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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 :)
The next headline we'll see is "Hippy's Show Soldiers How to Clean Rifles".
Leave the money makin' to the convicted monopolists, shall we boys?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Microsoft already has the benefits of their product being free for home/casual users. It's called "piracy".
Besides which, Open Office is in no way a real threat to MSOffice's success and market dominance. Like Microsoft is supposed to throw away their monopoly because someone else has made a word processor for free? Right.
"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.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
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
Just about anything else could be released as Open Source, or given away free, and they'd do ok. They've done some things like that - Netmeeting was the first widespread H.323 voice/video/data/conferencing product, and while they didn't give out the source, the product was free beer (on Windows, of course), and was a reasonably standards-based reference implementation that everybody else in the industry could use. But messing with Office is messing with the crown jewels.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
>>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.
I honestly wonder if they will eventually "get" that releasing MS Office code to the open source community is their only option if they really want to stop making almost 3 billion dollars a year in sales.
There, fixed that for ya.
Not that its as bad as it was 15 years ago but I still see far too many RTFM's for the OSS community to be lecturing Closed Source companies on treating people like they matter.
You jumped from point A to conclusion B awfully fast there. Why would they want to release the source code to Office? Also from TFA...
Ah...so you're worried that Microsoft would SUE someone using OpenOffice?
Honestly, I think OpenOffice is its own worst enemy. I've tried to switch to OpenOffice several times, but it just can't match my old Microsoft Office 97 in terms of launch and execution speed.
"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.
The important thing is, Bill Gates had an onion tied to his belt, as was the style at the time.
Has the poster RTFA? That's not even a rant - rants usually have a point or a specific grievance that they're aimed at. There's no point to that, no argument, he's not trying to meaningfully convince anyone of anything, offers no evidence, no logical or illogical basis for what's being concluded, nothing. It's just a loose collection of vague, meaningless assertions about how doomed MS is if they don't change. Does he even name one thing that MS is going to miss out on by not being OSS?
Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
"I honestly wonder if they will eventually 'get' that releasing MS Office code to the open source community is their only option."
Billg: "That's the dumbest fucking idea I've heard since I've been at Microsoft."
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...
*mouse kicks dinosaur in the toenail*
"Oh, yours is coming! We'll have our day! Yes-sirree!"
*kick kick kick*
"We're open source and free and real agile with a moral high ground and all kinds of stuff, and you are goin' DOWN!"
*lots more petulant kicking*
The dinosaur looks down, puzzled. It tickles. It also squishes.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
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.
Look, I loathe Microsoft and all of its business practices. But until something seriously threatens Windows, they really have little to worry about. People ask me, "Is that Vista?" "No, I'm running Linux with XGL/Compiz. Look at what I can do!" And they say wow and move on, because it wasn't Windows and they have no intent to use it. Nothing will stop them from making their programs incompatible with yours, or changing libraries or whatever to make OpenOffice.org so unbearably slow on Windows. If you want to play games, you'll probably need to support DirectX. The RIAA was voted the most-hated company in America by The Consumerist IIRC, yet their sales really have not been hit that badly (or not as much as they want you to think). It hasn't stopped people from buying music, listening to the radio, or supporting them indirectly.
You want to sue Microsoft for sabotaging you or stealing your patents? Go right ahead. You'll be embroiled in a long, expensive lawsuit, and the eventual penalties, if you get any, will be very little. As a result of FUD or "embrace, extend, extinguish," your company is more likely to be marginalized by the end, like RealNetworks or Netscape. I really think the only way to have dealt with it was the major antitrust lawsuit by the government, but we know how that resulted.
Sure, that would bring them revenue. Why would someone not just clone it and resell it? It isn't as if it requires a great deal of support or anything else for that matter. The only reason anyone pays for Office is they don't want to be possibly raided by BSA - home users pretty much just pirate or buy it with a new computer.
What possibly would Microsoft gain from exposing the code base? It would certainly allow OpenOffice to incorporate all of the "features" of Microsoft Office into their product with (a) little work and (b) no risk. What else would it do? It would not make throngs of Open Source devotees rush out and buy something the could have for free. I can't see unpaid volunteers contributing to the rather rigorous build process Microsoft has to add fixes for obscure, unfixed bugs.
And why does Microsoft have to sue anyone?
I'll even further that.
One of these days, Microsoft will completely cease to exist. The end has already begun.
It may not be in the next five years...or even 5 billion years...but it's coming.
Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 is $122 from Amazon.com, retail boxed. Three seat license. Currently - and predictably - #1 on the Amazon software sales chart.
There is of course the OEM edition and academic pricing.
The Geek is far too quick to equate max retail list with the street price for a legit copy of Office. But the deeper truth is that MS Office is still overwhelmingly dominant in every market and still best of class.
Sun Star Office 8 - a solid alternative, one might argue, for the home user - is $73 at Amazon and #1000 in sales.
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.
far too many RTFM's for the OSS community to be lecturing Closed Source companies on treating people like they matter.
Where do you see that? It's not on my LUG or in the class I help teach. Elitism is entirely a closed source constrution. Non free software is designed from the beginning to keep people helpless and divided, to create haves and have nots. Free software, by design, is inclusive and friendly. Have you ever seen a Vista install fest where enthusiastic volunteers come together and give a configured OS to anyone who wants it?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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".
You do realize that dinosaurs are extinct and rats aren't?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien