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What Microsoft Could Learn from OSS and Linux
An anonymous reader writes "An article on OSWeekly.com discusses a few things that Microsoft could learn from OSS and Linux. 'As Microsoft continues to understand that open source does not mean they cannot generate a decent profit, I honestly wonder if they will eventually "get" that releasing MS Office code to the open source community is their only option. Since the whole threatening to sue thing will be met with the same fan base response, just like the RIAA, it is certainly not a wise decision. And if Microsoft thinks Open Office is a pain now, try suing people over it, then see how many people refuse to buy their products.'"
They dont have to release code.. just give out a 100% accurate specification, and don't threaten to sue just because you write a program that can parse Word 97/07 docs.
This goes for any closed shop. Especially hardware vendors. We'll write the code, just release the docs! :)
Wow, could we have picked a title that would be more inviting to trolls? TFA is alright, but when I first saw that title I instantly thought, "Here we go again!" I guess that's to be expected on /. though :)
"I honestly wonder if they will eventually "get" that releasing MS Office code to the open source community is their only option"
Why in the hell would they do that or be enforced to do so?!
You can't enforce anybody to 'open up code'.
Supporting ODF or opening their own formats or codecs would suffice.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Lunix zealot/"journalist" with no business experience worth mentioning delivers condescending speech on what Microsoft needs to "get" and how much money they're giving up by not switching to Ubuntu's business model. Yawn.
Microsoft is a business. OSS is a community. Microsoft is out to make money. Only part of OSS is generating money through payment for services. Microsoft is completely successful as a business, and is making lots of money - there is little, if anything more OSS can teach Microsoft about money making.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
>>And if Microsoft thinks Open Office is a pain now, try suing people over it, then see how many people refuse to buy their products.
Statements like that just shout "I am delusional!". The people using Open Office are kinda already refusing to buy Microsoft's products. I don't think Microsoft is shakin' in their boots about pissing off Open Office users.
And if Microsoft thinks Open Office is a pain now ...
They don't. Nobody, and in terms of market share that's almost not an exaggeration, uses Open Office. If OOo would gain even a 10% market share, MS would probably like it, because it would help them argue that Microsoft Office isn't a monopoly.
Google Apps is a much bigger threat than OOo.
"Microsoft thinks Open Office is a pain now, try suing people over it, then see how many people refuse to buy their products."
How old is whoever wrote this? 12? Who honestly believe that anyone gives a flying expletive about whether Microsoft sues the Open Office project or not? As if the millions of technologically apathetic Microsoft Office users will rebel against Microsoft for a cause that they've likely never heard about.
How did this get on the front page? It's like a half-way thought through anti-Microsoft rant taken from any random open source related IRC channel.
Microsoft does not give a flying f*** about fans. They care about 10,000+ employee businesses that are MS shops. And even then, they want them to pay for premium level of support.
Even if the total number of MS haters exceed the total number of MS licenses on any given year, MS still goes to the bank with those licenses.
Do they want the haters to become joiners? No, not really. They do however want businesses to buy laptops for their workforce so that work done outside the office is still done with MS products.
Gee...I sometimes wonder how come every subject I submit gets rejected while this dreck gets posted...
I'm not MS fanboy, but WTF? What should MS be "getting"? Why does this joker think MS should just give their code to the Open Source community? Does he want the keys to my house next? People today have such an inflated sense of entitlement.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
To say nothing of the 'ie' -> 'y' :)
and then there are the must-have third-party apps and plug-ins that integrate with Office. along with the countless macros, templates, tutorials, etc., that do not exist for OpenOffice.org.
I.e. the useful and marketed parts of the OS.
As long as people maintain the attitudes like the one you shredded, Microsoft has nothing to fear. Microsoft has some of the worlds brightest technical people, who get beaten down on a regular basis when they try to get all 'geeky' with the software. Eventually, really good technology makes its way into the products, especially in the case of Office 2007, but only when the "user experience" is taken care of. It has to look good, feel good, install and uninstall with ease, and become second nature to the user in a short amount of time.
Linux people need to understand what they are up against. I work with a group of small medical research companies. When Merck decides to move to Office 2007, guess what all these companies have to do in order to continue working with Merck? Ya think they are going to take a moments look at Open Office? Nope.
You see, Microsoft understands that they can focus all their sales attention at a group of select companies, and the rest of the market has no choice but to follow, just to stay in business. Suppose you are a small manufacturer, trying to get your product sold at Walmart? Try sending them a financial forecast on anything but Excel, and see how far you get?
You dont beat this kind of lock-in with technical superiority. Steve Jobs understands this, and has restructured Apple accordingly. Linux vendors should follow his lead, but they dont. In no way is the IPod, or IPhone the most technically superior solution in its space, but both will be market leaders on the cool-factor alone.
Geeks dont like it, but tough shit, that is how the world turns.
In every industry, and in every marketplace, marketing determines who wins. I say it over and over again on Slashdot, but until Geeks relinquish the direction of their creative inventions to people who understand how to SELL something, the folks at Microsoft will lose no sleep.
Are you actually praising the upgrade train and trying to tell me that people like it? That's the impression I get when I read:
Microsoft's got a tight-knit set of products out there - businesses want to run Office because everybody else does, so they buy Windows to run it on, and buy upgrades to Office when it comes out, and buy upgrades to Windows when Office needs them.
Let's get this straight. M$ is coercive monopoly. People do not want Vista because it's expensive and restrictive. People are not buying it. The only thing they want less than Vista is a new Office design, complete with a format no one can open that forces them to buy the OS they don't want.
The real question is how long hardware vendors can hold their breath before deserting M$ entirely. They have waited six years for Vista and it's a dud. Retailer have been squeezed into buying 20,000,000 coppies of Vista that no one is buying, which adds insult to the poor hardware sales injury. The complex and anti-competitive standards M$ has pushed on hardware makers has made hardware purchases a real crapshot, solved only by purchasing systems as a unit or meticulous research. How long are they going to back that kind of inefficiency when the result is a stab in the back like Plays for Sure?
Their "crown jewels" are third rate and increasingly irrelevant. Digital restrictions are an obvious dissaster which must be removed if they want any media market share. After six years of development, mostly wasted on digital restrictions, we get Vista. I've never, ever, heard anyone say they like a new Office format that causes them to go spend a bunch of money. M$ can't fix these problems on their own and no one is going to ride to their aid unless the result is really free.
M$ has a choice to make: go free or die. I have not had any of their stuff in my house for six years and I could care less. Either way they are a diminishing threat to hardware and file formats.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Talk about delusional self-contradiction. Are you just trolling? Or do you expect anyone to actually believe this "M$ is dead" mantra that simply does not reflect reality?
Seriously, I mean:
Digital restrictions are an obvious dissaster which must be removed if they want any media market share.
That might suck, but in reality DRM will give them access to a much larger share of media, unless the media owners suddenly decide to change their ways. If you don't understand how these things work then why do you use that "I know what I'm talking about" tone? Don't you realize it just makes you look foolish?
It would be great if reality were different, but constantly repeating the same wishful drivel does not reality make.
Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I've seen it enough that while I don't necessarily think it's pervasive, it's certainly a problem.
This is no different than your wacky claims that you haven't seen a Vista laptop in your school, so therefore no one is buying Vista and it's a flop.
There's a nice Latin term for these types of disingenuous conclusions: reductio ad absurdum.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
And they run Exchange for somewhat dodgier reasons
It may be hard to imagine, but there's a very clear reason why people use the Exchange/Outlook combination: nothing else has done such a good job at integrating contacts, e-mail, and calendars. Seriously, I've talked to a lot of Linux guys and OSS advocates who cannot grasp the value in it, but it really ends up being very useful and functional. For all the criticisms you might have of Microsoft, their products in general, and even Exchange in particular, it's difficult to find a client/server package that can replace Outlook/Exchange.
In fact, I would go as far as to place "insufficient Outlook/Exchange replacements" as one of the big stumbling blocks for Linux/OOo migration. Evolution does a decent job, but still not perfect, and is only available for Linux. A Windows version has been in the works for some time, but AFAIK it's not even in beta yet.
It's not even that Outlook or Exchange is perfect. Certainly not. There's lots of room for improvement, but neither the OSS community nor any other company is really filling the need.
He speaks the truth.
I don't care for Microsoft's business practices. And many of their products are horribly flawed.
But Outlook/Exchange are staples in the business world, and I don't see a really alternative.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Let's get this straight. M$ is coercive monopoly. People do not want Vista because it's expensive and restrictive. People are not buying it. The only thing they want less than Vista is a new Office design, complete with a format no one can open that forces them to buy the OS they don't want.
I think half the problem with Vista sales, is how many copies they give away for free. Seriously, I have FOUR Vista licenses, all legitimate, none paid for.I think it's worth pointing out to you as well that Office 2007 works perfectly fine on XP so you're talking shit that it forces them to buy an OS they don't want, and to add insult to injury you can open Office 2007 documents in Office 2003! Further proof, that you're a fucking moron (you know, with how often you get moderated Troll, I wonder how you can post more than once a day).
The real question is how long hardware vendors can hold their breath before deserting M$ entirely. They have waited six years for Vista and it's a dud. Retailer have been squeezed into buying 20,000,000 coppies of Vista that no one is buying, which adds insult to the poor hardware sales injury. The complex and anti-competitive standards M$ has pushed on hardware makers has made hardware purchases a real crapshot, solved only by purchasing systems as a unit or meticulous research. How long are they going to back that kind of inefficiency when the result is a stab in the back like Plays for Sure?
Retailers haven't been "squeezed into" anything. Around here, we still have XP on shelves, and not so much Vista. If people want it, they get more copies in. Sounds like normal market workings to me. I can't decipher the rest of your rant (except PlaysForSure - which is about as crap as FairPlay in the long run).Their "crown jewels" are third rate and increasingly irrelevant. Digital restrictions are an obvious dissaster which must be removed if they want any media market share. After six years of development, mostly wasted on digital restrictions, we get Vista. I've never, ever, heard anyone say they like a new Office format that causes them to go spend a bunch of money. M$ can't fix these problems on their own and no one is going to ride to their aid unless the result is really free.
If they're third rate, why do people use them? Not because they're forced to - after all, OO.o does a fairly good job of opening Office documents - but because they CHOOSE to. Start getting OO.o on shelves in stores, and chances are, people will buy it. Face it, when people want to buy an Office Productivity application, they go down to the local store and look at what's there. They don't search the internet for "free office". That right there is something that OSS could learn from Microsoft. Marketing.M$ has a choice to make: go free or die. I have not had any of their stuff in my house for six years and I could care less. Either way they are a diminishing threat to hardware and file formats.
No need to respond to that, that's just utter bullshit. They don't need to "go free" any more than Apple needs to "go free" or Sony needs to "go free". Seriously. Morons like you HARM the Open Source movement more than help it - typically you whiney, zealous imbeciles are what the entire community is typecast as. Getting rid of that reputation would be a good start to actually getting somewhere in the market.Also, you mention that you haven't had an MS product in your house in six years, and apparently care a great deal about it (because you could care less, as opposed to couldn't care less). In that case, shut the fuck up because you don't use the products, and therefore you don't know anything about them,
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien