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Microsoft Continues Anti-OSS Strategy
MacDaffy writes "Microsoft's General Manager of Platform Strategy, Michael Taylor, continues Microsoft's press blitz against Open Source in general and Linux in particular in a CNET Interview. He says of Linux: 'You can build it, design it, and it will work great. The trouble begins when you want to add things to it...(due to) the brittle nature of the platform, when you do that, other things break.'"
... in Windows, you don't have to add things to break it!
"The trouble begins when you want to add things to it...(due to) the brittle nature of the platform, when you do that, other things break." The words 'pot', 'kettle' and 'black' come to mind. Is Microsoft unaware that their registry is far more 'brittle'?
How is this news? It would be news if they stopped.
You can't say that Ubuntu is 'brittle', nor GoboLinux, nor MEPIS. If you want to add something to any of these distributions of a Linux-based operating system, you can, with ease.
.. you either roll your own, pitch a tent in a distro field, or take a pre-packaged solution from a vendor who has done the hard work for you...
...
Microsoft, however, in their positioning, are exploiting the human incapacity for understanding a generality when confronted with logo/brand positions. "Linux" is a huge field. You can't just say "Linux" and mean "All services that depend on a Linux-based solution". Its pathetic.
Microsoft know this; they frame the fight so that when they say "Linux" they mean all Linux-based distributions. But to a user of Linux who actually wants to use Linux, and knows how to use Linux, "there ain't no such thing as a Single Linux target"
I say this having used Linux now for 10 years, quite productively. I haven't used Microsoft-based products in that time. I hardly consider that a "GM for Platform Strategy" at Microsoft will have had that experience
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It seems like whenever a Microsoft employee speaks they generalize Linux into a huge ball, never mention a distro, and say it's bad. Surely this distro is not using RPM or Apt, which many distros are based on, and surely it is not Gentoo with portage. I also don't think they quite understand how Linux works in that things aren't breaking when the end user is too stupid to configure the program.
It's as if Microsoft made their own distro, coaxed it with unstable software from 5 years ago, give it no package managemnet, and say "this is all Linux is!". Ugh, it's enough to drive a sane man crazy.
One of the main features of Free Software is that you CAN add things to it, you have the source, and since GNU/Linux is a Unix-like system it's easy to automate tasks, and to interface with any software on the system. Each part of the system is a different project, with it's own interfaces well declared and documented. In the case of proprietary software, you are limited to the APIs provided, since you don't have access to the source, and also, all the system is badly designed, many things are just hacked toghether into random librarys, and the whole OS is a single mess, and you can only use the provided API (which is poorly documented) to interface with the system. In many cases, the SDKs and APIs are proprietary, and you have to pay thousands to use them, in many other cases, you are legally FORBIDDEN to modify/interface with certain software, so, again, how it's hard to add things to Free Software and easy to add them to Proprietary soft?.
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Just how many coders outside Microsoft have added parts to the windows kernel?, now think how many coders contribute to Linux, How many plugins are there for MSN, and how many for Gaim?, The list just goes on and on
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
There's really nothing innovative today that Linux does that we can't do.
Actually, I agree with his sentiment. He's bang on. There's nothing Linux does that Windows can't do, certaintly if you're willing to invest the time and effort to produce a solution.
But the opposite is also true. There's nothing Windows does that Linux can't do either.
So the "battle" comes down to other issues, not simply what each OS can or can't do. Those issues are things like cost, trust, support, availability.. And those are when open source really starts to win. Microsoft is a corporate behemoth. Making decisions in a company that size takes real time.. months, if not years. Things have to be discussed, agreed, signed off, checked, signed off again. Compare that to the open source world where someone sees an issue, writes a patch, submits it to the dev tree, and it's in if the maintainer likes it, maybe with a handful of emails bounced around a mailing list, and open source starts to get a real, tangible business advantage over Microsoft.
So yeah, I'd agree with Taylor's analysis that Windows is just as capable as Linux on the CPU.. But if he thinks that's where Linux's fighting ground ends, he's dead wrong.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Which is why many places have test machines to test windows updates
Each of which needs its own software licenses. Cha-ching! As long as you can pull it off, it's a heck of a revenue generating business model!
"Note to Microsoft: you have tried FUD in the past, it did not work." Not true! It has worked in the past. IBM just retired OS/2; an example of Microsoft's FUD working to great effect.
"people didn't really understand buffer overruns and port 80 and I/O issues 10 years ago."
That's the part that caught my attention. Is he seriously suggesting that 10 years ago no one had ever heard of a buffer overrun? That no one had heard of network security in 1995? Maybe they should have thought of that BEFORE they forcibly tied a Browser into their Flagship product.
-theGreater.
I agree with Martin Taylor that transitioning software on a Linux platform can be difficult. I also believe transitioning software on ANY platform is difficult. If it wasn't, none of us would have jobs.
I also agree with Martin Taylor that going to a Linux platform may prove more costly than first expected. I also know from experience that Microsoft roll-outs have additional cost.
For Example: MS Exchange server compared to SuSE OpenExchange (now Netline OpenExchange). Similar Products. Exchange is cheaper out of the box until you add Spam Control, Virus Control, etc... Also, Exchange counts licenses by CAL connection, OpenExchange is Licensed by concurrent connections - much cheaper. If you want you can even download the Netline Open-Xchange for free with no license restrictions.
Martin Taylor is correct on many points. Unfortunately his logic breaks down because those points are universal and not specific to OSS.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
When you look at the issue of buffer overruns, eight to 10 years ago in software development, you did not know how much space you might need for something so you just create a big buffer zone to allow things to happen. Who knew that people could go exploit that and use that buffer space to do malicious things?
I'm speechless. I have no words. Except... W... T... F! is he blathering on about?!?
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
If Linux weren't a threat, Microsoft wouldn't be smearing it in a campaign but instead treating it as an annoying little gnat - by ignoring it and lauding it's own positives. By paying so much attention to and attempting to shape Linux's image publicly, Microsoft is validating it by its own advertising despite the negative content.
People with brains will realize what is propaganda and check Linux out on their own. Thanks to MS.
Many of them being family guys, they cannot turn these offers down due to finances. Kids are expensive, wives are expensive, SUVs are pricy, gas is pricy, taxes, computer hardware, and on and on.
So there aren't any other IT companies that are neutral or pro-Open source left in the world that he could have worked for, that would have paid a decent salary ? Have IBM gone out of business, and I don't know about it ?
Your statement almost implies that there are no employers left in any field at all, other than Microsoft, that are paying a living wage. Do I need to point out how unrealistic that implication is ?
The shame is Daniel's, not Microsoft's. Microsoft found somebody with the skills and experience they wanted, and who was willing to work for them. It was Daniel's choice, and he decided to sell out, probably for the money.
PS. Don't need an SUV. If they are costing too much in fuel, get a smaller car, such as a normal sized sedan ....
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Maybe Debian is brittle -- I highly doubt it -- but when I want to add something to my SuSE box that isn't pre-packaged, it's perhaps more difficult than popping open YaST and clicking around, but I haven't had the experiences you have. I rather prefer to roll my own copies of a lot of big software -- Apache, MySQL, PHP, Samba, and others come readily to mind. Usually, I find that it goes very well. I honestly can't recall the last time it took me anywhere near an hour to compile and install anything on Linux.
Ironically -- although this might be what Taylor is talking about -- I *do* find that I have difficulty installing proprietary software on Linux. Although it tries to hold your hand more, it frequently fails to Do The Right Thing, IMHO.
Furthermore, even if Andrew's experience is more typical than mine, it doesn't mean that Taylor was right. Taylor's claiming that installing non-prepackaged software breaks *other* stuff; that's patently false. A difficult system (what Andrew is claiming Linux can be) is very very different from a brittle system (what Taylor is claiming it is). Solaris is, IMHO, a very difficult system to install stuff on -- at least, stuff that's not prepackaged from Sun or SunFreware. Some of the other Unixes, like AIX and Tru64, are even more so. That doesn't make them brittle.
A brittle system is one where, say, installing a service pack breaks compatibility with many network services and programs. But, as many other posters have pointed out, that is much more descriptive of certain OS's whose names begin with a "w" and end with an "indows."
Another one bites the dust
Linux has no anti-Microsoft strategy yet people are migrating from Windows to Linux.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
From the article:
And what is open source? It is interesting in how you define it. Is it in terms of source visibility? Then, OK, in Microsoft's Shared Source program, people can access up to 65 percent of source codes for our core products. And through the government security program around the world, governments can access even more of our source codes, if they choose to. So we're not an open-source company, and yet people can do that.
Hey Martin, here's the definition of Open Source. Notice in the first paragraph it says Open Source doesn't just mean access to the source code. I doubt if you'd like it if people went around redefining your company's EULAs to suit themselves.
Or does it mean that you have technology licensed under the GPL (GNU Public License)? If that's the only definition, then I see a lot of companies that people call open source but aren't, because they're not licensed under the GPL.
No it isn't the only definition so your answer is irrelevant. The GPL may qualify as Open Source but it is Free Software - big difference. Don't you even know the difference?
Taylor: The GPL is a very complex licensing agreement, and they are working on different aspects of it.
It's an incredibly simple licensing agreement actually. Complex for Microsoft to understand perhaps, but simple for anyone else.
I don't know enough to even hypothesize how I would author it, but I would say that in any approach to licensing technology, the following things are important.
First, companies need to have some level of indemnification and protection from the technology deployed. When you license technology as a consumer or business, you should be comfortable that you're protected from patent (or) copyright...claims from anyone. That should be a core fundamental principle of licensing software.
Well, thanks for leading the way there. I'm so glad I'm indemnified when I use Microsoft software. Oh wait, I'm not?
Second, people should have the ability to monetize that and build on top of it. So if I'm an ISV (independent software vendor), I should be able to take the technology that I've licensed, build something on top of it, and sell it.
I do that with GPLed software now and have done for years. So have many other people.
If I'm a reseller or distributor of this technology, I should have a way that I can build and monetize things around that. I think that's what helps you build a very vibrant ecosystem. It also allows you in some ways to protect the intellectual property in different ways.
The GPL already allows this - and my "intellectual property" (whatever that means) is already protected by copyright law.
So this ability to patent your technology and have some level of protection against it, and in the course be able to build on top of that and innovate on top of that, is exciting.
Wait, so it's about patents now? Perhaps you can show me some genuine innovation in software that has been patented by Microsoft? You can't? Oh.
So what kind of innovation are you doing in your area for Microsoft?
Taylor: There are things we're excited about, and there are things that are just the basics. We spend close to $6.8 billion in research and development; it really comes in a variety of areas.
One area is just some fit-and-finish, and taking basic simple processes and doing it better. We have a feature called Configure Your Server Wizard, which allows you to go in and choose a server role so you can take a file server and (rebuild it as a) media server. That takes four to five clicks of a GUI (graphic user interface)
Reconfiguring a server using the mouse? Goodness me, what will they think of next!
Taylor: You have to understand why we have security problems today. In some ways, it's because a lot more things are connected today than they
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
However, it turns out that Microsoft doesn't offer much more than FOSS when it comes to backing their product. The following is from the WinXP EULA:
WTF does the NON-INFRINGEMENT statement refer to?
"What you mean 'WE', Kemosabe?"
:o) And when the HD died, the machine kept on ticking. This isn't the first time I'd experienced it, so I recommended to them that they not panic and deal with it during the regular maintenance period (on the weekend.) It kept happily running until I powered it off to replace the drive. I've no doubt that it would have continued to run until the power ran out (which would have been a long time, as it was on a big honking UPS.)
There's really nothing innovative today that Linux does that we can't do.
If by "we" he means Microsoft, then the response is "well duh" (after all, they *do* have the source code.)
But the obvious response is "then why don't you?"
I use Linux machines as routers for a local school district. A couple of weeks ago, the HD in one of them died - and nobody noticed (well, I noticed when the nightly backup didn't happen.) This machine was doing packet filtering, traffic shaping, and policy routing (iproute2 rocks!
Let's see Windows do traffic shaping.
Let's see Windows do policy routing.
Then let's see it keep running when you rip out the hard drive.
That's not a bug, it's a feature!
Really, the state of GNU/Linux is a product of its users as much as anything else. Many Linux users want to compile a number of their own apps, especially on servers.
Universal package management should be a goal for all distros, but they won't ever Windows-ize Linux software installation.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
.. they are first and formost a marketing company, They will say, in their marketing any thing they can that they believe will help them "market" their products.
Second, they are a marketing company that uses law as the game rules they play by, like in chess where you typically sacrifice some of your own players in effort to win. This is verified over and over again with their persistant effort to try and distort the law enough to get away with acts of anti-trust. They simply prefer to not play fair. And this is undersandable as they are least of all a company of innovation, but rather a company buying out innovation of others and then either closing it down or marketing it as their innovation.
The more the general public understands this, sees MS for what MS really is, a marketing company with a legal team to help them figure out what they can get away with, the better it is for the general public in making an operating system choice.
People = "Microsoft Employees", Programmers that program for Microsoft Products, Administrators that run Microsoft Products and similar "people". It's best written as (Microsoft) People, but you can leave the (Microsoft) bit off, if you are one of those people...
The quote should have been more like this:
"Ten years ago, (Microsoft) people didn't really understand Buffer Overruns, Port 80 and I/O Issues."
This is, or should be, similarly inferred when we have another major network news release about a "computer" or "Internet", examples follow.
"A new (Microsoft) Computer Virus in making the rounds through (Microsoft Outlook) E-mail Clients."
"A new (Microsoft OS Targeting) Internet Worm was discovered on (Microsoft OS Running) Computers yesterday morning which quickly spread across the (Microsoft OS Running Portion of the) Internet."
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
In case of install, break Windows.
In case of using IE, break Windows.
In case of using Outlook Express, break windows.
In case of buying a new graphics card, break windows.
In case of using it for a couple months, break windows.
Heh.. the title of the article should have been: "Microsoft Continues Anti-OS Strategy"
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Your example is an valid one for "Typical home users", however the article is discussing Business stategies, not End/Home User.
;-) ./peaCe
This article is ridiculous flamebait. Anyone who is a Decision Maker, recognizes the usefullness of both Operating Systems. I don't imagine we'll ever see an interview from an executive at microsoft, whereas he states "You should use Linux for this... and our product for that."
I just don't see how this is "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters". Microsoft claiming that their competitors suck, that's not news to anyone.. and it certianly doesn't matter to me.
Now microsoft providing a way to setup NTP without editing the registry, That would be News! Or RedHat providing me with a reason why cups test print works to my Epson POS, but actual print jobs don't.. That's stuff that matters
Awesome!
A little while ago I was called in to teach a Solaris course. I asked the lab admins to install the Solaris Community CD. They were like "Oh, no. We've got a system that works. We don't want to change anything". The fear in their voice was palpable.
I was dumfounded for a second. All I was asking them to do was add a CD's worth of random software. Nothing was even being enabled... then it dawned on me. "Oh. You're used to Windows aren't you? This is Unix. It's actually stable when you add software to it.
Ultimately I had my students add in the software. It was easier. I just mounted the CD image and made it available by NFS. They installed the software and all was well.
The fact that people are so scared of making changes to Windows disgusts me, but I don't think it's going to change. It's part of their FUD campaign. "If WIndows is so bad, what's it going to be like to go to a new system?"
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.