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MS Rails On Open Source, Appeals To Gov't Greed
Bill Harper writes "Open source software is a 'waste of money,' a Microsoft executive has said. He goes on to say that governments planning to use it will damage their own economies and that giving away source code is shooting yourself in the foot. What's interesting though is that this is just the latest in a series of nonsense arguments put forward by MS in Asia because it's scared of Linux stealing the market. An early one was that open-source software is anti-competitive!" Funny thing is, the MS executive (Chris Sharp) used to work for Red Hat.
Its NOT funny that he came from Red Hat. It will lend some 'creditability' to his words, in the public's eye.
"See...he had to move to Microsoft to make an income and not work for one of those evil/stupid 'Linux companies'".
Microsoft's marketing machine is in full motion these days, and we are taking a beating beacuse of it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think I have met him once at a RedHat presentation in Sydney - he wasn't terrribly open source centric back then either.
I think it's probabaly a fallacy to think that the RedHat managers are open source evangelists - they are more "executives" than evangelists.
Even the current local RedHat CEO doesn't come across as your typical oss advocate. They are more business driven (perhaps unfortunately - perhaps not, depends on your view).
Jon - TheSpork
To propose that sharing code is by nature insecure is saying security can only be achieved through secrecy. It says once you have my windows code, windows is no longer secure.
I think if these guys had any brains they would give away a base version of windows that had enought functionality to be useful.
Jeoin
Of course, he's just some greedy bastard
I would be a little more hesitant to call anybody who goes to work for MS a greedy bastard. I go to a small university in Pittsburgh that has a rather large anti-MS student body.... but at the same time I have never seen a larger turnout for prospective job seekers than when MS comes to town. Microsoft has the luxury of being able to hire the best people, and in the marketing business they can often come from the competition. After all, who better to detail the flaws in a competitor's products than someone who used to hawk them?
That being said I think the arguments are bunk but if you ever want to succeed you should learn to never hate your enemy since it clouds your judgement.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Really? Huh. So tell me again... as a Microsoft marketing strategist, when you look at me, what do you see?
Or perhaps the best example, from cache Borland's web site back before they were payed off^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H settled their case with msft.
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Microsoft's Concerted and Systematic Efforts to Unfairly Compete with Borland
...
.... As Gross put it, without even asking him to interview, "Microsoft gave him an offer he could not refuse." Borland is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that Microsoft's offer included a $1 million signing bonus, stock options and title to selected real estate in or near Redmond, Washington. Microsoft also informed Gross that it would increase the already substantial offer if he would accept it immediately, even though he had already scheduled a three month sabbatical to plan his wedding.
...Borland is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that Microsoft viewed Gross as key to its successful recruitment of Anders Hejlsberg ... Hejlsberg was reluctant to leave California, but Microsoft offered him a $1.5 million signing bonus, over a base salary of approximately $150,000 to $200,000 and extremely lucrative options to purchase 75,000 Microsoft shares.
Wonder if the RedHat guy got anything close....the method Microsoft chose to develop its answer to Delphi, as well as to C++ and the Internet tools, was to hire away the people at Borland who had developed Borland's superior products. By taking Borland employees, Microsoft reduces the number of people working on products that can compete with Microsoft and support open industry standards.
Gross had always been vehemently opposed to Microsoft and its way of doing business and had tried to discourage many of Borland's employees from taking jobs there. Representatives of Microsoft set their sights on Gross, however, and one day Silverberg and Bob Muglia of Microsoft arrived outside of Borland's headquarters in a limousine to pick up Gross to recruit him over lunch at an expensive restaurant.
Personally, though, I think it's nice to see that Microsoft recognises individual talent and rewards these people well.
Lest we forget, Microsoft has at least one OpenSource project. While copyright, and restricted use, microsoft has many, many example source programs on MSDN as well. Not GPL, but certainly open (as in viewable and modifiable) source.
MS seems to fairly regularly confuse say "this is good/bad for consumers" when it really means "this is good/bad for Microsoft". Do they knowingly take MS-internal-only presentations and show them to the public as normal business?
A statement such as "With open source, there is no way to make more software" may make sense to a bunch of coders inside of Microsoft, but it's so obviously stupid outside of that context that it doesn't even survive cursory analysis.
Could they actually define at what point this "no way to make more software" statement has/will kick in? Was it after Linux was released in 1991? After Apache was released a year or so later? Maybe OOo was the last piece of software that could be produced? Is it happening right now, and the code that's being developed at the moment can't be finished? Maybe it's in the future sometime; I'd really like to know the date that it's gonna occur so I can get into another industry beforehand.
Idiots
wait a minute!
when you install your copy of XP professional where is your support agreement...
YOU DONT HAVE ONE. Microsoft does not profide free support when you buy their OS you have to pay for support. JUST LIKE LINUX.
I dont know where this myth that microsoft OS has syupport built in comes from but everyone in the business that works with MS operating systems knows that MS support comes with a very large price tag and is never EVER free.
XP=$300.00 PLus a support agreement price... Linux= $0.00 plus a support agreement price..
even if Mandrake or Suse/Novell support was the same price as MS support (it isn't... it's cheaper) you are STILL ahead by $300.00 + the cost of the Office Suite + the cost of the server seat licenses + the cost of the assorted support software that comes free with the linux distro and is supported by the linux vendor.
the cost of support that is supposedly attached to linux is also there for Windows. nobody ever seems to mention that... or they somehow forget that HUGE bill they pay to MS for that support agreement they signed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Microsoft's continuous raiding did not stop after Microsoft took the top Borland strategist and Borland's top tools developer. Before 1996 was out, Ramin Halviatti, a Delphi Development Manager and, Jean Marie Babet, a C++ R&D engineer, had moved to Microsoft. In the past few weeks alone Microsoft has successfully recruited at least three more key Borland employees: Bill Dunlap, Marie Huwe, and Roland Fernandez."
"In April 1997, Microsoft hired two Borland marketing managers. Both Bill Dunlap, the Product Manager for JBuilder and Marie Huwe, the Product Marketing Manager for C++Builder,"
"Microsoft also hired Borland's senior Architect for its C++Builder product. Roland Fernandez, who resigned from Borland on April 25, 1997 played the key role in Borland's development of C++Builder, Borland's Rapid Application Development ("RAD") tool for C++. He left Borland with detailed knowledge of the overall architecture and feature set definition of C++Builder. At Microsoft, he is now doing exactly the same thing: creating a RAD C++ tool that competes directly with C++Builder. Unable to fix its tools products on its own, Microsoft has recruited Borland knowledge to do it. Minds that previously worked on products that support a wide variety of open industry standards are now limited to products that now support Microsoft platforms and proprietary technologies"
" Microsoft willfully, deliberately, according to its plan, and with the intention of harming Borland, hired at least 34 former employees of Borland, and set them out to use their knowledge of tools development, some of which is proprietary to Borland, to create tools for Microsoft. Microsoft continues, and will continue unless restrained, to accomplish this illegal course of conduct by continuing to solicit and recruit Borland employees. ...Borland is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that Microsoft=s solicitation and recruitment of Borland employees is intentional and being done for wrongful purposes: to inhibit Borland's competitive position in this technology area and to acquire Borland confidential information -- all with the express intent and purpose of unfairly benefiting Microsoft."
Couldn't agree more.
The worst thing is all those government health, safety and reliability regulations that relate to plumbing. Don't even get me started on national open standards. The fact that a property owner can go out and choose any old vendor and installer for their plumbing needs is ludicrous.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Delving a bit deeper into that; if you're sufficiently motivated, you can learn to fix your plumbing for free; and not only is plumbing knowledge essentially free ( if you are willing to look for it ) but the standards on how to do so are published in the books available for a small cost.
:)
Oh, and there are many people who will teach you about plumbing if you are willing to learn (it's part of my current job).
That's why the money to be made (and that is being made all over) thru open source belongs to the service trade. (There's no shame in being a software maintenance guy; the nice thing about open source vs. closed is that you have a lot more options open to you, whether you are a programmer or DIYer
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Governments are in a position to establish vendor neutral specs that could dominate the industry. If the IRS established XML specs for tax forms (rather than letting Intuit or another vendor dictate proprietary formats as the standards) then they can drive real competetion for good software that implements the standards. If this sort of thing expands it could make communication of data about patents, censuses, and parking tickets as easy to find as looking up a zip code is online today.
Governments don't seem to recognize that by giving power to the little dictators and their proprietary products they are ceding their own power as the neutral referee and protector of their people.
A few years ago I was one of a bunch of religious freaks who hit Sydney's Chinatown. Fantastic location. We didn't pretend to speak Chinese--in fact, we did our thing with some simple street theatre and a couple of really cool dance routines. We had a crowd of people watching, and some of the local businesses even gave us lunch because we were getting business for them!
If anyone wanted to talk about what we had presented, that was up to them. If people wanted to watch the concert and leave, that was fine too. We did the same thing in King's Cross and Darling Harbour.
What wrecked it was the freaks who followed us. The moment they started with their fake Chinese and bible bashing, people ran. We actually gave away over a hundred Bibles that day, and people seemed pleased with what they got. These other idiots didn't get to base one.
The moral of the story is that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. We said what we had to say in a non-confrontational way, and moved on. Everyone was happy. Go out of your way to offend, and end up going backwards.
This applies to the Linux evangelists as well as anything else. I can't stand Windows or anything else by MS (apart from their mice!) But I've found the easiest way to get people thinking about changing over to the Light Side is to use Linux, maybe show off a little bit, and know what the differences are. When people get interested, I can explain the benefits, and give them a copy of Knoppix. Easy. By treating people as human beings instead of targets to be hit everyone benefits.
Cogito, ergo sig.
Microsoft's value proposition is product based, i.e. sell lots of units of software product to make profit.
:-). I won't go political.
OSS value proposition is service based. Give the software away, and provide services, consulting etc. to help companies deploy and use the software. Companies may get support from either internal and/or external resources - either way they cost $.
Note: You still need services for product based vendors.
IBM (and others) have a hybrid model, services and software product sales. IBM get much more revenue from services than they do from software product. Interestingly, IBM will heavily discount there products (80%) in competetive situtaions - guess what? they want the service revenue!
Which model wins in the long run? The market will eventually sort that out.
Assuming that a service based model wins, then product oriented companies will fail: Which is why M$ are poohing their pants on this issue.
The basic economic free market model for OSS assumes a service based model. In fact for OSS to really work, it needs a really free market. Software patents are a really big risk for OSS, praticularly where the granted patent is for the trivial (one click, scroll bars, progress bars etc.)
Now we talk free market - we get political (where are Stallman and Raymeond when u need them
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
Thought that would get your attention :)
Let me explain my reasoning:
Ok, initially, the majority of open source development was dev support based (libraries, support and development applications...and a few OSes). However now there is a plethora of open source work being done in the application domain. Writing open source applications puts companies out of business. I'm not arguing if that's right or wrong yet, just stating fact. I write an application, sell it...someone comes along and starts giving it away...I go out of business (generally).
So, where does selfish come into it. One developer, who doesn't have to worry about the other parts of software development (administration, quality control, iso certification etc) because he's giving his product away, develops a product simply for the glory of it and maybe some cash in support money. If the application get's big, maybe he makes enough money to be well off from support and on the conference circuit.
Now, if he'd had the courage to take a chance and develop his software as a going concern...and it took off...he would be building something bigger than himself. A company that supplies income to many, perhaps even 1000s one day, employees and their families. But instead, he puts a company out of business (or at the least reduces market share)...all for his glory he puts 100s of families out of work. Sounds pretty selfish to me.
p.s. I'm now a microsoft nut, and do contribute regularly to several open source projects (library projects). I just think open sourcing applications of every variety is going to end up killing our industry
The link in my sig is commercial software I offer built on open source such as JBoss, Tomcat and MySQL. It works, however, with applications running in commercial J2EE vendors such as WebSphere.
There's room for BOTH open source and commercial software.
Open Standards Portal
Microsoft is Un-American because they are anti-capitalist.
I blame Microsoft for falling for the broken window fallacy and arguing for greater government spending. Government spending reduces investment in the economy because it takes capital away from the economy in taxes and borrowing.It would help if our own government, especially the California legislature, understood this.
In some respects i agree with MS... But really this is silly.
:)
If you look at it from the same point of view as outsourcing American jobs to low wage foreign workforces... Its the same argument. Funny that a Corperation is now using it to battle the free will of the people. How convient.
But the truth is... Open Source software still requires a work force to maintain it, author it, and contribute to it.
Microsoft is really concerned with sales of their software... not the jobs of people
If we put our super secret microsoft pr decoder glasses on, the statement actually reads:
"if you dont buy our software, it's going to hurt our company"
Well DUH Microsoft. It seems as if someone is affraid of a fair competitive market.
Microsoft could switch to the redhat buisness model and still hold the same market dominance with an open source Longhorn...
But they're all too greedy for that.
Its so funny to see Microsoft complaining about how free software is impossible to compete with... IE anyone?
Nope.. Mozilla firebird for me!