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OSDL CEO: Microsoft Has to Accept Linux
PenguinCandidate writes "The OSDL's Stuart Cohen has been in the news lately following a clandestine meeting with Microsoft about a dubiously independent TCO study; a study that has since been rejected by the OSDL. The idea of an independent Windows/Linux TCO comparison may be dead, but did Cohen have an additional card up his sleeve?
In this interview, Cohen states that while he "awaits the reply from MS's Martin Taylor on the results of his internal investigation" into how an off-the-record meeting became public, he will continue to promote his belief that MS will eventually have to accept Linux as customer demand increases."
What occurred to me is that there's something rather bizarre about how little interest has been generated by the complete destruction of a major US city a few days ago. I've barely blinked (sent money, couldn't do anything else, shrugged and went back to work) and in general there seems to have been a lot less fuss than I certainly would have imagined something like this would prompt.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
In an odd way, that's exactly what I believe Microsoft wishes the situation to be: Linux the junior partner to Windows. Microsoft will not accept Linux as the dominant server in the enterprise in any way. It has been suggested that recent acquisitions in the area of enterprise management by Microsoft is to ensure that whatever the Linux/Windows balance is, Windows will be in charge of the data centre. All the better to enforce its IP rights, no doubt.
I hear MCSE's praise Active Directory to the skies and claim that Unix ACL's can never match W2K's group attribute management. I don't really see anything a competent Unix admin couldn't match with OpenLDAP and efficient automation, but that's not the point, its the idea that whatever Linux can do, Windows has already done it and in a superior fashion. This is the direction I expect the pro-Microsoft argument to run once they've "accepted" that their TCO argument has failed.
The true value of open source solutions involving Linux and the *BSD's is that you're not trapped into one management model, and only the larger adoptees seem to have grasped this. If Microsoft insist on being the gatekeeper in the server market, they might have more resistance than they expected.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
In fact Windows is the younger brother (Unix has been around much longer), even if Windows has grown up looking like Tyson.
I am not interested in "recognition", whatever that means, nor comparisons. MS and their customers (pointy haired office managers and Joe Sixpack home users) are welcome to go their own way. Linux has by now established a viable user base.
I just want to see MS pressurised or forced to use open file standards.
>Wow. If that's true Apple's in deep shit.
Not really. OSX actually works (so they say), and significant portions of it are open source. Not the eyecandy, of course, but the foundations. If the world really needs what he said, Apple may do just fine. Is that really what the world wants? I haven't seen much evidence of demand for either ``actually works'' or ``open source''. I hope I'm wrong about that, but history suggests that the inferior product has a huge advantage.
The market is big enough for lots of players.
I remember before the IBM PC. Back then, when the market was a lot smaller, there really was room for lots of players. There was Vector Graphics, IMSAI, Altair, Altos, Otrona, Kaypro, Osbourne, General Automation, Franklin, Apple, Commodore, Northstar, Tandy, Heathkit (including a kit PDP-11!) and many others, running Xenix, single or multi-user variants of CPM, Pick, and I don't know what-all. I worked on or with them all. I had a diskette with a program which allowed me to read 43 different, proprietary, soft-sectored floppy disk formats. Obviously, that didn't include the 8-inch floppies and the hard-sectored ones like the Vector graphics. There were many manufacturers, and a huge variety of hardware and software.
Then came IBM. Suddenly the market was huge, and there wasn't room for all those many computer makers and their diverse products. Of that list of hardware and software platforms I mentioned above, how many are around today? How many do you even remember?
I'd say the microcomputer market is either way too small for ``lots of players'', or way too big. Right now, it seems to be about right for Wintel (or WinAMD) and a maybe Apple, and Apple's been dying at least as long as BSD.
See what I've been reading.
Why is there this feeling of Windows has to die, Linux must take over? okay its fair enough to monitor the linux uptake, because it can spark confidence in the community, and also encourage developers to take into account the rapidness of the uptake, however these figures should not be compared to other OSs.
We also have to remember, the majority of users don't switch OSs just because they think Windows is Evil, its almost always down to the "User Needs".
As for all this media coverage over Linux Vs Windows, and TCO Campaigns, when will see news of NEW and INNOVATIVE operating systems, like i recently stumbled on SKYOS(http://www.skyos.org/) which looks promising, and is commercial, none of the usual UNIX FOSS dervatives.
If I change the oil in my car myself, every ~3000 miles, it costs me about $20. If I have to take it to Quicky Lube it's about $32
You've missed another important point in the comparison: take it to a company like that, and they suck the oil out from the filler tube, which leaves all the crap in your engine's sump. Do it yourself, and you get the opportunity to undo the sump nut, thereby removing all the crap.
In other words, do it yourself and get it done right...
Linux users already outnumber Mac users.
That's entirely untrue.
Linux may be relatively popular among w3school.com users, but certaintly not among the general popular. In the statistics for the sites that my company administers (including a large national charity which receives huge amounts of traffic) Mac usage outnumbers Linux usage 20 to 1.
you only joined recently.
you joined to defend your 'review' of the ie7 beta in which you praise ms for creating 'superior software' and for adding new, innovative features.
now you claim the linux destop offers no significant advantage, is only for techies AND is a cheap knock off of windows.
the time lost and costs associated with the removal of adware, spyware and trojans is a significant disadvantage for ms windows. and that is just one of the advantages for linux that i care to mention atm.
there are a plethora of desktop environments for *nix, some of which are nothing like the windows ui. have you seen a modern linux desktop?
what are these missing features for non-technical people? file storage - check. internet browsing - check. office suite - check. media playback - check.
every post by you is decidely ms-centric, so i am thinking your experience with linux is fairly limited.
"you must be young, son
because your head is all wrong"
- me
sum.zero
ps i wrote this on a windows workstation
I'm no "communist hippie" type - if people want to pay for "out of the box" software then let them do it. But to me, and a large proportion of the Linux community, using Linux means having complete control over every aspect of how your PC runs and installing a closed source application on Linux would be an entirely "alien" thing to do. For that reason, I wouldn't buy or use MS Office if it was available for Linux.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Yesterday I had the prideful pleasure of watching my eldest daughter show me how she can play ANY of her CD's on her linux box. She uses FireFox, openOffice, Gaim, Thunderbird, Gimp, and soon Blender3D; All on KDE from a Knoppix distro. Her "Jump Start" games are starting to collect dust next to the Win'98se master cd. When she asked what is "BSOD"? I said, "It's just your father dating himself."
Sure microsoft will be making software to run on Linux but what kind of profits will it be generating, the same kind of profits it generates from it's xbox division or the profits it used to generate from it's office and os division.
Microsoft has to continue in the current marketing vein of all or nothing (not that it has to be real, it just has to convince it's share holders that it is real, as they are the ones that control it's share value). With out the effective monopoly, which is currently evaporating before their eyes, to be blunt, they are Flocked.
Have you really got evindence of microsoft "making money" if so, I am sure the US secret service will be very interested (after all that is what you implied in the context that you used it).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
But that's only your situation. I live 20 miles outside of the city with no community requirements whatsoever. I can change the oil in my garage or out on the lawn if I so wished.
I've got the extra time, and LOVE working on things. I build my own computers, I work on my own guns (rebuilt 2 Mausers and built a 1911 handgun from all aftermarket parts), and I'm working on building my own airplane (a Zodiac 601XL for anyone into the homebuilding scene). To me, I actually take ENJOYMENT out of things like this.
It's all a matter of perspective. Saying that just because it takes time then it's a cost is not accurate. There are some things that even if it were of equal cost to pay someone or do it myself, I'd still do it myself.
And the same applies to my Linux system. I like tinkering with it to get it running just right. And besides, my knowledge of Unix-like systems helped me get my current job.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If by "crap" you mean dirt and carbon particules, they are held in suspension in the oil and sucked out at the same time. If by "crap" you mean sludge, you should fix whatever is sludging your oil (probably a stuck open or missing thermostat). If by "crap" you mean metal particles, your motor has got some problems that an oil change is unlikely to fix.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
You are comparing car industry to software industry. Cars are not suppose to interoperate or lets put it other way, you cannot drive a Chrysler and Toyota at one time...however you can use Linux and run microsoft products within it. "Accept Linux" means acknowledge the fact that Linux is a viable alternative to your (MS) products and stop the subversive software practices that MS is famous for. Coming back to your Chrysler-Toyota example, Toyota and Chrysler both implicitely accept that they are competitors and they both try to make good products...it is just that they don't interoperate due to the nature of industry they are in.
When I use the term "core market" I might better be saying "stronghold market." The core market is the area where the product is not only widely used but derives a dispurportionate aspect of its sustinance. Core markets in this way are very hard to attack.
Microsoft's core market is the corporate workstation market, due to the dependence on Microsoft RAD tools, office suites, and operating systems. If this market falls, Microsoft falls software ceases to be the influence it currnetly is.
Similarly, Linux's core market is in the low-margin technology-centric world of the ISP, the embedded system vendors (TIVO), and hobbyists. ISP's were early adopters, and many employ maintenance developers part time for products like Linux, Apache, etc. If the ISP market would have gone to Windows in 1999, it would have set Linux back decades. If Microsoft had been able to convince embedded system vendors to use Windows CE (maybe free licenses on all products manufactured in the next 5 years), the same might be true today. And had Microsoft ever been able to leverage hobbyists the way Linux can, we would be in trouble.
The fact is that Microsoft is in a "containment" strategy. They are not trying to eliminate Linux at the moment. They are trying to keep it out of their core markets. And they are failing.
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