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Linus On The Future Of Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "There's a pretty good interview with Linus over at Good Morning Silicon Valley. The discussion seems focused predominantly on the future of proprietary software and what the tech landscape might look like if Microsoft's market share declines. 'Says Linus: I do not believe that anything can "replace" Microsoft in the market that MS is right now. Instead, what I think happens is that markets mature, and as they mature and become commoditized, the kind of dominant player like MS just doesn't happen any more. You don't have another dominant player coming in and taking its place -- to find a new dominant player you actually have to start looking at a totally different market altogether.'"
Was born 15 years earlier...
I'm not so sure about that. Think about foreign automobile makers and GM in today's world. GM is arguably a behemoth, and that in itself can be what drives a monopoly out of power. Even though this market is arguably very mature, market share can change fairly rapidly with innovation. Once you conquer enough of the market share, you will have a hard time keeping up with innovation in all the corners that could propel your rival to be serious competition someday.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
Therefore, while I would like to believe that what Linus says is true, I sincerely doubt it will happen, at least not in the forseeable future.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
As long as Microsoft has the money to throw at new projects, it will be a VERY long time before it looses any significant market share. All the new and inovative technologies coming out to compete with Microsoft, are either later copied by them, or bought out by them. And when 95+% already uses MS and doesn't care about alternatives, they'll stick with them when it comes to new technologies.
"A war over religion is like fighting over who has the best imaginary friend."
Linus is basing what he thinks will happen on his experience of past monopolies. How many of these have there been? Really? Maybe 10, 20? Nowhere near enough to start predicting the future on. We have had four and a half billion years of weather, and we still can't get that right, and god knows, big business is nearly as complex. The other problem, of course, is microsoft is learning every day how to protect itself from those other companies fates.
Here's the way I see it.
I understand completely why consumers, especially us, want there to be OS choice and
OS competition for everyone. Having three or four major OS's that end user every-day
Joes would use sounds like a Utopia. In fact, if I had it my way, there would be Windows,
Mac OS X, a revolutionary easy to use, yet powerful, Linux (shh.), and another free OS.
However, since most consumers don't know very much about computers, they're not going to
understand that their software doesn't work between OS's without hard-to-use (for them)
emulation software. With all of those choices, people are going to stick with the name
and software package they trust. Windows is going to win no matter what, unless Microsoft
goes the way of the dodo. The vast majority cannot handle the confusion and differences
between OS's, and they don't want to understand it. Even if somehow all the OS's could
use each other's software natively, then what would be the point in having more than one?
I hate to see one operating system dominate the market just as much as you guys do, but
there will always only be one primary operating system for (at least) the consumer market.
Whether it's always going to be Windows, I cannot say. I just know that people are happy
with standards, and they don't want to have to screw with migrating to something new, even
if they know it could be better for them.
nothing.can.stop.me.now
Consider that the average user is willfully clueless with their machines and software. Consider just how much. Now imagine AOL throwing their resources at a tight, polished, bootable AOL-ified Linux which they push on all those CDs.
Linux will continue to move places in the techie arena like with workstations and servers. End users who can't grok Windows? No, not until it gets polished.
So from that perspective, Linus is right that Microsoft isn't just going away. Are they going to continue to have share eaten in serverspace? Yes. Not going away though.
Overall very good replies by Linus, one billionth the level of intensity of the zealots who squak the most in the Linux world which is reassuring. I do think he's wrong that there won't be future Microsofts. There's plenty of innovations in tech to be made that one really lucky company may corner the market through sheer chance and idiocy of their competitors. Microsoft won where Apple, IBM, SCO, Oracle, Netscape, and Sun failed to take them down in various areas despite throwing massive energy into it. It could happen again.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
...People look to Microsoft for brand name recognition and "trust." (I hear you laughing, but think like a consumer, not like a tech person.)
People still don't know "Linux" even if they have seen the IBM ads. So there's not a lot of established consumer trust. That will have to come from company trust really... and let's be honest, we're still quite a way from that at the moment. (I don't deny the progress but I can't ignore the distance to the destination either.)
When people realize that the OS and the Software as the means of operating on data instead of as "the thing" then we'll start to see an appreciation that software can be a commodity especially when they see that by divorcing Microsoft, their business data becomes free to be used by ANY software and not just Microsoft's. We've got a long way to go before that happens.
Still, I like the language Torvalds is speaking on this matter...
True, but you're missing the point:
I wasn't addressing MS's "point" at all. I was comparing MS with IBM re: Open Source, in the context of the post I was replying to.
They point had the same goal of marketing.
No, they have different goals (IBM vs MS) wrt Open Source. IBM actually embraces it as a model, MS does not.
Here are three reasons MS open sourced that one program:
1. They can say, "we have open source projects" (when their customers ask), even though it doesn't mean what it implies.
2. They can continue with, "we haven't found open source all that useful a model, really".
3. The installer will be used and improved.
Microsoft's one thing probably got more press and thus was more successful.
I'm absolutely certain that if you were to take a poll, more people would associate IBM with Open Source than MS, hands down.