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Linux the Tortoise to Microsoft's Hare?
LukePieStalker writes "TheStreet.com is running a story by Ronna Abramson that makes a case for Linux cutting into Microsoft's server business and forcing Redmond to trim margins. A particular vulnerability is seen in overseas markets, but the heat should be turned up everywhere once Unix replacements are pretty far along by then end of next year. A quote from one CTO: [Linux is] "going to force Microsoft to spend more time on security and stability, and less time on adding new features.""
... explain this title to me...is the implication that Linux is slow at innovating or something? Or are they focusing on the 'steady' part from the old fable? The analogy doesn't quite seem to fit since Linux is both 'fast' and 'steady'...Besides Microsoft could be better anologized to a 'retarded turtle' that is both slow and disoriented/unfocused whereas linux is much more like a determined 'rabbit' which is both 'fast' and steady/focused.
Some may not agree with me on the 'focused' point but that's ok, they probably are using the 'retarded turtle' anyways.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
:::putting on flame-proof suit:::
Microsoft is an enormous innovator and will innovate in some manner to push back the threat of *nix. In fact, they may be one of the greatest innovators in the history of tech companies. They're just not innovating in an altruistic, philanthropic or technical way that most /. readers relate to.
From a business perspective, strategic marketing and business practices can and should be part of the innovation mix. If I'm Microsoft can package technology in such a way that it maximizes uptake, positions it as the de facto standard in the marketplace and raises the cost of entry for competitors, that's massive innovation, as long as you're defining innovation in a way that matters to the company's profitability and the financial success of shareholders -- and that is the only $DIETY Microsoft ultimately has to serve.
Microsoft makes some money when it technologically innovates. It makes one hell of a lot of money when it can innovate through changes in its business practices or (better yet) forcing changes in the business practies of most or all customers and competitors. This is where you'll see Microsoft working hard to combat erosion in its server market.
RMS can rant all he wants. We can wave the banner of free (Speech! Beer!) all we want. We can use the word monopoly all we want.
And Microsoft will still win.
Microsoft will win as long as they understand the whole war and we understand just one battle. The battle we're fighting is technological superiority, lower off-the-shelf cost and (in some cases) the principles of Free Software. Battles matter, but they're not the whole war. The war is market share and mindshare dominance, and "innovation" as simply a name for a whole range of tools that meet that primary business end.
In this war, it sometimes seems that we're using a gun and Microsoft is committed to using its whole arsenal. Can you win with just a gun? Yeah, if you're a good shot and take out a key leader. But the odds favor the person with more weapons.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
I think the fable is really about the danger of complacency, which MicroSoft displayed in abundance until recently.
I agree with you on this, but I think the idea is that slow and steady wins the race. Linux progresses (arguably) slowly, but steadily (not to mention stably). Whereas microsoft _attempts_ to leap forward, but at each leap forward it takes a rest and linux passes it. This is because each leap "forward" seems to introduce countless new bugs and security holes.
How is this an advantage. Everyone I know that is halfway technically savvy finds this a disadvantage about the Windows line of operating systems. People like having choices when it comes to the products and services they buy. Microsoft is going to shoot themselves in the foot with this line of thinking.
That is sadly something a lot of corporate types care about. If they know the brand then they will be much more likely to sink a little money into it.
They ought to be damn worried about the desktop and the consumer market as well. The Linux desktop as a drop in replacement for XP Home/whatever is still a ways away, but with advances in (the products formerly known as) Mozilla/Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and KDE/GNOME it's only a matter of time before it really improves to the point where a Linux desktop is truly accessible and does everything that 95% of the mass market wants to do.
Plus companies like IBM can afford to throw full-time devs at it in the hopes of avoiding millions of dollars of MS tax/Windows licenses a year.
Finally they're starting to get a taste of their own medicine (getting their market cannibalized by a free alternative).
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
linux doesn't really have that. sure there's "gnu" as in "gnutar" - but everyone just says "tar" anyway. and "k" and "g" for the desktop manager... but there's not over-arching naming mechanism that says "this is linux".
and quite frankly, i don't want there to be. if we're going to start messing with the names of linux stuff, i vote we put an 'n' in umount and an 'e' in resolv.conf first.
2 1337 4 u!
The Windows logo is seen by hundreds of millions of people each and everyday they boot up.
/. joke here) but the rest of 'everybody else' has no clue about computers, much less Linux.
Are you actually suggesting that the Linux Penguin is a better known mascot/logo? Get serious. 95% of the world doesn't even know Linux exists.
Remember, if you read slashdot, you are in that educated 1% of populace that knows a lot about computers (insert obligatory
...the reality of the situation is thus:
;).
Either IBM/SUN/Other serious development companies step in and totally embrace Linux and commit to an acceptable Open Source policy that makes everyone happy, or Micro$oft can quite literally re-invent themselves to be Linux killers.
For example, and this is horrifying, imagine that M$ purchases SCO's 'rights' (whatever the hell those actually are) and produces a Unix clone and puts 20 THOUSAND engineers on it. Imagine they do it right. Everything written to be secure, everything modularized, the ultimate desktop, et cetera.
This is a REAL possibility. Sadly, I think Apple is the one who showed them the possibilities. OSX was a huge slap in Redmond's face and I bet many of them said "Why don't we have something like that."
Can you imagine a (borg like) future were Microsoft has (like it does now) two product lines, the client line and the server line. The server line is Unix based, the client line is (who knows what) based.
Linux in all this? Gets marginalized.
In essenece what I'm trying to say is "Do not count on Micro$oft letting us slowly chew away at their business. They will come out with guns blazing and the only way to beat them is to do it with their own game, the throwing of literally billions of dollars and tens of thousands of HIGHLY organized engineers at a problem."
Look how quickly they crushed Netscape when they really put an effort into it. It's, quite frankly, terrifying. 40 billion in cash, tens of thousands of (despite what many of you think) quality software engineers, a first class research group. They're some scary mothers.
I sure wish SUN and Oracle would just suddenly go ALL LINUX. That'd scare the piss out of old Bill
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I guess it depends on how seriously you take Microsoft's "security" initiative. If you think it's for real, then yes, Microsoft has been focusing on security for two years. If you think it's just marketing nonsense, then Microsoft has been sitting on its ass for two years except when prodded forward by security vulnerabilities. It's a toss-up for many.
Take some of the things MS does to improve "security". Back in 199x, they had a problem with viruses being sent as attachments, because it's too easy to convince people to run foreign executables on Windows. So, do they fix the bug? No, they remove the feature. No attachments for you! Now it's 2004 and they have a bug in their HTTP URL parsing that allows people to phish. Fix the bug like Mozilla did? No, remove the feature--no usernames/passwords in URLs for you! It seems that Microsoft has learned nothing. Got a bug in a feature? Remove the feature, because fixing bugs is hard.
And then there's Oxymoronic statements, like "ActiveX security". You know what? ActiveX is a generic technology with no concept of program INSTALLATION with restricted user permissions. Using it as an Internet-exposed browser plugin technology was a quick and easy but extraordinarily insecure decision. The best Microsoft can do is throw up a lot of locks in front of the control, because once a user clicks "Yes" (and trust me, users do!) the show's over. The ActiveX control has complete control. Not so on Linux--I install plugins without root access, and they only apply to me, and can only damage my home directory. Home Windows users regularly run as administrators, not because they are dumb, but because they need to do things that Windows won't let them do unless they're administrators. Install browser plugins, fonts, change file associations. Linux users can do all of these things as unprivileged users.
Yes, I believe people at Microsoft believe they are working on security. I believe many Microsoft customers believe Microsoft is committed to security. And I also believe that the truth or falsehood of those beliefs is irrelevant. This is a PR blitz, nothing more.
*splutter*
.Net is going to make Melissa et al look like a minor cold compared to the digital Pearl Harbor that is .Net. This thing was built without security in mind, then it was "Oh, we need to secure it!". Cringely had a good column about this just last week.
SOAP (the communication protocol of .Net) was designed to deliberately to bypass firewalls by using the HTTP port by default. That alone is enough reason to shut down .Net. If you cannot block off .Net communication without breaking another (relatively more secure) protocol, you'll either cripple .Net or a lot of companies will be caught with their pants down.
Listen, I know you're all excited after reading the .NET and C# technology papers, etc. But I've been victimized by MS technology for nearly 15 years (Oh dear, has it been that long already??), and I can guarantee you: .NET will not provide half of what they claim it can do.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
The corporate world doesn't seem to have much of a problem with the logo as far as I can tell. HP and IBM were eagerly plastering it over all of their products at the last show I went to. Also, not all Linux companies companies insist on using the Linux pengiun in their logos, take RedHat or Progeny for example.
:p
Btw, is it just me, or does the RedHat guy look like a pretty shady character? I don't think I'd be too inclined to let someone like that manage my servers
Remember when Microsoft helped commoditize hardware in the 90? IBM can now get their revenge by commoditizing the operating system.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Something professional like an overweight man in a skin-tight butterfly suit? A lizard selling car insurance (geiko)?
I think you overestimate the corporate world a bit.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
That's because it doesn't look like most corporate logos (because its cartoonish etc.) I said that the message it conveyed was one of childishness and amateurishness. It is memorable for the same reasons that it doesn't convey professionalism and a commitment to quality.
I can think of lots of technology that comes with really slick, professional logos that is total crap.
How many of us have visited fancy websites for overpriced "enterprise" solutions that end up being complete junk?
I find the Tux logo to be refreshingly non-commercial. The logo tells me "we didn't spend all our money developing logos and using focus groups to ensure the logos convey the right qualities - we're more concerned with actually delivering those qualities."
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SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People like to believe they are empowered. Most people do not use the best product, they use the product that makes them feel the best. So what if Excel is not a database. The last place I worked full time for had so many excel spreadsheet databases that two people sitting beside each other could not agree on what a property's address was.
MS has the market for dumb users at the moment. Unskilled users can be brilliant at other things (like marketing, real estate, contracts, etc.) but they have no clue (or worse, little clue) how to work with data. They use MS products though and can get a small thing going, so they think the next step is just another click and drag away. Linux lacks this fundamental smoke screen.
The reason this race analogy is so beautiful is that Linux is slowly creeping up on MS's GUI ease of use and unskilled user empowerment. The key really is to allow people to do damage to themselves easily, then it is their choice. As Linux develops the ease of use, and ease of getting stuck that Windows currently has, then the rest of the world will start to flock to it. After all, these are most of the same people who download music, games and movies without paying. Then, they will not have to pay for the OS or the Office software.
Microsoft might be able to compete with that, but I doubt they can through legitimate means. After all, GNU applications and Linux development do not have any of the marketing, h/r, accounting or other costs associated with running a company. Pure development without the taint of beancounters or marketers.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.