of all kinds of software to play with that would cost me an arm and a leg in a Windows environment. It's more fun for me to use Linux on my desktop and more practical.
Free software such as Linux is better because it's free
John Milton wrote an essay about this freedom (in a broader sense) called Areopagetica. It's one of those things journalism majors usually have to wade through their senior year in mass communication history.
In his time, one in Britain could not print without prior authorization from the crown. The King's official reason for this prohibition was to "protect libel from being spread." Milton argued that it took the public grappling of truth against falsehood to determine what really was true. Without this public airing, you simply could not know whether the facts you had were true or not.
The closed source vs. open source issue, especially from the perspective of code security and reliability, is inherently linked to this issue argued nearly 400 years ago by Milton. There simply is no way Microsoft can expose its proprietary code to the inspections open source benefits from. The result is horribly broken, insecure and crash-prone Microsoft code vs. a base of increasingly stable open source.
And the future gets worse for Microsoft. Complexity is the instigator of this dynamic; as software complexity grows, the ability of closed source to hang on evaporates.
*scoove*