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Harvard Concludes Linux Will Remain Second Best
watzinaneihm writes "A Harvard Study which uses formal economic modelling to determine "Will OSS ever displace traditional software from its market leadership position?" came to a (not so?) surprising result. Linux is likely to remain second best as long as Microsoft has a first mover advantage."
Now that Macs are developing/supporting a BSD based OS, I think Linux will also lose some desktop share here as well.
In fact, I know of a few friends who chose to get a MacBook and keep OSX on it because they described it as "Linux with more hardware support" (or at least better support directly for the Mac). Not saying this is true, but that it is another well supported Unix alternative.
Surprisingly enough, I'm finding the exact opposite to be true.
;)
I've talked at length about how I deploy an entirely Microsoft-enabled enviroment for my college. 600+ machines, all running XP and Office 2003. 24 servers, all 2000/2003. A pretty typical Microsoft-enabled environment really.
However, I've personally just gone down the Linux route for my work laptop, and I'm giving projects like Edubuntu serious consideration for older, non-Vista compliant hardware.
I have no doubt that companies with ££££s to throw around will buy new machines that are pre-loaded with Vista, and they'll inevitably begin the Vista rollout come SP1. But big business is not everything; I know many of my fellow network managers in education are giving serious consideration to OSS solutions.
We're educating the business people of tomorrow, and if they are introduced to OSS at a younger age, I think we'll see some interesting changes somewhere down the line.
Well, I hope so...
"Will OSS ever displace traditional software from its market leadership position?" came to a (not so?) surprising result. Linux is likely to remain second best as long as Microsoft has a first mover advantage."
The only problem here is that OSS isn't the same thing as Linux. Apache is OSS, but it's not Linux.
When we (and by we, I mean the linux community) hit a larger portion of user base, say 10% of desktop market (if that will ever happen) linux is going to be well known, and I don't mean that just by the name, but people will actually from time to time use a computer that has linux installed.
Then and not until then will my mother think "why do I need this windows for anyway?" and might try linux out on the home computer. Then the kids start getting used to it (from home, school and most important, friends) and the adoption to linux REALLY hits, because no household will pay $$$ for an operating system if they know one that's usable for free. Not to mention the applications.
Alongside, user friendly distros such as ubuntu, mandriva and feodora will grow even easier to use (as a matter of fact, I think ubuntu is easier (and faster) to install than windows XP or 2000).
Harwatd may be brilliant in their analysis, but their conclusion is plain wrong.
People and companies don't switch to Linux because of a single reason its free. They switch because they know Linux is a viable alternative to MSFT Tax and technically can "match" [yeah flame me, but that's what companies think] Windows.
Harward was the one who predicted Nuclear powered cars would replace Gasoline cars in 1956.
They are just plain stupid.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Microsoft developed a lot of "standard" principles and features but that period is now over. For most people, computers are powerful and complex enough. Where Linux can excel is NOT being first to add new features but simply refining the interface and usefulness of what we have now. Mac OS X has been extraordinarily effective at this and Linux can be too. Windows is only going to get more bloated and cumbersome.
Intel always thought they'd be #1, eh?
I think Vista is where Microsoft will fork strongly. There are several smaller forks out there, people who refused to leave NT or 2000 or 98 SE, their PC's do what they want and they see no reason to buy new hardware everytime Intel or Microsoft say "Yow! New! Must have!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It is like saying Tiger Woods will remain number one as long as no one comes along who is better. Or this guy will live as long as he does not die.
You need to go to Harvard to come to lame conclusions like this? Nah, you need to go to Harvard to write escape clauses like this. If Linux become dominant you just declare, "MSFT no longer has the first mover advantage, so I am right". If Linux fades to obscurity, you can go "See, I told ya, Linux will never become numero uno"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
While I haven't read TFA yet, I have some difficulty with the word "best". I can think of various definitions of "best" for which Linux has been ahead of Windows, and various definitions for which Windows is ahead of Linux. How that will change when Vista comes out is, I think, impossible to say at this stage. Even if we assume we know what features will be in Vista and what the overall package will be like, we don't know when Vista will really be released, nor what Linux (what Linux, anyway?) will look like by that time.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It seems to me like Linux could be very healthy with second place, if market share approached 30% of its primary market - server space. That's enough penetration that it can't be ignored for interoperability.
Short version in English: Harvard says that because MS has more market share, it will have more market share.
Isn't that the thinking that kept IBM in control of computing in the 1970s?
--
make install -not war
As with economists, you could lay all of America's business professors end to end and still never reach a conclusion.
Linux does not aim to be best, second best or ninety-third best. Take Debian: it aims to provide a free universal operating system. How well it does, in the perception of others, is only incidental to Debian's core purpose. So, looking at all this in terms of winners and losers or best and worst is largely illusory. Linux is doing just fine and does not have to hit some arbitrary bar - such as overtaking Microsoft's market share - to continue to do just fine.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Harvard is a business school not exactly *the best* technical school. But I digress. I'd rather hear from MIT or Berkley or Perdue or whatnot on the matter...
They don't mention customer support, security and bug releases, interoperability with large scale Solaris/AIX/HPUX environments, proprietory protocols just for silly documents, business ethics, embedded devices, etc.
I'm no Linux zealot but I have to say any conclusion of any sort would be an egotistical and hubris opinion meant to spread FUD.
When I reach into my toolbox I definately don't say it's pliers vs screwdriver which is best tool and come to a conclusion and then write a paper on the topic.
The nerve of some people...
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
here? You would think that to some people, knowing someone used a Microsoft product was akin being spit on. Why? I'm a mac user but that doesn't mean I really give a damn if someone else uses Windows, Linux or anything else. Hell, I use Linux at work. It's no skin off my back, my OS doesn't stop working because someone is using Windows.
I consider my operating system to be a tool, not a way of life, not something that defines me. Maybe that is why I never understood OS evangelism. Can someone please explain to me that when someone says "Linux will not be the most popular desktop operating system in existence" Linux users feel the need to sling such insults as "numbnuts"(which by the way is not very mature and not likely to win you very many converts) towards them?
Monstar L
We conjecture that there are multiple equilibria and that the use of FUD to mold perceptions about future value becomes crucial.
Well, you are certainly helping with that one.
I'm surprised they didn't make the bold prediction that Compuserve will remain a dominant player in the dial-up accesss business for years to come.
Pick a Study. Any Study. G'head, g'head, pick two, we'll make more...
If the Linux community wants to have the "first mover advantage" it probably can.
"Open Source" isn't a group of programmers in a single building with team leaders managing them. They're thousands of people across the world. Also, anyone can be an OSS developer.
This should be a great advantage over Microsoft's way of doing stuff, and I'm really surprised that free/open source software isn't already orders of magnitude ahead of proprietary offerings. Perhaps OSS developers should spend less time copying Windows and/or Apple and start thinking about new ways of using our computers. Or, since the source is open and developers plentiful, have multiple groups where some work on recreating the Windows experience and others creating the next generation of software.
I suggest that IBM/Google etc, create a "blue sky" projects group. And give it a lot of publicity and support. Let's stop the "Microsoft is ahead" idea already!
And they pay people to come up with this stuff?
While I am loathed to tell people who know a lot more about economics than me how they should do their jobs I can't help feeling that they might have failed to (correctly) factor in some considerations. Not least is the consideration that Linux is free and always will be where as Windows will pretty much always be pay for even if it has a nominal price. Yes Microsoft could give Windows away in order to sell Office or other applications but that is a fundamental shift in the market and I don't think anyone could truly predict what the outcome of that could be.
Assuming that Linux continues to advance at the pace it is currently advancing it will match Windows for ease of use and features in a couple of years. The stumbling block is, of course, drivers but lets face it 98% of computers fall into one of two camps: those that never suffer driver upgrades because they are bought from "Dell" or they are run by people who know what they are doing.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
By the same logic, you could argue that cars will never replace trains, MP3s will never displace CDs, and so forth.
Bottled water? Not a chance! Creeks and brooks not only come pre-installed in most landscapes but they also have an insurmountable first mover advantage, greater mind share, and a more "intuitive" user interface. Sure, a few special-needs groups will drink out of canteens that they fill themselves, but it will never catch on with the general public.
And don't even get me started on the whole "forks and spoons" fad.
--MarkusQ
``That's because MSFT had a goddamn 10 year headstart.''
Did they, really? Slackware 1.0 was released in July 1993, years before Windows 95. Being Linux, it was 32-bit, had proper multi tasking, separation of tasks, permissions, the ext2 filesystem, etc. It also had X, and there was a dos emulator included, so you could run old DOS programs. Basically, a lot of features that Microsoft's offerings would only have years later.
I think GNU/Linux was there first...it just didn't have the marketing that Windows had.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
From the article "piracy may even result in higher profits to Microsoft!". Now that is interesting.
It doesn't matter which ape activates the Monolith
When ever I talk about purchases of computer and OS to bigwigs. It basically breaks down as LInux is a Free OS and could be considered good enough to do what they want to. What usually sowers the deal with Linux is the fact that the company usually has some software that is for windows only and moving off it is out of the question. Many times it is a CAD Program, other times it is some old custom app that cannot be replaced (Cheaply) and the people who made it are long gone. And on some other situation companies just went threw a painful migration from old Unix to Windows and they are not willing to go back to a Unix like platform for a long time (Even though Linux and newer Unix have far more to offer then their 1989 SCO box).
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm sure the first mover advantage enjoyed by mercedeez, audi, etc. translate into market share right?
OH NO WAIT!! IT DOESN'T!!
The vast majority of people are happy just driving around cheap, reliable, toyotas and hondas that meet their minimal transportation needs. The modders and street racers, also prefer these cars because they are well laid out and easy to modify. (ever try to mod a luxury car with the dearth of documentation? )
Professional racing uses specially constructed cars for their needs. So where does the luxury car fit into the car market? RIGHT! the social status market i.e. people with more money than sense, which incidentally is a good description of the windows vista market.
MS would be in court so fast being accused of trying to monopolize, exploit their "monopoly", etc if they followed the idea put forward that they give away the OS to specific clients just to prevent any other OS //Linux// from gaining ground. On the server side there are only so many *nix/Novell installations to be consumed, once that is done seeing who takes the most of the others installations will show us the real market.
On a side note, Microsoft doesn't need to "oust Linux". Yet it can make Linux irrelevant by maintaining the market percentage it has or combining forces with someone else to do so. OS/X is a great alternative and doesn't hurt MS nearly as much anymore. Why? Well there is that boot camp for the new machines which can result in continued Windows use and that little thing called "Office".
The worse thing that could come down the pike for Linux is for Apple to get into the server OS market. Give the best of the *nix world with a friendly and intuitive face.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A lot of us aren't in OSS for the the ride to the top. I personally couldn't care if 1% of the population used OSS or 99%. As long as I have the freedom to use the software that I want when I want to, then things are fine with me. And _that_ is one of my peeves against the Microsoft Corp.: by the very nature of their marketing/functioning the people who use their software tend to be drones in that they know not how to function with anyone else doesn't have the dam 4 colored Windows logo all over them.
I like Linux and the majority of OSS tools that I use because I prefer them to their Window's based counterparts, with a few exceptions. I have found that explaining to someone that Linux is "better" than Windows is like explaining gold is better than silver - they have a jewelry box full of a silver and their minds just aren't willing to absorb new information on that topic - and why, they think they are happy with what they have. All that will happen is that eventually, I will not know enough of Windows to troubleshoot their machines anymore
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
remember when linux was said to be just a hobbist os that would amount to nothing?
TFA suggests that FUD is a strong weapon against "Forward-looking" clients, and uses SCO as an example of that. The counter position is that Linux (and OSS in general) needs "strategic partners" -- large organizations (governments and corporations) who adopt for security or competitive reasons.
From my perspective, the biggest threat to OSS adoption right now isn't precisely FUD, but the increasing conflict between how people use ideas and how governments regulate them. TFA points out that OSS is attractive because OSS developers like to collaborate and to share ideas; in fact, free exchange of information is a basic human trait. Even the costs incurred in the discipline and training needed to evaluate such information (=education) makes people uneasy. Intellectual Property as a concept came pretty late.
But that's where the threat is: apply/change the law to legislate F/OSS out of existence.
The rest of the article is pretty straightforward: large institutions, such as governments, have it in their interest to use F/OSS, since non-proprietary, open code is cheaper to maintain (vendor lock-in does not occur). But governments do not have perfect access to the information: by its market position, Microsoft (and, mutatis mutandis, big ISPs in their anti-net Neutrality bids, and so on) has a privileged voice in legislation.
And that is where FUD is useful: not to discourage "forward-looking" clients, as to use legislation to change the playing field to their advantage. With the right targets, F/OSS jsut disappears.
In case people haven't noticed, linux has not only caught up, but surpassed Windows, in terms of stability, modularity, customizability, ease of install, maintainability of the code base, etc.
That last one - maintainability of the code base, is a killer. There will be no Windows after Vista. Even Microsoft has alluded to as much.
BTW - That "etc" I mentioned includes REPUTATION. What is the reputation of linux vs windows? Ask any virus-writer.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
If you are selling garden hoses, the cost of switching to a competing brand is just the replacement cost of a garden hose. If a company is switching software from one vendor to another, the switching cost is considerably more than just plain cost of new software. Like changing the garden hose requiring you change all the plumbing fitting and pressure valves in your home! The first mover advantage is directly proportional to the switching cost. Where are Lycos and Hotbot now? All vendors know that and they strive hard to increase the switching costs, from AutoCAD, Ansys, Fluent, Cadence, to Oracle, MSFT every dominant vendor in the market tries as hard as possible to make it inpossible to switch.
The reason why garden hoses, light bulbs and tires have low switching cost is because of standardization. Standards defined by independant third parties, not by the manufacturers themselves. People, consumers and corporations are beginning to understand the issue, as seen the recent moves by Massassuchetts to mandate ODF as the archival format for its documents. It is inevitable that people will see the advantages of interoperability and standardization. The first mover advantage will diminish as consumers level the playing field by demanding interoperability and standardization. At that time the "second mover" into these fields will be OSS with value added services.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You can make the entire discussion as complex as you want, but there is only one reason why Linux doesn't succeed on the desktop market: Most commercial application are written for Windows, among them are a lot of specialist applications like ERP systems and to name another example "analysis software which interoperates with an advanced metal detector to detect explosives in the ground". With these kind of applications you can't just switch to an alternative, because there are just too few that match your needs and often NONE of them support Linux. The only way for Linux to succeed in these kind of settings is to make Wine work flawlessly. While Linux suits my home needs and server needs -very well-, it's useless on the desktop at the company I work for.
FTFA: "Consider SCO, a small Swiss-based 'vulture' firm"
Now we know why the lawsuit has so many holes in it.
I'll wait to see what Yale thinks, Thank you very much...
God Be Gone
I disagree. The article is quite interesting.
/. summary doesn't quite get the conclusion right. From TFA:
They do point out that OSS is coming from behind in terms of market share becasue it is much newer. In addition, the
Our main result is that in the absence of cost asymmetries and as long as Windows has a first-mover advantage (a larger installed base at time zero), Linux never displaces Windows of its leadership position.
One of the things the study suggested that MS will have to do to maintain its dominance is significantly lower Windows' price to the point where price is not a factor when choosing between MS and OSS. There were cases in the model where OSS 'beats' Windows, but they all assumed a significant price difference between the two, which, as OSS threatens MS more and more, may become less and less likely, due to MS lowering it's prices.
The article also went into interesting points like which is better for the people. The conclusion was that an OSS monopoly is better than a Windows monopoly, but that a OSS-Windows mix is not always better than a Windows monopoly, due to a splitting of efforts. As a person who feels that the spitting of efforts in OSS is one of it's strengths due to the choices it gives us, I disagree with that one.
``Want to get a heated debate going among technologists? Ask them this question: Can the open source software movement defeat (or severely cripple) Microsoft in the marketplace?''
I had hoped, probably somewhat naively, that the smart fellas at Harvard would be above thinking that it's all about petty avarice towards Microsoft. I, at least, don't feel I'm on any sort of quest to defeat Microsoft. I just want to use my computer, and make it do what I want, and make it do what it does the way I want it. Open-source systems suit me better than closed-source ones. But I don't care much how many people use Windows and how many people use Windows, although I find it sad when people make what I see as wrong choices because they don't have the right information or because they refuse to consider it. However, that has nothing to do with Microsoft, and everything to do with caring about truth and fairness.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The poster's summary is extremely misleading. The article is not about which OS is best, it's about whether OSS can grab most of Microsoft's marketshare. If you're basing decisions about "best" software on marketshare, then congratulations, you will doubtless be regularly promoted up the toady pole until your company goes out of business. Soon.
I'm awake! The answer is BONK!
But, I'm not sure the article makes sense for servers. In fact, with servers it could be argured that *NIX systems had the headstart.
Actually, the "first mover advantage" arguement has another flaw: msft is usually (always?) not the first mover. Apple had a popular PC before the IBM PC. Apple had a great GUI system a decade before msft had anything to compare. Netscape had the first widely used browser. Novell had the first widely used LAN software for PCs. Msft office products were the first, or the best, or the most popular, for a long time.
Still msft's monopoly on the desktop makes it virtually impossible for Linux to ever catch-up:
- Since windows has 95% of the desktop market: HW/SW makers will make for Windows first. If the make stuff for Mac or Linux, at all, it will be a distant afterthought.
- Msft, with tens of billions of dollars in the bank, has enormous influence with hw/sw makers and politicians. Msft freely, and massively abuses the legal, political, and business systems; both in the USA and internationally.
- IMO: the most important thing for an OS to do - by far - is to run your applications, and work with your hardware. If an OS doesn't do that, it doesn't matter how fast it boots up, or how virus resistant it is, or anything like that. First and foremost: the OS must run what you need to run. Few people run an OS just to run the OS.
- Popular F/OSS apps are always ported to windows. Which means that in terms of apps, windows users are insured the best of the both worlds.
I'm not having any illusions of Linux being the #1 OS in two, three, maybe even five years but its inevitable that someday it will be. Second-best is good enough. Extrapolate that mathematical model by a few more years and will be the best. While hundreds of millions of PCs ship each year, not counting the DIY PCs (that don't have Windows installed), this time people have a choice. The Linux revolution won't necessarily begin in the US. There are lots of 2nd, 3rd world countries where $99 a pop isn't a joke.
Games are the only reason I (and lots others I suspect) haven't totally switched to Linux. This was exactly the same reason a lot of people in the early to mid 90s didn't entirely switch to Windows from DOS yet, till it became a viable gaming platform.
This study is useless. Didn't Bill Gates go to Harvard? Did M$ reward his alma meter with a little grant in exchange for a decent review? Everyone knows that non-free software is a sinking ship. Free software long ago surpassed non-free, which is something everyone except M$ is waking up to. People are realising that M$ is stagnating and that Vista will suck, and that GNU is the way to go.
Friends don't help friends install MS junk.
...to conquer the desktop, IMHO.
/dev and update it automagically, a la Windows, since Joe Sixpack cannot be expected to know how to manually send SIGHUP to udev after they've plugged in new hardware. Driver support for individual devices is an ongoing issue, as well.
;)
1) Games. With Cedega and the Wine project, this hurdle has actually gone close to being cleared. Granted, our own native answer to DirectX would help, but the fact that Wine runs WoW in particular without too much screwing around is a huge plus.
2) Package management that is truly good, and not just "good enough." Contrary to popular belief, this problem still has not been solved. I've written about this in a few other posts.
3) We need something that will poll
4) People need to stop caring about the patent issue re mp3 and other file codecs. They might be patented, but it's the proverbial unenforceable, pie crust law. I've never heard of anybody being sued for using mp3, gif, or other codecs anywhere else. Just use them.
Servers? Maybe. Or maybe it is the Number one best there?
Anyway, why is is called [some-number] best? Isn't "best" representing number one, and number two is no "best" at all?
I'm seeing quite a few commentors essentially bashing the authors of the study for "not knowing what they are talking about".
While many Slashdot users are critical of Microsoft and management type academics/practitioners in general, you should note that Pankaj Ghemawat (one of the authors of the article) is a very well-respected researcher in the field of strategy and competition. Some of his books are widely used in business schools around the world to teach the field of strategic management, indicating (to me, at least) that he might not be as incompetent as some would like to believe.
That being said, I think we should reserve judgement on the quality of the research until we have actually read the published and peer-reviewed article as such. The key sentence in the article on the Harvard Business School website is: "The model captures what we believe are the most important features of the Linux-Windows competitive battle (faster demand-side learning on the part of Linux and an initial installed base advantage for Windows), but makes important assumptions regarding other aspects."
Until we know what these "important assumptions" are, it's quite premature to say whether this study adds any value to the discussion or not.
1. OS X
2. Linux
3. Microsoft
I could live with that!
1- The words "OSS" and "Linux" are not interchangeable, they do not mean the same thing. 2- OSS Vs. Microsoft is not limited to Linux Vs. Windows (think Open Office Vs. MS Word / FF Vs. IE) 3- there is no Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows, Linux is a generic word describing various distro's, and fails to account for other OSes such as *BSD's, and Macs. Furthermore, Claiming that there is a duopoly is wrong since Windows owns 90-something percent of the marketshare. And the rest is equally split up between the other distros. 4- The OSS community doesn't really care about remaining second best, all we need now is for hardware manufacturers to take our case seriously and to provide "open" drivers for the stuff they make.
Interesting paragraph from TFA
In addition to this main result, we were also surprised to find that piracy may end up increasing Microsoft's profits. To understand why, notice that there are two types of pirates: those who would not have bought Windows in the first place because it is too expensive, and those who would have bought Windows but now decide to pirate it. The first category increases Windows' installed base without affecting sales. As a consequence, this group increases the value of Windows. And thanks to these pirates, Microsoft is able to set higher prices in the future (because the value of the system goes up). In addition, having these pirates means that Linux's installed base does not grow as much as it would have if piracy weren't there. The second type of pirates (those who in the absence of piracy would have bought Windows) reduces Windows' sales and profit. Thus, if the proportion of first-type pirates is sufficiently large, Microsoft's profits will increase with piracy.
Some of this comes from the fact that Microsoft behavior and tactics are akin to a monopoly. You ask then how can people feel so strongly about this. Microsoft has basically destroyed competition using tactics not so ethical.
By acting like a monopoly they have limited your choices to what you can buy or use. Someone made the analogy in an other post comparing a toolbox and the tools to the different OSS. You reach into the toolbox to get the tool you need for the job. What Microsoft has done is made it so that when you reach into that toolbox you only have one choice of tool to use, there's. You don't get to choose a different brand or kind of tool.
Something was on the verge of being done about this, but then the Bush Administration and there buddies stepped in and save Microsoft. Think about it there are plenty of reasons to not be a fan of Microsoft.
If you measure things on a complexity of say 0-100, then there's only a limited range of that which is profitable. That is, there's no money in making notepad clones and there's no money in extremely complicated features noone is able to use. However while there is OSS software that's trying to make money, a lot of it does not. Even in the darkest post-OS/2 days when Windows was completely dominating Linux evolved in a market that was essentially dead. That kind of development can't be stopped.
That is why I think OSS software will slowly consume normal COTS software, because they will keep going after the commercial companies say "Well, we've now added every feature with a tolerable ROI". I'm not quite sure about the timescale, but I think the OSS software base is only in its infancy. Imagine 10, 25 or 50 years down the road, how many software packages have matured to a point where they're everything a user expects from a word processor/graphics editor/media player etc., feature-complete and bugfree.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Whether or not you believe 'first mover advantage' is a factor in the 'innovation' business (which IMHO is absurd, especially when file formats can be emulated and network protocols are open by necessity), its inaccurate to call Microsoft a "first mover". Historically Microsoft has been the "vastly more powerful second or third mover". Microsoft is 'living proof' that first-movers don't have the advantage, particularly when subsequent players have more money and leverage.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
About 30 years ago, weren't they saying the same thing about IBM and the mainframe? Granted, it was hardware, but still, it seems that all it took for IBM and it's lock on the computing world to be unseated was a misjudging of the market. What's to keep Microsoft from doing the same? They've sunk a lot of resources into their vision of computing but what if the market decides they don't like it or worse yet (for Microsoft), what if there are major problems with Vista or the next version of Office or their security suite, etc.
The view of the article also seems to be pretty US centric, or at least western centric. What about the upcoming third world markets? China has a lot of potential sway in the outcome of what is adopted technology wise. Same with South America, Africa, India, and other non-European/US countries.
Will these countries as they develop their own IT industry rely on being tied to the US and Microsoft or will they look elsewhere? The answer to that question may ultimately decide what the status of OSS is in the future.
Since McDonalds sells more burgers than anyone else they are obviously the best burgers - best tasting and best for you!
Are you implying Windows is best in something? Now what might that be? Best malware platform?
Exactly.
It isn't that Linux is not "better" than Windows TODAY.
It is that Windows was "good enough" YESTERDAY.
And yesterday, the companies deployed Windows and locked up their data / training / money in apps that are not supported on Linux
All the companies I see now have their data AND business logic locked up in Access database apps that have evolved over the years to the point where they are un-maintainable. But still "necessary" to the daily operation of that company.
Where the Harvard study went wrong is that new companies are constantly forming and old ones dying. The base of companies are not static. It is dynamic. The new companies will NOT be bound by the headstart that Microsoft has in existing companies.
What Harvard really concluded was there was a better chance of getting an endowment and new Comp Sci building from MSFT than the open source community.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
s/marketing/revenue/
Slackware is free. Windows is not. Microsoft can afford to pay thousands of employees. Slackware cannot. It's a tradeoff, and in fact "users" (that would be brought by marketing) hurt OSS. Developers are the lifeblood of free software. Users who are the lifeblood of commercial software. They are fundamentally different models.
Linux's market is very different. Need not to say that OSS is not prone to one man's (team's) mistakes, while corporate products are.
They are somewhat right. Open Source and Linux development could be more organized. Teams do better together.
And I believe someone should step up and do an tv advertising blitz for Linux.
\
One major thing that is holding back Linux in my opinion is the lack of a portable binary/packaging standard, LSB kind of tries that, but with rather little success (anybody ever spotted a LSB-conforming binary in the wild?). Without such a standard, I really don't see how any normal person can survive the packaging chaos under Linux.
Peoples desire to use software doesn't stop with what the distribution provides, they want games, commercial applications and such and those must be easy to install and today they simply aren't. Instead you get .zip's with binarys that you have to chmod manually, tar.gz with binaries, autopackage packages, .run files, .sh files, rpms, debs and stuff, and sometimes, even if you manage to get the software installed the containing binary will simply be incompatible with your distribution.
With such limitations most people will sooner or later run into huge problems with using Linux and simply drop it or not install it in the first place, which really is a shame, since Linux really does a lot things much better then a normal Windows installation. Having all drivers included makes installing a Linux must faster then a Windows, so does having most software included, but as said software that people want to install doesn't stop with what the distributions provide and that won't change anytime soon. Just look at how many games are released for Windows every month, that is both an order or two of magnitude more then anything Linux can provide, both in terms of quantity and quality and that has not only todo with companies ignoring Linux, but also a lot with Linux being a hostile environment for third party applications.
Linux as it is, is great for the geeks and great for the cooperations that have a administrator to manage stuff, but an average homedesktop isn't run by either of those.
The point is not whether a Linux ditribution existed prior to Windows 95, but whether it existed prior to Microsoft's software being installed on some high percentage of the world's IBM-compatible computers. The latter has been the case pretty much from the word go. When my dad bought a PC, he bought DR-DOS 6 to go with it, but never got around to installing it because the hard drive actually had MS-DOS 5 installed on it at the factory (the hard drive factory, that is -- apparently not uncommon back in 1991-ish). Until relatively recently, it's been fairly rare to find an IBM-compatible computer that does NOT use a Microsoft operating system. Sure, a few people back in the day would run DR-DOS, a few less would run something akin to BSD, although I have an idea the first PC-compatible BSD was for the 386, so that's got to be at least six or seven years after MS started shipping PC operating systems.
Sure, Linux distributions were available before Windows 95, but the same argument made by TFA existed back in 1993 too -- Microsoft's software was entrenched, it was the de facto system on most IBM-compatible computers, and it's reasonable to assume that a high proportion of the people using those would stick to what they have/know, rather than switch to something entirely new. Therefore, despite the existence of Linux, most folks stayed with DOS & Windows 3 until Win95 came along, which was a funkier Windows which didn't need you to mess about with DOS to get it running.
-Q
The study pointed out that, in most cases, Microsoft remains dominant as long as it has a first mover advantage. The question now is, why does Microsoft continue to enjoy a first mover advantage?
My hypothesis is that Microsoft, by actively wooing game developers and turning Windows into a gaming platform, is using the games industry to retain a significant portion of users (gamers). These users then help Microsoft retain users by spreading the word about deficiencies in Linux (lack of gaming support). Thus, Microsoft gains a set of "zealots" whose influence counterbalances the effect of Linux zealots.
Therefore, it is important that the Linux community actively tries to make gaming (both programming and running games) easier in Linux. This involves improving hardware support, simplyfying graphics and sound APIs, and simplifying program installation. In addition, a campaign must be mounted to try to get more game developers to release versions of their games for Linux. Gaming is the last area of computing where Microsoft enjoys total dominance. Removing this advantage will help level the playing field considerably for Linux.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
I consider the economic nonsense they teach in universities today so far out of touch with reality, they may as well have created a theological model.
Beyond that, one of the major problems of this is it only sees one competition between Linux and Windows. But this is not the case, there is a competition between Linux on the low-end and high-end, as a desktop and server. Which is where some of their arguments fall apart. Clearly Microsoft dominated the desktop. But how about for servers? I recall back in 1996 when I had a fvwm desktop and the Mac-like Windows 95 had not been out long. We were running Linux servers and also had a Window NT 3.51 server. As a techie, I like fvwm and Linux, but I could understand how the average person would prefer Windows 95. But to me, the Linux 1.2 kernel was far superior to Windows NT 3.51. With NT 3.51, you could only have 8 or so IP addresses without editing the registry! It blue screened all the time. It did not clearly dominate the server market at all.
Fast-forward to today. It is still competitive between Linux and Windows in the server market. Linus, Andrew Morton and so forth repeatedly say that most of their concentration is on Linux as a server as opposed to Linux as a desktop. This makes sense to me, as this is where Linux has been in the game for a long time, and is still in the game. Windows Server blue screens less now, and has things like Remote Desktop which are definite improvements. They also use their monopoly advantage so that Outlook and Calendar and so forth hook into an Exchange server well, a free Outlook Express with the OS, they use the desktop as leverage against the server market. I now work at a company that uses Exchange servers for mail, the first time I've ever seen this at a company (by the way, considering how often it is down, I'd say it is not quite there yet).
For the desktop, Windows clearly dominates, and if Linux is lucky it will chisel a percent away every few months or years. The real competition between Linux and Windows is in the server market, and it has been like this for a while. Windows *has* been improving, as well as has been doing the old monopoly hooks thing. Linux not only has to be able to support high-end equipment on the kernel end, it has to make sure applications like Oracle run well on Red Hat (which it doesn't, although some don't like to hear this), or that Red Hat's patch system is better than or equal to Microsoft's (It is acceptable, but could be improved, especially in terms of ease-of-use). Of course not all Linux is Red Hat, although for the Fortune 1000 that don't roll their own it may as well be, and Linux isn't a corporation and doesn't have to be in a competition. But this is what Linux needs to do to continue being a player on the server market. This report ignoring the desktop/server distinction shows how little they know of their subject.
The article leaves DRM, and the wider issue of "trusted" computing off the table.
"Trusted" computing turns your personal computer into something that you no longer fully own. That reduces the value of your PC. Currently, the only way to avoid having this happen is to use open source software.
While it may be true that FOSS cannot "win" the game, most games are lost, not won. This is especially true in business. The brilliant win is much rarer than the screwing up and losing.
By embracing the content publishers too closely and enthusiastically pursuing "trusted" computing, Microsoft may be choosing a losing path.
I wrote parts of this stuff
Microsoft doesn't have a "first mover advantage" in the current market because the market is changing. In fact, Microsoft probably will suffer badly from its golden handcuffs, Windows and Office: the open and free alternatives are already providing reasonable alternatives to Windows and Office, but open and free alternatives are free to innovate in this space and change quickly in response to user demand.
.NET applications), and then some.
Microsoft has had to drop almost all new technologies from Vista and still has slipped again and again on deadlines. At the same time, Linux is shipping all the technologies that Microsoft originally promised for Vista (e.g., desktop search, hardware accelerated graphics, XML GUI languages,
Because there are tens of thousands of users that occasionally post and hundreds of nut jobs that post more often than that. Slashdot is a huge community, and like anything else, the voice of unreason is often louder than the voice of reason.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Why are we still having this debate? Look, I love linux, with a passion, but yes, it will always be second best, why's that, because it's free, clean and simple. Microsoft has to make a product that people want to pay for, so they have to make it work and be worth while, but linux, it's free, so it doesn't have to sell, it just has to work. Let's face it, not too many people would really think about paying for linux, but we all pay for Windows because it's worth(or at least is justified) for the price. I have a laptop right now that isn't properly supported by linux, so it loses about an hour's battery life, which defeat's the purpose of getting a Centrino, but it all works fine under windows. The difference their is I paid for the windows support, but I can still use linux, which doesn't wholistically work, for free. It's that simple.
N. A. Stuart
I don't think those trends say much of anything. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps there's more searches for Linux because people need more help using it and getting it to just run properly? How many searches for "Macintosh" is someone with a Mac going to do if their Mac is running perfectly from the start? Just how many of those "Linux" searches are desperate newbies to Linux who are in week 3 of trying to figure out how to get wifi or wpa encryption support on their laptops or to get their monitors to run in the right resolution or to get CUPS printing working? One linux user might initiate dozens of search queries for anything linux related. A Mac user on the other hand would be searching for non-computer related stuff cause their computer is already working as it should be.
Apple is selling Macs hand over fists. The Apple Stores are always jam packed, the company is sourcing a third provider for notebooks and can't currently meet the demand they have for MacBooks and MacBookPros. The overwhelming majority of people who use Macs don't even know what UNIX is or that Mac OS X has a Unix core running underneath. Apple just doubled its laptop marketshare to 12% of the US market. Add in Apple's installed base all over the world and its pretty clear to me at least that not only are there more Mac users than Linux users but its going to stay that way for quite some time. Even if you account for the fact that it is nearly impossible to track Linux installs because Linux can be downloaded for free you should also admit that a lot of those downloads are probably never installed. I myself run Kubuntu Linux on a spare laptop and before I settled on it I downloaded at least 8 other distros. Some people download more distros some download less but the point I'm making is that only a fraction of the Linux downloads that are happening end up being actual installs. And sometimes none of them end up being permanent installs as the OS is still too rough around the edges for many users and they either go back to Windows or OS X.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Microsoft had a perfectly good strategy, roll out unstable bad OSs, so that people will be begging to buy the new version. I mean: Windows 3.1 -> Windows 3.11 -> Windows 95 -> Windows 98 -> Windows 98SE -> Windows ME Those are the ones I have seen, and with the exception of ME, each OS has been better than the previous Then Microsoft made XP, and now, they are screwed. Because it's stable, very usable and has excellent hardware support, why would anyone in their right mind want to change to Vista? I love XP, I love FreeBSD, I use both, XP for workstations, BSD for niche *nix applications and developing software. They suit me just fine, and I will not be changing to Vista any time this decade.
It does matter which operating system other people use, because companies like Microsoft and Apple take steps to ensure that as a Linux user, I can't communicate properly with users of other operating systems. For example, I tried to apply for a job recently, and the government department that I was trying to apply to sent me a Microsoft Word .doc file. These files are in a secret, proprietary format that Microsoft won't tell people how to open. They want to ensure that only Microsoft Word will open such files.
Another example, there's a radio station that I like to listen to online, and because they only offer Windows Media streams, I had to break the law (due to software patents) to play them on my Linux computer. Breaking the law isn't something I enjoy doing, and it shouldn't be something I have to do in order to not be excluded just because I am not using Microsoft software.
The problem isn't that people aren't running Linux, it's that they're running software from companies who are trying to exclude me (a Linux user) from being able to communicate other people (Windows and Mac users).
Microsoft has benefited from piracy ever since Micro-Soft [sic] Basic for the Altair 8800, when hobbyists gave copied paper tapes to one another. This proliferation helped establish Micro-Soft Basic as the standard for microcomputers. It was that market recognition that caused IBM to ask Bill Gates to develop an operating system for their 5150 Personal Computer.
Bill Gates may have b*tched about piracy in a letter he wrote to the Homebrew Computer Club in February 1976, but it has made him an extremely wealthy man.
So maybe what the OSS community needs is a media campaign: Don't steal proprietary software. Use free software instead.
Seems like everyday the Microsoft front has been active on trying to discredit the Linux camp. The funny thing is that the OS can be open source but the actual underlying business model isn't. Why would someone give their advantage away, it's not good business. I'm sure that the real backbone will unveil itself in time. It's just the way it goes. Honestly I believe that it will be the other way around in terms of Microsoft becoming the minority and Linux becoming the majority. It will take a while (maybe a long while) but Linux does have an advantage over Microsoft even though Microsoft has a 10 year headstart. BSD based OS has only started to catch on through a broader market through Apple.
I don't know why but it seems as though Microsoft has a severe lack of foresight. It might be because their presence is known to be too big. I'm not really sure. I was hoping something more from Vista and that's when I started to realize that they might be going nowhere. They're in a rut and I'm not sure if they can get out of it. I'm not sure they know where to start. For having a ten year headstart they are already 3 years behind what is going on in current advancements. Even then, it looks as though their advantage is shrinking even further based on their current efforts. Ultimately, it is my opinion based on my experiences and my perspective and if Microsoft does something better I will be impressed. Right now, I don't see it.
Actually, there is, I think. a lot of interesting stuff buried in this study. Too much to assimilate and comment on quickly. For example, they seem to have found that so called "strategic buyers" (governments, large corporations) could drive Microsoft from a segment of the market if they trust OSS code -- which they can look at -- more than Microsoft code that they maybe can't.
There are lots of hidden gems. e.g. Microsoft would benefit from changing its pricing strategies to make older products cheaper over time. I have no idea if that is true, but it sure seems to me that selling MSDOS licenses for $5 would bring in more revenue than telling folks that if they want to use MSDOS 6.22 they will just have to pirate it. Well, sure ... if that's really how you feel about it ... -- let's see "diskcopy a: b:", right?
And there is an interesting discussion near the end of Microsoft strategies to deal with OSS. e.g. make it hard to run Windows software on the free Unixes, but make it easy to run OSS software on Windows. ... etc. Might pay system administrators to look at these closely just to see what Microsoft might do in the future that might have nasty side affects.
Anyway, I think there is at least one basic problem with the study. It assumes that Microsoft is progressing toward some goal and that OSS is forever following. Could be, but the Vista fiasco looks to me like floundering, not progressing. So, one wonders if the model were altered to reflect a shrinking lag between Microsoft and OSS capabilities and also, an increasing fraction of the marketplace where OSS is good enough or better than good enough, if the results wouldn't be different.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
That thing is going to change computing paradigms. Once it starts shipping in million unit chunks, and it will despite the naysayers, a lot of kids who will be growing up and becoming their country's nerds and engineers will have the experience of linux as the first OS they have seen and used. That particular Fedora variant will become the most installed distro as well. MS is dominant in the western nations from past installed base and some business applications and because it comes pre installed on less expensive machines. In all other areas it's because of gaming and the outright ease of piracy and the "who cares" attitude there, again, easy and cheap. Once MS and the WTO make piracy harder, eliminating the easy and cheap part, their product becomes less worth it, what they want to charge for it anyway. Stuff changes and it doesn't take too long in terms of years. Look at hybrid cars, just 5 years ago they were being dumped on, very few people bought them, most people hooted at them, yuk yuk yuk, never buy one, etc, the bulk of the car industry was even reluctant to build them-but look now, they are the fastest growing segment in that industry and all the manufacturers of note are either selling them or are close to selling them. That didn't take long to completely alter a major industry, it caught most of the marketing "experts" flatfooted as well. I know I live in bubbaland, where conventional pickups and SUVs are king-and those things are lined up rows and rows deep at the local car lots and they have to throw zero percent financing at them to sell them., but there's waiting lists for the hybrids, and now they are making SUV hybrids, because they will sell those. I would guess pickup variants will be coming next, along with a big switch from gasoline powered to diesel powered. Stuff changes fast.
It looks to me like they missed the mark here. There have been some serious jumps for linux recently. IMHO I think that linspire making basic service to their CNR system free was huge. Then the open source CNR Client that is coming out with Freespire 1.1 should really put a copy of it on every Debian based distro, making it rediculously easy to install software, as well as figure out what software to install, with their screen shots and reviews and such. Add to all of this the fact that Vista probably won't work well enough for the "real" big corporations to start adopting it until SP1 or 2 (my company just finished up testing XP SP2 to start rolling it out to us before the end of the year). I think that there are enough people that will wait to adopt it at home until it's adopted at work, that by the time they're ready, someone's going to tell them to save their money, and get the free operating system that will meet all of their needs.
.DOC. I think that makes some sense too, because then if companies really want to, they not only have the choice of not paying microsoft, but writing/modifying their own office suite.
I've also heard about a movement to start big corporations adopting the Open Document Format instead of the traditional
Research reports are only as good as the work that goes into them.
I stopped reading this one when I reached the bit where it says:
SCO, a small Swiss-based "vulture" firm
Goodness knows where they got this "Swiss-based" nonsense. SCO's web site doesn't even list Switzerland among the countries where it has a sales office!
http://google.com/trends?q=mac%2Cubuntu&ctab=0&geo =all&date=all
Instead of "macintosh" set it for "mac." Now you get way more mac searches than ubuntu searches.
I don't know about others (well, actually I do, since I've seen that chart), but whenever I'm searching for Mac stuff, I search for "mac" not "macintosh."
Apple seems to call it "mac" more than "macintosh" anyway.
Scorta futuere amo!
Now Intel is laying of people left right and center. No it hasn't collapsed and the next round or even this round of the CPU wars might see it take up the lead again BUT the time that Intel ruled the desktop and you only bought "Intel Inside" is gone.]
Who would have predicted that? Well, anyone who built their own machines for gaming yeah. Anyone who actually knows something about cpu's and could see that Intel was driving itself into a corner. Yet I read very few reports from analysists predicting this.
Does this mean the same might happen to Microsoft? No, not at all. Totally different market. In way, it is thanks to microsoft that AMD could do what it did. If MS had not supported AMD chips then AMD wouldn't have had a chance in hell. (How fast would an cpu run if only had the generic x86 instructions?)
Software is different. I don't matter wich CPU I have to run my apps on but it damn well matters wich OS I have.
But still. One part of Wintel is now gone. Dell now sells AMD machines as well. The Intel Inside logo has gone the way of the dodo. It is not the first time a mighty name in the desktop market has fallen. Oldies like me might remember that PC games used to be IBM-PC-compatible games. When was the last time you saw an IBM PC?
Predictions are all well and good but they rarely take into account that fact of "shit happens". No I can't see exactly how Windows will loose massive market share anytime soon but who knows what might happen. What if Vista bombs like ME did? What if big companies decide they were screwed by MS software assurance plan and determine that they need an alternative strategy?
Vista is talked about a lot and a lot of people talk about not adopting it but very few take it as far as trying to think of what it would mean if Vista becomes another ME. That was a massive failure for MS but tolerable because it was only ever meant for the consumer market. Vista is supposed to be taken up by both consumers AND business. What if it doesn't get picked up? XP is getting rather old and since that was just a skin for 2000 we are talking some rather wonky code by now. MS is stalling with an SP3 for XP because it wants people to go to Vista instead. But what if the market just refuses. Won't be the first time MS is forced to do an extra SP to support an OS they rather don't want to support anymore. This would cost a lot of money, MS got plenty but without a take up of Vista and people just using the free service packs it would start to loose money. Worse, is Office Vista tied to Vista the OS? No Vista OS pickup could mean no Office Vista pickup. Two of its milkcows shot down.
Is any of this likely? Was it likely that Dell would sell AMD and AMD would outsell Intel? Shit happens. Probably won't, but it might and to be honest I think any attempt to predict it is going to be as accurate as a cointoss.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Linux is best (Joke???)! Just because the majority uses Windows doesn't mean that Windows is best! Just because there are many Windows users doesn't mean Windows is best, it means that we have many bad and irresponsible computer users! It's impossible to decide who is best. Microsoft has enought money to develop the next 3 version of Windows... They don't need to make money to survive... Linux companies has to! So we will properbly never see Microsoft go down, and as long as that haven't happened it impossible to decide who's number one... (From an Ubuntu user)...
Apple offers exactly zero advantages in this aspect. In fact it is only disadvantages that Apple offers. With Apple you actually have to PAY for upgrades/service-packs. Just ask a OS-X user who has been there from the start and legally upgraded the OS over the past years for the total cost. MS software all of sudden ain't that expensive anymore.
Now compare it to the linux cost of staying up-to-date. Oh and remember, if you got enough machines that licensing costs matter you already have someone working for you who is compotent enough to do it without say a RedHat or Novell holding your hand for a per-cpu support fee.
Free as in freedom is nice and very noble, but free as in no-cost is very important too.
The silly thing people forget because they obviously failed accountancy is that the free to get upgrades from "linux" or the free service-packs but paid upgrades from MS or the entirely paid upgrades from Apple ALL cost roughly the same to install. Unless offcourse you think that you can afford to run thousands of servers with a lesser windows admin then a unix admin. Wich to me is like saying that your family car doesn't need as good a mechanic to fix the brakes as a F1 car. Pay for a good admin, keeps your servers from ending up a burning heap on the side of the road.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Being ahead of your competitors in market share has its advantages. In the world of computer operating systems, among other things it means more people will buy your product regardless because it is the only thing they know, but also that more ISVs will develop for your OS simply because you're ahead.
That last one is the more important. Many (if not most) businesses buy computers for the (specialist) applications they need, and if those application require Windows, then so be it -- Linux will not even be considered. From a normal user's point of view, the coolest newest applications are always only available for Windows. Maybe the same functionality will be available 6-12 months later for Linux, but that's always 6-12 months too late.
Being a huge Linux fan myself, I often wonder what can be done. It's been suggested that we should focus more on products like WINE, but by definition this will never close the gap. Well, then what about solutions such as VMware? That's one of my favorites, but unfortunately it also makes systems more complex and expensive. My clients have never been fond of that.
Is there really nothing we can do? I don't know. One of our best chances was when the US government was investigating Microsoft for anti-trust and was poised to split up the company, thus weakening their monopoly position. It was such a pity to see good old Dubya move in and let them off the hook. However, they were effectively charged with policing themselves, so it's still possible that the next White House administration with review the whole affair, decide that Redmond has not kept themselves to the agreement and split them up anyway.
Another possibility is that, in their never-ending quest to satisfy their stockholders and squeeze more money out of their customers, Microsoft will eventually go too far and thus loose enough of their customers to make a difference. It would certainly help if some cool Linux apps were to come along to make that decision easier for the average Joe, but I don't see that as likely.
This battle could take a while. In the mean we just have to hang in there, keep improving our Linux systems and applications make sure we're there when Microsoft slips up. I think patience is the key.
Was it the Gartner group or another firm specialized in IT which, in 1987, announced that OS/2 would be present on 70% of all PCs ? :-)
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
TFA describes a few sets of assumptions, and some of them result in windows being driven from the marketplace. I'm not an economist, but some notes...
"in the absence of cost asymmetries and as long as Windows has a first-mover advantage (a larger installed base at time zero), Linux never displaces Windows of its leadership position." Obviously the first-mover advantage obtains, but -- the "absence of cost asymmetries" caught my attention.
"natural question is then whether the central result that Windows survives in the long-run equilibrium regardless of the speed of Linux's demand-side learning persists if there are cost asymmetries. We find that because OSS implies lower profits for Microsoft, the larger the cost differences are between Linux and Windows, the less able Microsoft is to guarantee the survival of Windows" (My emphasis)
Please read TFA. It's not FUD.
"the presence of strategic buyers" (mentioned by parent) "together with Linux's sufficiently strong demand-side learning results in Windows being driven out of the market." "Strategic buyers" here means simply buyers for whom access to the source code is a critical good -- buyers who do not view software only as a means-to-an-end (performing business functions) but also as intrinsically valuable because of its characteristics Govts., in particular, need source code in order to do meaningful security auditing. Even if the software doesn't "perform" as well, overriding concerns drive them to it.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Whats holding back Linux on the desktop:
1) Software install - It MUST be as simple as wimpslease, PERIOD. Desktop users could CARE LESS if its written in Tcl/Tck, if the QT Libraries are used, if gcc 4.0, 3.6, or any thing else like that. 99.99999% of the DESKTOP USERS DON'T CARE!
1a) SOURCE CODE and libaries - End users don't give a damn about it. They want to download your program run the installer be it a script or binary and it does what it needs to install and setup the program.
2) License schmizense! GPL1.0, 2.03, LPGL, Right GPL, Wrong GPL, USERS again DO NOT CARE! Your software is either FREE menaing NO COST, or its COSTS MONEY! There is nothing in between. Your wasting your efforts on getting end users to give a damn about the suorce code and licensing. THEY DO NOT CARE. Software is either FREE or COSTS.
3) There needs to a Microsloth like NON PROFIT ENTITY that puts out the OFFICIAL Linux O/S. This is where Linus would work. How its funded I will leave to the community I have an idea, but that probably chaff the zealots butt too much. Until there is a base OS from which to work from there is too much fragmentation. People look at the various distros and go "Which is the OFFICIAL Linux?" Again, THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT THE EVANGELISM! Put software x on computer a and get z done! Thats it!
There needs to be one main OS that is packed up and that you can EASILY ADD OPTIONS for what ever you want to get what EXTRAS YOU NEED. The base would start with one windo manager, one shell. Add others, use others if you want, the base Linux will start here, extend it beyond this point all you want.
The base OS would be an XP like ready to go OS. Don't like KDE for your window manger, fine. Click install stupid gnome, or Xfce or what ever. There is nothing wrong with having the OPTION to have different window manager offerings, but till there is an official STARTING POINT the end user adoption is going to lanquish. All the distros would start with this base Official Linux and modify what the defaults are for the user. Ubutunu would still use stuipd gnome, Kubunutu would use the default KDE based WM. Just like another company is planning for their next release certain features would be part of the OS for differing verions(distros).
4) EASY UPDATES of software and the OS.
5) Vendors!!! - MUST SUPPORT hardware with drivers as needed. This gets back to it needs to be as simple to install a driver as it is now on a winslease box. Users don't care about what makes it work, they just want to go to megapcmart either online or brick & mortar, come home install hardware, add drivers, works! Driver install issues occur on winsleas, yes, but Linux is not making it easy either.
6) Where is the VIRTUALIZATION OS at? ?? ? ? ? ? VMWare and others have a great idea. Running something like the VMplayer works great to get Linux on winslease, winsleas on Linux BUT.... They run under one or the other OS WHY? ? ? Seems to me the correct way to do this is to generate a Virtulization Layer OS that provides the VM Layer to guest OS's. I thought VMWare started that way but may be confusing it with something else. The VML OS would provide some simple tools to boot up the machine and start up the VM's and virtualize the underlying hardware to each VM. If you've got the hardware and desire to run Linux, winslease, and Mactel OSX fine! (Oh, and apple just release the PPC and X86 versions of the OS to the public already! You want more market share? Heres your chance!)
1311393600 - Back to Black
They didn't predict that linux will remain second best at ALL. In fact, given the current conditions Linux will WIN!
"Having obtained this basic result, we investigate the conditions that will warrant that Linux ends up forcing Windows out. We do this by modifying the model in two ways. First of all, we look at the effect of having buyers such as governments and some large corporations committed to deployment of Linux in their organizations. We call such buyers strategic. In addition to cost-related reasons, governments back Linux because having access to the source code allows them to verify that sensitive data is treated securely. Binary code makes it hard to figure out who has access to information flowing in a network. Companies such as IBM, in contrast, back Linux because they see in OSS one way to diminish Microsoft's dominance. We find that the presence of strategic buyers together with Linux's sufficiently strong demand-side learning results in Windows being driven out of the market. This may be one main reason why Microsoft has been providing chunks of Windows' source code to governments."
Currently we have large stratigic buyers who are buying into linux in a big way. China is no small fish. This sounds more like the situation as it stands now. What he IS saying is that Linux will NEVER displace Microsoft "On it's own merits" because the superiority of the OS doesn't defeat Micosofts current large install base. We DO need things like the Free Software Foundation, it is critically important for linux that governments see the advantages of the development model and buy in.
You can see from the actions of Microsoft that they have known this data for quite some time, or at least are reacting in much the ways that the study recommends. So this IS a fight and the winner is by no means certain. One thing that I got out of this was that while Linux can accually defeat Microsoft, MS can't acctually defeat Linux and force it to dissapear. Think about that for a while.
There is also the efficiency of development issue.
Yes, first mover advantage is pretty strong in Windows, and economy of scale is a killer, but in such an envionment, I think that Linux is doing pretty well. Look at the strides that have occurred in the last few years in terms of allowing for polished-looking Linux desktops.
Some time ago, I concluded that there was enough attention being paid to Linux that it had reached critical mass even on the desktop. Indeed, only Windows and Linux have been showing consistant gains in that area.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
John Q Public will take whatever's presented to him. But the article is a troll. They even claim that SCO is a Swiss-based company. If they can't even get the right continent, I wonder just what sort of drug experiments they're conducting at Harvard nowadays.
FTFUA (From the F*cked-Up Article): "Consider SCO, a small Swiss-based "vulture" firm that had bought up the intellectual property rights to a particular version of Unix and threatened Linux users"
They can't even read a press release properly, how do you expect them to design and analyse anything more complex than the instructions for using toilet paper?
``Slackware is free. Windows is not. Microsoft can afford to pay thousands of employees. Slackware cannot. It's a tradeoff, and in fact "users" (that would be brought by marketing) hurt OSS. Developers are the lifeblood of free software. Users who are the lifeblood of commercial software. They are fundamentally different models.''
It's an interesting view, and OSS and proprietary software definitely have different dynamics, but I don't agree that "\"users\" (that would be brought by marketing) hurt OSS". Many of the behaviors a user could exhibit are the same for OSS and proprietary software: bug the developers, complain to friends and acquaintances that the product sucks, helping other users, recommending the product, writing about it in columns, etc. In either case, users may or may not be required to pay for the software (which can help maintain it), but it's never given that they will: a lot of software is free for use, and if it's not, there are always ways to avoid payment.
The big difference is that users of OSS can and will help maintaining and improving the product.
So, if anything, more users is an even bigger boost to OSS than to proprietary software; at least that's how I see it.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Apple will gain market share in the desktop but not at the expense of Linux.
Apple has a significant glass ceiling where wide growth is concerned: do you imagine schools in the third world are going to roll out Apple desktops for tens of millions of students? That whole governments are going to buy iMacs? Extremely unlikely. Apple is a U.S corporation with an OS tied to a single platform. The big growth areas for the desktop, in the sense of mass 'adoption', are just not there for Apple as they don't meet criteria where growth is demanded the most. Apple and Linux are not in the same 'market space', so to speak. Despite both OS's enjoying healthy growth on the desktop in western-world, Linux has bigger fish to fry.
The summary is not as much fun as the article, which declares Microsoft's future dependent on FUD, sabotage, intentional waste and dumping rather than code quality. The whole summary reasoning boils down to, "It will be like this tomorrow because it's like this today." Even M$ knows that's not true. What M$ and IBM did to DEC used to keep Bill Gates up at night, and still might despite all of his ill gotten wealth. The authors have much more interesting things to say and do not really conclude M$ will always be around. The authors, while they do overplay the importance of an undefined "network effect" don't make such a gross error.
The authors don't really understand free software development but they do understand what M$ must do to stay alive. They understand the M$ network effect, which is difficulty working with people who don't have the latest and greatest M$ crap, but completely miss the free software networking effect and much of free software's social benefit. The more free software does, the more it will be used and the more it will grow. It's a power function, not dependent on large organizations and we are still at the very start of the curve.
One of the key flaws I found in the author's reasoning was this:
However, with a monopoly, the efforts to develop new software and improve the platform are directed towards one system only and this may turn out to be better from a social welfare perspective.
That's seriously flawed for two reasons. First there is no such thing as a "Linux Monopoly". It's only freely publish standards that make it look like a coherent whole and it's only M$ intentional ignorance of those standards that keeps both systems from interacting freely. The second, they seriously underestimate the size of the free software community and it's growth potential. The free developer community is and will allways be larger than the non free community. The whole point of the non free monopoly is to charge people money to participate. Free participation will never cost more than time and effort. GCC comes with most GNU/Linux distributions and there is a fantastic library of source code for every purpose no further than a network request away. The cost of a full version of M$ Visual Studio is close to $800, after you have paid the OS tax, and you need to buy a new one for each programmer every year or so. How economists could miss such a basic part of their model as cost of raw materials is beyond me, but part of it is a flawed assumption that free software is dependent on government and business support:
This questions the social desirability of policies aimed at guaranteeing Linux's survival. ... This [corporate] support is important because there are tedious portions of the code that would rarely be developed spontaneously by members of the Linux-developer community.
Wile corporate and government participation are welcome, studies don't bear out the necessity of their involvement. Companies and governments are going to increasingly use free software because of the tremendous flexibility and cost savings. There are hosts of things you just can't do with non free softare and most programmers spend all of their time making things work. Most programmers would be just as happy or happier with free software as long as it does the job.
Recognition of all the evil things M$ must do, while common here, are welcome from economists and business types. Formal recognition of the SCO and other FUD attacks, dumping by "piracy", the Halloween Documents, even sabotage of free software by "encouraging forks" are nice to see in print from a "respectable" organization. Remarkably, nowhere is there a statement that M$ has or must improve the quality of their code. Their conclusion is telling:
We conjecture that there are multiple equilibria and that the use of FUD to mold perceptions about future value becomes crucial.
Essentially, M$'s future is depends on lies. That's not a very bright future. Admission to that fact is all it takes for them and all of their intentional waste to dissapear.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My thoughts on this subject can be found here. T"v""v"itter is not Twitter.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I think that its a good think that Linux will remain "second best". As long as Microsoft and Apple have majority control of the OS market, crackers will be less inclined to produce malicious software for Linux, and Linux users can retain their feeling of independence from the norm.
They went to all this work doing a sophisticated study, only to make a glaringly false assumption that shows up throughout the entire paper.
Guess what? What people generally refer to as "Linux" is not free cost to an organization! Yes, the kernel does not cost you anything to download and sometimes you can even get an entire distribution without cost -- but this is but a fraction of the TCO because it doesn't include support or staffing. In fact, in some cases such as with Red Hat, the software itself is even priced above that of Windows, no?
The idea of Linux as a collection of nerds hacking away in their mothers basments is so passe, it's ridiculous now to base a large body of work on that premise. The Linux kernel and the softwares that run on top of it are mainly constructed by people working for large corporations who mutually benefit from their GPL-enforced co-operation.
The question of whether Linux can unseat Microsoft's dominance given their massive degree of monopoly power over the market is still unanswered, it's just incredibly sad to see how much effort these fine folks have put in a completely uninteresting tangent of that question.
501 Not Implemented
"Maybe that is why I never understood OS evangelism."
1) It's not OS evangelism (to most of us). It's a matter of being able to freely process our own data and keep our own secrets. This doesn't seem like such a big deal on the surface, but it's everything in the modern economy -- where profits are directly related to one's ability to process data and keep secrets.
2) You've failed to learn from history. An unfree market will artificially raise costs for everyone, barring most of us from participating in the market at all.
3) You've failed to see beyond the next ten minutes. A heterogeneous network is a strong network. A monocultural network, regardless of its other merits, is a disaster waiting to happen. With Microsoft controlling such a large part of a business' network, a single compromise can bring the entire thing down. We need a diverse network, and every node that is not Microsoft controlled makes the network that much safer.
It's not a matter of crushing Microsoft. It's a matter of restoring sanity to the computing world.
And if you care to lump Linux in with Unix, Microsoft was hardly the first mover. If not the code than at least the ideas in Linux are mature, refined, tested, and far superior to Windows.
J
Well, Harvard's study is erred. The assumption to the article, "second best" is a false assumption. Nuf said.
Classic.
Windows' goal is to make money for Microsoft. "First mover advantage" and "market leadership" are essential to that goal. In that sense, OF COURSE GNU/Linux/FOSS will be second best in "the market" - because "leadership" in software "markets" is not their goal. To focus on outdated models of product-style economic competition is to completely miss the point of Free Software.
The goal of Free software is, first and foremost, not so much to be free, but to make YOU free; "market leadership" is secondary, if anything. In that sense, Microsoft and Apple will always be second best (if not third, fourth, or farther).
1. BSD 2. Linux Seems obvious enough to me!
Some settling may occur during posting.
Why must there always be a troll who'll go against the tide no matter what. You're full of shit, and we see right through you.
I guess I missed the easier to install part. Honestly; not trying to argue. I've only installed Fedora Core (and the older Red Hat 7.1) and SuSe. But none of those came close to the ease of installing Windows XP or Windows Vista.
Is it Ubuntu that I should have installed for it to be easier than installing Windows?
Honestly, when someone asks me which distro to have their mother install - which is it that is "easiest" (and easier than Windows)?
Of course, Windows 3 was there, but it was not 32-bit, did not support pre-emptive multitasking, proper separation of tasks, filesystem permissions, etc. Also, Windows 3 isn't an operating system. Whichever way you turn it, Linux was technically ahead of Microsoft at that time.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
But it turns out they're putting *Windows* first?
Wold is strange...
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
"Microsoft vs. Open Source: Who Will Win? Can the open source software movement defeat (or severely cripple) Microsoft in the marketplace?" asks TFA. What is meant by "win" here? Linux and Windows do not in any way compete with each other, except in Microsoft's eyes.
Never mind that either Harvard (unlikely) or TFA's authors don't know that Open Source != Linux.
Linux is what it is, and its many faceted horde of users use it in as many different ways as it has users.
TFA makes it look like Linux's reason for existance is to bankrupt Microsoft and as long as it doesn't, it loses. This is a stupid question asked by dumbass jock types. It doesn't matter to Linux if it is the 100th most used OS in existance, so long as people continue to use it, it wins. And as long as Microsoft stays solvent and sells its OS, it wins too.
I'm a nerd, I don't give a rat's ass how popular a thing is, I care about its price and performance, and suitibility to my intended purpose for it.
Apples vs Oranges: who will win?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
``I'm a mac user but that doesn't mean I really give a damn if someone else uses Windows, Linux or anything else. Hell, I use Linux at work. It's no skin off my back, my OS doesn't stop working because someone is using Windows.''
So the spam and malware being propagated by Windows machines doesn't bother you?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This sounds like something out of the Communist Manifesto. If it were true that competition does not improve products and services, then we ought to drop capitalism and move to a socialist system. Of course, it isn't true. This seems like basic economics, and these guys don't understand it?
Here we have some also rather questionable thinking. I guess these guys don't believe in layers of abstraction (nor do Linux types often). If I'm a writer of children's stories, I don't want to have to know how to fix bugs in the OS, word processor, etc. I want to have whomever wrote the thing to fix it. So why give so much credit to Linux? Give me something that works. In fact, if I were uSoft, I would begin to guarantee the function of my software for fitness of a particular purpose to combat the ridiculous notion that my mother or grandmother wants to modify linux sources.
What has happened to the Harvard department of economics? sounds like they've bought into the socialist view of the world.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
It is has become easy and economical to move from Unix to Linux in what has always been a Unix environment. But what about the markets which emerged after the PC came to dominate the desktop?
OS evangelism is easily understood. It is in the best interest of every user of a minority OS like linux or OS X for more people to switch to their OS. This is because a larger user base will encourage more companies to develop for a platform. This way you don't have to rely on 3rd party alternatives to windows software that may or may not be perfectly compatible.
I hate this Linux/Windows argument as I happy to be that 1% that can surf the net safely as hackers and virus makers are targeting the 99% of other internet users. The one thing that irks me about MS and the other corporate gangsters is the lack of freedom it gives me. So that not to cause flame, I will use a non-OS situtation that sums up freedom for me. I used to have an mobile phone. If I wanted to change the ringtone, I had to download one at £2.50 or more that was midi and mostly sounded nothing like what I paid for. I now have a new phone where I can edit part of a MP3 file on my PC, transfer it to my mobile and then set my ringtone to that MP3 sample. This function was created by a corporate company that set proprietary music formats onto me but it gave me the freedom to change a feature of my phone without having to pay a company for a product that is not entirely to my satisfaction.
There's no way you can model something like this. This is what kills me about the Harvard school - they have no problem taking millions of variables and shoving them into a couple oversimplified models. When are people going to learn that econometrics simply doesn't work?
The reason that it doesn't work is simple: subjective marginal utility. The choices being made are by people from all kinds of backgrounds with all kinds of needs (which are constantly changing and evolving, thus changing how computers are utilized), with subjective valuations on which operating system is preferred.
There is no way to mathematically compute the utility difference between Linux and Windows for each and every person in the model. I prefer OpenBSD (already breaking one of their model assumptions) because it presents a very high level of utility for what I do (web applications), and because I like the way it is controlled. Other people disagree, or have tasks that OpenBSD is not as good for. The point is, they have their reasons, but we have no statistically-accurate way of determining them.
The authors also make a weird assumption that linux is free (as in beer). The Linux distributions that companies are adopting are -not- free, they are systems like Red Hat Enterprise. Price is just one of many factors that makes people choose Linux over Windows - I can get a rock outside my house for "free", but that doesn't mean I'll use it to run a web site.
I could probably throw out random examples all day, my point is we simply don't have enough information to make conclusions like this. Maybe it's Linux. Maybe it's a completely different operating system altogether. We'll know who's on top when we get there. Meanwhile, if you think being the 100 ton gorilla -guarantees- you future market dominance, Wikipedia for Ford, IBM and Intel and see how well that theory has worked for them.
And in fact such "stategic" buyers are appearing all over the globe.
Further, the article ignores the role of hardware shift. Thus far, every time there has been a shift in the preferred hardware class, the OS has shifted as well. Mainframes: IBM os dominant. Minicomputers: VMS, others. Workstations: Unix dominant. PCs: DOS/Windows dominant.
We're entering the cellphone era, and some surveys have Linux already leading Windows mobile 2:1 (with Symbian dominant at them moment).
Microsoft Windows is a brand like the ipod. It will always be no 1.
That's because MSFT had a goddamn 10 year headstart.
That is exactly true. There is a huge semantic problem when they use the word 'best'. What does 'best' mean in this case? If it means greater market share, I say, "well, DUH." If it means a 'better product' there is a hell of a lot of room for debate there.
I'm not the least bit impressed with this article, but I am quite amazed that this wisdom is apparently what a Harvard education gets you these days.
FTA: In fact, the model suggests ways in which the likelihood of OSS winning out can be minimized
Yes, the newest and most effective tool in that warchest is called the software patent. It's a way that entrenched monopolies can rape and pillage any effort to improve things, explore tangential ideas, or offer alternatives. What's this about again? Oh yeah... OSS being second-best.
MS would be in court so fast being accused of trying to monopolize, exploit their "monopoly", etc...
Not under the Bush administration, they wouldn't be. Bush remembers and has honoured the corporate half of Mussolini's definition of fascist government. The antitrust trial against Microsoft was started by the Clinton administration, and was dropped roughly five minutes after Bush arrived in office.
They might be facing antitrust charges in the EU, but in the US at least, the Bush administration means that Microsoft (and any other big corp, for that matter) can do whatever it wants.
You're just blatantly FUDing there!
Microsoft said no such thing. They stated that they think that Windows, in it's current OS-on-a-DVD-that-you-install-on-a-PC form probably wouldn't exist. They're thinking of expanding it to a network or web-based OS environment based on the idea that people will have less and less to do with actual physical PC's and will be using more distributed computing methods (smartphones, consoles, laptops, etc...).
What you suggested is not only false, but it's inflammatory. You should be ashamed!
FromTFA:
``The basic trade-off is the following: With a duopoly, more individuals and organizations use PCs because prices are lower, and this raises welfare. However, with a duopoly, no operating system ends up exploiting fully its potential because developers' efforts wind up divided between the two systems. However, with a monopoly, the efforts to develop new software and improve the platform are directed towards one system only and this may turn out to be better from a social welfare perspective.''
That is, unless there are standardized APIs between the competing operating systems. As it happens, Windows does not implement the same APIs that its competitors implement, and that's what really causes the duplication of developer effort. If, say, the competition had been between Linux and Mac OS X, the situation would have been much better.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
If Harvard said so, it must be true. The educator of America's elite cannot be wrong. Only the stupid ones, like Skilling, get caught.
Linus concludes Harvard remains third or fourth best.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
... it's the thought-process that goes into it.
... Mac OS X has finally gotten multi-desktops, which is nice) YMMV. I also like the apps I can get (free, open source) for Linux; many of these are cross-platform (GIMP, OO.o), and for others I suspect there are work-a-likes** (and I'm sure some of them inspired the Linux analogs I know and use), so a workable desktop can be made using mostly free software on Windows these days, BUT, my Linux systems all crash less than my Windows computers have, don't need drivers for most mainstream peripherals, don't get cluttered with stupid-ware,* and generally (to my eye) look nicer, whether using fluxbox, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, or a few other choices.
... NeXTstep, or like the GNOME desktop, or like blackbox? OS X is a perfectly nice looking interface, but being able to choose is nicer yet, since there's no accounting for taste. [NOTE: am I wrong about auto-raise? Was stil true when last I used OS X, I think ...]
... my printer isn't connected. Thanks, I still know that, yes.),
As others have pointed out, the conclusion here is overstated in the headline and over-mitigated in the research; "number one until not number one" doesn't have an overwhelming ring.
But the idea of "better" when it comes to software is not the simple "A v. B" comparison that some people would like it to be. Whether something's better *to you* is the most important thing, and your reasons may seem like dream-logic to me (or mine might to you), but them's the breaks.
A coarse for-instance: There's lots of griping about when Linux "will be ready for the desktop" -- to which I have to admit bafflement that such a question can even be asked seriously. It's been ready for *my* desktop for the past 8 or so years, ever since I bought my first non-Mac computer on which to run it, and spent 1 kajillion hours frustratedly copying boot/root floppy pairs from a CD that came along with The Linux Bible or similar giant book.
I'm afraid I'll never be a real power user, and I sure run into hurdles all the time, but compared to Windows, the frustration level of Linux is ever so much more bearable, and I like the way the various desktop interfaces let me control the look and behavior of my desktop. (Sloppy focus, auto-raise, multiple desktops
Mac OS X fans like to gloat that it "just works," "is more intuitive," etc; maybe that's true for them, and for a lot of people; Apple certainly hires smart people and makes a visually appealing desktop. But until the next version's out, what if the thing I want to just work is "virtual switch to desktop 3?" Or "let windows be selected and automatically raised if the mouse hovers over them"? Or (and this one's not fair, but it's my point) what it I want it to look more like
timothy (using the currently ready-for-the-desktop Gnome 2.14 on a ThinkPad, running under Debian/GNU Linux, installed using the ultra-slick, laughably easy Kanotix installer. Hey, it works pretty nicely for me, despite a few glitches. Certainly nicer than the Windows XP which arrived on this machine.)
*(Like the useless "Printer Status" pop-up window that comes up every time on my Windows XP laptop to tell me that
** Still no Tomboy for Windows, though perhaps there's some decent similarly functional program.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Harvard? Is this the university that bestowed an MBA on George W. Bush?
How can we expect cogent analysis from a diploma mill like that?
Given servers that are either public web servers, e-mail servers, application servers, DB servers, etc (i.e. simple file servers like you see in every other office don't count), what is the breakdown of UNIX-type (including Linux OSs) vs. Windows vs. Something Else (Netware, OS/2, etc) machines? My feeling is that it'd be around 60% UNIX, 35% Windows, and 5% Something Else, at least in the US.
-b.
i'm sure they had help modeling this from the Rocket Scientists from MIT.
Economic modelling is very accurate! It was used to successfully predict 12 of the last five recessions.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The first mover advantage is irrelevant when things are moving in different directions. Linux has no "C:" drive - it is a unix clone and not an MS windows ripoff.
And that must be why everyone is running BSD?
oh wait they're not. and there isn't *much* technical difference, they run (almost) all the same software on (almost) all the same hardware, why isn't everyone running around raving on BSD?
Personally I couldn't care less whether my software was BSD or GPL, I still get the source, I can change whatever I want, I can even relicense BSD code as GPL.
[sarcasm]And I've seen soo many OEM binary drivers for OpenBSD[/sarcasm] not!
What could be better than a jet powered motorcycle? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8l6GTHLSWE
They do. There are plenty of places you can buy linux preinstalled. it's just not the majority that windows is due to pervasiveness or mac due to hardware issues. I love when people whine about how hard linux is to install. they'll say, "Windows was never this hard to install" as if they have ever installed windows. As a systems Admin who has done many windows installs on work machones and my own home machine, let me clarrify that I've had better success loading linux than windows across teh board. Almost every windows install i've ever done has needed to be redone at least one. it's just ugly. And it's not going ot get any better because they lack a reason ot improve it, since most computers come with windows in them already.
The problem with that logic is that the problem is worse in windows. if windows doesn't support your hardware correctly, you don't even HAVE the option of going to the community because there really isn't one. You can go to MS tech support and wait a year. I've never had a linux problem that lasted longer than a week and most are fixed in the same day, sometimes minutes. And all the technical know how it takes is the ability to read (though more is helpful). People talk about going to the command line like it's of the devil, but I can't see why it's that bad. open program and type what you're told to type. Sure, if you learn more you can be much more proficient, but most help forums and users will give you a command-by-command walkthrough if you need it.
I haven't had a system restart due to a driver failure in years. But then again, I don't do Windows.
The same hardware absolutely refuses to install 2k3 in more than 4-color mode (2 bit "color" is so retarded-looking), and screws up the video with XP.
Try OpenSUSE 10.0, or 10.1.
A lot easier to get a complete machine, with applications, configured, etc., than Windows ever was or will be (unless Microsoft goes to a closed architecture a la Apple).
Fucking lying scum-bag microshills!
Here's what I said: "There will be no Windows after Vista. Even Microsoft has alluded to as much."
Here's what you say:
" Microsoft said no such thing. They stated that they think that Windows, in it's current OS-on-a-DVD-that-you-install-on-a-PC form probably wouldn't exist."
Some vague "cloud of services on the Internet" or whatever they want to come up with as a replacement is not Windows. So fuck off. Vista is the end of the line for Windows as we know and hate it, and I'm SO happy.
http:\\www.winehq.org
It's getting better every time I install a new version. It's not a silver bullet, but gets you off the MS crack pipe.
The commercial version for the PHB's: http://www.codeweavers.com/
There's also a nice dos emulator: www.dosemu.org/ That's made some of my clients -very- happy.
Billable time for testing/install is very low compared to license costs on some of these commercial products.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Are you talking about MS Windows or Linux here? The ubuntuforums sounds like a Linux name, but the rest sounds like a Microsoft situation.
If I have trouble getting something to work in Linux or see if it works, I just do a google search. If it says it doesn't work, it doesn't work. If it has instructions how to get it to work, I'm good to go. If it says nothing, I assume no one has tried it and choose accordingly.
It's stupid to assume something will work on every computer no matter what. There may be an incompatibility with the motherboard or the like. What kind of idiot doesn't check to see if it will work before he buys it? It is no different than the 80s where manufacturers would only build parts which worked with specific computers--many times they had to because of physical constraints. Something made for an Amiga generally wouldn't work with an Atari 130XE. Only stupid lusers believe everything will automaticly work with their computer. With more standarization of hardware (such as pci and usb) it is more drivers which are the issue, however hardware compatibilty problems still show up.
I've been doing a lot of shopping on TigerDirect lately, and I've seen plenty of MS Windows users complain that they have trouble getting something to work and gave up. The problems aren't all on Linux.
Er, yeah. He forgot that GNU/Linux didn't include the BSOD API.
"No. Those commercials are just telling you to use an OS compatible with your personality. If you're an inveterate square, it makes no sense for you to use a Mac."
The commercial is all wrong. The apple guy should be wearing a pink shirt and talking with a lisp (and listening to showtunes).
Microsoft should put this in their commercial, but I don't think they would have the balls to do it.
The authors consider that by MSoft controlling the price of their operating system they can influence the relative demand for linux vs windows and always retain market dominance. This might be true of a market in physical products. The problem with this assumption is that price may not always decide which operating system someone uses. For example, if freedom from data-lockin were to become more important than price for users, then the choice of operating system becomes a binary decision of yes or no, and not a floating point decision of "microsoft have lowered their price so much that I find it attractive to give up my freedom." This is already effectively the case at the moment for a section of the market. Microsoft could not pay many linux users to use windows.
First movers may retain their advantage in a particular market, but it's not much good retaining an advantage in horse driven carriages when cars come along, and it's possible open source software development represents a change of this magnitude. It could be a case of Microsoft retaining their first mover advantage in the market of closed source operating systems, and linux having the "first mover" advantage in open source operating systems market. The open source operating systems market might easily grow to be 99% of the overall operating system market. Microsoft might be driven to open source windows to compete against linux, but it will suffer from being late to the open source OS market.
The study says, that Linux endorsement by big players like governments and Microsoft rivals could allow Linux to win the final battle over MS. So it is NOT making a simple conclusion that Linux will remain playing the second fiddle. Read it, it is good, if you have any capability to understand some economics.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
just reading the first few paragraphs I found (paragraph 2): "However, OSS has disadvantages too. Most importantly, it comes from behind in terms of market share (installed base)." ***Buzzz*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installed_base ,----[ Full quote ]
| "Installed base is a measure of the number of units of a
| particular type of system (usually a computing platform)
| actually in use, as opposed to market share, which only reflects
| sales over a particular period. Because installed base includes
| machines that may have been in use for many years, it is usually a
| higher figure than market share. Many people see it as a more
| reliable indicator of a platform's popularity."
`----
That's when I stopped reading. And so should the reviewer. When people get
technical terminology wrong and fall victim to misconception, peer review
should have the paper rejected. The guys may have studied malarkey like
Taylorism and can work out strategies, but their technical merits and
understanding of groupthink is lacking due to the scope of their research.
When a person from the field of economics approaches a discussion about
computing, then you know you should take a step back.
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
Others may have pointed this out before, but if Linux has "intrinsically better design and potential differential value", this will translate into a cost asymmetry because of less downtime, lower administration costs etc.
Assuming that "absence of cost asymmetries" and "intrinsically better design" can coexist in the long term shows that the makers of this study do not understand software.
C - the footgun of programming languages
why is the parent modded troll? his post is completely true and not trollish at all. This is exactly the way OSS works (just ask ESR, although his name seems to be pretty muddy around here)
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
It is obviously true that the one that goes in front has 'first mover advantage'; even lesser minds have realized that before now. But linux is actually in front in many areas - it's just that opensource SW doesn't get advertised loudly everywhere.
UNIX (and now linux) has traditionally been the platform for technical creativity - just think of the 'everything-as-files' concept as one example. This is of course because most true creativity happens in the minds of people who aren't yet in a wellpaid job: students, young PhD researchers, the nerd who sits up late in his room every night, etc. When you don't have a large company budget in your back, you are not likely to want to invest a lot in Windows, Visual Studio and other expensive SW; certainly not when there are excellent tools that can had for free.
So Microsoft only have first mover advantage in narrowly focused areas: the ones that fall within their sphere of business interests; only MS Office, really. Which is why, to take another example, we had Firefox coming up with one good idea after another, like tabbed browsing and extensions, which MS are now trying to bring into IE.
The problem as I see it folks is people don't pay for Windows,.
Now hang with me a second.
You see they purchase that PC with Windows included, or they get it from their son Jimmy who pirates a copy of XP on or whatever, either way people aren't NOTICABLY paying for XP, they don't get an "XP bill" - XP is rarely if ever itemised on their invoice from the store and heck if they have Win2k and it crashes and they take it to a PC store they say "fix it" if the cost is 300$ of which 199$ is for a copy of XP, they STILL don't think consciously they are paying for it - it's just it cost "300$ to fix mah computarrrr" kind of thing.
No no and no - eventually Microsoft is going to move towards monthly / weekly / yearly fees - infact I heard rumours Vista will have some kind of service for 50$ a year which cleans out virus's and spyware (windows live perhaps?) THIS is when people will go, "wait a second this operating system thing costs money, Jimmy what can you do for ma to stop me getting these here yearly Microsoft bills" *THAT* people is when Jimmy can roll out a good distro of linux including a simple browser, email client, IM client and hopefully basic decent printing / camera / burning / mp3 support - which really is what probably 70% of home computers are ever used for, if not more.
Until we reach the point where Microsofts bills are a little more visible and slapping us directly in the face a lot of people just won't care.
(in other, somewhat related news, I heard this Windows Live business with subscription fees might use Microsoft "points" same as the points from Xbox live, to make people not associate points with actual money >:( fucking typical "oh this anti virus is only 100 points! - not realising that's 20$ or whatever.......... - hopefully I'm wrong)
How did MicroSoft transition from "embrace and extend" to a "first mover"?
I'm not sure if this kind of research was actually necessary.
Anyway, I believe that humans fall into 2 broad categories:
a) Do-It-Yourself (who do/will use OSS) &
b) Get-Others-To-Do-It-For-You (who do/will use Apple/Microsoft/etc).
The principle of specialization/outsourcing is "We prefer not to mess with it ourselves, we'll get an expert to do it instead." Whereas the DIY mentality is "I shall/will mess with this and see if I can't come up with something better/more suited to my needs."
I have not conducted research nor do I know of any which might give a useable ratio of DIY people vs the rest. However, based on my observations of the people I have come in contact with over the years, I can safely say that less than 25% of humans are of the DIY kind.
Whaddaya say?
What did you think was hard in the Fedora Core installation? And which version are we talking about?
Ease of installing Windows XP? Did you ever install it from the Windows XP media (and not from a computer-supplied recovery disk)? I'd say that Fedora Core is about as easy to install as Windows XP (haven't tried installing Vista yet), but the Windows installer is much more irritating. Especially the pattern "click a few buttons, wait five minutes, click buttons, wait five minutes, click buttons, wait..." is very irritating, I'd much prefer the Fedora way of "make all settings in one go, and then wait for half an hour while installing".
I used both Windows and Linux back in the mid 1990s. Linux was missing a great deal of things back then. And, that is from a time when I was working as a Windows Admin and SysV Unix admin running on AT&T 3B2Gs.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
- OSX isn't covered
- effects of usability on sales isn't, either.
- that first mover effects don't guarantee indefinite future dominance, otherwise Commodore, Apple, and Atari would own the PC market.
What if OSX were FOSS? What if Linux became as usable and had as many apps available as OSX and stayed free of charge? At that point, why would manufacturers load anything *but* non-MS OSs on new computers? I think they chose the wrong limiting cases. While this is not news, it is good to see someone using formalized methodology to demonstrate it. Remember Napster's (positive) effect on music sales. FUD is counterproductive when the target population knows the FUDmakers are lying. SCO's FUD drive is already over, and has been fairly ineffective, though it may succeed in getting the FUDmakers behind bars and perhaps even a few Micro$hits indicted once the SEC investigates them. in the server space, even that wouldn't work unless MS could make a server OS and apps equally reliable, which they can't as long as they require the ability to run legacy code. This would also require that the cost of migration from *nix to Microsoft is non-zero. The cost of an OS is generally the least important component of TCO. This study is a good start, but they need to pull somebody into their team that understands the technologies involved. (preferably somebody who's platform agnostic) Their lack of understanding results in too many flawed assumptions to permit the study to be really useful in promoting understanding of the realities in this area.Tech Public Policy stuff
Some places, yes, but what places? Consider where JQP is likely to shop. Check Dell's and HP's regular consumer lines -- not only are they all Windows XP, but you'll also notice at the top "____ recommends Windows® XP Professional." Linux only appears in the business sections, not where JQP is likely to look for a new computer.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
You know what? Maybe that's OK. The price of remaining true to principles and morals is second-best, as far as market share goes. But we'll always be first best at what we do. Screw selling out for more market share. I'm OK with that if it means OSS will have the same appeal it does now.
"Who is this General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?"
Slacker for life!