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A Perspective on Microsoft's Shared Source
Masa writes "ONLamp has an insightful article by Stephen R. Walli about Microsoft Shared Source Initiative and some thoughts, what it would really mean if Microsoft would open-source their operating system.
The article gives a nice perspective on the Shared Source Initiative and what it is meant to be. It also shows that even if it might look that Microsoft doesn't understand the value of open source, there actually are some projects under the OSI-approved licenses, for example the WiX Toolset, which is a good example of a successful open source project by Microsoft."
The people at Microsoft aren't stupid. They completely understand open source. But, they also understand the value of a closed proprietary system. Microsoft earns 80% profit margins on Office and Windows. When Red Hat earns that kind of profit, then Microsoft might switch.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Microsoft are pushing for patents so they can open source their OS and kill the "open source" threat.
-captain obvious
What I've imagined are thousands of developers worldwide working for years to cut bloat from the operating system eventually landing on a copy of Windows XP with all the relevant features that installs on a Pentium II with 64 megs of RAM on a 1 gig hard drive with plenty of room to spare.
Unfortunately there's a lot of effort and little to no profit to be had in reducing bloat; so for-profit companies rarely do it.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Why would Windows being open source make PCs less expensive? Open source != free.
It also shows that even if it might look that Microsoft doesn't understand the value of open source,
When you say "value", you mean "potential massive loss of revenue", right? Microsoft are there to make a profit. Expecting them to adopt open source is like expecting Ayn Rand to rise from the grave clutching a copy of Das Kapital.
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If Windows became open source we would see £100 knock down on the price of every single PC. This would then make more people buy PCs, which would help the whole industry except Microsoft. It would encourage growth in hardware and softcore could follow suite nicely.
Absolutely not. You seem to confuse the most obvious difference between "free software" and "open source". "Open source" means just that I allow you to take a peek into the source code of my application - but still I have everything under my firm control. "Free Software" means not just that I will show you my source code, but also I will allow you to do basically anything you want to do, provided that the results will also be distributed as Free Software. So opening source to the entire Microsoft Windows would not necessarily means a price drop - the source code could still be protected by proprietary copyright law. Of course, you could violate the copyright and compile your own copy - but then again, you can pirate MS Windows as well.
Check Microsoft's own website for their own description of Shared Source. A brief quote: Like the CSD (Commercial Software Development) model, the SSI (Shared Source Initiative) rewards innovators for their research and development efforts by protecting their valuable IP rights in the source code they produce. .
Look at your post.
If Windows became open source we would see £100 knock down on the price of every single PC.
This would then make more people buy PCs, which would help the whole industry except Microsoft.
Microsoft isn't going to do anything that won't help Microsoft. They have an obligation to shareholders to increase profits and market share (dominating as they are). Of course, this is only the case with their current business model.
Now, if they switched to a service contract type business model and open sourced Windows, things might be different. Think of those people that still have Windows 98. What if they had been paying, say, $10-$15 a year since then for support? Microsoft would have made more on them than the customer's initial purchase of Windows (assuming an OEM installed Windows, not Retail).
The customer doesn't have to get support, but lots of people pirate Windows anyway. Might as well release it to everyone and work on *really* good tech support.
Maybe I'm simplifying things too much. I'm sure someone will correct me.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
How would M$ make money at this? Before I get blasted the same kind of money they are making today. Open source is great, but aren't most of the posts anti establishment? Why is it bad to make money? If you don't like don't buy it. You can not ask a man who has been making money the same way for years to suddenly stop.
No this is nothing against Linux, I run Linux for certain applications and I run M$ for other applications. They are just tools. I always use the correct tool for the job.
My sigs offend the max # of people all over the world, regardless of race, religion, color, sex or creed. It's a gift.
Because once making money goes above all other pursuits, it starts to damage the environment, the people, the animals, everyone.
Making money is not bad (it's a tool like anything else, a way to measure resources) but making it your god which justifies all means, that is bad.
Corporations have no soul and no social responsibility. If they could make lots of money by selling babies stolen from the birth ward and then beheaded, you can be 100% sure that's what would happen! "If you don't like, don't buy it" doesn't make a difference since the damage has already been done.
I'm sure these are among the reasons many people consider money and making money to be bad.
Where are the 10 GHz CPUs we were supposed to have by now? What about a 5 GHz one? How long has the 3 GHz CPU been state-of-the-art?
Various data are kept in an
dismay at what an obfuscated object model MS Word presents
admiration for the VBA enviornment for creating such a silk purse out of this sow's ear.
So, in addition to tidying the operating system (or at least producing well documented test cases showing WTF), we could also expect to see gradual creation of wrapper classes that would un-bork a lot of this ugliness. I'm envisioniong http://ms_office_space.sourceforge.net, or something, as an umbrella project for libraries that are as 'easy' to use as VBA, but are in a language we can use without negative impact to our self-esteem.
That will be enough wishful thinking for now, Chris; back to work.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
1) OEM licensed software, Microsoft doesn't support. The OEM is required by the software license. 2) Microsoft already charges for the limited support they do offer. At least phone support. Email support is free, but worthless. Having gone that route, I don't believe anyone actually reads the emails sent, but a computer analyzes it for keywords and sends a boilerplate message based on the keywords. Then in slaps a name on the message to make it look like a real person is responding. 3) Most consumers want to pay up front (or finance), not subscribe to a support service. And what's to keep a user from not subscribing until a problem comes up, getting a 1 yr support contract, and then canceling after the problem is fixed (possibly getting a proration)? 4) Corporations that purchase support, are already getting that support elsewhere. Granted its largely Microsoft rhetoric generated to dupe the masses and make themselves sleep better at night, but they insist that their current model is used to help OEM system builders sell value-added services. 5) On the point someone made earlier about hacking WinXP to get it to be usable on older/lesser hardware, it comes back to the point made earlier in this thread. Selling bloated software is good business for all tha hardware manufacturers whose products are being sold to run the new software. Look at gaming and video cards. New cards come out to better run new games and new games come out to better take advantage of the capabilities of new cards. WinXP isn't going to run well on my PII 233 with 64MB RAM work machine, so if my employer wanted to upgrade to XP, they'd have to buy new hardware. And that makes companies like Dell and HP, happy and supports their profit margins, marketshare, and shareholder dividends. 6) Win98 came out 7 yrs ago. At $10-$15/yr, that comes out to $70-$105. Thats just barely breaking even with the current distribution model. Are the shareholders going to be happy with a business model change that takes longer to see the same profit? 7) It's a good idea, unfortunatly, not grounded on enough reality. mofe) I just wanted to use the number invented in one of the newspaper comic strips. sorry.
Free MacMini
In your brain-dead model of processors and computers they are only on desktops.
Suppose the Government decides to place monitoring statins along the border with Mexico and they place, say, 10,000 of these at the cost of, say, 10,000 dollars a piece. So that is 100 million dollars.
and then a few years in to this some flaw is discovered in the code. The solution is to upgrade the operating systems of these nodes.
In your model they must replace the processors and motherboards.
Capital equipment and infrastructure must have an upgrade path. Also it should be expected to last more than ten years. Why? Otherwise it is just a big fat boondoggle.
M$ is a toy operating system and no serious captial equipment designer should even consider it. It is crap, insecure, and actually dangerous for our security. That is why there is such a push to not use it anymore.
But the M$ people have so much damn money that they get their stuff approved because so many people have thier stock.
hope you have that patched XP or else your machine is probably a drone owned by some eastern europoean script kiddie.
Oh, and by the way, the cost of computer is also the cost of installing and running the computer. So if we are talking about capital equipment we want an operating system that is easy to install and upgrade. That is not the M$ one.
I find it hard to see that Microsoft's license would be any more liberal than the one that Sun have used to open up Solaris 10.
"Sure you can look at it, but you can't use it without relicensing your code under our license. And if we find our code in any of your work we'll sue you. "
Open Source isn't a "buzzword". Success is assured by people.
As far as kernel source not making a distribution, Windows is pretty monolithic. Unlike Linux, where most of your system is isolated in small stand-alone utilities, pretty much everything in Windows is woven together such that it would be a nightmare to try and untangle it. Longhorn may start to address this, but it's an architectural condition that can't really be resolved without making some major changes to the O/S
Actually the NT kernel is far form monolithic. It is still classified as a client/server kernel (which is somewhat unique into iself)
There are NO woven' or NT kernel dependancies. Each subsystem that lies on top of the NT kernel have their own 'OS Layer' Kernels, that are woven in their specific Subsystem, but they are not woven into NT kernsl, and far from it.
NT's arichtecture can actually do things that neither a monolithic BSD or micro Linux kernel can do, that is part of the genius behind Cutler and the NT development team of 1990-1993. And this is still being used today.
Not only does it offer a HAL an portabiltiy, but it also offers the same type of portability up in layers on the platform.
Microsoft already has a Unix subsystem for Windows, and it is even running on a couple of server here (one for test). It is a UNIX Subsystem, it has NOTHING to do with the Win32 subystem unless it wants to. In theory, Microsoft could even drop in a Linux binary level subsytem (with slight kernel changes in their Linux subsystem kernel), and run binary compatible i386 applicaitons in a Subsystem, and have the applications, EVEN X, appear side by side on the Windows desktop. And Linux would even then be running on TOP of the NT kernel, with possibly even an increase in performance for the Linux applications.
The irony in this, is that if Linux ever gets too succesful, that is all Microsoft would have to do is just add a Linux Subystem to the NT platform, and bingo, the users have WIndows and Linux too.