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Former Windows Chief on Microsoft Vs. Open-Source
prostoalex writes "Brad Silverberg, former chief of Microsoft Windows division, who left the company in 1999, is being interviewed by the Milestone Group, on Microsoft specifically, and the software venture capital world in general (Silverberg is currently working as managing partner for Ignition Partners). He provides an interesting viewpoint on Microsoft's understanding of open source: 'I don't think they have figured that out yet, I think that is clear. They are struggling with not so much open source, per se, but rather they are no longer the low price solution. In the past Microsoft was the low cost solution and Microsoft was then competing and attacking expensive proprietary systems from below. Now for the first time the tables are turned and it's Microsoft that's being attacked from below by a lower price solution. Microsoft needs to figure out how it can demonstrate better TCO to justify its higher prices. Another aspect to that, which is an area I think Microsoft is also struggling with, which is when you are as successful and dominant as they are, how do you continue to foster that ecosystem? What really propelled Microsoft Windows success was an ecosystem that they created that allowed other people to benefit from your success. Actually your success was really a side effect or byproduct of their own success.'"
I am tired of reading about "total cost of ownership". It is a made-up concept
Any concept of the inner workings of a Fortune 500 company? i.e. what it means to have thousands upon thousands of non technical users who are now required to use a PC for their job 8 hours a day? Any idea on earth what it costs to support these people? (hint- these operatives may make as low as minimum wage, but the people supporting them certainly don't!)
This article is basically what people here on Slashdot have already said ad nauseum. Microsoft is struggling to compete with something free, and Microsoft is struggling to compete with itself. I already knew that from countless discussions on the subject beforehand.
Yeah, back in the day when proprietary UNIX OSes running on proprietary hardware ruled the data center, Windows really *was* the low-cost solution--it ran on commodity hardware, and its licencing was often less onerous and expensive than their competitors.
Now that they're no longer really competeing with proprietary UNIX in the data center (they've pretty much taken all they're going to get in that market) along comes a new OS that also runs on commodity hardware, but has the added benefit of being (mostly) free as well.
Once upon a time, they really could argue that they were cheaper than the "big boys". Now, in the portion of the data center market they control, that's not true anymore.
-- Dave
Making fun of dumb people since 2009
You're thinking of late-day Microsoft. The early-day Microsoft was often a pretty reasonable solution in terms of price.
WordStar and WordPerfect charged plenty for the word processors, plus if you wanted spell-check, that thing alone would cost you extra $300 or so. Then Microsoft came around with Word, which wasn't all great, but sufficiently functional and way cheaper.
The same with Windows NT - Novell is jumping the Linux bandwagon now only because it got its ass kicked by early Windows NT sales, which made Novell look way over-priced. True, early Novell was technologically superior to early Windows NT, but as the market expanded, NT got better and Novell became the bottom-feeder.
As long as Windows continues to be preloaded on a majority of machines, Windows will continue to sell (duh) and some of their apps will continue to sell.
On another note...
Ha! I remember a sentence in 'Undocumented DOS' so many years ago: "Your product may be a DLL in the next version of Windows." So the developers are finally wising up, eh? About fucking time.I think you're behind the times, kid. Microsoft hasn't been ruled by "King Gates" in some time...he's moved on to more of an advisory roll and delegated most of the company's decisions to Balmer. Furthermore, there are a number of markets in which Microsoft still has the low price solution...for example, if you want a reliable load balanced database, SQL Server kicks the price pants off of Oracle and DB2. Sybase is languishing and open source doesn't have anything remotely near the feature set of these four (no, we can't all use MySQL).
You're also apparently unaware of some of the options Microsoft was faced with on their way to becoming the "huge, oppressive, evil monopoly" that made my second favorite operating system. Back in the day, you could drop $300+ on a copy of Word Perfect, or get Word for something like $100. Like Open Source today, Word was the inferior solution from a feature set and usability standpoint, but it was cheaper and offered enough functionality that most people didn't care. Later, Office sprung up as a way to further lower costs by offering the most common pieces of software for one low price. This left Lotus and WordPerfect scrambling to put together a package that was similar and/or better for a similarly low price. In the end, Microsoft's suite was better integrated, interoperated better (e.g. AmiPro/WordPro could open MS documents well but not visa versa, leaving MS as the defacto standard) and above all cheaper than its competitors.
Of course, this was well before they were officially a monopoly, back when Lotus and Word Perfect still had a chance to make a decent product, a chance neither of them was capable of. Microsoft won this war because they had better businessmen. The problem is, they didn't change their policies once they won...and you can't play the "exclusive contract" game once you've out-stripped your competeition.
Finally, your government systems analogy is kind of foolish. Hive Societies may be "better" idealistically, but historically have never really worked beyond a certain population level. On the other hand, kingdoms have been quite stable and succesful, especially in parts of the world where individual wealth and education are too concentrated to promote an egalitarian society. In fact, on the micro level almost all systems break down into localized oligarchies, with a single set of localized idea-men and a series of lackeys doing what these men say. A single charismatic ruler will always have better luck at efficiently organizing people and delivering services than a committee in a constant power struggle -- this happens so reliably, I think it is safe to assume that it is a genetic predisposition in the human animal to choose a definite vision when available.
Extrapolating from this, since user education in the computer field will always a bigger issue than price, and most Open Source packages are by definition indefinite, open ended entities, I think we can safely assume Open Source isn't going to revolutionize the proletariat's desktop any time soon.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
As answered 100 times already, yes, the really were. Even now, allowing that "low price" includes ROI considerations like my time to setup systems, train users, and maintain networks, MS is a decent alternative. I'm a big fan of the LINUX potential, and hope that this or something like it kicks into high gear and gets in all those little places, but until "dumb users" (we all have them in our offices) get over their FUD of not Windows, it's here.
Consider that to the average Joe (think's he's computer savvy, but isn't really) that walks into his local mega-outlet to buy a ready-to-use computer-in-a-box, Windows is installed (although I have seen Lindows-installed PCs on the shelf, now), included in the price. Realistically, yes, the price is in there somewhere, but to Joe, it's "free" (as in "already done for me"). To change the OS, assuming Joe can figure that out, there's at the very least download and install time, if not a direct purchase of an OS box from the shelf to use. In this case, Microsoft can be argued to be the low-cost winner. Before you bash me, yes, this is where MS has been playing badly...monsters in my box.
To another Joe, the really-savvy computer guru, like you, dear reader (who assembles his system from scratch picking the best components money can buy and lovingly screwing them together in is l33t modded case...), looking at the Suse, RedHat, and Microsoft OS boxes on the shelf, no, Microsoft is not the clear winner in the low-price category. (Especilly to the l33t users who say "screw the shelves" and get their latest from BitTorrent.)
Consider also Joe, the manager of the mega-corp IT department, who licenses and maintains 10,000 desktops. MS is again arguably a low-cost winner, again, especially considering the simple ROI factors.
Note, no insult intended to anyone actually named Joe, who may or may not know how to do any of these things...
MS did a great job of figuring it out early. Although it's since been kicked for unfair practices, they started out selling "irrelevant" software to IBM, who only wanted the hardware money, and became a giant. While their own APIs are closed, they've done plenty for the developers who wish to create software to run on their platform. They rallied the world and got basically anyone who makes hardware to provide (either MS or OEM) drivers that work. They did OK figuring plenty out.
And can someone point out a "Hive Society"? Surely you don't mean some kind of bee-like or Borg-like collective or commune... The "kingdom" (more of a republic, really) I live in is doing pretty good, despite all of the bees buzzing around in Michigan and Montana. However, I think I know what you mean. In the long run, yes, the hives may outlast the big, fat kingdom, but in the meantime, the kingdom will, well, get big and fat...MS posts billions of dollars of revenue, and the collection of your favorite other software manufacturers is a shadow of their tax liability...
Now, I know it looks like I'm on the MS bandwagon; I just believe that you can't bash them just because they're the biggest. Pick on them because they behave monsterously; that they do.
End the FUD