How Microsoft Could Embrace Linux

securitas writes "In a commentary and analysis piece, BusinessWeek technology editor Alex Salkever discusses how Microsoft can embrace Linux, and asks the question, 'Considering Redmond's slim odds of conquering developing nations, why not offer them a low-cost Linux version of Office?' Salkever explains that 'Microsoft faces increasing competition in both PC operating systems and in desktop applications' which are its core businesses, while corporate customers would likely adopt Microsoft Linux products." (Read more below.)

"He goes on to cite the governments of Paris, Munich, Brazil, Peru, China, Korea, and Japan which are all embracing open source software to varying degrees. Meanwhile, when they choose Microsoft software, fast-growing emerging markets like China and India opt for pirated copies. Salkever explains that the concerns for customers like these are the 'relatively high price of Microsoft software' and the 'concerns about buying proprietary software to run critical government operations.' Finally he points to recent moves by Sun and IBM to leave the commoditized software and hardware business behind, writing 'When the world's largest and most respected IT consultancy draws a clear bead on your crown jewels, it's time to mount a bold counterattack.'"

Comments

Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[phantasma6]

why not offer them a low-cost Linux version of Office?

why would any linux user use MS Office, especially when they have to pay for it?

considering heaps of people use OpenOffice.org and the like on Windows, I really don't see many people using MS Office under linux.

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[Elektrance]

I think there would be a market for this. Consider an IT department that is transistioning to Linux. If they can use Microsoft Office on Linux, there is one less area to re-train the users, saving the business money and time. That is of course assuming that the cost of the Office liscenses is less than the cost of training all your users.

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[julesh]

It _would_ help persuade management to switch. "Can we still use Word?" "Yes."

Of course, this ignores (a) the existence of Crossover Office, which I understand is capable of running Word virtually flawlessly, and (b) the fact that MS wouldn't do it because they know that they'd lose -- the number of people switching to Linux because of the availability of office would cut directly into their Windows revenues, and probably into some of their other application-based revenues also.

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[meringuoid]

I have a whole lot of VBA written in Office. I could redo it all in OOo, but it's probably not worth my time if Microsoft's price for Linux Office is reasonable.

From what I heard, it's Office that's the real cash cow anyway, not Windows. Why shouldn't they?

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[!the!bad!fish!]

why would any linux user use MS Office

There are some things that just don't work on other word processor. :-)

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[GreatDrok]

Since when does having a copy of MS Office guarantee 100% compatibility with other MS Office users? I have Office X on my Mac and it can't successfully share files with the PC version. Fonts and formatting get minced so I don't see any reason why a Linux version would be any different. I can run Office under Linux using Crossover and it is pretty good but none of the MS Office formats should be used if you want to preserve and share your documents, the 'format' just isn't good enough. OpenOffice files transfer much better between Windows, Linux and MacOS X.

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[FlutterVertigo(gmail]

Office is the cash cow. Office produces 1/3 of their profit. Not sales, but profit.

This is why there was a story here on /. several weeks ago pointing out that a lot of good ideas which have to be round-filed because the overall contribution of two vital sources (time, people) would interfer with things such as Office. Unless and until something mysteriously is left on their doorstep, they're kind of wearing golden handcuffs.

What's interestingly is this week's Barrons'...the cover shows a picture of Gates peeking through a candy store's window.
"Time to Grow Up: After paying its hue divident, Microsoft will no longer be the kid in the candy store. But, even in middle age, Bill Gates' company has impressive growth ropects. Why the stop could jump 25%"
It requires a subscription to get to the story (which I don't have - I only get it when there's something good in it)

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[orzetto]

Why shouldn't they?

Because they would be exposed to competition in office suites. If I write an excellent office suite for Windows, and somehow have a real chance to take on MSOffice, all they have to do is wait for the next deadly Windows worm, release a patch that everybody will have to install, and attach it something that will make my program crash; then blame me for my poor programming.

In Windows they own the house, in Linux they would be guests. Windows/Office is a powerful combination, and it makes no sense to break it. Rather, they will give discounts on Windows, give away software (typically to schools), or tolerate piracy as in China, so that when the market gets rich they can start some enforcing.

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[hendridm]

Their whole system is built around integration - the more Microsoft you use, the more "pleasant" it's supposed to be. Exchange with Active Directory and SQL Back End, IIS for the web server, etc. If they make their products interoperate with competitor's technologies, they lose this sales tool.

We ran into this problem when we were looking to buy a new web server. The director actualyl gave me a choice on what was loaded on it. Although my last employer was a Linux shop, this place is Microsoft/Novell. As much as I love all things Linux on the server, we eventually decided to put Windows on it because a) we didn't want a third environment (Windows, Novell, Linux), b) most of our department expertise is Windows/Novell, c) Many of our apps are written in ASP, and although it wouldn't have been out of the question to rewrite them or use an emulator in the short term, it was a drawback.

I wouldn't doubt, however, that the major reason our director (is generally against free software) was okay with Linux is because Novell is backing it now, which is a good thing.

Re:Office for Linux? who'd use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure it's due to crossplatform issues and not crossversion issues? Different versions of Word are notorious for playing badly with each other.

Er, OpenOffice

[DrStrangeLug]

If people have already decided to go for a linux OS then finding a good open source office suite to go with it is no problem at all. I think the time for MS to try to gain a foothold in the linux application market was about 2 years ago and they missed it.

If MS were not so proud...

[otisg]

I would venture to say that if Microsoft were smart and if they could lose some of their stubborn pride, they would adopt a UNIX kernel the way Apple did.

Before that move, Apple's Mac OSes were a joke - constantly crashing, freezing, etc. They integrated BSD kernel and built their pretty UI and nice apps on top. Good move by Steve Jobs. Apple lost nothing. This is the real reason why MacOS is so popular among the 'computer owners elite' today.

Microsoft could do the same and really hurt all of their competition whose existence is based on the fragility of various/all Windows versions.

Of course, MS could also just make their own Linux distro (MS Linux), make it better than RedHat and 100% free. That's an easy way to get all other Linux distro companies out of business. With their thick bank accounts holding over 30 billion USD, they could offer it for free for a looong looong time. On the other hand, that's Linux distro companies' bread and butter.

Re:If MS were not so proud...

[Twylite]

Thank you for displaying your profound lack of knowledge of MS operating systems.

The kernel behind Windows 2000/2003 is as solid as Linux. Crashes are almost without exception the result of third party device drivers. The perceived frailty of MS is (a) a hangover from the Win95/98/Me crap and (b) because of the UI and application communication layers, not the kernel.

As a developer I get to see the side of Windows and Linux that many don't -- low level interfaces to system functionality. And many aspects of Windows, from a developer perspective, are ahread of *nix.

The Win32 threading and synchronisation models are ridiculously powerful compared to *nix, which is precisely what makes it so hard to port a lot of Win32-based software to other platforms. The fact that you can't do a simple operation like "wait for a mutex to be released or a socket to become readable" deserves to be a joke about legacy operating systems, not a persistent reality. At least BSD's kqueue comes close.

There are many other places in which the *nix kernels show their age compared to the design of Win32 (not to mention MS's ability to maintain a consistent API over 10 years of product developments). 30 year old technology may be "mature", but its not always The Right Thing To Do for the future.

So try to get the facts before you succumb to FUD about the state of computing -- from MS or FLOSS.

Re:If MS were not so proud...

[Anonymous Coward]

Condition variables (available under any half decent implementation of Pthreads Posix standard) give you just that kind of ability.

Granted you don't have the ability to set up asynchronous callbacks to be called when something does happen to your mutex/socket.

Before someone points out that a call to select() will tell you when data becomes available for reading, the important distinction is that in the asynchronous callback model in Win32 you get told when and don't have to hang around waiting for it to happen. Obviously you could simulate something along the same lines by having a select() in a single thread notify you (or do a callback) when data is available but in Win32 this takes almost no effort on your part.

If doing communication based software that has to actually be cross platform (and your stuck with C++ for some reason) then ACE is your saviour.

It is a bit unfair criticising the features of the Pthreads model vs the Win32 model - as with everything Microsoft they only had to make it work on one platform theirs ! Portability and real cross platform applicability does come at a cost.

Re:If MS were not so proud...

[steinnes]

Yeah, that was a really good move for apple. I recently read in a history of Mac OS X, that it is in fact just the latest "NeXT Step" platform.

NeXT Step was from the start (according to the document I read) a BSD like system built on a Mach microkernel, and with a windowing system on top of the BSD.

So what happens is that Jobs is forced out of Apple, he starts NeXT, returns to apple a few years later, and uses the stuff he started at NeXT, thus effectively Steve Jobs never stopped working towards a better Mac! :-)

Too bad (or not?) that Microsoft's top executives have historically lacked the vision and drive exhibited by Apple (most notably Jobs maybe?), but compensated for lack of vision with ruthless business tactics?

Re:If MS were not so proud...

[ookaze]

What ??!!! STraw men and red herrings !!!

Stop spreading such lies. Each one of your sentence seems unfinished to spread half truths.
Well, I suppose you know the Windows kernel pretty well. But it is NOT as solid as Linux, at best, it is as solid as the PART of Linux that deals with the same hardware and functionality. Windows still does not scale as well as Linux, even with threads
on a single processor. It fails also faster under heavy load.

And you are switching easy (and bloatty) API with "ahead of *nix" too. You misinterpret 1 call of an easy API which is equivalent to 4 or 5 different calls on *nix. You make the mistake of thinking "easy to program" = "kernel ahead". That is just not true. You can "wait for a mutex to be released or a socket to become readable" on *nix. It is harder to program, because you have to actually know what you are doing, to know the theory. So, you have a better scaling than on Windows, but it is harder to program, that I agree. That does not make the Win NT kernel more powerful. Most professors would tell you such a complicated API should never go into a kernel, especially on these topics of parallelism and concurrency. This is better left in user space, and you have several libraries that implements this for you on Linux if you need them.

Perhaps *nix are showing their age, perhaps POSIX is showing its age, but saying that Linux is showing its age (compared to Win 2000, or even Win 2003) is nonsense.
BTW, you change the subject from Linux to *nix in your post, I suppose it was done on purpose to spread more FUD.

Re:If MS were not so proud...

[Twylite]

Win32 has blocking, non-blocking and asynchronous modes of IO. But where it really shines is the integration between IO and scheduling (from a developer perspective).

The call WaitForMultipleObjects allows you to wait on any number of objects, for any or all of them to be signalled. Each object can be a thread, an IO resource (file, socket, pipe), a synchronisation primitive (mutex, event, semaphore), etc.

The other point of integration is Completion Ports. You can provide worker threads and asynchronous callback functions (to be invoked in the worker threads) to any IO operation.

POSIX AIO provides most of the functionality (with regard to IO) that one can desire (Completion ports are cute and offer a lot of potential for performance, but you can do an equivalent job with kqueue/poll/devpoll and/or aio). But POSIX AIO doesn't offer developers control over the integration between the scheduler and IO.

Re:If MS were not so proud...

[mosschops]

The perceived frailty of MS is (a) a hangover from the Win95/98/Me crap and (b) because of the UI and application communication layers, not the kernel.

What about the current inability to cancel create requests in the kernel? That's responsible for a lot of application-level hangs, without involving 3rd-party drivers. You also end up with unkillable processes - not just Unix-like zombie processes, but multi-megabyte monsters that won't go away. In such situations Shutdown is merely a wishful request, and even W2K/XP will struggle to complete it with hung applications.

And many aspects of Windows, from a developer perspective, are ahread of *nix.

Such as? I've been coding for Windows for 10 years, and I still yearn for the simpler and more powerful approach of Unix coding (which is mainly in my spare time at present). From a coder's point of view, the only thing Windows has going for it is Visual Studio, which is still much nicer than KDevelop. The new Visual Studio 2005 Beta is very sluggish, so I hope they've not ruined it.

I had the misfortune to be working on a file-system driver under Windows last year, and it's beyond a joke. Writing even a simple new filesystem requires spending thousands of dollars on the MS IFS kit, and it's far from easy from there. It's a complete spaghetti of interactions between your driver and the cache manager + OS, with many subtle pitfalls. Why else could OSR charge $50K for a driver framework kit just to aid development?? Did I mention that a file-system driver for 9x/Me is completely different from NT/W2K/XP? Now compare this to the simplicity of the VFS layer Unix, and weep...

Windows seems to go out of its way to make everything complicated, just for the sake of it. I'm pleased to see the push for .NET and Web Services is going "so well", as it's another step down the road to hell.

30 year old technology may be "mature", but its not always The Right Thing To Do for the future.

If it works well, why change it? As a coder I'd rather work with a tried an tested system. With Windows I seem to too much time testing on and coding round the subtle differences between different versions of Windows than , and I'm sure Longhorn is going to be yet another version to include.

Re:If MS were not so proud...

[Bert64]

What's interesting to note however...
The kernel that you talk about, was mostly stolen from DEC..
The UI and application layers were microsoft's own code bolted on top...
The original kernel was a microkernel architecture where device drivers shouldn't have been able to drop the whole system, microsoft screwed that up by allowing drivers to be loaded into kernel space.
The stable parts of windows were stolen, the unstable parts were their own code.. Tells you something about the quality of their development process. The same thing applies to a lot of their other products, the more stable ones were bought/stolen from elsewhere.

Re:If MS were not so proud...

[bit01]

wait for a mutex to be released or a socket to become readable

And there speaks a programmer who has been ill educated by the MSWindows environment. There are dozens of events that a program may need to wait on, everything from mutexes to sockets to GUI callbacks to USB events to power fails to signals to virtual memory events to whatever. To have a special call to wait on only two of them is stupid, precisely the sort of nonsense you expect to see in the MSWindows environment, rather than consistently solving the general problem with powerful, general purpose tools like threads and asynchronous IO. Related to the above, programmers who like the MSWindows kitchen sink API frequently have a poor idea of what a race condition is and how to avoid them, a large part of why MSWindows and MSWindows applications are so flaky. The Unix/Linux API isn't particularly clean either but it's a lot cleaner architecturally.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

Of course not

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Micro$oft make the Linux platform more appealing by creating apps for it?

They won't !

[jalet]

They won't embrace it, because they can't extend and extinguish it as they have done for other software.

Thanks for the most part to RMS and the GNU GPL.

Why?

[MrHanky]

Why is it that an editor of BusinessWeek has no clue about business? If Microsoft embraced Linux by selling a low cost version of Office for it, migrating to Linux would be even easier --> no money for Windows, less money for Office.

With no MS Office for Linux, migrating is a lot harder. OOo works fine for most people (better in my experience, but my experience probably differs), but in some cases you just simply need the original, which means you also need Windows (or Crossover Office).

It really is as simple as that. Office isn't just MS's biggest cash cow, it's also their most important selection of proprietary file formats.

Re:Why?

[secondsun]

Because in 2000 Microsoft was broken up by the justice department into an Operating Systens unit and an applications unit.

Oh wait sorry, the yellow header sent me into my happy space where the world was fair and McCain was president.

The article doesn't think things through

[hcdejong]

It lists two reasons people are moving to Linux/OpenOffice, but doesn't address either of them.
Quote: In November, 2003, the government of Brazil ordered its agencies to use Linux and other open-source software as much as possible. A month later, Israel's Commerce Ministry announced a decision to migrate to OpenOffice, an open-source desktop suite that runs on Linux and Apple's (AAPL ) OS X system, as well as on Windows. The city governments of Paris and Munich both announced their intention to switch to Linux and open-source applications. In Peru, a state legislature nearly passed a law banning the use of proprietary software by government agencies. And the governments of China, Korea, and Japan have announced an alliance to promote open-source software.
All of these organisations are switching because they don't want to use proprietary software. Providing a Linux version of MS Office won't solve this, as there's no chance in hell MS will release it as OSS.
So that's one of the concerns the article mentions, but leaves unaddressed.
Second is the price. Why would MS offer Office for Linux for a low price, when it can just offer existing products (Windows XP plus Office) for a low price, ensuring a lock-in that wouldn't occur with Office/Linux?

M$ on linux

[Sarastrobert]

It would be nice but I think there is too much speaking against it.

First of all I don't think it would be an easy port to make considering how M$likes to intermingle it's OS with it's applications. Office is bound to be using alot of OS specific API's, com objects etc... If the main selling opportunity would be low priced copies to the third world, then maybe they don't think it is worth the cost.

Thirdly I think it would be to much an admittance of defeat for M$ to aknowledge Linux that way.

Re:M$ on linux

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

"First of all I don't think it would be an easy port to make considering how M$likes to intermingle it's OS with it's applications."

While part of that is true, i'd like to bring to your attention the nice, shiny boxes that hold MS Office for OSX.

Re:argh! my eyes

[Ralph Yarro]

Congrats on the new section, but the color scheme is killing my eyes.

Color scheme looks okay to me, nowhere near as bad as the Games ones but I'm wondering whether they really have enough Italian readers to justify a special 'it' section.

it would be their death

[Cheeze]

They only make money off of their OS and office suite. If they offered a low-cost office suite, no one would need the expensive operating system or expensive office suite. Who really wants to pay $750 for Longhorn, and then pay another few hundred for an Office suite? Then, 5 years down the road, have to upgrade again because MS stops offering bug fixes. Multiply that by 500 workstations and you have a large budget that you're basically giving MS. That probably funds upgrades to calc.exe and clock.exe.

This is probably *bad* for Microsoft...

[McCall]

There are really three scenarios here:

You want a low cost, or free, system.
- In which case you use Linux and OpenOffice.org both of which are already proven products.

You want a UNIX based system as your using legacy UNIX products, but need Microsoft Office.
- In which case you use MacOS X and Microsoft Office.

You need Microsoft Office for office productivity and compatibility with other products.
- In which case is the $100 for a Microsoft Windows license really an issue?

I agree developing nations should find better and cheaper ways of doing things, but doing the same things a different way just for the sake of it doesn't seem justified to me!

Re:New Office Version

[maxwell demon]

No problem:

bash# cd Office-3.5b/src
bash# ./configure --cd-key=0815-4711-MSFT-XY42-XXX0
Testing if the system is running a Microsoft approved kernel ... OK
Testing if the Microsoft Linux TCP extensions are activated ... OK
Testing if the Microsoft Registration Daemon is running ... OK
Testing if the Microsoft Registry Daemon is running ... OK
Testing if we are connected to the Internet ... OK
Checking the CD Key ... OK
Checking for acceptance of EULA ...

End User License Agreement (EULA)

[... MS legalese skipped ...]

To accept this EULA, please type in "I Accept": I Accept
Checking for acceptance of EULA ... OK
Checking version and key with Microsoft Registratrion Daemon ...
Please wait while connecting to Microsoft Registration Server ...
License accepted.
Checking version and key with Microsoft Registratrion Daemon ... OK
Creating makefile ... DONE
bash# make
./decrypt --keyserver keys.microsoft.com ../office
bash# make install
cp -a ../office /opt
regedit office.reg
bash#

with the right trade laws, M$ can conquer all

[edgarde]

Considering Redmond's slim odds of conquering developing nations

Don't count on it. Monsanto ... uh I mean Microsoft ... can muster lots of support for such a campaign.

The United States forbids poor countries from making generic versions of antiretroviral drugs for AIDS treatment. Given the limited financial resources involved, this will certainly cost lives.

Monsanto Company is suing farmers for re-using seed where patented genes have been found, whether said farmers wanted them or not.

How will software be any different? Countries developed enough to need office suites will be signing trade agreements with the United States. Undoubtedly there will be intellectual property conditions.

Of sockets, mutex and performance

[tjwhaynes]

The Win32 threading and synchronisation models are ridiculously powerful compared to *nix, which is precisely what makes it so hard to port a lot of Win32-based software to other platforms. The fact that you can't do a simple operation like "wait for a mutex to be released or a socket to become readable" deserves to be a joke about legacy operating systems, not a persistent reality. At least BSD's kqueue comes close.

If that is true, then it's a shame that the performance of the Win32 sockets are so meagre compared to the Linux implementation. Take a look at this article on Developerworks. Maybe you can spot the changes required to close the performance gap between Windows and Linux (Linux running about 2 and a half times faster on the same machine).

And I think I'll take you to task for your blind assertion that "you can't do a simple operation like "wait for a mutex to be released or a socket to become readable" on a Unix platform. If you call pthread_mutex_lock in 'fast' mode it simply waits for the mutex to be released and will pick up as soon as the mutex becomes available. And there are plenty of other options around. It's also totally trivial to write a spin-check to check the TCP status of a socket.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

One step further: MS Linux...

[Thimble]

MS Linux bundled with a compatible MS Office makes more sense...