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Microsoft 'under attack' On All Fronts
khujifig writes "The Beeb are carrying a story looking at the challenges facing Microsoft in the next few years.
This includes a brief description of the M.Home (sans Clippy) which the Beeb describes as "a far cry from real life", and a discussion of the next few years competition for Microsoft. They go on to highlight Linux, OpenOffice.org, the GIMP and Firefox (which Gates himself has used: "I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"), and look Apple in relation to Longhorn. Not as bad a read as I was expecting. Their summary: Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to innovate or die. "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?."" It should be said, tho', that articles like this have been written about MSFT for a long time - and there's still billions in their war-chest.
Quite the pro OSS piece... To answer the question posed in the summary, "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?" Because there is more to the world than just the web and e-mail.
It's the end of the world as we know it...
...and I feel fine.
Which Microsoft product "The Gimp" is supposed to attack? Paintbrush?
I thought The Gimp was Adobe Photoshop concurrent, and AFAIK, Adobe has not yet been bought by MS.
"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"
What makes it so much better? I've been using Firefox for a while now and it seems like more then 'just another browser' to me.
Most of the small businesses out there want support for a product even if they never use it. They want to know it's there. They also want to know that it's going to be supported by the same people for a long time. Think of it as security.
This isn't about which is the better product... it's about which one will get the project done AND be supported if shit hits the fan.
Support does NOT mean Forums or RTFM. They want real people. The fact is most people are not IT people. They just want it to work and forget about it. If it breaks they want someone to call to get it working again.
The same is for large companies except in the fact that they want support of future innovations. You are institituting a large scale database project... you are using My-SQL... something goes wrong... what do you do? Post in a forum, email a friend...
Same situation you are using MS-SQL, you can call tech support and bam get an answer or at least a much more educated idea.
I'm dissing open source. It's awesome and I think it keeps innovation alive and is always an alternative. But without the support... you aren't going to get the backing you might want.
One day, Microsoft will market their own flavor of Linux, out of spite.
Google GMail doesn't seem like a serious threat to Exchange. Postfix, yes, but a third-party service which reads your email...no.
Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to inovate or die.
Microsoft is about likely to go under as IBM, they may take a hit now and again, they they always come out fighting.. Look atthe X-Box, they had no real console based experenice before, yet they managed to give Sony a good fight, even debuting a year after Sony... I expect that the new version of IE will have everything that FF has, and more...it's just how MS does things...
I have always looked at MS as a big mean dog...you really don't want to mess with them, and you really really don't want to back them in a corner..
Please don't talk this as pro-MS, it's more of a pro-reality statement
"Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?." Sadly because i play games, and to play 99% of the games out there you need windows.
Microsoft will never die, its far too rich now to disappear completely, it may have diversify like IBM. If they have enough money to throw at the XBox project without blinking an eye then they will eventually find something that is profitable. They may never make the kind of dosh they have from Windows and Office but while they can afford to hire the best talent they are virtually guaranteed to stay in business.
But hopefully they'll get up off their lazy butts and get to work.
How old is IE? Wonder if the recent Firefox buzz hasn't got them back in the shop feverishly working on IE 7. Wonder if many of the feature in the said browser won't mimic those found in Firefox (opera, safari, etc...)
How old is XP? Wonder if the recent Jaguar/Panther/Tiger buzz hasn't got them in the shop.... (you get the idea).
I hope we can keep them lumbering for a few more years. It would sure be nice to see them either start to *really* innovate or throw in the towel.
If you make them lose money long enough, it doesn't matter how much they have in the war-chest: like any good capatalist, they'll pull out when they realize its not growing anymore.
Name a company that can seriously put all of there resources together and pose a serious threat to Microsoft?
Only niche market software sources are able to peck away at MS.
People are brainwashed into following the most marketed item with all of the fancy surface features.
This should be old news to Slashdot readers. We all know that Office is the cash cow that leverages windows across the enterprise. Or SMB.
... It's just that since they do so much badly that it all gets integrated into their OS/Office/Back-office. That's when people stop buying competing programs.
Really, most new Microsoft "lines" have failed miserably: Passport, MSNBC,
Besides, most companies are afraid to compete with Microsoft: Just look at MacAdobeMedia. They were formed explicitly because of fear. Most companies that are competing with MS started in an area that Microsoft moved into (Skype).
Q:What do you call a clumsy 800lb gorilla?
A: Sir (or an 800lb gorilla)
I think Microsoft is in the weakest position it's been in in a long time. Their new OS has been delayed. Their browser is full of holes. VB 6 developers are not moving to .net like they hoped. Their new OS will contain a lot of DRM that nobody wants. Mac and Linux are both making inroads. This is a prime time to get people to switch to something else.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Why read the Beeb when you have an optical mouse and a DVD burner? :)
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Honestly having 90% + market share is to much for any company. People are starting to realize that there are tools better fitted for their own needs. So Microsoft is not always the answer. It is not saying that microsoft products are perfect or they are utterly crap. But there are some jobs better fit by microsoft products and other fitted with other products. Now that consumers are getting use to downloading application for free and reading reviews on other products. The 90% stranglehold that microosft have is leaving. Windows is no longer considered a part of the computer. IE is not the Internet. As general knowlege grows the less stranglehold Microsoft will have. It is much like the drop in prices for our geekly services. Back in the 80s and 90s we were getting premium pay for simple jobs such as swapping drives or running backups even the Title "Computer Operator" was considered a high tech job, but as more people got use to computers many of the simple jobs are now done by people in accounting or marketing, or the janator is doing it. Just because it is common knowlege. Why was the mainfraim replaced with PCs because they were cheper and fast enough to get the work done. The same is happening with Microsoft. Will Microsoft die, Probably not but there market share will probably drop to 25-40% and still be the #1 software company. When people look at linux or apple and see a 2%-10% market share. They say it is low. But with all the competition out there 3% market share is pritty damn good.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Mac ownership is still at less than 2% and Linux can't really be considered to be a more secure and desktop-ready alternative to XP or 2000.
According to Gartner Mac market share is at 3.7% for Q1 2005. Not to mention that Macs tend to be used longer (still using a 400mhz G4 from 2000 as my primary computer when my PC from the same time has long been recycled).
As for Linux, maybe not desktop-ready, but clearly more secure than Windows? Oops, I fed the troll.
However, MS IS looking at web and e-mail. A little over a week ago I got a call from an MS recruiter asking if I wanted to interview for the MSN web services division (my resume was posted online). It was my first ever call from MS (although I've approached them a few times before).
Basically, they're looking for people to code things like Outlook Live, which is essentially a web service edition of Outlook Web Access. According to the recruiter, they seem to be going full-speed toward services (while keeping an eye on the cashcows).
there is more to the world than just the web and e-mail
Not to the vast majority of computer users. Most people I know think that the Web and the Internet are the same thing.
The computer using experience for most is: email, web surfing (this includes shopping on eBay) and gaming.
Digital photography is starting to push into that list more and more, but let's face it, Picassa is a great app and the price is right!
Mr Gates told me, and challenged my assertion that Firefox's 'market share' is growing rapidly.
"So much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?" he argued.
And I have to say that software gets [forcefully] purchased all the time as well. Heck, I can remember buying dozens of computers -- ranging from desktops made into back-office quasi-servers to full blown workgroup type servers. To get each and every one of those machines the Windows tax had to be paid (at the time). I'm sure those machines are counted in Microsoft's totals for market share as well.
They still run Linux to this day.
Heck, I can count now HUNDREDS of computers that I'm responsible for that all originally legally ran Windows. Care to guess which Linux distro I used on them? Sad -- but a lot of those installs showed up as only one (1) [bittorrent] download...
Mr. Gate's arguments don't and won't fly for too much longer. Microsoft days are numbers -- and yes, I am ready to sell-short their stock when the day(s) come. Might as well make money on their misery -- they certainly have on mine.
Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to inovate or die.
Isn't it like that for every company in this domain? I mean, there are a lot of them who just copy, but those who work well and make big bucks, usually its the law : Inovate or die
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
As bad as Microsoft has become over the years, they were needed at the time ( some odd 15 years ago or so ).
We needed their marketing power to jumpstart the PC market, as the more talented companies like Apple just weren't going to do it.
Forcing a pseudo standard via their monopolistic practices is what brought us to this point, and I don't think we would have advanced as far as we have if we still had 20 companies running around catering to hobbyists or niche markets..
However, the need for this has passed. Its time for the giant to step aside and let the rest of us get back to work. They if course will not go down with to a long and expensive fight. But their time has come and gone, its just a matter of how long will they keep flapping around like a beached whale before they concede to reality.
( A similar thing is just now starting to happen in the 'entertainment industry' as well )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
At the end of this movie, Steve Jobs says to Bill Gates, "We're better than you," to which Gates replies, "You just don't get it... That doesn't matter!" This still holds true today. It doesn't make any difference if Microsoft has no imagination or invention because the mass of consumption and forces of conformity give them room to sit back and relax. While others need to innovate, MS only needs to assure their customers that the stolen ideas will come a few months later. (Or years later.)
Name a company that can seriously put all of there resources together and pose a serious threat to Microsoft?
The problem with Microsoft is that they've become too big and they have way too many products.
There's not a single company who can fight with Microsoft. But all of them are fighting with them: Sony, Nintendo (xbox), Linux, mac os x, solaris (windows), mysql, postgresql, oracle, IBM DB2 (ms sql), firefox, opera (ie), google, yahoo (search engine, MSN), openoffice (office)
Microsoft just can't win. After having 95%+ of market share in desktops they need to search a way to grow even more to satisfy the stock buyers, so they fight in every market. And they can fight against a single or a few companies, but not against the whole IT industry
This is a popular misconception.
Long before their bank-balance reached zero, investors would be dumping MS shares on the market in order to get rid of them. The prices of the shares would drop, the value of the company would drop and, in turn, so would that bank balance even more.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Perhaps in the not-too-distant future there will be some tool out there that will ensure 100% compatibility and transferability of proprietary systems to open solutions. Sure, there are jumps and fits today in that direction, but we are not at that magical point yet.
To that end, it really is Microsoft's challenge to 'innovate' enough to stay ahead of the Linux pack while not biting off so much that the product never ships (aka Longhorn).
There is a big thing you are missing here. In a lot of markets Linux is making small inroads in the form of a the dual boot systems. At my place of employment everyone who doesn't use Linux straight out dual boots. They haven't switched over completely yet but for the purposes of compatibility they dual boot and spend some of their time using Linux.
Often this turns into a lot of their time. The fact is that when using Linux I can read any document you give me, and mount/use any drive on the network, I have full compatibility. Windows hasn't got this important feature because they are being deliberatly obtuse and not interoperating. The guy down the hall starts to feel outmoded when me with my Linux machine and Betty with her Mac can interoperate together completely and can both interoperate with him, but his machine can't do the same.
MS simply has to change this practice. They also have to get serious about supporting more applications. A lot of the publishing work we do is in TeX because TeX is pretty much the defacto standard of professional publishing. MS has rudimentary at best support, whereas Linux and Mac make it easy as pie.
There is a serious growing threat here, and as has been shown numerous times the idea that it costs more to switch platforms is false. It costs nothing more to dual boot, and often the cost of switching is zero or less, especially in an environment that has been dual booting for a while.
Microsoft has not lost its ability to innovate because its people aren't smart any more. They have not lost their ability to innovate because they just don't have any more great ideas. They have not lost their ability to innovate because of poor management or leadership.
Microsoft has lost its ability to create innovative products for three reasons:
1) The company is now run by HR, which is forcing a politically correct agenda into the rank and file. The biggest head on this hydra is the review process, where you are reviewed by your direct manager. From this review comes rewards and longevity at the company. Because of the onerous process, people tend to drift into comfortable spots where they have a great relationship with their manager, and stay there. If you don't do this, you run the risk of being one of the lower echelon that is managed out of the company. There is no peer review, the system encourages favoritism. The process is completely destructive to innovation, you do what your manager wants, not what is right for the company. They are different things.
2)Microsoft cannot move innovation from the research groups into the product groups because the product groups are completely disfunctional and understaffed. Once the 35% y/y growth stopped, it became all about revenue, and headcount became a scarce commodity that had to be completely justified. Because of this, the resource pool is spent on the most critical areas, which tend to be test and sustaining engineering, and whatever Bill wants to fund this year. This leaves little for new features and innovation. In fact, the feature list for Office has over a thousand new features on it, they can fund maybe 30. The 30 are picked by Sinofski or Bill. The rest are dropped. Work from Research is ignored.
3)Employee morale is at an all time low. The place is just not fun to work at any more. The stock option program is gone, replaced by a stock award program that gives the employee one-tenth the leverage they had with options. The stock has been flat for 5 years. The will and desire of the average employee is gone. It's just a job.
Microsoft has to address these three problems in order to remain competitive. I, personally, do not believe they can fix these issues. It will take them a long time to die, and it will be painful to watch, but they will join the ranks of AT&T, DEC, SUN and the long list of other one-time greats.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
Gates' IE might be better than FireFox. Because Gates' intranet is built (presumably) for IE-feature applications. And, most importantly, because his intranet is secured by a huge staff of people with some of the latest IE bug reports. That unique bubble is keeping Gates, and his minions, out of touch with the security nightmares his products create for his customers.
MS has long been kept ahead by its huge external developer program. But IE bugs can't be addressed by those developers, because the source is secret. Ironically, that integration between app developers and the market is OSS' true strength. Exactly where MS has made its greatest success. Will Gates finally starve up in his ivory silicon tower?
--
make install -not war
Hmm, I work in a big building full of people who use computers for more than Email, Web and Gaming. It's this strange custom called a J O B -- you Linux users should try it sometime.
They could give away everything they make for free for 20-50 years before going bankrupt.
So nice to see clueless moderators mod this nonsense up. NOT!
Get your bloody facts straight!
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Well, I've seen figured cited at anywhere from 8% to a patently unbelievable 35%, but 10% or so seems to be the most common. Here's one study.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
shows that the majority of people still buy their products
I would suggest that the majority of people buy a computer which has MS products pre-installed. Very few people actually go out and buy MS products.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Someone here said that Microsoft has become a dull and boring place, and I tend to believe it has. I think their engineers have lost the spice to create really cool things, because we can see that in the evolution of windows. Since Windows 95 we have seen the START taskbar... below. And the only differences are nicer graphics and more compatibility with hardware and games. That is basically it.
And frankly by the look of things, Longhorn is just looking to be a big fat white elephant. Longhorn will be Microsoft's downfall. Nothing the OS has is impressive, not glass, not Aero... basically its more gloatware... The only thing it had that was amazing, IMHO, was the WinFX foundation and that got ripped out.
But to say Microsoft entirely is doomed is an overstatement. While I think Microsoft's downfall will be the OS Longhorn, it will rise from the ashes with the new Xbox 360. I guess while they are not innovating on the Desktop they are doing it on the Living Room. So all is not lost for Microsoft.
In that sense the competition they are getting heavily from Apple will either put them on their toes or bring them to their knees, specially if more governments around the world choose to dump Microsoft for cheaper and better functioning Open Source solutions.
That is why I strongly believe Longhorn won't be the event they think it will be. The most important group of people that has to upgrade their systems and wont do it in the first 5yrs is the corporate sector. The consumer will prolly upgrade to Longhorn, but not that quickly as you think they can. Mostly because the hardware requirements to run LH with all the bells and whistles are short of obscene and your average PC comes with a Intel Video graphics card that sucks... But on the other hand, their innovative new Xbox 360 will do everything you wanted to do in the living room and will change the way the living room is. In that department SONY doesnt have a chance.
Everything that is important will happen this summer and by the end of the summer we are going to be well aware of who is winning the war of Microsoft vs The World.
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
and gaming
And for many, gaming is also the web. Freecell.com, Yahoo games, Neopets.com, etc.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I pose this as a serious question.
.NET framework, either VB.NET or C# (I use C#) and SQL Server make a superb environment to work in for building either WinForms or ASP.NET.
... its hard to justify messing with PHP and not much more than a text editor for tools.
/. sometimes makes me wonder if I'm backing the wrong horse here. Am I blinded by the hype, stupid, gullible, naive or doing the right thing here? So far my choice of platform is getting pretty good results.
I'm a sole inhouse developer in a company with about 100 employees. I build specialized desktop and web tools for sales and logistics and stuff for presenting info to customers etc. Nothing I do is really rocket science but off the shelf tools just don't do what we want so its worth keeping me around. We're a typical company in many ways. MS Office on every desktop.
I've done some private / volunteer projects using LAMP, I've fiddled with Java, I maintain a Linux web host for a non-profit. I consider myself a reasonably competent programmer despite having written many thousands of lines of VB6.
For someone in my position, right now, Visual Studio, the
MSDN is a great resource.
ASP.NET is finally moving web development out of the stone age with real debugging and abstraction from the tedium of html. According to MS, the new version will be all W3C compliant and yes they do test with FireFox. I'm coming to the concluson that nothing really comes close to ASP.NET for ease of development for web projects. I've used several PHP frameworks. Prado is very cool and I was planning on using it for another volunteer project for a non-profit I'm involved with but good ASP.NET web hosts are appearing, complete with SQL Server that don't cost a lot more per month than LAMP so
Reading
I've dealt with a lot of commercial 3rd party support schemes, and I have to say, my experience has been extremly positive with regards to Open source.
I remember a big CORBA corporation, won't name them or their product, but it was basically an ORB. We had used their stuff for previous versions of our product, but it was unstable and a nightmare to maintain. Just to give you an example, telnetting into their software that was attached to our process, would kill the whole server by just typing a random character!!!
So one day they started asking us "how much money we make" with our product, and wanted to charge us a % of the profits we make! Not only that, they wanted to charge us in the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, for their new support scam to be renewed in a yearly basis. Oh, and the new version of their orb required us to recode our app!
So when they told us this, one of my co-workers had been testing JacORB. Turns out this our software was faster, more stable and ran in more platforms than the one from the comercial vendor!
Not only that, but when we had problems, we usually got responses the same day. We even got sent code to patch the software for some problems! All of this FOR FREE!
I have no problem paying for tech support, but a lot of this support is not only too expensive, but it's very slow and no, it's not much better than the message boards or mailing lists of some of the open source products. Try dealing with Oracle tech support and exchaging code with them, to see how slow it is to get them to fix problems.
- sigs are for wimps.
More along the lines of: GIMP::Photoshop New Military Technology::Tired old civilian technology Photoshop is ok, but GIMP is better. Have you ever even used it? The interface is a bit rough around the edges, less so these days than the past, but it has an enourmous amount of power behind it.
How do you figure?
Photoshop is the compilation of years of work, hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, and -- most importantly -- over 15 years of industry feedback and exposure. Adobe has crafted Photoshop to fit real world needs, based on input from people who actually use it in a professional setting.
Indeed, at this point, it's impossible to say which has more influence: industry over Photoshop, or Photoshop over industry.
The GIMP, while an admirable effort -- and certainly one worth continuing -- is nowhere NEAR ready to take a place on the professional stage. Just the lack of native CMYK support alone is enough to render it useless for pretty much every company, individual graphic designer, and photographer I can think of.
Saying that the GIMP's interface "is a bit rough around the edges" exposes you as an enthusiast, but probably not a professional user (that is, one who earns his living off of graphic design). The difference between a good, familiar interface and a rough, unfamiliar interface can translate into massive ammounts of lost time. At this point, after 15 years, the Photoshop interface has become something of a standard; when you open a graphic design program you expect certain hotkeys to do certain things, certain menus to be in certain places, and certain tools to work certain ways. Everything that deviates from those expectations translates into lost time. The GIMP is rife with breaks from the "standard" interface.
I know that slashdot is hardly the place for Adobe users, but uninformed "our OSS product is better because it's free" thinking is bad for all of us. I'd love to be able to replace Photoshop with the GIMP some day, and maybe I will. But if people really believe that the GIMP is a viable replacement for Photoshop today, I fear that day will never come.
-F.
student of animation and the fine arts
The computer using experience for most is: email, web surfing (this includes shopping on eBay) and gaming.
Your post mostly refers to home users.
What about word processing and other office applications, which is the #2 application in my office (after Email/Outlook)?
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
You're spot on. I started out using PS 2.0 and the interface is what keeps me from using GIMP. I've tried, but I really don't want to devote the time needed to make the switch. Free is nice, but my time isn't free.
Defecation occurs.
Microsoft has real problems and here is why - they approach the market reactively, "innovating" by relying on surveys, focus groups, market analysis, whatever you want to call it. To sum it up -
if (no complaint)
stick to status quo
else
fix complaint
The problem is that complaints are usually symptoms of larger problems, and by tacking on simple fixes, Microsoft usually just ends up with a convoluted framework for whatever product they happen to be fixing.
Your average joe doesn't understand the potential of new technology, he is just reacting to the new-fangled features you just put in. This is why technology design by survey fails miserably. You need someone who fully understands what is at the edge of current technology, and who can creatively apply it in ways that enhance the average joe's life. I don't get the impression that Ballmer gets this idea. In fact, I have heard through the grapevine that the problem is ingrained in Microsoft company culture, and no one challenges it, because the company is conservatively micro-managed from the top.
Microsoft gets away with this model because the average joe is unaware of innovative concepts while they are new, before Microsoft has copied them. But the software remains clunky, akin to cars of the old days, where you cranked the thing up by hand and put up with the smell, noise, and the breakdowns - because there was still a tangible benefit. People thought this was the nature of cars back then, and accepted it because they couldn't see any better. Better engineering will eventually make computer systems easier to use and more reliable, analagous to what the Japanese did to the auto industry. Aside from good design the Japanese automakers popularized the use of statistics to test their components to make sure the performed reliably, carefully revising materials and design based on what worked, rather than going with the what was most available on the market. The computer industry could use that same sense of perfection, followed through with design by people who understand both people and the techonology, and of course lots of unit testing.
Microsoft hasn't re-invented itself as management would like shareholders to think, it has only re-hashed itself into something superficially better in order to avoid any more slip. Until the old guard leaves, that isn't likely to happen. This can be witnessed in the company's financials - growth continues, but is slowing in a growing market, despite a monopoly. If you want to make some dough, invest in some Apple stock and watch Microsoft sink in the long run - since it is pretty clear that they will be sticking to their guns with Ballmer. I've never owned a Mac but I've used a few and I see them as the next best thing, especially with the affordable mini model out, a good architecture to boot, and style that drops Microsoft right on its ass.
I think the interesting point that this article raises is that Microsoft is no longer able to bully its competition. Back in the days of the web browser wars and even the GUI wars Microsoft was able to win because it could either undercut, buy out, or out lawyer any corporation on the planet. In the absense of innovation and an active monopoly these appear to be Microsofts only weapons and they are all neutured by OSS. You can't undercut or buy-out free software, and the global nature of OSS seems to give lawyers the willies. There is only one thing left for them to try and thats patents, and I don't anybody really wants to open that can of worms, even M$... but they will.
Just as Microsoft needs an Apple, I think OSS needs a Microsoft (if only to keep it on its toes) so I don't want to see M$ die completely just reduce its market share to a healthy 30-50%. But I'd also like to see them release some decent products. I can't remember the last time I saw some Microsoft software and thought "Hey thats cool!". They've got the resources what's stopping them?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Well.......
RMS had a nice job at a nice enterprise, and a great product he could sell (Emacs, yeah, laugh), and he did sell it.
He was in a much better position that Bill Gates at the time.
He could have had some dollars.
He wanted freedom, not power. Well, freedom _is_ power, but is a much nicer power, because it's power to all the users, and not just to some guy.
Of course, I believe RMS does want recognition, or even fame, but if he wanted _power_, there would be no point in copyleft.
GNU is used by lots of people throughout the world, and he has even less power than Linus!!
But that's not accidental, the GPL warrants that!
I used to be one of the photoshop detractors. It's funny what groupthink does when you're part of the creation of it. I really believed gimp was the bees knees because I was contributing to its code, using it, and because I heard all the testimony from other gimp users about how much better than photoshop it must be.
Then I went & used photoshop 5.5 for 45 minutes on my girlfriend's powerbook. Never had such a quick turnaround in my life. I went right back to Gimp, gave it one look and thought "What is this shit?" and stopped caring (and developing) for it.
I'm no graphic artist, but I'll go to the gf's macs before using gimp on my own desktop.
These articles only partially get it right. Alot of what MS makes their big $ off of is becoming a commodity. It doesn't really even matter if Firefox and OOo are "better". This part of the computer industry will become less and less the sweet spot for growth and innovation. If MS concentrates on these markets but fails in the growths area (connected non-PC devices, web services etc.) then they will die. If they climb to the high ground and are successful, I think one day we will be saying "Remember when MS used to make Office?". As much as I like the open source movement, Apple and Google are MS's real problems. Linux, Firefox, OOo are just commoditizing the trailing edge where MS will lose if they try and key fighting on this front. I mean how much more can you improve office, at some point OOo will catch up.
I would say microsoft is attacking everywhere. They are leveraging money and monopoloy into new markets all the time. Yeah there is some competition nipping at their heels, but it is hard to stand in the way of an unchecked monopoly with a huge wad of cash.
PDAs/Smartphones: They keep respinning this and getting better and getting more market share. Any prediction when they hit #1?
Game Consoles/SW: Jan 2007: It is not out of the question to consider that Xbox2 will be the number one gaming console in North America. MS will probably also be a significant publisher (having bought out a pile of gaming companies)
Next Gen DVD: Microsoft had its own compression format placed as one of the mandatory codecs in both formats..
The list could probably go on an on, but anwhere money is being made in large amount MS will be there and eventually will be a significant if not dominant player.
Under-estimate them at your folly.
Haven't you heard of OpenOffice.org lately? You don't need Microsoft to do word processing.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
I mean, that is supposed to be the entire idea of capitalism: competition. No?
I suppose that msft has monopolized the desktop for so long, that the very idea of msft having to compete like a normal company is considered peculiar.
When I worked at Microsoft, there was a large push to look at trying to develop a services model out of their support section. They brought in some guy from IBM to push this (after they merged their Product Support Services division with Microsoft Consulting Services and called it Microsoft Services).
;-)
They had two large problems that lead them to either slow these plans down or abandon them altogether (not sure since I no longer work there). The first is that people expect MS to lose money on support. Note that they only lose money because they are darned inefficient at providing support, however, so it is not the great value that it appears.
Secondly, they don't want to gut their partner program by directly competing with their partners.
There is a third problem that I don't think they have thought about, however. This is that the services industry is pretty close to what economists call "perfect competition." There are very few barriers to entry. Customers can switch service providers at any time at very little cost. So services will *never* be the cash cow that Windows and Office are. Yet Windows and Office are under what I call terminal attack. The attacks from the open source community are simply not ever going to go away, and Microsoft can never really win this war-- the best they can hope for is a containment strategy which quite frankly isn't working at the moment.
What about emerging product markets (home of the future sort of things)? Great, and there is growth potential there. However, there is no potential for Microsoft to grow there because these markets are small. And they are competitive. So they could grow rapidly and Microsoft would simply be unable to have this growth translate into similar levels of revenue growth. This means that these markets *will not* satisfy shareholders.
Microsoft, as a software company, is dying. But it is a death of a thousand cuts and is unlikely to be a dramatic implosion in the immediate future. However, give it five or ten years and we will see a very different picture. I predict that in 10 years, that Microsoft will largely be a media and entertainment business. However, I make the following predictions:
1) Longhorn will be praised as a great marketing success by Microsoft. It will sell more retail copies than XP.
2) We are already in the opening period of a war for the desktop. A few battles have gone either direction. Each battle that Microsoft loses will force more interoperability from them and will cause more to fall. It will also bring more expertise to open source software. Battles that FOSS loses will have no long-term implications. The Desktop War is already heating up, with Microsoft launching a counterattack via television advertising
3) The consumer market will follow the corporate market.
4) Microsoft will lose this war within 10 years.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
A lot have people have claimed (including Linus IIRC) that the NT kernel itself isn't bad at all, and the main problems I have when running Windows are certainly not a problem of the kernel. There's no reason I can think of for replacing it.
Microsoft isn't entirely about control, it's about taking advantage of its monopoly with incompatibility with the competition. Gates likes IE because as long as it has a large marketshare, Microsoft can break compatibility with things it doesn't like, thus eliminating them (see the issues with Java and CSS2).
You don't need Microsoft to do word processing.
Yes, I do. All my clients send me documents in either Excel or Word format. If I can't read them properly, or mess them up making edits and sending them back, it's at least embarassing.
Sure, mis-matched versions of Office can cause problems - but then I can say "well, sorry about that, but I used the right software - could you send it again please? Maybe try saving it as an older version, say Word 97?". If I use OO.o and it messes it up, it's my fault.
Not fair, perhaps, but that's the way it works in business a lot of the time. Thankfully, I don't have to deal with that sort of crap very often.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better."
This, my friends, is only the latest reinforcement of the axiom "Bill Gates, a purported uber-nerd, continues to be out of touch with respect to the future of technology."
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist