Slashdot Mirror
How Microsoft-Yahoo Will Affect Open Source
jammag writes "If the marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo were to be consummated, GNU/Linux would be hindered, argues Roy Schestowitz. Yahoo's funding of open source initiatives would dry up. Yahoo, which acquired Zimbra, would lose its love for the open source competitor of Microsoft Outlook. The list goes on..."
All the more reason why this deal should NOT go through....Anti-Competitive ? I think Microsoft would axe Zimbra in a heart beat.
Yeah, administrators of Zimbra based E-mail servers (like me) are starting to panic I think a Google bailout/business alliance could be, as one Zimbra developer described it, "manna from heaven".
I don't understand how it would effect Linux (much less the GNU utilities), but it might slow down a few Y! projects. These projects, even if MS succeeds and stops all development on them, will still be continued if someone in the community thinks they are useful. That's the beauty of Open Source.
Should M$ aquire Yahoo! I sure hope my del.icio.us bookmarks will still be up and running. If so they better still work in FF/WindowsXP or FF/Kubuntu->Linux. Otherwise I'll just use the local FireFox bookmarks again. Backed up my bookmarks just in case... That would be a pretty big downer for my bookmarks to vanish or just stop working across different platforms...
From what I can tell skimming the YPL it takes nothing more than setting up a Sourceforge Project to fork each of these products. It was only a few years ago when Push&Pull JavaScript and a few guys competing with Exchange with a Web ASP were nothing but a handfull of nutcases.
Apart from the corporate fuled buzz Yahoo is putting behind YUI and the consited branding of Zimbra there is absolutely nothing for FOSS to lose with this MS-Yahoo deal. On the contrary. We're watching the evil empire blowing ca. 50 billion on a pipe dream about going head-to-head with Google in search. That's fine with me.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Not that I don't often find open source valuable and useful, but I don't see the trends you're talking about. There are very few open source products that are winning and/or dominant over their proprietary rivals. Google certainly has not gotten much adoption of their enterprise software-- they're still basically an advertising company. If Microsoft would accept that, and accept that Microsoft is NOT an advertising company, they could probably live together reasonably well.
E pluribus unum
MS currently has 10% of the market share of the search engines. Yahoo has about 1/3. Google has about 50% or more. If MS aquires Yahoo, they will convert it instantly to being live.com and will exclude all Linux systems. My guess is that sites that use apache will slowly see their searches be pushed back further and further in the MS engine. IOW, this is designed not to just take on Google, but to move companies off of Apache as well as punish all those that are not using Windows.
And to think that just recently MS was released from Federal oversight. All of this makes a good case for either FTC to step in or for either IBM or even Sun to purchase Yahoo. Otherwise, those companies will see *nix take a HUGE hit on the net. For IBM it will hurt a bit, but for Sun, it will destroy them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
When I say "he" I'm really using a figure of speech, since it seems to me that it's practically impossible for someone who is supposed to be a medical student on a budget to have that massive level of output. That alone would be an angle worth considering.
After all, whenever Dan Lyons or some other person publishes something /. readers don't like the discussion turns into one large ad hominem. Why should everyone else get a pass? Especially when they have dodgy reputations and seem to have done nothing more valuable than foisting ideas from other people about the Yahoo deal.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Flickr is fantastic in my opinion. I love the site, the way it works, and it's style. It's very low on clutter yet has plenty of features to keep it interesting... if only Yahoo! could take that same sense of style and, oh I don't know apply it to there main page?
Better yet.
Let's take the sense of design from www.flickr.com
Some of the content from www.yahoo.com
and add it to search.yahoo.com
Not quite the no nonsense beauty of Google, but hopefully not the cluster fuck of links that Yahoo currently is. And at the same time they would be distinguishing themselves somewhat from their main competitor.
Just my 2 cents!
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Please forgive me if this reply is a bit off-topic.
Firstly, I don't believe GNU/Linux development will be seriously hindered. It's long since reached a tipping point past which any major disruptions are unlikely.
This might be a good time, however, for people to begin looking at some of the BSDs. Yes, I realize Yahoo! is a major BSD customer, and should this deal go through I can't see Microsoft permitting the existence of anything else on their servers. Still, the BSDs are also widely deployed, reliable, and many would argue that the BSD license is less encumbering. Also, it has a formal foundation and governance which effectively ensures it's survival.
I've been an open source user/administrator now for over 12 years (12 w/ Linux, 11 w/ BSD) and am surprised at the relatively low uptake for this family of operating systems. In short, Linux ain't the only game in town.
Poof! Billions of Microsoft dollars gone up in smoke. So sssssshhhh... don't tell them they are making a very big mistake. Perhaps then they will start competing on valuable software and services.
I predict that the bazaar will continue to grow and expand and cater to all kinds of needs and tastes in the future. That really is the benefit of FOSS, isn't it? The freedom to choose (and use) the software that suits our needs, rather than being forced to take what the silo masters are pushing.
Well I think its super, actually. I think some people can confuse FOSS with anti-corporatism, and certainly, there's those that would and on both sides of the boring old aisle. But I think really that the whole thing is about freedom, and sometimes freedom does not necessarily mean efficiency and it doesn't necessarily mean free as in beer either. I see no moral quandry with using, supporting, and developing for Linux while at the same time being a money grubbing capitalist, even if it might have a sad impact on the stock price of a certain large software company whose products aggravate me, and nor do I have any fundamental problem with donating to organizations that actually worked on things for Linux.
I kinda think an NPR for Linux would not be a bad thing at all.
The crazy thing is, I would be willing to bet that if Microsoft just GPL'd Windows, they would actually be much, much better off as a company. Yeah, they would be paying for the development of something they are giving away, but all of a sudden they would have a huge new market for their tool chains as Linux is just killing Windows on every computer that is not a PC. It seems like for every deal Microsoft inks with some Windows variant, there's another dozen devices popping up that run Linux. MS just can't keep up with everyone and every niche market, and that's where the bazaar really wins.
This is my sig.
You may not directly use their 'services' but I think you would notice over time due to collateral damage to other seemingly untreated projects.
One more step towards eradication of that pesky OSS movement.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Do you use google?
This deal is to start cutting off google's air supply -- paid ads.
This is similar to MS destruction of Netscape. MS identified the source of revenue (business sales of browser) and bundled IE with the OS, removing the need for businesses to purchase browser software.
MS gets 2 things from Yahoo: an add network and denying google a chance to purchase yahoo.
This deal will be the death of yahoo -- they use Linux extensively and have A LOT of overlap with MS & MSN etc.
Open Source: Apache, Tomcat, Linux (been in a server room lately?), MySQL, Perl, Python, Ruby, Rails, GNU Compiler Collection, Vim, Emacs, Netbeans, Solaris, Java, Glassfish, Sendmail, Postfix, Exim, OpenLDAP, ISC Bind.
Look at all those loser applications. Give me a couple more minutes I might think of some more.
Maybe you're stuck in an anachronistic office suite kind of existence, but few folks I know could care less about creating gratuitously formatted meeting minutes.
I'm all for freedom, including your freedom to keep feeding your money to companies who do little more than capriciously alter their file formats and protocols on a semi-annual basis to compel otherwise useless upgrades. Of course, some folks just like to spend money to have shiny objects too. Fine with me, I do the same thing sometimes. Just remember, in a free market, victory goes to the most efficient and productive; and wasting money on services and software that have been commoditized is a loser.