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Linux, Inc.
An anonymous reader sends in a link to Businessweek talking about the business of Linux, and the increasing threat to Microsoft's operating system monopoly.
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Google. That would've helped to shake up the PHBs a little more effectively, given this is BusinessWeek.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
You know something must be up if BillG himself is shuffling off to South America to persuade the government to lose interest in open software...
Oh no! Not that!
Love,
Steve Balmer.
P.S. I can buy any Linux business that becomes a real threat with the spare change in the cracks of my sofa.
The only reason they're not doing that is the simple fact that they are effectively a monopoly. If they let Linux get a small share, then all that Linux will do is take up some of the slack from people who would have a higher chance of not paying for MS products anyway. What it also does though is give them something to point to. "See! They have some of the market...we're not a monopoly" can be their response to a judge.
Soon, hopefully, Linux won't be at MS's whim that much. But for now...they're letting us get any gains we have.
Buying decisions are made by suits, though. Most CIO's are former CFO's working towards becoming COO's. They don't give two shits about what "hackers" like.
If it were not from grown-ups (in suits) working for Red Hat and IBM driving the Market, Linux would still be a nifty project on University campuses, instead of the multi-billion-dollar industry that it is.
Not even M$ has the change to buy IBM and they are the biggest 'Linux' company out there.....
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Stop saying that! They might own the desktop (tell that to mac users), but they have never owned the server room. If anything the server room has changed from being filled with proprietary Unix boxes to being filled with Linux boxes.
This 'threat' has been mentioned every year for the past couple of years. In order for linux to become truly something to be wreckoned with, Joe user must become accustomed to it.
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Too lazy to create a sig...
I have seen headlines about the linux revolution for a few years now.
I use linux at home and love it.
Wake me up when linux breaks double digit market share in the desktop world and then we can call it a revolution
I've been really thinking about the whole Linux gaining footing thing, and as much as everyone around here just LOVES XWindows and loves to say it's as usable as OS X or Windows, let's face it, in the eyes of most users it simply isn't.
Apple has taken FreeBSD/Darwin and built their own desktop environment around it. OS X is very usable according to most people. And even though there are many camps of people who will argue that Windows is more usable than OS X or vice versa, the one point most people will agree on is that OS X and Windows are both more usable than XWindows and the various window managers. I perosnally hate both KDE and Gnome, and thus use a mostly text BSD box, but I know I'm in the minority there, as well.
Here's what I've been thinking.
What's stopping someone from writing an entire environment like OS X from the ground up, around and on top of Linux, and creating an OS X like environment that is as complete and modern as either OS X or Windows?
I know everybody shudders at the thought of obsoleting their beloved X, but even some OS X users install and use X when they still feel they need it, but I think I'm just being realistic when I think hanging onto X is just overall the wrong strategy for putting Linux on the desktop. (Counter arguments exist, and will likely be in the many replies, and I don't entirely disagree with them, but...)
I really think this is an effort worth pursuing. A new desktop environment built to be the primary way that Linux is used. A Linux based graphical environment designed from the ground up to be a Desktop GUI, following in the footsteps of OSX/Aqua.
To make things easier (here's where many will disagree with me) one could work on such a program primarily focusing on modern hardware and esspecially modern video cards. Let's face it, ATI and NVidia run the show now days anyway.
These are just my thoughts, and I hope people will constructively discuss this possibility instead of throwing around a bunch of "No way, not possible, why bother, go to hell Apple/Microsoft lover" comments.
I like BSD, and I like OS X. I would like to see something similar done with Linux.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Having RMS walk in in his St. Ignucius getup is enough to make anybody lose their lunch...not just the suit and tie crowd.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
While this article includes nothing new for any regular /. reader, it's still a really good one. It avoids the all-to-common journalistic practise of balancing one positive statement with one negative statement. This article doesn't serve as a bullborn for FUD, it's entirely positive wrt Linux and the open source model. And it's written in a way that any shmoe can understand.
So why would us slashdotters care about an article written for average shmoes? Well, because we can forward it to friends and family who have a hard time relating to this "Linux" thing they keep hearing us enthusiastically blathering about. I've already sent it to my friends and family, you should too. C'mon, get going.
No, I have no stock in BusinessWeek, don't be so cynical.
BSD probably wouldn't exist if not for linux (correct me if I'm wrong but it uses the linux kernel right?)
NO
BSD is much, much older than Linux.
The GPL ensures that Linux will never cost money itself, and commercial adoption means that innovation will come in the area of user-friendliness. I'm not militantly Free, and I think that this a good step to making Linux a viable competitor in all areas currently dominated by MS. I am considering converting my entire family to Linux (I'm currently the only linux user) or Mac OS X when Longhorn becomes the only option with a new computer, because it will be different enough that either way will be a struggle on my part. Linux is becoming polished enough by big corporations that it is becoming a very strong competitor to MS for everyone. OS X though, still reigns king in my mind for ease-of-use and polish (except for games :()
I just had a knee-jerk thought. How is Linux a threat to anyone? Linux is freely available to almost anyone ... individuals or businesses.
:-)
The "playing field" is even because of this universal availability. Those that don't take advantage of this MAY find themselves at a disadvantage to those that do.
Linux isn't a threat because YOU choose NOT to use it in your business model. The real threat is a poor plan that doesn't use the tools and technologies FREELY available today.
Did that make any sense?
"Windows is built by a company that listens to its potential customers and tries to fulfill their needs. Linux is built by a group that listens to itself and tries to impress each other."
IBM's Linux division isn't listening to the needs of its customers? AFAIAC, this post is nothing but FUD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD gives a brief history of BSD and its evolution since the 70s.
www.DIYTVAntennas.com
BSD probably wouldn't exist if not for linux (correct me if I'm wrong but it uses the linux kernel right?)
No, BSD predates linux - and Linux does borrow some things from the BSDs...
Solaris, Aix, HPuX? Tighly bound to [insert name] hardware
Solaris is available in SPARC and x86 versions, but the others you mentioned are pretty much tied to their vendor hardware. HPUX? way too retro IMHO, and damned expensive.
What other OS would have become the MS competitor in the server market?
It could well be that most of the current linux developers would have been BSD developers, and perhaps FreeBSD would be the dominant force in the server room today.
I read somewhere an interesting theory that companies (and organizations) that don't try to compete directly with Microsoft (plan their buisness around beating Billy) and just concentrate on making a good product end up succeeding. (Imagine that!).
One of Microsoft's tactics over the years is to bait companies into direct competition with them. Usually companies that take the bait lose.
As long as LINUX continues to improve NOT because of MS but because people are interested in making better software, then I think success will continue.
I'd imagine it's as if you were playing some game like raquetball or tennis and some dude is at the fence trying to get you to "compete" when you are perfectly content to play whatever you are playing, and get better.
The turning point for Linux will only come when desktop Linux users become willing to pay money for software on linux; non Open Source software at that.
With great OSS projects like Open Office, Gimp, and others, Linux desktop users have become accustomed a totally free desktop, and dislike free solutions that only provide binaries. This is not a very inviting environment for commercial companies to jump in, given the effort porting would take, and given Linux's penetration into the Desktop market (not meager, but not massive either).
BSD probably wouldn't exist if not for linux (correct me if I'm wrong but it uses the linux kernel right?)
Oh my God
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
Microsoft is not worried about losing their Windows dominance to Linux. They aren't worried, in other words, about losing 100% of their server OS business-- they are worried about losing 10% of it. That's all the fight is for now.
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Unfortunately, they tend to do this on the golf course with their other CEO, CIO, CFO, and CTO buddies, instead of asking the people who have to actually support the applications and systems. They want all the stuff that looks flashy, etc. The techies, unfortunately, then have to figure out ways to make the stuff work.
Many years ago, I went to a company where they wanted to have several applications talk to each other. Two of them ran on Solaris, two of them ran on Windows. One used Oracle as the back-end, another used DBASE. How did they come up with the combination of COTS stuff? They asked the users to pick which software package they wanted for which particular function. The problem is, nobody ever really evaluated what could be done with each of them. It turned out that one of the Windows apps couldn't be made to talk with anything else because of the memory control module. The database stuff it used wanted to do its own memory allocation, and it interfered with the TCP/IP sockets library's ability to do its necessary memory allocation. I didn't last long there, because I basically made my opinions known and they didn't want to hear that they made some really bad decisions.
When going for my RHCE, the instructor was telling us that RedHat basically came into existence because for Linux to be a viable business solution, companies wanted to be able to point fingers at someone to say, "You... FIX THIS!" They didn't want to file bug reports and wait for someone to get around to it. They wanted someone to be there at their beck-and-call, providing the necessary support. This kind of thinking is what actually helped Linux become a viable business solution.
OCO is Loco
That being said, most of the *iux developers I know today, including myself, dumped Linux for Apple especially on laptops. Granted this was 3 - 4 years ago and OSX versus Linux of the day was no contest. However, I haven't known of anyone that's gone back from OSX to linux. Some have linux boxes they use as cheap test boxes, but I even converted my old x86 box into a FreeBSD server for my house.
Still if I am going to pick between a Linux box or getting a Macmini or is it MiniMac...anyway, I think I'm going to spend the money on the Mac. Again it comes down to needs and software. iLife is a great set of tools for home use. Its easy to use, simple, and works. Linux has come a long way since I started using it circa Slackware 2, but it still has aways to go as well.
I say this with a grain of salt: but the some in the rabid Pro-Linux community is still hurting the image. There are still those that want it in the realm of the uber-geek hacker. As the song "Every OS sucks" by three-dead trolls in a baggie says: "Linux or Lineux, I'm not sure how to you say it or install it or how to use it, but its for elitest nerdy smucks".
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
To draw the parallel, it seems like this would make Microsoft comparable to, say, Acme Cesspit Corp., a fictional company that might have invented and patented cesspits and the means and tools for keeping them safe and usable in a city environment.
The public is crying out for a better system, which has been developed and is proving itself in municipality after municipality. But Acme is freaking out and suing or hiring thugs in towns where they dominate in order to maintain control of your bodily waste.
A company like Acme could do well to embrace the open standard and move on to the next step, since even with an open standard, people are going to continue needing help disposing of their wastes.
Likewise, Microsoft would do well to embrace open source software and operating systems. People will still need great apps and services, and they'll be willing to pay for them. But if they weren't so dependent on the volume of money coming in from their operating system monop^H^H^H^H^H division, they might realize that letting go and moving on to other types of products and services might be a hundred times more profitable.
Or, better yet, 100 times more beneficial to humanity. Minesweeper is a great game and I'm glad they include it, but nobody ever cured cancer by playing it.
The CB App. What's your 20?
It kinda makes me scratch my flea-ridden head... There's an endless stream of articles heralding linux as enterprise ready, Msft's achille's heal, etc. Yet when you look at novell and redhat's stock you see something much like this: \ What gives?
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Cant Linux remain Linux. I can appreciate X becuase its the same as it was 10 years ago, and it will remain the same.
There will always be typewriters, toasters, mobile phones, audio players, video players, game consoles and Macintoshes that will be better than Linux in some aspects and for some groups of people (that said, they could of course be made Linux-based, thats another thing).
I want Linux because it compils and runs the huge amount of useful and fun open source toys, tools and server programs I like. I like that the VIM/gcc/make-development environment is constant. I dont need to upgrade to the latest version before I continue with my hobby-projects. grep, sed and friends are always there, and they always make the same great job. That means a problem solved today, is a problem solved in ten years. If you throw X out, thousands of man-years are lost, just because we want to copy a desktop innovator.
For desktop purposes, BSD and Linux kernels would basically do the same great work. Apple chose the BSD kernel for license reasons. The Apple advantage is that they have great design, and full hardware control. That gives them the opportunity to create a superb user experience.
Linux should continue to be the plattform of choice for geeks who just want their "problems solved", for once and ever. Then companies and people will find amazing ways to use the great technology - and one day you'll find Linux in your toaster, game console or car...
This was certainly considered and many, many people tried. But nothing really came of it. It now looks like the way to progress is to modify X into a modern system.
The biggest impediment was in fact the opposite of what you are claiming: using X gets you the modern hardware, and alternatives don't. Any and all advanced drivers are written for X, and the X driver interface was so complex and linked to how X worked that it was impossible to reuse them for anything other than X. Thus the very first thing any replacement for X would encounter was that it would not run in anything better that SVGA mode and would run quite slow without even rudimentary 2D acceleration. This has killed Berlin, Fresco, KGI, even kernel framebuffer interfaces, and every other alternative to X on Linux. Every one of these projects has been forced to make a "run in an X window" implementation so that they can at least write tests yet run their screens at their natural resolution, which means they will never work better than X and will all be subject to any and all glitches in X.
The truly annoying thing is that a real alterantive would probably have a much better driver interface and if it succeeded we would have many more and better drivers and hardware support than X has. Not only that, more alternatives would be easy to write because these new drivers could probably be reused easier. So it is all a catch-22.
The other lesser impediment was the need to provide compatability with X so you could run your existing applications. Ideally this should be done by an emulation library atop your new system, however Xlib is such a mess that this is incredibly difficult and will not be done by a new development. So at least initially, either X programs don't work, or they work in an incredible kludge where the hardware is shared by two low-level systems (like the OS/X solution) which makes the windows behave in annoyingly imcompatable ways that produce a worse user experience than plain X does.
I personally thought this was an excellent idea and fully expected it to happen, may favorite solution would be to return to IrixGL days, where OpenGL was used to draw every single pixel you see on the screen. But it never materialized, I followed development on a dozen systems but nothing ever came of it. It now looks like the future is in Xorg and the freedesktop standards, where they are trying, however painful it is, to modify X into a modern system, by replacing the driver level and adding new X calls to do modern graphics.
IBM has more developers working on Linux than RedHat has employees. I'd say that makes them as much a Linux company as RedHat, wouldn't you?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I can't remember if this is from patent, copyright or trademark law, but isn't there a legal requirement somewhere to defend your IP as soon as you know of an infringing case? And if it can be demonstrated that you knew about it and chose to not defend your IP against infringement then you lose the right to sue in the future based on that same IP?
If it were not from grown-ups (in suits) working for Red Hat and IBM driving the Market, Linux would still be a nifty project on University campuses, instead of the multi-billion-dollar industry that it is.
Not quite. Companies still need to earn a profit (at least some of the time). If Windows were a complete pile of shit, they would be flocking to Unix in droves. Actually a couple of decades ago they were, but I digress. But because Windows is mediocre, it's much harder for Unix to make headway.
p.s. Note that I'm using the word "Unix". In the real world (outside of Slashdot) Linux is merely another flavor of Unix. It may not be genuine Unix, but it looks, smells and tastes like it. And it doesn't require expensive hardware either.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Being employed by REAL fortune 500 companies I can assure you IBM has a Huge investment in Linux Software ( they are phasing out AIX in the next 12 months) Just because they don't make a Linux Distro, doesn't mean they are'nt a linux Co. Last Co I worked for, you could go in the data center and see rows & rows & rows of rack mount IBM servers in cases all running Linux and some other IBM software DB2, Tivoli etc.....
Thier new Cell processors, guess what OS they will be running them on, YUP linux.
Go back to playing half life2 or whatever in your parents basement. If you don't think IBM has bet the bank on Linux then you need to get out more.
Their Super Computing cluster??? Only runs Linux.
Now thats not what they sell, but they are moving quickly to a linux only model. The Co I used to work for, they cried never Linux on desktops, now IBM is pushing them in that direction. The Company is a well known fortune 500 company, with Billions in Assets and Income.
You need to think before you type.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
I didn't last long there, because I basically made my opinions known and they didn't want to hear that they made some really bad decisions.
How to Succeed in Business as an advisor: Find out what your boss wants to do, and then advise him to do it.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
But consensus is really the key. Why does OS X work so well? It's not just because they have a different window manager and widget set. It's because they build in consistency and uniformity from the ground up. That covers widgets, fonts, colours, textures, menu layouts, shortcut keys, toolbars, cut'n'paste, drag'n'drop, file locations, selection, high-level GUI metaphors like drawers and tabs, Dock behaviour, and so on throughout everything in the system. It's all been designed to work the same way (i.e. the way you expect), and to interoperate.
It's not perfect, of course; some choices are questionable, and there's the occasional oddity. But in general, apps look, feel, behave, and work the way you expect them to. And I think it's this consistency which is the real difference from Linux: not just in the low-level look of individual components, but in the mindset and user experience too.
The flip side of this is that it gives developers less choice. Using the system widgets (where appropriate) stops you getting creative in designing your own. Letting the user choose colours and skins may make your app stand out, but it detracts from the whole system. I don't want the choice of umpteen skins and looks -- I want ONE that WORKS PROPERLY! (Sorry for shouting, but I've struggled against so many apps whose authors seem to think that providing a choice of skin or other decoration is the answer to an ugly, awkward or unusable UI.) Similarly, using non-standard shortcut keys or whatever may be better for your app, but the lack of consistency reflects on all apps.
So IMV the main problem with getting a decent UI which is easy for casual users is that it requires app developers to be disciplined and to restrain (or at least channel) their natural creativity and ego. That's why a corporate setting is probably the best bet for such a system; not because individual developers lack the skills, direction, or organisation (as Linux &c have shown), but because a decent GUI needs restraint, obedience, and submission to central authority.
The only way such a system could be possible would be to have a very strong leader who knew exactly what he wanted and could take steps to ensure that apps complied, but who could also inspire lots of developers to join in -- a tough combination.
In the meantime, while developers still consider the natural unit of functionality to be the application and not the whole system, I'll keep on using OS X!
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Microsoft has had the Mom & Dad users since 1980.
WalMart, with its enormous purchasing power, can't sell a Linux system off the web that undercuts it's Windows equivalent by more than 50 bucks. Simpler and cheaper to call Dell, avoid the sales tax, and get free home delivery.
...then please, for sanity's sake, buy and read "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines". You will find that Apple actually researched what makes an intuitive interface & then did a damn fine job accomplishing it. The current Linux GUIs suffer from the same problem as Windows; they're completely arbitrary.
I hate when background windows force themselves to the front on MS Windows, and it makes me sick to see that happen under Linux. I hate selecting some bit of text under Windows, only to find that releasing my finger from the button caused some last-second movement that totally screws up my selection. Linux's GUIs do this too. Macintosh knows people are human beings & it filters out last-second movements like that. And so on, and so on, and so on.
So please...if you're going to write a proper Linux GUI...HEED STRONGLY WHAT APPLE SAYS!!!
(Disclaimer: I am a major Linux head, but was once a Mac developer. OS X looks awesome, but unless Apple stops being the sole source of hardware, I'm not buying a Mac.)
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
It could well be that most of the current linux developers would have been BSD developers, and perhaps FreeBSD would be the dominant force in the server room today.
I've thought of that myself. Thing is, a major driver behind Linux has been corporate adoption. The GPL effectively prevents a company from taking the software, improving it and keeping the improvements to themselves.
Unlike the BSD license, where Big Company Ltd. could write a whole bunch of improvements, release them to the world - and three weeks later find Microsoft has taken their improved software, improved it further, slapped a £9.99 price sticker on it and chosen not to release the source. Bit of a disincentive for Big Company Ltd?
For this you'll be moderated +10 Insughtful.
How come the date on the article shows a date of January 31, 2005?
Not as bad as Indonesia. I have spent two months in Ecuador and the corruption there is NOTHING to what you see in Indonesia.
It is true, though that if you bribe the right people, you can usually get some traction. However, things have unpredictable consequences.
When I was in Indonesia for six months, there was a massive movement among businesses to switch to Linux. So, I wondered why, and I asked a few people. The answer really didn't surprise me, but it is of interest to this discussion.
It seems that the Indonesian Government had begun a serious crack-down on the distribution of pirated movies and software (apparently due to presure from the US). Now you couldn't get Windows for $10 anymore, and nobody wanted to pay for it, so they were adopting Linux wholesale.
So, in this case, you have to bribe a WHOLE LOT of people. And in the long run you still lose.
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