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Windows Monoculture Myopia Revisited

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank dept.

round stic writes "eWeek magazine has an interesting look at the effects of the Windows monoculture on IT budgets, even as everyone agrees on the severity of the inherent security risks. The article contains interviews with Dan Geer and others who warned about the risks of the Windows monopoly three years ago. The article coincides with a piece in the Observer that suggests Vista is the end of the Microsoft monolith because of how complex the operating system has become."

23 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. End of a monopoly by Jesrad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Microsoft's monopoly is fighting against itself: newer versions of Windows are finding themselves to be in the "striving competition" position, trying to steal marketshare from older versions. This phenomenon can only amplify with Microsoft's inability to innovate. This is the end of the monopoly.

    --
    Maybe we deserve this world ?
  2. bah by tritonman · · Score: 1, Interesting

    BS, windows doesn't have a monopoly in the IT environment. I've worked at many places who use unix systems and those tend to be some very expensive machines. Plus, these IT companies should have big IT budgets, they shouldn't have all their stuff running on free operating systems, it's called redistribution of wealth. The big businesses with lots of money use the unix or windows sytems that cost lots of money which creates more jobs for developers to make the operating systems better. Those little startups can use linux all they want. There is no monopoly, it's a bunch of bologna.

    1. Re:bah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      That is essentially why Sun bought StarOffice back then and turned it into OpenOffice -- it was cheaper for them to buy a company doing office software and have them implement the features they needed than to buy 50.000 licenses.

    2. Re:bah by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There is most certainly a monopoly, but the Windows monopoly is a secondary effect of the Office monopoly. People just are not trained on anything other than MS-Office, and naturally jump back in fear at the very idea of using something other than Word, Excel, or Powerpoint. This is a cycle that is difficult to break, especially at larger, well-established companies that often have hundreds of documents that simply do not render right in OOo or Wordperfect (to name the two most popular non-MS-Office suites). Startups still need to hire people, and finding people who put OpenOffice on their resume is difficult, and migrating from Office to OOo is very difficult, despite the fact that most business tasks are covered by OOo. I know people who run Linux but still have to get Windows and Office licenses and run them under VMWare or QEMU -- OS migration is easy compared to document and software migration.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    3. Re:bah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      For those who still go by the old non-sense "Hey, no one was ever fired for buying Microsoft!"
      I know several people fired because of using or buying Microsoft. Even a link has been posted by someone else about getting fired.

      http://blog.lobby4linux.com/index.php?/archives/83 -No-One-Ever-Got-Fired-For-Using-Microsoft.-Yes-Th ey-Did..html

  3. sabotaging own install base by 192939495969798999 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Let's assume that people buy new OEM PC's that have the newest Microsoft OS on them. If Vista provides new, "incompatible with old version" features, then the Windows install base becomes less self-compatible. If Microsoft fights to keep Vista compatible, there will be no real reason to upgrade. It's a catch-22 of being the monopoly OEM-installed OS.

    --
    stuff |
  4. End of the monopoly... by tygerstripes · · Score: 4, Interesting
    We can but hope.


    Just to play devil's advocate here (so don't bite my head off); while Windows may be complex, its ubiquitous nature does reduce the need for applications to be particularly portable, and for programmers to be particularly knowledgable. That's an arguable benefit, but it maybe the drive for varied OSes has its drawbacks.

    It would obviously be preferable to have a well-written universal OS, but that brings us around to the old saying: The best kind of government would be a benevolent dictator, but how many dictators stay benevolent?

    Windows and M$ may be evil, are certainly a pain in the arse, but are they also just an inevitable consequence of the technological and economic environment we have created? If it weren't M$, would we just be having the same problem with someone else? If the devil didn't exist, would it have been necessary for us to have created him?

    What do others think about this? (Again, I'm only playing devil's advocate - I want to see how others view this situation)

    --
    Meta will eat itself
    1. Re:End of the monopoly... by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It would obviously be preferable to have a well-written universal OS, but that brings us around to the old saying: The best kind of government would be a benevolent dictator, but how many dictators stay benevolent?

      It would be vastly better if we have well-written universal API layers. Like Java, C#/.NET/Mono, Qt, GTK, and other beautiful cross-platform toolkits.

      Unfortunately, except for Java and C#, we don't have any toolkits that go "all the way" in being cross platform, with the possible exception of Win32 (WINE), but Wine is reverse engineered, not bottom-up designed, so there are limitations.

      There's no reason for application interfaces to be deeply tied into the OS. Properly engineered, a user-space environment on Linux should be able to run Windows or OS X or whatever applications, and vice versa. The reason we do not have this is not because of engineering limitations, but because of vertical vendor lock in. Lately, this seems to be easing slightly.

      I envision a future where applications come with API requirements, not OS requirements. "Requires GTK 2.42, OpenGL 3.0, and SDL. OpenAL 5 required for 3D audio." Software manufacturers would probably support particular "distributions" on the box ("Runs on OS 12.5, Mandriva 2012, and Windows Super-Next-Hubble-Viewpoint"), but like *current* binary software for Linux you shouldn't have many problems installing on the "wrong" distribution; with minor API-requirement caveats.

      Think Python applications (these are often cross-platform). Think Java. Think C#. As CPUs get faster, we can put up with some of this overhead; and indeed, in some cases there is very little overhead (WINE does Win32 in userspace on Linux really quickly. Imagine if Microsoft gave up the OS business, but just started selling something like Wine. The "Windows" application layer for Linux, OS X, Unix, Solaris, whatever.

      If you want an example of this environment, look at Linux, Solaris' Linux Application Environment, FreeBSD's Linux Application layer, and lxrun, the Linux application layer for (ick) SCO Unix. IIRC, AIX is also Linux compatible.

      I think it can work; and giant commercial developers have no problem operating in this multisegmented space. Sure, there are a few more compatibilty bugs than in the Windows monoculture, but there's a greater diversity of applications and environments (from very small systems to giagantic systems), and if the commercial OS space was more competitive in the Desktop world (multiple vendors of multiple pedigree OSs) we would see these compatibility issues worked out quickly.

      --
      WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
    2. Re:End of the monopoly... by tygerstripes · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Hmm... Yes, I agree - it's the vendor vertical lock-in of APIs and such that has caused the majority of problems (and that probably causes all this friction between M$-users and FOSSers).


      I'm starting to think, as a result of this discussion - see other threads - that Windows (or something like it) was an inevitable phase in the evolution of OS software. Much like the IBM PC in the 80's, as somebody else said, at first it was fear of the unknown and incompatibility that drove people (well, the market in general) to stick with what they knew. Then, as the requirements became more clearly defined through experience and familiarity, alternative solutions to well-defined problems became available, and we now have thousands of PC and component manufacturers all using the same standards. In the case of M$ though, they've used every trick in the book to keep their standards as closed as possible and keep everyone else out of the market, which may explain why this phase has lasted so long. The cause of their market dominance could be seen as a combination of their anti-competitive practices and the fact that they pretty much "got their first" in gaining market share during that crucial stage of OS evolution.

      So maybe, with luck, we're looking at the same evolution of the OS market. Universal platforms and APIs are the way things will progress, and within a few years your choice of OS will be seen as a matter of taste, preference or function (as it is with Linux now).

      I must say, I do like your vision of the future.

      --
      Meta will eat itself
    3. Re:End of the monopoly... by jafac · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I envision a future where applications come with API requirements, not OS requirements. "Requires GTK 2.42, OpenGL 3.0, and SDL. OpenAL 5 required for 3D audio."

      Well, the kicker here is - these things ARE pretty much cross platform; Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, etc.

      It's where you need to talk to the OS (Administrative Script Programmers chime in here - ) that causes the problem.

      Sure, I can use a Perl script to admin my windows network, to talk to Active Directory through the ADSI interface, talk to the event log, registry, or file system through the WMI or WIN32 interface, etc.

      But that script isn't portable.

      I can do stuff on ANY unix, like create users, archive logs, secure permissions, etc. - and with the exception of specific paths (/usr /etc /var etc.) that script is pretty much portable. But talking to the OS in a windows world is a whole 'nother ball of twine. You may as well write your stuff in VBScript, because at least there's a bunch of examples out there where other coders have done the work (spent the hours) for you.

      So - with the exception of this kind of scripting - we're pretty much already there. Pick your language. Pick your runtime environment.

      What does this tell us?

      The real battle is for the Server Market, and the mindshare of the network admins out there. Microsoft has made a lot of headway in the Server Market. No doubt about that. They totally made Novell their bitch in the 1990's. But there are signs they're losing their momentum. Part of this has to do with the failure of their focus on .NET. Part of this has to do with their reluctance to use any form of Open Source development, or open file formats. (in fact, the only time I can recall MS adopting an open protocol was TCP/IP, which, on their part, was wildly successful for them). They had a model to follow. They've done it before. But they're just reluctant to repeat their old successes, I guess.

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  5. Just to add to this.... by AriesGeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can already hear everyone saying, "But Apple came up with the UI idea" or even "But Xerox came up with the UI idea." Be that as it may, it was Microsoft who proliferated it throughout the world and ingrained the idea of the particular UI into our brains. Like it or not, admit it or not, Microsoft has done a bit of good for IT in general.

    With that being said, they have done quite a bit of evil too. But there's so many negative posts about Microsoft, I had to comment on the one positive post that I saw that wasn't just a "microsoft rules you lunix users muhahahaha" troll.

    Ok, Mods, do your job. Mod me down for saying something positive about evil evil bad bad Microsoft.

    --
    Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
    1. Re:Just to add to this.... by AriesGeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think you are generalizing too much. Sure, people who use their computer only at work for 1 or 2 applications will be lost when they go to another machine. Look at the bigger picture, though. It is 2006, not 1996. The average computer user knows, in general, how to use Windows, how to use IE, etc. The days of "sysadmins" knowing the ins and outs and everyone else knowing next to nothing are gone. There is a computer IQ middle class now, and it dominates. And guess what most of these people use? Windows XP. So yes, the statement is accurate.

      Don't get me wrong. I used to be a Microsoft hater. Being a FreeBSD person, I used to also be a Linux hater because of the zealotry. In my old age, I guess I have settled down a bit and realized that everything has its place, including Microsoft. To the average /. reader: Wait about 10 - 15 years, you'll know what I'm talking about. :)

      --
      Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
  6. Three years ago? by pookemon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    who warned about the risks of the Windows monopoly three years ago

    What took them so long? That was 2003 - it was a "monopoly" (Not really - it never has been and never will be...) long before then.

    --
    dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
  7. I don't think its the end of a monopoly by Siberwulf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Really, I don't think it will be the end of a monopoly. Why would it? MS has every bit of steam possible in their engine. As a "Seasoned" (5 years or so) .NET developer, we cater to Windows. Therefore, we use windows. Furthermore, we use Office. Our clients use Windows (I guess we don't help things by not offering MAC IE/Safari or Firefox/Opera support, but thats another thread, honestly).

    Another neat note is that MS's XNA framework and GAme Studio Express is just out in beta and quite a few people are liking what they see. Unfortunately, it'll take another beta release to get the Content Pipeline out the door, which means painful conversion of Mesh files, but thats ok for now, as people get to learn the IDE.

    I've always been told that making money has nothing to do with having a decent base product. While that might not be the selling point, the fact that you have good accessories, or at least desirable accessories usually can push the fence-sitters onto your side.

    *NIX will never die. Windows will never die. I don't think it matters how much each side tries, since the appeal (to the GP) of "Widely Used" vs "Better" have always offset.

  8. Slight nit with the CISO's position by hey! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The CISOs' concerns about the cost of non-standardization to an organization miss an important possibility: organizations can choose to standardize on a product or vendor without making the same choices as the majority of people in the world. For example, you can choose to standardize on SUSE Linux, and with much of the world's black hat population focused on Windows, you'd avoid many of the Windows attacks.

    This is much smarter security-wise and economically than trying to support many different operating systems in production systems. For one thing your support costs go way down, especially if you choose the right vendor, because you are buying and deploying in quantity. While you as (for example) a SUSE shop will still get slammed hard when Linux is targetted, the shop that tries to suport Linux and Windows at the same time will get hit with Linux AND Windows vulnerabilities. Furthermore, it's likely that no matter what operating system is vulnerable, some mission critical system some place will be compromised.

    So, a possible strategy is to standardize, but on something that is not a dominant "de facto" industry standard. For larger outfits, you may choose to standardize differently for different divisions and subsidiaries. You still get the scale effects of standardization, and while it does mean you respond to more security problems, you're probably scaled and organized in a way that makes this possible to handle.

    One problem of course is that presumes you have a choice of applications which can meet your needs. One of the arguments some economists (who have magically rediscovered some of the disadvantages of competition) is that software is subject to the "network effect", which amounts to that if there is only one platform to target, then the market for software for that platform is bigger. This means you benefit from the competition in the application space. The downside of course is that you suffer from lack of competition in the OS space, from the OS vendor's attempts to tilt the playing field in the application space, and of course the monoculture effect.

    These days various flavors of Linux are at least as good as Windows by any reasonable standard, when considered as an operating environment for your computer. Linux and BSD fall short availability of suitable applications for these customers, and support for those applications. In some application areas, Unix flavors are a bit ahead of Windows IMHO, but overall the Windows market has the full spectrum of applications better covered than Unix. This barrier is a catch-22; developers will come to a platform when there are adopters, and adopters will come to the platform when there are developers.

    So, a legitimate strategy to avoid the monoculture problem is to use a Unix derivative such as Linux, BSD or MacOS. However the practicality hinges on the differential in application availability being less than your concern for security.

    MacOS is probably the most important player to watch. It may well break the network effect log jam, to the benefit of Linux and BSD as well.

    The one place where movement towards this rosy future can be thwarted is in standards compliance. Consider the number of web servers that run on Unix variants, but whose clients are overwhelmingly Windows desktops. The standardization of HTTP, HTML and these days javascript makes this possible (although failure to support standards inflates costs). Standards for data interchange and communication are a critical enabler of a heterogenous software ecology. Without them you cannot work with suppliers and customers who make different vendor choices than you.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  9. Re:TFA perpetuates myth by orasio · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Where would they both be now if they stopped fighting in, say, 1999?


    In DRM hell, of course. There is where you can see how correct RMS was, back in the day. The GPL is of course the only thing that effectively stops MS from embracing and extending GNU/Linux. If Linus Torvalds hadn't learned about the GNU project and the GPL, lots of hard work by lots of people in the kernel could be made irrelevant.

  10. Re:But what about INERTIA? by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Are the masses of IT directors going to think, "Gee, monoculture is bad, I think I'll replace all my Dell desktops with iMacs"?

    Hell no, they will do whatever the trade magazines and microsoft sales drones tell them to do. I have yet to meet ONE IT director that not only understood what the hell he was in charge of, but had the ability to even formulate a plan on how to research and impliment the best solution for the company.

    The last job I was at, the new IT director demanded that the video production department be brought up to corperate standards... Which meant getting rid of all the G5's the new server raid arrays, etc.. and replacing them with absolute piece of crap Dell pc's and windows based video editing and composting solutions. Productivity of that department was utterly decimated by a retarted moron who is horribly overpaid even though every one of us was telling him it was a very bad idea.

    So productivity went down to ZERO, morale was destroyed, the whole thing was such a mess we had to hire outside contractors to get our work done pay for advanced training for all staff and the director asshole got a "bonus" for losing the company money.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  11. Risk analysis for managers and techies by Danathar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Fact of the matter is, nobody (who makes the purchasing recommendation) gets fired for choosing Microsoft if their products fail as a result of a design flaw that causes an application/OS crash or security hole that results in someobody taking control of systems you don't want. You can just say "it's windows...everybody runs it. Not my fault!".

    If you go out on a limb and choose something different then your "risk" of getting the crap beat out of you if you fail is HIGH and the return is LOW.

    Accountability for the people who choose MS products for their organizations will help. If your boss said "if a SINGLE desktop gets infected with a virus or spyware you are fired" would you choose Windows as your desktop/server OS?

  12. What is competition by nuggz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    MS outperformed, they got set up as the default and made their software good enough.
    If we look only at PC hardware
    People bought MS DOS, not PC DOS, not Dr DOS

    There were a few windowing environments and task swapping/multitasking
    Deskview (sp?) GEM, OS/2, GEOS
    People still bought MSDOS (Dosshell swapping later and MS windows multitasking)

    They also leveraged their default status, when they went QBasic and the default editor, did anyone notice it was very similar to the QuickBasic and QuickC environments? (I loved QuickC 2.5 at the time)

    123-> Excel
    Wordperfect -> Word

    They simply make a good enough product, and work on the weak points till it's no longer clearly inferior to the competition.
    It's a very effective way to compete.

    1. Re:What is competition by Magnusite · · Score: 2, Interesting
      This is an interesting observation, but compare the right things.
      GEM (Digital Research), TopView (IBM), MS Windows all came out as graphical shells over DOS. You still needed to have DOS in the first place. In contrast, OS/2 was the origin/inspiration of Microsoft Windows 3.0.

      Lotus 1-2-3 originally competed against Microsoft Multiplan, and completely crushed it (what? you've never heard of Multiplan? Guess why?). Bill was so mad that the next version of MS-DOS broke API compatibility and Lotus apopeared to be "buggy". Lotus had to issue a fix once they understood what had happened. Yes, Excel did eventually win, and I'll tell you why shortly.

      Wordperfect had the market cold against everything, because they supported nearly every model of printer on the market. In addition, the formatting scheme that the program used made sense, IMHO much more so than Word style sheets. Yes, Word did eventually win, and I'll tell you why.

      Bundling.
      Around 1994, Microsoft put a word processor (Word), a spreadsheet (Excel), something else, I can't remember what, and made them all work together. One could even use Visual Basic to script up special applications with these things. It still wasn't enough to get people to switch.So they dropped the price for the whole package to $150 USD. Nobody could compete with that, so everybody else lost. Once MS had the market to themselves, they slowly raised the rate on every new version of MS Office until it was profitable again.

    2. Re:What is competition by Gilmoure · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You left out the part where, after not getting in touch with Kildall, a VP of IBM, who was on the national United Way board mentioned this to the chairwoman of the board, Mary Gates. She said to contact her son. And so it goes. The fact that others in Gate's family were IP lawyers, with connections to IBM as well probably helped as well.

      It's not what you know...

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
  13. Re:You forget business volume licensing by flight_master · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think this is screwed logic. First off, you would like everyone to buy a new computer, every 6 months? Most people I work with (private people, small businesss, etc) Don't have a clue why they should upgrade. Heck, one guy thinks that his computer is "full of bugs" (adware)! The standard upgrade time for computers, at least, around here, is 4 - 5 years, with quite a few buying 'new' machines in the last year or so.

    Next, a lot of the business from the big companies comes from Celeron / Athlon / P4 business. Most of these computers don't have the memory, CPU power, or even the video card (most use on-board accelerators) to power Vista.

    I know, I know, RC1 looks a lot better than Beta2, but it still won't run on my "noob-machine" (Celeron 1.2Ghz, 512 RAM, Intel graphics solution). And this is the typical type of homebrew computer you'll see in use.

    The way I see it, I don't think that many people will upgrade to Vista, at least, not right away. Vista is terribly complex, and for some things, XP is actually easier to use - I wouldn't be surprised if some people actually go back to XP, after their experience with Vista.


    -Christian

    --
    "Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price.
  14. Re:Please read the Observer article before comment by archen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    MS made their bed they can sleep in it. Windows is too complex because MS MAKES it too complex. When you strip everything down to the (very stable) NT kernel, the design is pretty good. Then come on the layers for the GUI and things get muddled quickly. But even that isn't a big deal. Now lets consider the other crap that really has nothing to do with an "operating system", but is simply bundled in. You have junk like Media Player, Internet Explorer, notepad.. The list of apps that is just bolted on top goes on and on, but these things should be completely modular. MS is unwilling to decouple these things and is now mired in overcomplexity which is compounded by attempting to manage a team size needed to complete these tasks.

    I'm starting to get the idea that MS doesn't even LIKE their OS anymore. It's just too much to maintain, while other programs like Office provide lots of money with less than half of the development costs.