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Microsoft at the Tipover Point
David Gerard writes "In the wake of Microsoft's first flat quarter, The Inquirer brings us The IT Industry Is Shifting Away From Microsoft - Linux is being taken seriously, Microsoft is not trusted and our favorite monopoly is finding it harder and harder to compete with 'free.'"
You know what this means right? We've backed Microsoft into a corner, so now it's going to pull every dirty trick in the book to get it's profits back...
;)
No, really, I wouldn't put it past them... Wonder what technology area they're going to monopolize next? Tivo looks prime for the picking...
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
It's an extended holiday, and any opinion peices you see during these days are little more than weak efforts to fill a quota. I would also assume that this article was posted on slashdot to fill a similar hole.
On one hand, I'm breaking out the wine for a little celebration. On the other, this is the Inquirer we're talking about guys. I might save the bottle for when a reliable source follows up this story.
To be fair, does Microsoft's flattening revenue have to do with "open source" taking their marketshare, or is it because many customers are quite happy with older Microsoft products and have refused to sign up to the recent licensing agreements? I know a couple of very large corporations whose desktops are NT 4, and they're only grudgingly finally upgrading to 2000. This same thing can be seen with countless users continuing to use Office 97, etc -- Given this, a flattening or declining revenue stream seems obvious.
Office and Windows rely on being ubiquitious to drive sales. Every free copy of Word that goes out there, every stolen copy of Windows, serves to cement Microsoft's monopoly in place. When people now have to think in terms of Windows and Word as a paying proposition, the relatively high prices for Windows and Office suddenly become a factor. Free is pretty good, but Sun seems to be making money off of "reasonably priced."
This is my sig.
On the web server this may be true. In Germany it is even > 89% Apache.
But Microsoft still is strong in the Desktop market. Soon KDE 3.2 will be released and as Linux quickly matures on the desktop I don't see a reason why it will not be the default plattform in the enterprise desktop market.
Only software patents can stop Linux now, but today software patents and patent privateers harm Microsoft (eolas, SPX ecc.). But Microsoft performs well in the armsraise.
Sure, Microsoft will die away. It's only a matter of time.
The editorial points mostly at Microsoft's failed offerings like MSN and Xbox, saying that the 80% profit numbers for Windows and Office can only sustain the failed products as long as Windows and Office remain profitable. It suggests that Linux and GPL'ed office products will erode that 80% profit number.
The "failed" products aren't a problem: that's exactly what big business is supposed to do. When you've got a product or two that bring in tons of money, you throw lots of money around trying to invent other moneymakers. You know that your main product or two will eventually run dry: that's no surprise, and that's why you continue to throw money at other ideas trying to come up with the next big moneymaker.
Most of these other sideline products (MSN, Xbox, smart phones) will fail. But that's not unexpected: most small businesses and startups fail. This is what big businesses do: fund R&D trying to come up with the Next Big Thing to replace their current revenue stream.
It's the same thing Microsoft did with Office: initially, they were an OS-only company. They got into Office because they needed to diversify, just like every big business did. Office started as a pretty crummy product that got routinely spanked by both WordPerfect and Lotus. But given enough time and enough money, Office became a profit machine. Microsoft is actually pretty lucky to have two dynamo products in the market at once.
Think of MS like 3M: could 3M survive simply by producing Post-It Notes? No, they have a huge amount of diversity and R&D running to find the Next Big Thing. The more products you throw at the market, the more chances you have of staying power.
What's your damage, Heather?
But could they? It would destroy their MSWind system. It would put them into competition with OpenOffice on a system where they don't control the APIs. And the people already using it despise them. And once their current customers realize that there's an alternative, they'll despise them too.
MS might come out with a BSD derived OS though. They can do that without giving up everything. And Apple has, again, proved that it can be done by a commercial company. But don't look for MS to do anything that causes them to need to admit ANYTHING.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Long before Windows 95 there was OS/2. A far better implementation of a GUI interface. Stable, powerful and good looking. Better than Mac OS was at the time and far better than Windows 3.x and it didn't crash all the time.
:)
To be accurate you have to say that Microsoft has *never* actually created anything new. They are not innovators, they are remarketers of existing technology. Period. If you look at the history of the company, they have purchased, stolen or borrowed everything they have. Bill Gates didn't "invent" DOS, he bought it. He didn't "invent" Windows. He didn't "invent" Word or Excel or Powerpoint or Access or Front Page or... Remember Word Star, Word Perfect, Lotus 123, etc. ? Those were all forerunners of the Microsoft products and they were all better. The reason Microsoft took over was because they had the marketing behind MS-DOS and once they had their stranglehold on the OEMs with that it was just a matter of time before the rest happened. IBM REALLY screwed up there. Digital Research had a better DOS but didn't have the marketing at the time.
My point is that Microsoft has not done anything that someone else didn't do first or even better. It's too bad IBM didn't have Bill Gates in their marketing department. We'd be much better off than we are today.
Oh wait - we have Linux now so maybe not!
Have you hugged your penguin today?
> This is the beginning of a growth period for Microsoft that is on a whole different scale than the last one.
No, I don't want to buy your MSFT.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Does more, is more secure and costs less. At least that's the argument that I have been pushing at my military contract where I work and lo and behold we are now switching to Zope (OSS CMS system). The fact that Oracle recommends Linux as it's platform has resulted in us installing a fair number of Linux boxes.
Government agencies have been feeling the pinch and they really have no choice but to consider it.
I think I may have been the only person at my contract to be REALLY excited about the fact that we needed a lot of new functionality without having much money.
Pardon me, but the article seems like a bunch of half-assed opinions with no facts to back them up, mixed in with a little bit of good old fashoned flaming/ranting.
Licensing 6.0 is a disaster, and so is Product Activation. At least we know that much.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Come on now people, companies go through good times and bad times, and I wouldn't count Microsoft out so easily -- especially since our point of fact is from The Inquirer. (The most reputable source for news since man put script to paper.)
Moreover, let's keep in mind, Microsoft is a heavily diversified company with an overwhelming monopoly to weild, and thye've taken losses in some very touchy areas -- especially the home entertainment business. Their business on a whole may be flat, but some parts of their business doing AMAZINGLY well.
In business, there is no single factor to bring down a company (well, besides money of course), but rather it's a aglomeration of tons of facts which balance the company. Even with Microsoft's "flat" quarter, they've got a lot of steam to pump other products up. Just look at their cash reserves.
But Open Source doesn't NEED to "is coming anywhere CLOSE to Microsoft popularity". That's a part of the point. It merely needs to get "good enough" penetration that people start developing vertical application for it. And it's already there. All of a sudden, there's need for the more general applications. And what do you know, many of them are already available.
The cost saving will frequently make a choice that popularity ignores. Thus the tipping point isn't anywhere near the point of "equal popularity". It's a lot cheaper to choose Linux. And with the price of computers dropping, the cost of the OS and Office Software can be more than the cost of the computer. Not even counting the cost of keeping track of the licenses. Or the cost of the file formats becoming incompatible. Or the cost of...
Whether we are actually near the tipping point is arguable. Claiming that we aren't because most people "prefer" MS software is...at best misleading.
P.S.: Do you really put more faith in the stories from the major media? I have to believe that you've never been on the scene of something that you later saw reported. The major media deserve NO more credence than the Weekly World News. That they are a trifle subtler doesn't give them more credence, it merely means that they fool a larger fraction of the people.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Anyone who installed one of the earliest versions of Windows 95 (look, I crave forgiveness, I was younger and being paid to do it, OK!) will remember that it didnt come with MSIE, instead it came with the Microsoft Network. Back in the early '90s (so went the script) the internet wasnt going to happen, instead we were all going to use paid online services like AOL and Compuserve. MSN was on the roadmap as Microsoft's entry into the market and in the MSdream it was going to sweep aside AOL and Compuserve lust like MSIE swept aside Netscape a few years later.
Of course, we know it didnt happen that way. If MS had been IBM we'd have seen them soldier on with the MSN dream and suddenly have to backpedal in about 2000 just in time to miss the dotcom thing and lose loads of cash. As it was they dropped the idea like a hot potato and changed the direction of the entire company in record time to embrace the Internet. It's an overused phrase, but the rest is history.
My point? Dont write off Microsoft. They've stayed where they are by flexibility and they wont have lost that flexibility. It could be different this time of course because the flexibility of the OS movement is what makes it so cool, but I'll start dancing on Microsoft's grave when I see the headstone.
Oxford Dictionaries Online
This must have been written by a fanboy, and not a serious person. The flattening of Microsoft's profits is long overdue; it is a sign of a company reaching middle age. The growth of a startup company in an undersaturated market cannot be maintained forever. Eventually, new products cease to be useful. At least not worth replacement for the sake of replacement.
For thirty years, Microsoft competed in a market that had essentially zero competition. Now, after having delivered fairly robust and stable systems (Windows XP and 2k), they are no longer selling to untapped markets. Of course their profits are going to taper off. This has absolutely nothing to do with Linux, BSD, Apple, or Sun. This has everything to do with classic market mechanics.
The article leads some fun 'rah rah' type cheerleading, but it misses the point. Are things changing for Microsoft? Undoubtedly. Are they solely or even mostly due to 'upstart' operating systems? Not a chance. I'd love it if some vertical apps (particularly EMR systems) were being written for Linux. But they aren't. Beating MS isn't going to be like overwhelming an enemy. It'll be more like digging Frenchman out of trenches, one inch at a time, in WWI. (Feel free to run with the analogy. I haven't got the time;)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Man, that article is a huge circle-jerk. Look, I like Linux. I use it every day -- for development. I use XP for my everyday apps, because it's a better tool for those.
Linux has almost no penetration desktop, non-server applications. Evidence? Coming right up. Note Google's usage breakdown.
Note that Linux ranks dead last, below Windows 95! Yes, we're talking about Google, which is the geek's best friend, which would have naturally higher numbers than many other sites.
Tipover point? XP ranks first at 42%! Yes, Microsoft's latest O/S (which the article seems to think is a dismal failure) accounts for almost half of all web access!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
As a Linux user/advocate and recent Mac "switcher", the issue of free software was not the one the deal maker for me when I decided on a PowerBook instead of an x86 lappy (i.e. Dell, Acer, Toshiba, etc). I didn't appreciate Dell, and many other reputable laptop makers telling me, "We're tacking an extra $200 to the bottom line for software you don't intend to use, you have no choice in the matter, and you have to agree to some arcane license just to take it off". The Microsoft Tax is what finally pushed me in the direction of the Mac. I use Linux exclusively at work, and had been running Windoze at home simply because I didn't feel like teaching my family how to use Linux systems. The last virus that hit our intranet was the straw that broke that camel's back and we went to a strictly 'Nix shop at home. So no, free was never an issue for me, reliability and integrity (both of which M$ has displayed less and less of IN SPITE of recent Anti-trust findings) is what sealed the deal for me.
The english language is in beta. It's evolving but has not yet reached a level of usability.
I have a feeling that Microsoft's slide won't be quick, nor complete... remember when IBM was supposedly going to fall into the ocean because they weren't able to compete with Sun, SGI, and HP in the UNIX market?
Functionally, the company can continue to generate revenue and remain "profitable" for a long time. If you look at Microsoft's strongest competitors in each business, how many of them can retain a lead on M$ for another 3-5 years while Microsoft tries to reinvent itself to boost profits?
IBM and HP each half-compete with Microsoft while shipping their products to their enterprise customers.
Sun and "The Linux Distros" (Red Hat, SuSE, etc...) all nudge Microsoft at the desktop level... although none of them may have the resources to survive a sustained competition with Microsoft. That said, Apple seems to thrive despite having a small market share because it has a loyal userbase.
Sony may have a real battle on its hands with the next generation consoles given that Nintendo's weakness and Microsoft's marketing muscle (and deep pockets) may give them a big boost to narrow the gap in marketshare.
And how is Palm weathering the Micro$oft assault on handheld operating systems?
Perhaps the most interesting thing will not be anticipating the inevitable downturn Microsoft will face, but to consider what form a "new" Microsoft will take when they try to claw their way back to the top? I have this gut feeling that X-Box and PocketPC create a new "low-end" strategy in markets where being the provider of an OS and a reference design can be very profitable.
Apache serves my web pages for the same reason - does what we need and it's way cheaper than IIS. IExplorer is so prone to attack that we use Firebird instead. Firebird also has a few features like pop-up blocking and tabbed windows that I wonder why anyone sticks with Explorer.
Re-reading your post gave me a distinct sense of Deja-Vu. Back in the late 70's, early 80's, IBM was pretty dismissive when it came to the Apple II. IBM just couldn't imagine that these desktop computers would amount to much. What IBM, and apparently you, failed to realize is that most businesses have pretty simple needs that can be met dozens of ways. When that's the case, price becomes an important factor.
I think the point he was making was that big customers can show MS that they are assessing technologies such as Star Office and Java Desktop, and immediately be offered huge discounts. That must have at least some effect on MS's bottom line.
And I'm not sure why you were modded "Troll" for making some reasonable points... oh, hang on, this is /.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
I'll take the moderation hit in agreement.
.NET makes a lot of things a lot easier, and it makes some things more difficult. The Visual Studio IDE still blows away anything and everything Linux offers and developing world class web apps can be done with .NET faster than in Linux.
Yes,
Will is lead once again to MS growth? I don't know, it certainly could, but it just seems like too little...
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Use Vobbo for Video Blogs
Wehn will people start to understand that Microsoft does not free market principles for it's success - it relies on a government granted monopoly called copyrights. There is a difference.
They'll learn to improve, and we'll once again have the good microsoft we did in the pre-1999 days
At least as far as I can tell, the "old" Bill Gates Microsoft is pretty much gone. That's the MS that valued universal adoption over vertical lock-in. That MS commoditized technology, priced things cheap, let people pirate them like crazy, and used it's muscle to get it's stuff everywhere possible.
(Whether or not the old MS was "good" is debatable. They certainly seemed like it coming out of the war with IBM in the early 90s, not so coming out of the war with Netscape.)
The "new" Ballmer Microsoft is trying to go Up Market and become a new mini-IBM. They don't really try to compete on price, they compete on a the level of integration they provide. Their new tier of products really only have value add when combined with other MS products.
Microsoft probably no longer cares if Office has a 95% marketshare or not. They are probably only really interested in Office customers that use all the network groupware, collaboration, and security functions. Much like IBM in the old days, if you aren't interested in becoming an end-to-end "Microsoft Shop", you aren't a very valuable customer anymore and you can go use StarOffice.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
If those companies had signed up for the new license, then they would still be paying Microsoft.
#1. Open Source is part of the equation. It allows companies that do sign with Microsoft to get huge discounts.
#2. Other companies do not upgrade their old Microsoft products. But they may have problems getting licenses for those products in the future.
#3. Other companies have migrated all or a portion of their systems to Open Source products.
#4. Microsoft's other products are losing money.
It is a bit complicated. There isn't any single factor. And that is why Microsoft is having such a hard time dealing with it.
They actually don't cost that much. Take you M$ reps out to lunch when they visit. Tell one of the interns to walk by the cube at around 3:10 and casually mention something about the "linux server" banter with the reps mindlessly for another hour discussing your problems things you'd like to see etc, then ask for some software licenses, chances are they will give them too you. We do this every year or so, we call it our "M$ shake down", it works.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
With $50 billion in the bank comes political clout that no open source project can hope to counter. MS, along with their industry lackys, will push for, and we will have enacted legislation making it illegal to use software that doesn't have "content protection" built in at the hardware level. Of course only "approved" software will have any real access to the hardware, and any thought of truely open source operating systems will be lost. Major hardware vendors will produce motherboards, processors, and mass storage devices for sale in the USA that can only be accessed by approved software with proper digital ids and signatures. Of course this will be able to be hacked, but it will relagate open source back into a hobby! No amount of GPL'd code can overcome the fact that it will be a crime(as in DMCA) to break the "trusted computing" layer in hardware to allow code not certified "acceptable" to have free access to the CD/DVD/network/RAM/processor/video card etc.... Just a nightmare that Orwell would be proud of!
cheers, ben
Never miss a good chance to shut up -- Will Rogers
Microsoft may have been slowed by Linux, but if history has taught computer users anything over the last twenty-odd years, it's that Microsoft is exceptional adept at re-tooling itself and resuming it's domination of the software industry.
.NET and Longhorn product cycles. Then, of course, armed to the teeth with their own patent portfolios and unique proprietary technologies, their customer base will remain (they hope) safely in the Microsoft fold.
...And when Longhorn comes out and ties it all together, the One Evil Ring will very possibly remain firmly on Bill Gates finger.
Their doom has been forecast many times, yet it seems that they always rebound stronger and more profitable than ever before. Until they have shown YEARS of decline, I for one refuse to believe any reports of their death, much less serious injury.
To wit, they seem to have a palpable strategy in place to combat Linux. Basically, it is their hope that the questions of IP will slow adoption long enough for them to lock their corporate customers into the Windows 2003 server,
Remember that Office 2003 is actually a salvo in the Embrace, Extend and Extinguish strategy -- their XML formats are just proprietary enough to make that so, given the inertia that they have with the largest installed office-suite base as well as (frankly, like it or not) the most functionally integrated package on the market. Add to that the B2B interaction of sending Word, Powerpoint and Excel files and their strategy very well might work once again.
Windows Server 2003 and it's embedded technologies promises much of the same.
I say all this not as a Microsoft apologist but simply as a realist. While I strongly prefer Linux both on the server and on the desktop, the fact remains that there is much to be done, very much indeed, before it will topple the likes of a Microsoft.
Mike Magee must be desperate for page hits: the author of the piece can't even count.
/. extra ad hits.
Microsoft only started breaking out the seven subunits about a year ago. During each of the quarters since then, three units -- not two -- have made money: client, Office, and server and tools. More than that, MSN (you know, the horrible money loser?) made money last quarter, and shows no signs of slowing revenue growth. That's four of seven making money, not two.
The author of the Inquirer piece would like to lump the two OS divisions together, but that makes no sense: F/OSS systems don't compete against the client yet, only against the server and tools segment. Revenue in that segment is growing faster than the segment. That's not being beaten by Linux; it competing solidly, despite a price disadvantage.
Worse, for the author's thesis, the handhelds division is hardly "losing money fast" -- instead, it's losing money at a constant rate, with its revenues more than doubling each year. If current patterns continue, that division will be profitable in the current quarter or the next quarter. That's not clearly going to happen, but it certainly doesn't seem unlikely.
That leaves two divisions not making money: Home and Small business solutions. Those are both new businesses for Microsoft, and they're both businesses where Microsoft expects to lose money for about a decade, just as it did with servers, with MSN, and with handhelds.
But, hey, the story predicts the death of the internet...I mean, the death of Microsoft. SO we've got to front page it to give Magee and
For example, the author says that Microsoft refuses to change, but they have a history of doing just that. They followed Apple's lead on GUIs. They went from poo-poo-ing the internet to become one of its chief exploiters. One of their key corporate virtues is a distinct lack of NIH (not invented here) Syndrome; many of their key products were originally developed elsewhere (DOS, IE, PowerPoint, WebTV, FrontPage, VisualBasic, SQL Server), or are direct copies of other companies' products (Pocket PC, Ultimate TV, Windows).
Granted, they've shown a certain unwillingness to overhaul their systems at the cost of backward compatibility (like Apple has peridoically done, with the transition from ][ to Mac, from 68K to PPC, from MacOS to OSX), but don't mistake that for obstinance.
One thing I don't get is the myth that if I operate a MS OS I'm locked into Microsoft software and paying MS eternally for updates etc. I just went through the software I use daily and while most of it runs on Windows XP, none of it's by Microsoft. Here's the list:
Acrobat (Adobe)
Agent (Forte)
Eudora (Qualcomm)
Ghostscript (AFPL/OSS)
GSView (Ghostgum)
Mathematica (Wolfram Research)
MikTeX (OSS)
Mozilla (OSS)
Octave (OSS)
Paint Shop Pro (JASC)
PuTTY (OSS)
Winamp (Nullsoft)
Notice especially how many great open-source or otherwise free packages there exist in fields that Microsoft haven't got anything to offer. Then why do I constantly read on /. that MS have a complete monopoly on software like nothing else was available?
Note also the complete lack of Office of any kind. I rarely need a word processor, and if I do there's Wordpad or KOffice and whatever spreadsheet it comes with on Linux. Oh, I guess I use WMP or RealPlayer (blegh) occasionally.
In one sense, the Enquirer article seems correct. In another sense, by not naming the really serious problems with Microsoft products, the article almost praises Microsoft.
For example, "Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP have crippled file systems." The file system cannot copy some of the files that are necessary to the operating system. Microsoft provides no way of making functional backups of its newer operating systems! (Yes I know about Sysprep and NTBackup and third-party methods. Microsoft technical support agrees with my statement.)
Microsoft uses proprietary file formats. You can't reliably work with your intellectual property created with Microsoft products unless you pay Microsoft money!
Microsoft can change the license terms to which you are bound after you have made your purchase and agreed to the terms!
Who was using the more than 60 serious security vulnerabilities found in the last two years in Microsoft products before they were fixed?!!! Foreign governments? Your competitors? Hackers?
There is always someone better, faster, smarter, or more creative than you. Suck it up, be happy there are things to learn from others, and share what you know. MS has tremendous resources and I'd love to see them join the rest of the tech community instead of constantly trying to force the computing industry to adopt their worldview.
But could they? It would destroy their MSWind system.
Remember there are two Windows OSes, Server and Desktop. Linux has been eating away at the Server OS and looks like it's winning, but MS is still strong since they have AD and strong integration on the back end. That won't last long with Novell and Suse attacking it.
As for the desktop OS, people will still be reluctant to use anything but MS Office; OO may be good, but when it comes to documents which have been edited by dozens of people and have hundreds of pages with different formatting everywhere, only the same version of Word that created that document opens it without any errors. Even if OO does open it correctly, the cost of reviewing the document just once for formatting inconsistancies makes buying the same version of Word worth the price.
MS could port MS Office to Linux/BSD, which would ensure their cash cow continues to bring in money. But would they do it? Probably not since Office is about the only reason people don't desert Windows. And without the desktop Windows OS, the server OS loses a lot of the functionality.
They could build Windows on top of existing distributions; but then they lose control of plug and play, which would be the biggest complaint from users of Windows on Linux; people would blame MS for Linux's shortcomings when their brand new digital camera failed to connect properly. They could build their own distribution to have better control of plug and play, but then they'd have to release under GPL... I doubt MS would be willing to do that. To build a hybrid OS like Apple and keep it closed source would do nothing for MS since it's no different from what they have now.
So unless (until?) there's a shift in their thinking about Open Source, I think they're just gonna keep fighting (losing) the battle by adding new bells and whistles and spending a lot more money on the PR FUD front.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
The thing that makes Microsoft special is that it can (reasonably) legitimately cook the books such that their results don't go through good times and bad times. In good times, they put their extra income into hiding, such that they can pull it out later to cover the bad times. The fact that they're actually having a flat quarter, therefore, means that either they decided they wanted to have a flat quarter (other companies getting too jealous and dangerous, perhaps), accounting standards have become such that they can't do this trick anymore (in the wake of Enron, it's possible), or they've been actually having bad times for long enough that they've run out of ways to cover them.
It's certainly possible that the market for MS products hasn't grown any since the mid 90s, when they saturated the market for everything they make money on, and so their trend of making more on paper each year has now caught up with them. This could be simply a result of the fact that you can't make any more money when you already have all the money.
It's also possible that their tricks have now been outlawed in such a way that someone would actually end up in jail, so now they have to report what they actually make when they actually make it. I wouldn't be too surprised if this were the case, since regulators and Congress have been really worried about companies doing exactly what Microsoft does not to maintain the appearance of slowly and steadily improving, but simply staying in business.
Or maybe Microsoft is actually at the end of their rope, and have avoided appearing this way due to their enormous assets and complex accounting, and will lose all their money next year. I wouldn't bet on that, but I wouldn't be surprised if this quarter signals that Microsoft will no longer be performing (in an earnings way) absolutely reliably in the future, which may shake the market's weird (from a technical standpoint) confidence in them.
I just went through the software I use daily and while most of it runs on Windows XP, none of it's by Microsoft.
Yeah, well, there's your problem. You read Slashdot. You know of alternatives to Microsoft junk and are willing to seek them out. The vast majority of people are not, and will use just what comes on their machine.
The best examples of Microsoft lock-in are Outlook/Exchange and ActiveX. If you want to use Exchange to its fullest potential, you'd better have all Windows machines in your organization, or forget it. The Mac version was shit until late 2000. In Outlook 8.2.2, attempting to accept a meeting invitation would crash a Mac. Things got better when Outlook 2001 came around, but even that still doesn't do certain things like (IIRC) voting buttons. Now if you want OS X-native Exchange connectivity, you need Entourage. But Entourage does a shit job at it. It doesn't speak MAPI, instead relying on other protocols (IMAP, SMTP) for everything-- protocols that are typically turned off in most organizations, who won't turn them back on due to security concerns and whatnot. And the Windows version of Outlook is like the Roach Motel for your data. Ever notice that Outlook will happily import data from about a dozen different competing products, but that exporting data out of Outlook is a major pain in the ass? Think that's not intentional? That's lock-in. Make it painful to try to use or switch to something else.
Then there's ActiveX. A Microsoft concoction designed to appeal to lazy developers. They develop stuff in ActiveX, and if you want to use it on a non-IE browser, you're SOL. That's lock-in.
Bottom line: Microsoft products play best with other Microsoft products, and grudgingly if at all with other products. If you want cross-platform capability, you're better off with Linux or OS X-- those platforms MUST interoperate very well so they'll be adopted into Microsoft strongholds. Microsoft stuff doesn't HAVE to work with anything but other Microsoft stuff.
Here's another example of tacit Microsoft lock-in: the Snap Server applicances. Yeah, they run some Unix variant. Yeah, they provide Windows and Apple file sharing, or a reasonable facsimilie thereof. But here's something you need to know about it: files touched by Mac clients don't get their Windows backup flag set correctly, so Windows backup software can't tell what do put on tape when a differential backup is run-- Mac-changed files don't get backed up. The Snap people know, and they don't care. What's implied is that if you want everything to work right you should get rid of your Macs.
That said, there are still a great many IT people and users who still believe that Microsoft defines IT these days, and it will take years for the views expressed in the Inquirer article to catch up with them. I view this as a normal process, and I often see that perception lags progress by 18 months or more.
My most serious problem with this article is that I cannot show it to any serious business clients; the article shows almost nothing but contempt for them as a whole, and they will (wrongly) take that as a reflection on the Linux community; the editorial choices made indicate that the author is very blatantly pro-Linux. This tends to reinforce the perception that Linux and OSS folk are rather anti-business, playing into the hands of FUD spreaders.
We need this message delivered, but with better packaging, primarily since it will be more effective. Note that packaging and presenting is perhaps Microsoft's greatest strength, and we would do well to improve our packing as much as possible, although we certainly don't need to follow Microsoft in this regard.
> If Gates wanted to, he could by up every Linux
> company with pocket change...
Which would accomplish precisely nothing he couldn't accomplish by starting his own distribution. Buying up Linux companies would just encourage the founding of more Linux companies.
> I put a little more credence into what financial
> analysts are saying...
Well, of course. Just look how well they predicted the dot-bomb crash.
Someone is paying those analysts for those opinions. It isn't you and I. I wonder who it might be?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I showed the Monkeyboy clip to a non-techie friend of mine. He had the best take yet on it. "My God! This is the way those Amway assholes act!" Yeah, Monkeyboy made for a lot of snide comments but there is no context whatsover in which it looks good. It's indicative of a huge grape Flavr-Aid happening.
As a developer for a Major Microsoft vendor, I value flexibility. The more flexibility I have with current software apps in production, the more options I have for development and integration. Whenever we choose a Microsoft app, I know that we will ONLY be able to use SQL Server, it will ONLY work on the Microsoft OS and my options are extremely limited.
If one thing in that entire chain fails, the entire chain fails.
But by going with tools and apps that are cross platform compatible, I can mix and match with no worries. The development community is much more vast and mixed as well and any problem I can possibly conceive has usually been solved. By choosing tools and apps that give you options, you have a greater fklexibility for development.
This is one reason why whenever I we decide to purchase new software or apps, I ALWAYS evaluate open source projects first and actively promote them to the company; I have been asked if this is contradictory to our companies nature since Microsoft is our biggest client and my response has been 'We run Microsoft on every desktop here in the compny as well as on numerous servers. Do they honestly expect EVERYTHING to be Microsoft?'
Fact remains that Microsoft decided early to be a desktop company and never really put a decent effort towards servers until recently... which is a little late in the game. They realized that by getting businesses to buy in to their product, the could get software developers to buy in and then consumers. But they focused on the desktops of the business, not the servers (as shown by their weak effort put into Xenix which was later sold to old SCO and currently owned by the new SCO).
Linux has always been server side and as such has a ddistinct advantage; they are attacking the problem from a top down perspective. Get it on the servers and then onto business desktops. Once the worker spends 8 hours out of nearly everyday with Linux, Windows will be seem awkward and unstable to even the most computer illiterate luddite. Software manufacturers will realize that businesses use Linux for desktops as well as servers, lose their fear of the GPL and realize that you can make closed source software for open source systems.
Once Photoshop is released for Linux, that will herald the day of the Linux desktop and Microsoft will truly be scared.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Microsoft's business model has built up around the ever increasing share price, to buy other companies and to woo developers. The share price has increased steadily because the revenue has gone up steadily. The long article describes this in a lot more words.
Revenue can't increase any more. The US market is saturated. Foreign markets can't afford list price or anything close, so Microsoft has condoned piracy up until recently, rightly figuring a stolen copy buys mindshare that a legitimate copy of somebody else's software doesn't. But with all their carping on piracy, and especially with Hollywood screaming about piracy, foreigners have been cracking down on piracy and turning to alternatives like Linux.
That's the cause of the flattening.
Infuriate left and right
"Now that Phoenix has signed on to "Trusted Computing" we are facing the very real possibility that the next generation of hardware (and MS OS) will have a very difficult to break content lock in. I doubt they'd do anything as blatient as making Linux impossible to run, but it'd have to run in "Non-Trusted" mode, MS webservers wouldn't serve to a non-trusted computer, movies, sounds, and images built with "trusted" packages won't open on non-trusted OSes.
Its likely that a group of hackers would crack it, and allow Linux to open the "secure" content, but that would be illegal, which kinda kills the idea of Linux as an OS for the masses... "
Ok, a bit of background. I wrote that story on the Inq that is the topic here, and as part of my job, I have been following the Trusted Computing/Palladium/whatever very closely. It isn't that bad. The technology is not evil, and it won't lock you out. The technology simply is.
Before you go blathering on and on about how linux won't run on it, or it will be a bitch for the average user to port, I hate to tell you, but Linux was up and running on a 'trusted' platform at IDF this fall. Intel wants it, IBM wants it, and so does everyone else. It is already there, don't lose any sleep over this any more.
That said, the whole idea is stupid, unworkable and won't achieve anything that they are aiming for, but that is for a totally different reason. If you want a great example of how people don't get it, go watch the fall '03 IDF keynote, it is probably on the Intel web site somewhere. You will understand how they missed the mark (A big wet kiss to the first person to link it in a comment).
Now, if you want evil, and I do mean evil, that IS meant to lock you out, look to EFI and the new bootloaders. That is where MS is going to try to cut linux off at the knees, or maybe already has. I am working on this story, but it is slow going. Be very afraid of EFI people.....
-Charlie
I wrote that piece because I wanted to. I have a bunch more to write, and some that I have already written. One got slashdotted yesterday in fact. I am under no pressure, deadlines, or quotas, and as far as I know, the Inq doesn't do that. I just happened to have free time, and no news to report, so I did a lot of the stories that I have not had time to do recently.
-Charlie
That said, start expecting to see exploits coming out a lot -- there's simply going to be more people attacking as well as using.
Security problems are bound to happen. It's going to be up to us to prove that we can respond faster and more professionally than Microsoft. Get ready!
Berto
I see it coming. The people who run Microsoft are clever; many readers here don't think so, but they've managed to outpace and outwit everyone from their competitors to govermnent investigators. Lately we've heard about MS doing "why do you use Linux" surveys and paying a fair amount of attention to the Linux side of the world. No imagine MS Linux: The OS is OSS, free to all. Then you simply buy the CS versions of MS software that run on it, and presto: as a business owner you now have the wonder of Linux, with its highly touted security and "free" price tag, and the integration with your existing MS Windows infrastructure. Imagine Linux web and database servers that interoperate with Active Directory and allow for seamless intranet connections with MS boxes; that's what I see happening. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a full-steam-ahead development team working on it as I type.
The person who wrote this really knows their stuff. MS has been backing themselves into a corner for a while now and while most windows users can be distracted by bright shiny objects some are admitting the fact that their OS has major problems that are not going away anytime soon.
As one reader here wrote that some websites or servers will not work without the seal of "owned by MS" in the future, it is already here. There are some sites now that will not work with any other OS and browser other than Windows and IE. Can you guess where the content creation tools that made these sites come from?
Even the MS page to lodge a complaint against it for the anti-trust case only works under Windows and IE....which if you are running those, you will be less likely to complain. Good idea I guess....but proves the case against them.
Microsoft will reap what it has sown and it could not happen to a nicer bunch!
I am a severe skeptic of every technology company around, but have found myself engulfed by Microsoft as a Windows Geek because they just keep surprising me by not going totally braindead. (in spite of The Inquirer's article) Is it just me or didn't MS servers go from 10 percent of the market (LAN Manager on DOS or OS/2), to 20 percent (Novell ignored this), to 38 percent (where I thought they would peak), to 55 percent now? These Windows 200X Servers are pretty impressive examples of how the Borg has expanded through embrace and extend. In the meantime, Linux has been killing off the NIX'es and Novell to become the other big kid on this block. All the while, I have seen boneheaded move after boneheaded move by MS that tempted me to write them off, learn Java and Linux, and start looking for a job with "The Rebel Alliance". The phenomenal price hikes, the horrific defense they put on against David Boies and the Justice Department, SQL Slammer, Blaster, the refusal to backport Active Directory's Group Policies to pre-Windows 2X (Windows 2000, XP, 2003) machines, the forcing of Exchange customers wanting Exchange 2000 to deploy Active Directory (on Windows 200X Servers only), MSN, losing their lawsuit with Sun over Java, the threatened arbitrary defrocking of Windows NT 4.0 MCSE's (Microsoft Certified Sales Engineers :) )that was only averted four months from the deadline, and more. This company has committed about a zillion errors and it keeps coming back from them all smiling, profitable, and supremely confident like some sort of liquid metal-based Terminator soaking up shotgun blasts. Sixty billion in the bank will do that for you, I suppose.
What to make of this? An old friend long ago advised me that whatever IBM is doing, do the opposite. He has long been an MS guy and it has paid off for both of us. Will it go on forever? Extremely unlikely. When twenty year olds come to me these days asking for long-range IT advice, I recommend Open Source. You will learn more, you have the time to learn it, and it's not going away. If they need to learn MS later, it will be easy after Open Source. MS won't be going away any time soon, but eventually we will ALL perceive that IT is not just about desktops, servers, and mainframes. When it comes to money, we need to remember those cell phones, Blackberry's, PDA's, gaming consoles, set top boxes, supercomputers, Distributed.net, manufacturing control systems, routers, firewalls, and dozens of things that don't come to mind. When viewed in its' totality, this market has MANY big players. The winds of change are blowing and the devices are bypassing MS's chokehold on innovation in its markets. Adam Smith's invisible hand will crash right through MS discounts, Justice Department inaction, and legions of lawyers to bring us the computing solutions we need. A pox on Darl McBride!
In principio erat Verbum.
A few years ago, I worked at HP on EFI firmware for IA-64 machines. Like all technologies, it can be used for good or evil.
EFI, short for External Firmware Interface can be described as BIOS on steroids, combined with MS-DOS. It's a programming API in firmware used specifically for low-level hardware configuration and bootstraping of OSes. It comes with a command shell that looks much like MS-DOS - it reads FAT filesystems, runs a TCP/IP stack, lets you manipulate files from the command line, set up scripts and execute programs. For the most part, these programs do things like boot OSes (from disk or network), splash screens & hardware configuration. I personally have seen Linux boot through a version of LILO hacked for EFI (though that was three years ago). It's much more flexible than the PC-style BIOS for such things. For those of you with Unix backgrounds, it's somewhat like the firmware in PA-RISC workstations that normally bootstraps HP-UX.
It isn't much of a stretch to suggest EFI can be used to set up Trusted Computing software or DRM, and even to lock out software that the Powers That Be consider to be undesireable, by running an initdrm program in the boot script just before it executes the hwconfig, splashscreen or bootos programs. As I said, EFI can be used for good or evil. EFI can be used for this, but doesn't have to be.
I personally doubt EFI will be used to cut off Linux, since a lot of the big players like HP and IBM have too much at stake to let themselves be shut out.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
Ever wonder what all those uppity protesters were up in arms about in Seattle a few years back? They're protesting against NAFTA, FTAA, GATT, WTO, and MAI because these groups and agreements allow investors to override laws.
To quote from a recent article "NAFTA: North American Deal Dismal After a Decade"
NAFTA rules also limit each country's domestic policies to deal with issues ranging from environmental health and food safety to banking and truck safety regulation.
Under the unprecedented investor rights sewn into the deal, investors are allowed to demand compensation for "indirect expropriation", which has been interpreted to mean any government act -- including those directed at public health and the environment -- that diminishes the value of a foreign investment.
Following one such suit, the Mexican government was ordered in August 2000 to pay nearly 17 million dollars to a California firm that was denied a permit from a Mexican municipality to operate a hazardous waste treatment facility in an environmentally sensitive location.
Yeah, that's what everyone was so up in arms about it. Too bad the media only told you about some dumb kids who threw some bricks at a Starbucks. If you want to understand the sort of societal structures that underly this situation, I recommend the book Understanding Power.
When our firewall got hacked and I was reimplementing it in Linux or OpenBSD, I was constantly being asked, what is Linux, how much does it cost?
I used to tell em its free but they'd give me the look that Ive fallen for a nigerian scammer or havent read between the lines, or stealing software.
Nothing in life comes free... I got that twice as I was setting up the firewall. They also needed a big company behind the software regardless of my opinion of its stability. IT experts around the globe understand and respect opensource operaring systems, but companies as a whole cant put their trust into Linux. Microsoft is a face. It has an address and everyone knows that address. There are phone numbers to call and people to threaten should things break. You cannot call a kid in a garage and threaten him.
So companies like RedHat leaving out desktop users and focusing on business are doing Linux a favor. They're doing IT technicians in those companies a favor by allowing them to use what they trust in most. Once you have every institution use a Linux or BSD server as a redundant firewall or file server... other applications for it will spring up, and that tide, Microsoft cant go against.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Here we are 20 years on and I can't actually remember the last time I saw an IBM branded PC in a shop. I've seen the odd model of laptop but the days of walking into a PC retailers and seeing swathes of IBM PCs are long gone. Microsoft is starting to go exactly the same way.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
Some defections were headed off, like the Thai government, which pays $36 for Office and Windows XP comes with a 95% discount if you compare it to list.
This kind of glosses over the fact that this price was available only for government program offering low-cost computers to Thais. These computers were set to come with the government's own version of Linux and other programs localized for Thai. One million computers with Linux pre-installed scared MS enough that the program put the first crack in the "One Price Around the World" dam that MS had erected to that point.
Prices for regular software dropped somewhat shortly after, but not to the level quoted in the article. Despite this, the MS initiative seems to have succeeded because the Thai gov't has signed at least one huge contract with MS since then and has all but ceased the open source propoganda that it was pushing before.
Put identity in the browser.