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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 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.
Was Microsoft *ever* the low price solution? I'm sure I'm not the only one who laughed at the whole "they haven't figure that out yet" part. They haven't figured *anything* out yet. That's why we got rid of the feudal system -- because government, on all levels (including corporate management) should be for the people, by the people. My point is that Microsoft, being ruled by King Gates, is behind the times while they are trying to be ahead of the times. They are a working paradox. Open Source is to Closed Source, as Hive Societies are to Kingdoms; one clearly is better than the other and I think we can all agree which one it is.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Microsoft is likely to agressively start publishing TCO comparisons in various media outlets. Like all statistics, TCO numbers can be fudged too, but most customers will still believe whatever numbers are pushed to them. Open Source folks need to go out there also and start publishing their cost ownership numbers, with real life examples.
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There are damn few large businesses that can handle a large change, let alone a fundamental change. Those that survive change (GE, e.g.) are generally so massive that they can lose some divisions' whole business model and carry on.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
_ALL_ Economics is based on "frankly don't have a clue on how to address it", except for the little bit that actually understands that the economy is a dynamic system with a _huge_ number of bodies and variables, and thus you must consider it using probablistic and statistical methods.
First step is to realise that "The Economy" is something that _WE_ created.... there is no intrinsic economy created by some supreme being.. and we shouldn't get carried away considering it as something holy that needs to be studied.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
How would you challenge TCO being a real thing? Evidence please. Most companies still have a bottom-line to account for; heck, even families do. TCO revolves around money. That's not made up, I'm afraid.
That is certainly true, but there's also a pscyhological dynamic as well. In the past (up until 1995) to some degree Microsoft was seen in two ways - the underdog (compared to the still-seen-as-evil IBM) and the platform of geeky freeware tinkerers. You used to have entire cottage industries that catered to the nerd contingent (eg JPSoft) of people who would sit at home
and -on thier dos computers- see what they could contruct on their own and how they could push the performance of their 386sx computers.
So, not only does Microsoft suffer from signifigantly higher TCO, but they also have lost any sort of "outsider" aka geek cred that they may have had pre-1995.
I believe that this, along with the ill-will from Microsoft's more famous stumblings (eg, crushing netscape) have gone a long way to erode any kind of good will that computer users may have once had for them.
Actually, the reverse is true. By and large over the last 11 years -starting with the assimilation of disk compression and one or two symantec technologies- Microsoft has built their success on the successful deployment of third party technologies. The pattern has typically been that a signifigant technology will get a small foothold on the windows platform, and then when it starts to look promising, MS will either buy it out (in the case of many of its' office products) or clone it and make the original redundant (as was the case with netscape).
So, yes, they 'allowed' other players to grow on their platform, but I think it was more a matter of fattening them up for the kill!
"Microsoft needs to figure out how it can demonstrate better TCO to justify its higher prices."
By funding more objective "studies", no doubt?
Silverberg says, "In the past Microsoft was the low cost solution and Microsoft was then competing and attacking expensive proprietary systems from below."
In the realm of personal computers, I do not think this observation is accurate at all. Microsoft's approach was not to compete on price in the normal sense of the word. Rather, Microsoft's approach was to bundle applications with the operating system. Since these applications and utilities were thus already "paid for" (or included for "free" in people's minds), people had less incentive to buy competing applications, even though the competing applications were often better.
I think the distinction is important. If a particular application becomes popoular, Microsoft just rolls a copy of it into the OS, thereby gutting the market for that application. How many people buy Eudora anymore? Or Netscape? Or Trumpet Winsock? This is not the same thing as competing on price.
I think it case could be made that very few people actually benefited from Microsoft's success that weren't inside of Microsoft. Yeah sure, a few developers here and there who made some apps, but most of them were then bought up by Microsoft (see: Visio). I think Microsoft is struggling, because for the first time they're having to actually sell their software on its merits. The customer has real choices. They can use Open Office that costs them nothing, or they can spend alot of money on Microsoft Office. Microsoft has to convince those people who use 1% of their products functionality that the product is worth the cost. As free or low cost alternatives come of age, that argument gets harder.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Why do people act as if Microsoft's ship is sinking? Is MS not GAINING in the server market? I could swear it was. Is MS not DOMINATING the desktop market? I could swear it was. Have I suddenly awoken in the fabled "Year of Linux"?
The only market MS seems to be slipping in is the web browser market. Even there, with 2(+?) years of doing nothing to improve their browser, they dominate the market.
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!)
Microsoft, the (one time) king of software, believes it's own BS. The fact of the matter is, whatever the kids (high school and college) use is where the industry is going. Forget TCO and stuff like this. Back in the days of Windows 3.1, you could easily make the installation disks, and give them to your school mates and buddies, and so all the local kids had a copy. Sure, Apple was in the schools, but kids couldn't afford Apple (Macintosh) OS, so people stayed with Microsoft. Well, hello XP and such, where each and every user has to register.. kids can't get their hands on it and pass it around and such anymore. Enter Linux... :)
In my opinion, Linux is going to win because kids can get it cheap, College students can get it cheap, and it is the kids that drives the next wave of OS's, not the price or TCO.
Why Not? - Because they are no longer meeting all IT needs, in fact they are basically the problem. Security is more important today.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
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.
Microsoft has expanded into many markets that they didn't need to. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is even pragmatic, but it is not conducive toward encouraging others to prosper with you. The truth is that Microsoft has merely allowed others to live. It's easier to let Adobe exist than to build a competitor to Photoshop, but Microsoft has the resources to do it.
Look at how with Longhorn they're systematically attacking Macromedia by going after Flash and Shockwave. They're already trying to demolish Dreamweaver and if they take out Flash, Shockwave and Dreamweaver then Macromedia will be at best a shadow of its former self.
The problem with Microsoft's attitude of "only the paranoid survive" is that it causes companies to see competitors where they don't really exist. Netscape didn't compete with Microsoft and a business agreement with Netscape probably would have worked better. Same thing with Java. Microsoft should have worked hard to be "the best Java platform provider, period." If Microsoft did that then no one would want to run Java on any OS other than Windows because anything else would be second rate.
The only thing Microsoft needs now is an answer to IBM Global Services. Unfortunately they're too busy attacking the trees to realize that the forest is moving in to kill them. Linux is just a few trees in the greater non-Microsoft forest that IBM GS is the vanguard of. The stronger they get, the weaker Microsoft's position gets, and IBM is playing hardball with Microsoft here.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
There is a lot of emotion and a lot of psychology in the market and I think we are starting to see some of that again. We are encouraged that the market is growing warmer, but it is not time to throw caution to the wind.
Oh, that's good to hear. I just need my advisor to tell me when it is time to throw caution to the wind.
Wheeeee!!
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
I think that MSFT has in fact figured this out, and that's why they devote so much technology and marketing talent into Windows as a development platform.
Say what you will about Windows as an operating system, but the application development toolchain is really, really slick.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Let's not forget that Windows was also running on commodity hardware. In the early years, it wasn't "Windows" - it was Mac or PC. People were buying a platform with all the advantages of commodity hardware; price, selection, customization, etc. The PC platform had considerable draw from the market. It was able to provide value to customers that previous proprietary computing products lacked. And in the end, the commodity platform "won".
That's not to say Microsoft didn't do a good job with supporting developers. They did better than Apple in many ways. But in those days, that simply ensured that "Killer App Version 2.0" was available for the "PC" as well as other platforms.
The real success for Windows was in it's being the catalyst for commoditization of the hardware market. And then riding the ensuing wave.
Now we're facing a possible next wave in IT; commoditization of the OS. Microsoft would clearly have issues with this. And they would rather fight it than try and ride this one too (or at least not start paddling for it until the very last minute). It's interesting to see that one notable who was plowed under by the earlier wave is now trying to set up to ride this one; IBM.
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.TCO, Total Cost of Ownership, isn't bogus - it's just a different/newer way of looking at how much an asset "really" costs someone. It might be used in some FUD that some software (or any other) companies put out to try and get people to buy their product, but it doesn't have to apply just to software and/or computers.
You could apply a TCO formula to just about everything. For example, the "TCO" of my car includes:
- How much I paid for it,
- How much insurance costs me,
- What the gas mileage is (how much gas costs me),
- How many people can it hold (how "efficient" is it?),
- How many other uses does it have that would cost me money to get otherwise (like towing), and
- other factors that I'm sure I'm forgetting right now.
One definition of TCO found on the web is (and there are a few):
"The life cycle cost view of an asset, which includes acquisition, setup, support, ongoing maintenance, service and all operating expenses. It focuses attention on the sum of all costs of owning an asset, as opposed to the initial or vendor cost, and is useful in outsourcing decisions."
(From The Bridgefield Group)
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
Bill Gates as The Dark Lord (aka Sauron)
Microsoft Corp as Mordor
Balmer, et al as The Nine
Linus Torvalds as Elrond
RMS as Gandalf
Tux as Frodo
Microsoft Windows (TM) as The One Ring
and Darl McBride as Gollum
Sorry, just thought of the parallelism while I was R'ing TFA.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
If MSFT really wanted to latch on to the future they would buy Yahoo, Google or Ebay. The era of anyone really caring that much about a document editor (enough tp pay gobs of cash for it) are over.
You still need input variables to your model, and as the model is a simplification in itself, you need to be extremely careful how you interpret the output.
I'm not saying that models have no value, but if the model tells you exactly what the gold price is going to be in 30 days time (for example), you need to know what the uncertainty is... which means we are back to probabilities and statistics.
A good way to use models is to perturb the inputs slightly and see how your outputs diverge. This is classic chaos theory. If a small change in input doesn't change the output, your model is stable.
Its relation to reality is another thing entirely. I've seen beautiful models that produce beautiful, stable, consistent but utterly meaningless results.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Microsoft:
1980: "Every house should have its own MS OS home-computer"
1990: "Every house should have its own MS OS home-computer, and every company should have our server system"
2000: "Every house should have its own MS OS home-computer, every company should have our server system, and every large-scale company should replace their existing UNIX systems with our stuff"
Linux:
2000: "Every company have our server system, and every large-scale company are replacing their existing UNIX systems with our stuff. Now how about this thought: Shouldnt every house have its own Linux home-computer?"
Linux is allready there at all levels, except for the average home-computer.
I respect your opinion on the matter, and for many people it does make a great deal of sense, but I see it differently.
I use OSS/Free Software when it's the best tool for the job. Right now I'm using Opera on Windows XP, but my servers run Linux.
OSS being cheaper($$$) than propriatary software is just one aspect of it being better in certain situations. As much as is possible, I leave my religion and politics out of my professional life.
For RMS and the like Free Software could be called a religion, the belief that Free Software is always better can be argued for convincingly. But ideology isn't a good way to convert new users.
People don't like being preached at. Standing on a soapbox browbeating people will get you fewer converts.
To me, this is never a battle driven by competition leading to lower prices. Rather, it has always been the ideologies involved.
I think that people like you, and people like me can and should work together on this. Lower prices is what prompted me to get my feet wet, so to speak, and that lead me to learn more about the OSS/Free Software philosophy. Use the lower price advantage to get people interested. Once they begin to listen to what you have to say, you can share the ideology without seeming like you're preaching or browbeating them.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Have falling sales due to open source? How about changing your 95% profit margin to a 50% profit margin?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
This "forced" revenue stream continued until just recently when some companies started preloading Linux. MS no longer controls the forced upgrade market. If they stop supporting their older systems now, the 'big' users will start investigating other lower cost operating systems. MS is threatened by Linux because people do not like to be controlled and basically extorted.
I believe you are incorrect. Both Netscape and Java were deadly competitors to Microsoft and, by their philosophy, nothing was to be spared in crushing these companies.
Netscape presented the vision of making the operating system irrelevant. Let's look at two of the most popular software products of the last few years: Google and Amazon. Yes, these are software products and each is completely platform agnostic. When I use Google or Amazon on Linux running Firefox, I get the exact same user experience as I get on Windows using IE. If this trend had continued, with the browser and its associated control of the user interface firmly in the hands of Netscape, Microsoft's monopoly position as the operating system of choice would have been lost.
Java was a danger due to a similar argument. Windows is popular because the most popular applications run on it. If Java delivered on its promise of platform independence, a whole new class of killer applications could have arose that were independant of the operating system. Microsoft would then no longer be the operating system of choice. Worse, it would not be the choice for the developers making new killer apps.
Killing Netscape and Java were not paranoid manoevers, they were carefully considered and rational defenses of one of Microsoft's two core strengths, the Operating System. Combined with the other strength: Office, Microsoft presents a huge barrier to entry for anyone attempting to wrest monopoly control over desktop computers from Microsoft.
The problem for Microsoft is they took out the companies, not the ideas. By the time they noticed, the idea of a universal browser was too well entrenched to go away. They have not yet succeeded in converting the Internet to a Microsoft only product (despite the best efforts of ActiveX and IIS).
Building a better Java is not an answer. At some point, the competitors would catch up to a standard such as a language, then how could Microsoft compete? Add features? To Sun's language?
And what happens when someone reimplements 80% of Office in Java? And suppose this new version runs just as nicely on Windows as, say, Mac? What's to keep people on Windows then?
No, these companies had to die. Nothing else would defend Microsoft's monopoly. That they attacked these companies is unfortunate, but part of our system of business. That they did so by exploiting their monopoly position is illegal and should have got them more severly punished.
...by doing what Apple did: Build your wimpy OS on top of something strong, like BSD, Linux, or some other flavor of *NIX.
I keep saying this and I am surprised that MS is not going that route somehow. I thought for sure that this Longhorn project would be some sort of MS implementation of *NIX. (Not Xenix).
We all know MS can do it if they wanted. We also know they like to copy Apple (Look at WIN 95)....it makes so much sense, from MS' perspective, I cannot fathom why MS doesn't build it's next version of Windows on top of BSD, Linux, or some other *NIX variant.
Microsoft never put RTFM on technet!
Maybe there is a project of this type already out there, but I've never seen it.
We could come up with a list of criteria to compare like:
Anyone have any additional items?
Find coupons in Greeley
1991: Wow, Linux is fun to hack. I just want to build an OS for myself.
1994: Wow, Linux is still fun to hack. I just want to build an OS for myself and a few thousand friends.
1997: Wow, Linux is still fun to hack. And people are taking this stuff seriously. I'm glad I built it from the ground up with security/efficiency/stability in mind.
I more or less agree with what you posted about Linux in the year 2000. But let's not forget Linux's roots.
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/
"Microsoft's Java support was pretty damn good. It just wan't what Sun wanted."
Well, it wasn't what _anyone_ other than Microsoft wanted. That is, by default with with no warnings, it was very easy for your Java would become Windows-dependent, undermining the fundamental value of Java.
Microsoft could have done all of the innovative things (e.g. calling OS-specific COM objects and other routines easily, nice fast JVM) that they did with their JVM and runtime _without_ violating their Java license, simply by placing their OS-specific enhancements outside of the java.* class heirarchy, by warning developers when they were generating non-portable code, and by supporting all of Java properly. But MS decided that it was more important to try to tie Java developers to Windows than it was to honor the Java license (or, of course, to provide what Java developers wanted).
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
i disagree. you are thinking to much horizontal market (i.e. netscape, wordperfect etc.)
;) (and ask yourself why you won't find such software for linux desktops..
where people really benefit from the microsoft monoply is the vertical market, software for solicitors, craftsman, real estate firms etc. you still can make a lot of bugs with (mostly badly written) software for very specific professional groups because you write it for windows and everyone has windows. think visual basic
PAT
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
"you still can make a lot of bugs" - nice pun :))
i meant "bucks" of course..
PAT
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
In terms of adoption, it's not the ideologies of the developers that matter so much as those of the users, except when they differ to such a degree as to be incompatible.
Users want something that gets the job done that costs as little as possible. Generally speaking they could give a shit if it's open source or not, if it's Free Software or not.
To the user, this is a battle over prices, driven by competition. If Microsoft gives them Office, they probably won't bother with OpenOffice.org, due to the immense momentum of MS Office. However, that's not going to happen, so Microsoft has to resort to lies - they sure aren't depending on their technical superiority. They, like we, know that would be fruitless.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think the bottom line is that Microsoft originally suceeded on it's merits, making (or buying) better software that filled a niche. The problem is that in the last 5 years, Microsoft has been relying on its momentum... Selling products by being the almost the only OEM OS software (barring Mac), bundling software with Windows to lock down a market (IE, Outlook Express, and slowly but surely, Windows Media Player), and resorting to compatability gimics (Office). Microsoft got so big they were able to use their momentum and ignore the software to a large extent. And now with other, better solution such as Firefox, Linux, OpenOffice, etc, Microsoft is starting to slip. They have to go back to doing what got them up there in the first place. After all, that's what Apple did. The lost momentum and were unable to coast on their previous success so they made OS X and focused on design/styling and now the much anticipated "Death of Apple(TM)" seems a long way away.
These words have server a lot of people well and it should serve MS well to.
;)or whatever they want to name it and linux (The kernel that rules the x86 ;)). :(), misc apps.
:D.
As many here have said, Linux won't go away.
So if MS can't make Linux go away they should simply become like IBM. With there power they could really influence the Open Source community in any direction they want.
The first step is to port Office to linux(it's already working on mac os X, so that wouldn't be to hard to port). Then you make a killer GUI that will smash Apple's aqua to bits and finaly stopping all those switchers from the x86.
The important thing is to keep people on the x86 with office, Space GUI(space is cold and dark you know , gotta keep there old image
Then when they are the employers of 90% of the linux kernel coders (which they surely will be).
Now they have the power to control the way linux moves.
Becuse they employ the mayority of the kernel and surely most of the developers to X and all the other important liberaries.
Now they can optimize the whole system for there killer GUI, office, smb(Don't remember the real name of the protocol
And they can become the biggest distro
Ofcourse they have to do this slowly, phase out windows first in the server area then in the coperate area and last the homes.
They have to understand that there kernel is CRAP and would cost more money to develop to a better kernel then linux then to use the linux kernel.
Remember, there are som really great minds employed by MS. They just need to let them lose.
God,root what's the difference? I read slashdot, there for I errr... am stupid?
I worked in the server division for a tier 1 hardware company for 8 years. I thought that TCO was a gimic that the marketing group came up with to justify our higher hardware costs.
If I were in a shop with 5 servers that never failed, I might agree with your viewpoint.
I now work in an environment that has servers in the 10's of thousands. TCO is VERY real.
Ballpark numbers, a server that costs me $10k to purchase, may cost me $1k a month to run, not counting bandwidth. That $1k a month cost inludes power, cooling, admin overhead, tech overhead, etc.
Over the four year life of the server, that means that 20% of the servers cost was in aquisition, and the server costs me $50,000 over the lifetime of the server. I am more interested in saving that back end cost of $40,000 than I am in the $10k. Knock $1k off that server price, not interested. Making sure that my techs never have to go out to the floor to change a part in 4 years, you have my attention.
I would expect anyone who works in a large IT organization should know this. I am suprised by the amount of folks that do not.
When they bought the cool Outlook searching tool Lookout it looks as though they bought into some open source components as well.
> your success was really a side effect or byproduct of their own success
that's why its called 'the collective'...
Apple Macintosh shipped in 1984. Microsoft Windows was announced in 1983 but Windows 1.0 shipped in 1985.
Certainly Raskin begun the work on the Macintosh (and the GUI that the Lisa too then inherited) many years prior to 1984, but Apple didn't announce until the machine was ready to ship. (And it's much a matter of taste whether Win 1.0 ever was "ready to ship"...)
The Look & Feel lawsuit was Apple suing Microsoft, not the other way around...
Its relation to reality is another thing entirely. I've seen beautiful models that produce beautiful, stable, consistent but utterly meaningless results.
"There is nothing so horrifying as witnessing the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts."
--unknown
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
MS Word has always been better than Wordperfect.
Absolutely untrue. MS Word has always been different from Word Perfect, but Word was designed around discovery, not around workflow. You can get more done in any version of Word Perfect faster, and WP had cascading markup well before the days of HTML -- a lot of people prefer this to the Microsoft stylesheets and sections method. Word Perfect -- up until 6.0, which was the first attempt to go beyond workflow into the WYSIWYG paradigm and it was slow as hell -- was a brilliant piece of software with a simple interface. Best of all, if you didn't know how to do something, you could press F3, type the letter of what function you were looking for, and it would tell you how to do it. There was a menu if you wanted, and syntax highlighting if you wanted. Otherwise, it was just you and the text. No distractions. Very productive. Worth the $300.
You would have to be connected to everyone else 100% of the time for that to happen. Open Source is like the hive design
Open Source is hardly the model of connectivity. In fact, since the model demands that somebody be willing to do the work they need done, or willing to do the work for somebody else, there are segments of the market -- beginners who are non-programmers with no other computers -- who will never be connected. Furthermore, I've notice many Open Source afficianados are complete dicks. Hard to have 100% pure communication when your success depends on a guy whose answer to every question is "STFU and RTFM, n00b." Heck, those words don't even make SENSE outside of the context of the community.
This sounds like Bill Gates' comment regarding onboard memory.
The one he never made? You know, bringing up points that are provably false doesn't help your argument or your image.
Do you call everyone kid?
Only children,
Hey freaks: now you're ju