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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.'"
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.
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!
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.
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!
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
Microsoft still is the low price solution. A linux liscense runs $699 from SCO, whereas XP Pro retails for 200.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.Yes, once upon a time, they were.
Back in the mid-80s, I worked for a little value added retailer which sold medical billing systems. They sold Xenix/Altos and Pick/General Automation systems with several users on several terminals, and competed with IBM, which sold mini computers which cost far more than the tens of thousands our systems cost.
When IBM PC compatibles became a major force in the market, we were able to undercut our old systems dramatically. We weren't selling MS systems, but every PC system we sold had MS-DOS on it. We were able to undercut ourselves, and cut our own throats.
Microsoft gets a bit of the credit for this, because they provided the standard and open[1] (but proprietary) base that companies like Peachtree, Kaypro and Compaq could build on. Suddenly, there was no need to support a group of engineers and programmers in your home town who could integrate hardware and write software to get the job done. Peachtree and the clones did it from the Bay Area, cheaper and better, as long as better meant cheaper.
MS was always cheaper than what it replaced, jsut as the platform it ran on was cheaper than the minis. MS was making it big on volume. Today, they've got more volume than ever before, but the new competition is able to cut prices all the way to zero, forever, and that's just the opening salvo in the price war. MS aren't stupid. They may figure it out eventually, but they may stumble badly on the way.
[1] The PC BIOS sourcecode was listed in the manual. Command.com was simple enough that you could figure it out using debug.exe.
See what I've been reading.
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
I've been programming for close to 30 years now, and I used to say the same thing about MS development platforms. Well I realized one day that I was spending 80% of my time coding around the crap that MS intentionally puts into their code to keep me from writing something that would compete with what they have. Sure if you are only writing front-ends to access db's or just duct taping objects together VB and Delphi are excellent tools (though I prefer writing the db front-ends as web applications myself because it offers a more heterogeneous approach.). As you grow more programming skills you will learn that their tools (although shiney and pretty up front) actually get in the way of writing code that will still be in use 10 or 15 years from now. Most business dont like the idea of having to completely rewrite code every 2 years because MS decides to change the API's so that developers have to go out and buy a new version of Visual C++. This whole backward compatability thing is a red herring if MS wouldnt keep changing their API's there would be no backward compatibility issue. Old programs would just not be able to take advantantage of new functionality.