ESR's Halloween XI -- Get the FUD

dave writes "In the newest Halloween Document (mirror), Eric Raymond analyzes Microsoft's 'Get The Facts' road show. The anti-Linux arguments they are using now -- and, even more, the arguments they're *not* using -- reveal how desperate Microsoft is getting. He explains why he thinks we need to focus more on government adoptions, and predicts serious ugliness during the next year."

Comments

The beauty of government adoption of open source

[tcopeland]

...is in the spinoff projects. For example, this open source Java memory profiler is a spinoff of the DARPA-supported COUGAAR agent framework.

And since both projects are hosted on a server running GForge, I can help improve GForge during working hours. Good times!

As always

[swordboy]

Be sure to order your free evaluation kit. Lets slashdot this baby! It costs them a few bucks for every one. Get one for your mom!

Re:As always

[vk2]

No need to register.!!

Offer already expired.!! Don't waste your disposable email address.

From the linked page:
Offer good until June 1, 2004 or while supplies last.

You're missing the point of gov't adoptions

[ShatteredDream]

If the DoD switches in near totality to OpenOffice, hundreds of corporations will switch too for the sake of compatability with their primary source of bread and butter. Microsoft is terrified at the idea of losing not just approximately 1-1.5 million defense desktops (not counting the other, smaller, departments) but the corporations that sell to them. A mass move to Linux, or better yet in 2 years, HaikuOS would be a disaster for Microsoft.

Re:You're missing the point of gov't adoptions

[The Snowman]

If the DoD switches in near totality to OpenOffice, hundreds of corporations will switch too for the sake of compatability with their primary source of bread and butter. Microsoft is terrified at the idea of losing not just approximately 1-1.5 million defense desktops (not counting the other, smaller, departments) but the corporations that sell to them. A mass move to Linux, or better yet in 2 years, HaikuOS would be a disaster for Microsoft.

Good luck. The generals and admirals want their Exchange/Outlook combo and Active Directory. At least in the Air Force there is a huge push to make Outlook the standard with a truly global address book and all the stupid little "features" it adds that I just turn off because they are annoying. Sigh. This will be an uphill battle. I hope open source can make inroads into the U.S. government, especially the DOD, but it will be a battle fiercer than any we have fought.

Steve Ballmer spoke at a recent Air Force conference that I attended. He let us know that the U.S. Air Force is the single largest customer of Microsoft. Do you really think we can "just switch the whole DOD" that easily? The military/DOD is a huge customer for Microsoft and one they will not give up without an epic battle.

Re:You're missing the point of gov't adoptions

[ldspartan]

imho, Outlook/Exchange's ability to handle meeting scheduling is a Big Freaking Deal. Of course, I'm just a college student working in IT, but I've never seen anything in the Free Software world that could compare to the power of Exchange for colloboration.

Am I wrong?

--
Phil

Re:You're missing the point of gov't adoptions

[Creepy Crawler]

My god, you sound sooo much like a MS report shill.. Please, I'll enlighten you.

---You're leaving out the cost of additional internal support. You're forgetting that customization of your environment leads to additional hassles applying patches and upgrades. Finally, you're forgetting that switching hardware costs money.

Hmm, switching to Linux requires no hardware changes (except for some wacky modems and weird stuff). It runs on mnay more platforms than Windows EVER ran on (thinking of old Mips, Alpha, X86, hmmm days, forget that last one).

---Ask yourself this: On how many thousands of computers would I have to save $100 per license to pay for a small team of programmers with secret or better security clearances for three years? If you figure a small team is 5-6 programmers, it works out to around 20,000 computers.

You assume programmers. Oh, and I manage all my computers from a nice shell script. It updates them all at once, and can give basic commmandline prompt through ssh. And if you NEED clearance, you're doing megabucks of something. Might as well do it right anyways. You'll need those programmers on Windows OR Linux.

---On how many more thousands of computers would I have to save $100 per license to pay the additional sysadmins, QA, and help desk personnel? What about the project managers that coordinate all these efforts? What about the additional oversight and compliance officers that ensure all of these activities meet regulations and standards?

I can easily handle 5000 clients. Its the servers I tend to want more people on. Perhaps 1 person per 20 servers or so.. Depends how much uptime is worth. Im not quoting Windows numbers either.

----As you can see, it quickly gets to a point where using a free as in beer product and supporting yourself is more expensive than buying from a vendor and getting a support contract.

Funny. Now count how much downtime costs under windows. Now license costs. Now finding INTELLIGENT admins in the windows world (there's not many). There's a good chance if you hire a Linux admin, youre getting more intelligence, problem solving and generally more expertise.

----A small to medium size business may save some money, but once you grow past that, it just makes more sense to pay for support.

Yet more unfounded statements. Why not hire more intelligent people for IT staff. Yes, it costs more, but thats what IT is for... Reducing the amount of Downtime of network and services. IT is NOT for making money (unless youre a software dev)

Perfervid?

[burgburgburg]

Anyone who thinks I'm being perfervid

Main Entry: perfervid
Pronunciation: (")p&r-'f&r-v&d, 'p&r-
Function: adjective
Etymology: New Latin perfervidus, from Latin per- thoroughly + fervidus fervid
: marked by overwrought or exaggerated emotion : excessively fervent

Yes, that's exactly what I was going to say.

Re:Perfervid?

[NaugaHunter]

Why not? It's a perfectly cromulent word that embiggens his point.

Re:Say it ain't so!

[numbski]

"Free as in speech."

Linux IS free.

It's just not neccessarily "free as in beer". It may cost you some money, but you're free to do with it (to a degree) what you wish, so long as you contribute any changes back.

Over-simplified, sure. But go download the windows source code, add a few features to explorer (heck, squash some bugs and security flaws while you're in there), and re-release the source back out there with a Makefile.

Let's see how long until your pants are sued right off of your legs.

Too desperate

[KrisCowboy]

The "Get the Facts" series is one of the funniest things I've ever read, especially about linux. M$ is unable to digest the fact that more and more governments are going for F/OSS. With hardware becoming surprisingly cheaper(well, atleast for some governments), they are no longer willing to spend more money for software. Even some state governments are switching to linux. The time/money involved in training the staff to adopt to linux is better than sinking huge amounts into fighting viruses and frequent shutdowns.

Re:Too desperate

[decipher_saint]

The time/money involved in training the staff to adopt to linux is better than sinking huge amounts into fighting viruses and frequent shutdowns.

You sir have never tried to train Gov't employees, I'd rather deal with the viruses...

On the other hand, if Governments (especially the United States Gov't) start using more OSS-based applications / operating systems there will probably be a marked increase in viruses / worms that affect those platforms. Well, other than infecting OSS with a mostly clueless user base.

P.S. I'm mostly joking about Gov't employees, there are quite a few adept Government people, but I'm sure even you guys know about the "lifers" who still pine for their typewriters...

Re:Too desperate

[jc42]

... they now consider independence from MS as an end in itself.

This isn't all that new a phenomenon. For some years, I've found that a simple way of ending most discussions of the subject with non-Americans (and some Americans ;-) is to ask "Do you want your data and communications controlled by a giant American corporation that doesn't have your interests at heart?" This cuts right to the heart of the matter, and often produces a quick change of topic.

Also, for much of the past couple years, I've been working on a project that amounts to getting a big European corporation (it doesn't much matter which one) from under the thumb of IBM. Several years ago, their management realized that their corporate data was in fact controlled by IBM, and they couldn't access it without IBM's cooperation. My job has amounted to "data raiding", extracting the data from their old computers by any means necessary and stuffing it into a flock of little linux (RedHat) boxes scattered around the Net. There has been much obstructionism in this task from IBM, whose people have been ordered to give us as little information about data formats as possible, consistent with their contracts of course. But they're losing the battle, because for their system to work at all, most of the data has to be exposed to the company and its customers at some point, and that's where we can intercept it and cache the information somewhere else. Thus, most customer information can be found by merely sending us a copy of the billing print files.

Much of our "sales" guys' argument is that we can't do to them what IBM did over the years. They have access to all the source, all the way down to the bottom. If they decide they don't like us, they can simply walk away from us, and they won't lose anything (except some capable consultants ;-).

One irony is that we've advised them a couple of times that IBM's linux workstations would in fact be very good machines for their purposes. But we also emphasize that ease of migration is important, and they should always be on the lookout for new suppliers.

You might think that there's another irony in the fact that this approach is being used by a group that is mostly Americans. But it's no irony at all, because many Americans are just as worried about IBM and Microsoft power. Any corporation with that much control over our information is a serious threat to society, regardless of where the borders may be drawn.

I just like to say "giant American corporation" to non-Americans because it gets the idea across better. There is a widespread perception in much of the world that the leaders in America have a very arrogant and possessive attitude towards the rest of the world. Many people view MS and IBM as much more threatening than a "local" corporation, irrational as such an attitude may be. But you can use this to get across the idea that they really should look at approaches that free them from domination by any such giant power center.

Corrections in the ESR documents.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just emailed ESR about the gross misreference to GNU/Linux as linux in his article.

We need more "freedom" emphasis

[bollow (a) NoLockIn]

Quote from the article:

Linux isn't free. Hello? If there is actually anyone still left on the planet who thinks the term free software was a good idea, I hope they're paying attention. Because what Microsoft is doing here is exploiting the old familiar gratis/libre ambiguity of the word free in yet another way. They're setting up for a claim that free software advocates are lying or deluded because Linux has a nonzero TCO. Therefore, goes the implication, you can't really trust them about that other freedom thing, can you?

Maybe we need a better / more effective / less easily confused way to talk about the "freedom" aspect. I'd be interested in constructive discussion of this. But there is a logical flaw in ESR's argument here. It's wrong to conclude that using the term "free software" is a bad idea just because MS tries to muddy the waters. MS may or may not succeed in making our current way of communicating the freedom aspect of Free Software less effective, but this is certainly not a reason to stop talking about "Free Foftware". Quite on the contrary, if after all their studying Microsoft is now trying to discredit the "freedom thing", isn't that an indication that emphasis on the freedom aspect is important, and should be increased rather than diminished!

Re:The clueless userbase to propagates the worms.

[Creepy Crawler]

Actually, Ive ran across 1 of them..

This "worm" was about 1 MB, self contained and ran quite fast.

The full intention of this worm was as an auto-hacker for linux machines. It used a IRC seession, DES encrypted and MD5 checksummed. Once 1 machine was infected, it would use a large library of exploits against other known linux machines (with use of nmap-like scans) and attempt to dupe it to others.

Ive been able to isolate it, but whatever the coders did with it, they made it into semi-encrypted spaghetti. Crashes damn near every debugger Ive tried. It's now a collection on one of my cd's now. "Strange and infectous stuf"

Apache runs on Windows

[ForsakenRegex]

I'm a bit surprised that ESR would point out the Apche vs. IIS differences when Microsoft could come back by pointing out you can always run Apache on Windows if you want to.

I'm sure MS would prefer you use IIS, but this seems an easily deflected statement. I'm positive that MS prefers you using Apache on Windows to you using Apache on Linux.

M$ vs. Linux "Roadshow"

[BigBadBus]

A friend at work attended one of these Linux vs. M$ roadshows in the UK a few weeks back. These are the basic points:

The basic messages about selecting MS/Linux for a system are governed by the following:
- Don't change for the sake of it
- Take into account what your people know (e.g. Linux possibly better if you have lots of Unix people)
- Much of the cost saving of Linux over Unix comes from hardware - i.e. using Intel over mainframe/AIX/zSeries etc.
- OS/Platform is just a tool - choose the right one for the job
- MS/Linux TCO's are nearly always within 10% for most projects by the time all costs are accounted for (this was from an independent solutions provider)
- Don't just focus on TCO - look at ROI (return on investment)
- MS is pretty well zero-development (no code or scripting)
- The People and Processes are more important than the technical solution
- Check licensing model of any platform (will any Linux development become your IP, or will it be open)
- Linux still does not have a really good desktop and the office suites available are still lagging
- security issues such as virus updates and patch management are more of an administration issue than a platform one
- Easier porting J2EE->.Net than the other way round (i.e. MS ties you in worse!!!)

Re:M$ vs. Linux "Roadshow"

[Creepy Crawler]

The basic messages about selecting MS/Linux for a system are governed by the following:

- Much of the cost saving of Linux over Unix comes from hardware - i.e. using Intel over mainframe/AIX/zSeries etc.

Wrong. Go buy a license for 100 mail users, or 50 MSSQL user licenses. OUCH. Now compare Postgres/MySQL or Sendmail/Qmail/god-knows-what-free-email-servers

- OS/Platform is just a tool - choose the right one for the job

Not quite. I get a bunch of apps with a linux install that windows doesnt see fit us have. Even compilers come free. Where's a free (stripped down) version of Visual Basic on Windows? You know, include a low VB 5 compiler for quick stuff..

- MS/Linux TCO's are nearly always within 10% for most projects by the time all costs are accounted for (this was from an independent solutions provider)

---As said by Independant firm who just got 50K from Microsoft.

- Don't just focus on TCO - look at ROI (return on investment)

Nope. ROI doesnt work in IT. IT is a loss leader to prevent bigger losses (downtime).

- MS is pretty well zero-development (no code or scripting)

Yep, and it it doesnt fit, you're screwed. Period.

- The People and Processes are more important than the technical solution

Ok, people are stupid. In Linux, you can people-proof more than you can in Windows. Easier to alias and block commands than it is to load some dumb "dont click here" windows program.

- Check licensing model of any platform (will any Linux development become your IP, or will it be open)

USING Linux is free with no strings attached. USING SOURCE code from GPL programs is where you get in trouble. However, using GCC to compile is fully legit.

- Linux still does not have a really good desktop and the office suites available are still lagging

Windows and everything teh sux0r. Face it, THIS IS AN OPINION. The statement is worthless.

- security issues such as virus updates and patch management are more of an administration issue than a platform one

They are? If I hear of root exploit, I take all harmed services down immediately, and patch one by one. I also give calls to the companies I work with. They agree that having a little bit of downtime is well worth the risk of not being auto-hacked.

- Easier porting J2EE->.Net than the other way round (i.e. MS ties you in worse!!!)

That's why you should use Java OR a server side program (who cares about OS then ;-)...

They have done us a favour

[sheeny]

I firmly believe Microsoft have done us a favour.

"Windows vs Linux TCO..."

CIO, "Linux, what's Linux?"
Engineer, "Its that system I have been trying to tell you about that can save us time and money"
CIO, "Ok, tell me about it then"
10 Mins later...
"Ok do it, lets see how it goes."

End of Story. And even though the 'facts' are biased, lets hope most CIO's can consider both sides of the story:)

Re:The clueless userbase to propagates the worms.

[bob dobalina]

Well spoken. The issue of "which platform is more stable, secure and usable" has less to do with the subtle genius of the design of linux and more to do with the fact that, currently, linux users are a self-selecting group of people who try to solve their own problems. If linux ever gets as popular as its proselytizers hope, they will have to deal with a whole new batch of users doing silly things, weakening security policies and allowing worm and virus writers a way in. Linux is not bugproof nor bulletproof, and certainly not foolproof.

I have to argue that, despite MS's other claims, I agree that TCO will be higher, primarily because most linux programs require a lot more user support than your average windows program, installed and patched with "software wizards". If you're a user installing openoffice and you don't have a certain library, or you have an outdated one, you're going to spend a lot of time learning about ldd and ldconfig. Personally I think the library linking issue is one of Linux's biggest achilles heels, despite a few relatively intelligent attempts to fix it.

I also think that the linux office products out there are simply substandard to Microsoft. That probably has to do with the fact that MS has been at that game for a long time. But nevertheless, linux office products like openoffice, while reasonable facsimiles, simply don't reach MS in terms of functionality and behavior. I spent four hours writing up a macro-enabled, data-validity-using spreadsheet for my company's linux users, while the identical spreadsheet in Excel took me about 45 minutes, and the linux version just didn't compare, and I'm not even a spreadsheet power user.

MS's dominance might be eroding, but it's not simply due to their being entrenched in the marketplace.

Microsoft are educating their users on our behalf

[epo001]

I was at the Edinburgh event last week and spoke to many Microsofties and to their corporate customers. The customers were quite cynical about Microsoft's motives but many of them said, in effect, they wouldn't have attended such an event if it hadn't been organised by Microsoft. Microsoft are panicing, time is on our side. Ed

Re:ESR, again.

[JohnTheFisherman]

What has ESR brought to the Open Source community?

Stunningly accurate predictions, like MS's monopoly collapsing in 2001, and Windows becoming obsolete when computer prices dipped below $350.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/13/2162 37 &mode=thread&tid=99
http://slashdot.org/article.p l?sid=02/02/28/132424 8&mode=thread&tid=163

He's got a knack for predicting the future. You can rest assured that MS really is getting *DESPERATE* now, especially now that they're obsolete and their monopoly had collapsed years ago. :)

Um

[Requiem]

Can we stop giving a soapbox to a man who claims to channel Pan?

Until I realized, finally, belatedly, what had been happening to me. Until the Great God Pan reached out of my hindbrain and thundered "YOU!" And his gift is music and his chosen instruments the pipes and flutes. And his, too the power of joy; magic so strong that when it flowed out of me, even before I knew what I was doing, it amazed people into awe and incoherence and poetry.

That day I was reborn; from a skinny lame kid with a flute into a shaman and a vessel of the Goat-Foot God, the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the Horned Lord. And the music was my first power, but not my last.

ESR is off the deep end.

Re:Um

[BenjyD]

How is that any more or less valid than any other religious belief? Should we ignore all Christian people because they believe someone walked on water? Or muslims because they do streching exercises every day as a form of prayer to their god?

Just because a religion sounds silly to you doesn't make it any less valid than any other religion.

Re:Hey, FUD-packer.

[Enry]

So what do the people start doing? Logging in as root. That's right, they will ignore the fact that we have users (like they do w/Windows, no one wants to be anything but the administrator) and they will run everything as root.

Uhm. OS X already does this. As a normal user, you don't have write access to larger parts of the filesystem. To install applications or update the system, you have to give a password, which is then sent to sudo.

Under Windows, there's no easy way to go from "joe user" to "super user", so everyone stays as "super user". Linux and OS X make it pretty easy for the user to upgrade their priveleges temporarily.

Re:The clueless userbase to propagates the worms.

[Creepy Crawler]

Yep, tried to.

Ive ran all the common unpackers, and Tron against it. Tron gives "unknown packer" and some pack detecters just crash...

Ive tried hand decoding it (fun fun ;( ) but it seems to use some sort of the same encryption as AZPR's Zip password recovery. Has a executable stub, some code, then somehow the key itself is encrypted and only the password is the key..

Take a look at trying to crack AZPR.. Ill pay you 100$ if you can. AZPR password somehow has the key as part of the executable so when correct, it correctly decrypts the packed part. No softice or asm dumps can beat it. In my opinion, it seems to be the perfect packing setup.

Admittley its way over my head. I can do stuff like DDD debugging, or looking over deadlists (ala MS VC++ compiler errors and inline asm command switching). I just cant even comprehend what exacly its doing.

And yes, anonycoward, I am telling the truth. You actually think that there's no worms at all for Linux?

Re:ESR, again.

[RLiegh]

Oh, good Lord, you are sniffing glue, right? Microsoft is alive and well., and the only vanilla box you can get for below $350 is a used piece of shit that has Windows ME installed. Get out of your basement, your parents need the space.

Well, strictly looking for new and under $350, I found this at Walmart's site right off the bat. They also have a 2.4gzh one for $398.

I'm sure I could have found even better deals, but I don't really have a lot of time to spend looking (and I'm happy getting a used box from retrobox).

I made a little chart...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to show who says what.

Stallman GNU/linux Free Software Bearded Chaotic Good
Linus linux Open Source(?) Unbearded True Neutral
Eric linux Open Source Hitler Mustache Chaotic Evil
Bruce P GNU/linux Free Software Beardless Lawful Good
Alan Cox GNU/lin(mostly) Free Software Mighty beard Chaotic Good

Software libre

[amightywind]

Hello? If there is actually anyone still left on the planet who thinks the term free software was a good idea, I hope they're paying attention. Because what Microsoft is doing here is exploiting the old familiar gratis/libre ambiguity of the word free in yet another way.

Raymond should be less glib and contrive a better argument against the term free software than mere coersion. I see no reason why Micro$oft's perverse attacks should affect my philosophy the freedom of ideas, or dictate which terms are acceptable in discussing it. In these dark days of ever expanding corporatism we need more discussion of freedom, not less.

Re:ESR, again.

[Mr_Silver]

What has ESR brought to the Open Source community?

A few things although I agree with you that predicting the future is not his strong point.

Re:The clueless userbase to propagates the worms.

[Etyenne]

I have to argue that, despite MS's other claims, I agree that TCO will be higher, primarily because most linux programs require a lot more user support than your average windows program, installed and patched with "software wizards".

Could you explain to us how using "software wizards" instead of package manager (yum, apt, urpmi, whatever your distro is based on) and related GUI for software installation and patching could translate into TCO saving ? Remember, most software installation and patching is not being done by the end-user anyway, but by their IT departement.

I spent four hours writing up a macro-enabled, data-validity-using spreadsheet for my company's linux users, while the identical spreadsheet in Excel took me about 45 minutes, and the linux version just didn't compare, and I'm not even a spreadsheet power user.

If you would be equally proficient with both MS Office and OO.org, that would be telling something. However, I am pretty sure you are not. With that assumption, the only conclusion I can draw ATM is that using software you are not familiar with take more time, especially for advanced stuff like data validation. Duh.

It's not a war!

[Junks Jerzey]

Remember how Linux advocates, real early on, used to love to quote Ghandi? You know, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you've won? Well, it works both ways. Now we have both camps bitterly and intentionally fighting with each other. And what good does it do? If Linux--excuse me, I mean "open source in general" is so blindly superior to Windows in every single way, then that's it. It's over. The existing momentum will carry through and eventually the better solution wins. It's a quiet revolution. It isn't a niche loss, like laser discs or Betamax.

Now what should be worrying people like Mr. Raymond is that Linux-based desktops (which is what we're really talking about, not simply "open source"), is that Linux *isn't* so blindingly superior as to carry the day. Truthfully, I think this is the case. I've used UNIX, I like Linux, but we're essentially having a big battle of the old and huge operating systems here, and none of them is a revolution. None of them is so much better than all the others is wonderful and positive ways. (Mostly they're all negative: don't get virii, don't have to deal with Microsoft.) In fact, the entire concept of the big operating system is a relic. Does anyone argue about the OS in a digital camera? Or a Palm? Or a cell phone? No. And those are more akin to what an "OS" of the future needs to be: thin, small, and unobtrusive. We need the Commodore 64 of the next decade, not the next VAX.

Thanks for listening :)

Re:Hey, FUD-packer.

[general_re]

Under Windows, there's no easy way to go from "joe user" to "super user"...

Sure there is, but few people take advantage of it or understand why it's a good idea - runas /user:user_name program_name, where user_name is the local administrator. Enter the password and away you go. If you have a proggy that you regularly need to run with admin privs, create a shortcut and pull up the properties sheet for the shortcut - check the box marked "Run as different user". Enter the username and pw when prompted, and away you go.

Anyway, the point is, people who are confused by this, who don't understand it and why it's not a good idea to not run as root all the time, they are not suddenly going to grok the mysteries of sudo when switching to some other OS. People who are clueless will not become clueful just by switching wallpapers on them - unless and until people are better educated in safe computing practices, nothing is really going to change.

Re:ESR, again.

[mirko]

Not sure whether it has been posted here before but here's an interesting point of view on ESR : It's about things he claims and things he obviously has not done : "The Emperor Has No Clothes"

The gloves are off.

[Roskolnikov]

After Microsofts *successful* defence in the anti-trust suit it
appears as if they are on the attack again.

I recently had the chance to 'lunch' with a team of boiler room types on the topic of ' Interoperability, Integration, Extensibility'
subtitled 'Unix interoperability'

After enjoying a excellent meal at one of the better steak houses in town I began to notice that this 'meating' wasn't so much about working with Unix systems as it was about providing unix services from Windows servers; After being seeded with 'free' software (funny that, free tools just not free source) title:Windows Services for Unix 3.5 and looking closely I saw that they are now providing NFS, Syslog, NIS, DNS, Mail and a tool to 'port' your Unix 'legacy' (their words) apps to a modern OS.

What frightened me most was that my inclusion to this meeting was last minute and that my 'peers' didn't have a technical bone in em, they were all either Microsoft partners or middle to upper manglement types.

The last 'free' software I saw from Microsoft was IE, I wonder if this latest offering will have as profound an effect.

Re:ESR, again.

[sgtrock]

Re: the idiots who didn't recognize your article for what it was; a slam at ESR: I can't believe the number of people who read Slashdot who don't recognize sarcasm!

You're right, his ability to prognosticate is badly flawed when predicting end results. OTOH, I think he's been pretty accurate in how MS would fight the war, don't you? Go back and re-read the Halloween docs and you'll see what I mean.

Re:I think you misunderstood me.

[The Bungi]

Of course they are liable, but up to a point.

Microsoft has a consumer OS they're trying to secure. You have a server OS that you're trying to make usable as a workstation. You can argue endlessly about how each side could have done things differently, but most of the time most people who attack Microsoft because they're (in your words) "unable to write good code" also discount the fact that they have to deal with a huge user and legacy application base. They can't just change the default shell action of a VB script from "Run" to "Edit" (which pretty much eliminates script worms) without getting themselves into a hell of a bind. There is no easy solution. But the attitude from people like you is mostly "lock it down and let the user fight it". You won't sell a lot of anything like that, unfortunately. As long as open source continues to think of users as developers who don't mind opening a console and typing 'su' to get anything done Linux won't get far in the desktop.

The Apple comparison is dumb, as always. Just by virtue of sheer user base size.

You just wait until Linux gains some market share in the desktop thanks to IBM or Novell. The day some fuck starts sending tarballs with bash scripts that delete ~/ or zombie the box to send spam we'll have another chat. There's no need to run as root to do damage to a machine.

Very disingenuous

[sethamin]

I think ESR is being really disingenuous here and not really addressing the meat of MS's points at all. I wouldn't call it FUD, but he's certainly missing the argument and just responding snidely to them.

1. Claim that linux isn't free.

ESR seems to think all MS is talking about here is that it isn't free because it "has a nonzero TCO." Sure, that's part of it, but I think the argument goes deeper. The point is that the majority of corporate customers are not going to just download a freely available distribution of Linux, because most enterprise customers NEED support. Therefore, they are going to buy a supported distribution from a major Linux vendor, and that most certainly costs money. In that case it's most certainly not free (as in beer), and while it is still free (as in speech), those companies are not going to really exercise that freedom because they can't just modify their distribution and still expect support from the vendor.

2. Pretend that Shared source is the same as Open Source.

ESR's basically just belittles this statement, but again, there's some truth behind it. If you consider a company as above, namely, that they have bought a Linux vendor's distribution with support and they are not going to modify that distribution and lose their support. At that point, what IS the difference between 'Shared Source' and 'Open Source'? Either way, they're only looking at the source code and not modifying it. The only real difference I can see is that with Open Source (or really, Free Software) they could try to create a patch and get it into a future release in the hope that their vendor will pick it up and support it. This is really only marginally better than relying on your commercial software vendor for new features, because you're still dependent on some external entity (in this case, your vendor) and their decision making process to get that feature.

ESR is just a zealot

[pandrijeczko]

IMHO, ESR makes one valid point and one only:

Writing code that doesn't suck always has to be our base-level and most important response

To put the Open Source movement in some kind of "battle" with Microsoft only serves to belittle what the F/OSS community does.

Let's put things a little into perspective:

1. A huge amount of OSS software runs on Windows also - Mozilla, GIMP, OpenOffice, etc. etc.

This means that whether you run Windows, Linux, BSD, whatever, you have a choice. You do not need to be tied into one of a few commercial software vendors for your applications. It also means that you have the opportunity to try out new applications at little risk and no cost - as a result, you get a comparitive benchmark and can make a decision for yourself whether a particular application you need is better served by a commercial or OSS application. End of story.

2. It's closed standards, not Microsoft, that's the problem.

Using a computer brings with it a responsibility - namely that you take charge of the data that you store on it. You decide how shareable that data is to be, you decide how portable it needs to be and you decide how deeply you lock it away from the eyes of others.

DRM and closed formats simply mean that you hand over that responsibility to a commercial organisation, nothing more. That means that they charge you for taking control of your data and, because they are interested in making a profit, will naturally try to charge you more as time goes on. When use of that DRM format becomes widespread, it becomes the norm and all of a sudden, everyone has had their responsibilities handed over to that organisation. This is the potential loss of personal freedom we must focus on not becoming reality.

Microsoft backs DRM heavily and it is that issue we should fight against because that's the only danger to Open Source - OSS and Microsoft can co-exist provided standards and formats remain open to all. If Microsoft cannot accept that, then that's their problem...

3. Users need to be educated to make a choice.

Spreading the word of Open Source & Linux is the only way forward because people then start to make choices for themselves as to what software best fulfills the job that they need to do, rather than simply just blindly consuming every piece of software Microsoft churns out. If the F/OSS community has no remit to "destroy Microsoft" then it can simply focus on creating good software and listening to the users of that software as to how to improve or change that it for the better.

For example, while I can work wonders with UNIX command line tools that can format text just about any way I want it, my teenage niece who does her homework in Word, Excel & Powerpoint is not suddenly going to get a knock on the door from her uncle armed with his Linux CD, just because he thinks "grep" and "sed" are better... Everyone has their own perceptions of what is usable.

The OSS community is doing what it should be doing right now - keep churning out the good software, not rising to Microsoft's little tantrums & letting the users know they have a choice.

ESR, a factual case is the best case.

[e.m.rainey]

There's lots of compelling arguments in your case here, but I think you could use some edits.

1.) " Like the dog that didn't bark in the night-time, these omissions are significant, because Microsoft marketing is thorough and ruthlessly opportunistic." The first part of this statement is rather confounding. I assume that you mean that that fact that they have dropped these arguments should be indicative of the thoroughness of the marketers.

2.) "Do I even need to point out that most of the factual claims are blatant lies brought to you by the same people who got caught faking video evidence in their Federal antitrust trial?". Unless you can show that the actual forger is at work here, refrain from painting all MS employees with the brush of a criminal. This only serves to undermine your objectivity.

3.) "Hammer them without mercy -- but do it in a quiet, reasonable voice and keep control of the terms of argument. " Do it "ruthlessly" perhaps? This also serves to undermine you credibility as it shows you too are playing the word game. Ruthless is a "charged word" even though it used to mean "without emotion" it implies some bitter, hateful vengence now. You used it to describe MS Marketing before but you don't use it now, but just be consistent. The rest of the statement is good though, stick to the facts and definitions, and keep the argument in your favor.

4.) "...higher Windows TCO is forever" Please quantify "higher" with a number.

5.) "Shared source is a poison pill." Shared Source may be a misnomer but calling it a "posion" pill is just imflamitory.

6.) "Can you explain why Windows IIS websites are cracked or defaced more often than Apache ones, despite the fact that IIS runs less than a third the number of sites Apache does?" Please quantify "more often". Also, attempt to separate this into 2 questions, as the answer will undoubtably be "Hackers hate Windows, hackers attack Windows" which will only be to their advantage because it implies that they are top dog. The top dog is perpetually being challenged. Saying that they are attacked often is handing them the opportunity to say that they are top dog.

Otherwise, this is good article and it's got some great questions for MS PR about the Shared Source == Open Source nonsense.

Re:ESR, again.

[black mariah]

sarcasm
n.

1. A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.
2. A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule.
3. The use of sarcasm. See Synonyms at wit1.

Re:The clueless userbase to propagates the worms.

[Mirk]

I would be very much interested in seeing it. Could you email, or make it available through http/ftp/whatever?

I'd like to see it, too, please. I've set my root password to "querty". Please ssh onto my box and run this fascinating software so I can look into it.

Re:The clueless userbase to propagates the worms.

[Knuckles]

The well respected German computer magazine c't had a spreadsheet shootout a few weeks ago (issue 12/04). Overall, OO.org Calc came out head-to-head with Excel, with particular tasks being easier on one or the other.

Re:The clueless userbase to propagates the worms.

[ejbst25]

Whew! Glad you mispelled qwerty or that would be totally insecure!

Re:Something like Meeting Maker wd be cool

[Kiryat Malachi]

Honestly, I think it's because getting a good calendaring/email solution together isn't a small task; its equivalent to writing a full-fledged office program. However, unlike an office program, it isn't very useful to the home user, pretty much solely useful for corporate users. As a result, there's not really an "itch" for most developers.

As to the other part of it - honestly, Outlook/Exchange is a pretty decent setup. Outlook as an email client is awful, but Outlook/Exchange as a group calendaring/room reservation/resource reservation setup (yes, we reserve a conference room by adding it to our meeting request on Outlook, and resources similarly for those that are tracked) is a decent solution. It would take a lot of work for an OS developer to come up with something as good, and the companies that most need that sort of solution (giant corporations; IBMs, Intels, Motorolas, Walmarts) are the ones who are most able to deal with both the cost of licenses.

Basically, the problem is that its a big problem that has no use for home users, and none of the big corporates has shown a desire to move away from the 'good enough' solution O/Ex provides.

Re:ESR, again.

[PhxBlue]

Sorry there, but besides Fud, what has ESR brought to the Open Source community ?

The aqueduct. . . and the sanitation! And the roads. . .