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Why Windows Must (and Will) Go Open Source
Attila Dimedici writes "Charles Babcock of Information Week published an interesting article suggesting that Microsoft will have to at least to some degree take Windows open source if they want to stay in business. He suggests that the money to be made from the things MS builds on top of Windows (Office, Server, SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.) is so much greater than what can be made from Windows itself that MS will have to give up the revenue stream from Windows in order to maintain these other, more valuable, revenue streams."
Having to give the OS away for free in order to sell the apps only makes sense if you don't already have a stranglehold on the OS market. Sure, MS has gotten some bad press lately but they still enjoy the overwhelming share of the OS market, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon.
The fact that they are not making a lot of money selling Vista does not mean people are moving away from MS in droves...they're just sticking to an older MS product for now. MS is still entrenched as simply the way people expect computers to work, and it's going to take a much longer series of much larger screwups from Microsoft to change that.
Just look at Gates' earlier comments about how open source ruins development models.
Something tells me that ship might sink rather than adapt (assuming the opinion piece on the direction of the market is correct in the first place).
- Toast
Maybe this guy has different stats, but last I heard, Microsoft made something like 1/3 of their revenue from Windows and 1/3 from Office. It's not like they don't make any money from Windows.
Gosh, I laughed so hard at that.
Oh goodness, that is so funny. Microsoft going open source with Windows.
Snort
Man, it hurts to laugh now.
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...is the day Steve Ballmer stops sweating profusely.
"I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
and first step towards FOSS crowd, almost finished after 10 years in MS research labs, is FUCKING GRUB SUPPORT.
839*929
Not a chance, no way no how... and they will just give it to OEM's who will discount PC prices? LOL
You know why? Because if this is indeed the case, Microsoft would have released the code for systems like DOS, Windows 3.1, 3.11 for Work Groups, 95, 98 or 98 SE.
WINE + SAMBA
Well, at least it isn't VISTA
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
Hard to believe linux desktop gets anyone at Microsoft shaking in their booties with its < 1% market share. MacOS just broke above 10%. That's a target to neutralise, not linux.
Are we witnessing new John Dvorak being born?
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Nice joke, I sure some people will even believe it, but save things like this for April Fools Day.
leave aside support activity being a bitch in itself. the shittiest thing in i.t. is probably support ?
with this fashion, ms would cut support costs, and make better profit selling more expensive office items and serves and stuff to an enlarging userbase.
BUT ....
all of us here know that microsoft wont do that even if hell freezes over, so there's no point in arguing. that's bad for them. and good for us. with 'us', i mean the free world.
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Sure, not supporting Linux, *BSD, and dirivatives will cut into their profits if the Year of Linux on the Desktop ever comes, but they don't need to open source Windows. They can delay that Year by releasing Windows as freeware or make a Linux port.
I don't no about that. The market may be more a factor in Linux success. ARM (or MIPS) chips, China, Linux and flash means we don't need intel any more. People and business can't keep saying no so easily, and with the netbooks there is a proven market.
The world is moving away from x86 arch
Like Apple did?
Honestly, can't the summary tell us at least "Why Windows Must (and Will) Go Open Source?" The summary doesn't explain why, it simply counters one reason why not.
windows. going open source....? hahahaha
whoever thought that this would happen is truly, indescribably stupid.
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What planet are you from? PPC is dead. Sparc is dieing. Embedded is owned by ARM almost as completely as x86 rules the desktop. Intel attempted to kill x86 with IA-64, only to see it fail miserably to AMDs x86-64. Hell, x86 is even making inroads in embedded systems. A few very high end specialty devices like game consoles are doing other architectures, but that's about it. If anything the x86 stranglehold is stronger than ever.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
What if Microsoft offered their OS at a much cheaper price and modeled their revenue after, say, console makers? While the consoles are still expensive, the corporations sell them at a loss and instead plan on gaining a profit from selling video games.
In Microsoft's case, they would sell their software products like units at a profit, and they could concentrate on producing new types of software in house (like Apple does). Plus, if they went this route, they wouldn't necessarily have to pursue something stupid like new their software subscription services strategy.
I'm pretty sure they sell more ARM chips than Intel chips these days, and probably with much higher margins.
Most of the NMT (network media tanks) are running on MIPS or ARM right now. Looks like some of the netbooks will be. Can't wait till we see the power-savings and weight-savings.
There's a pile of different CPU ARCHes out there. How many does Windows run on? How many does Linux run on?
Clunky desktops and 5lb laptops aren't the only form-factor.
...the real question is whether what comes after Windows will be open source.
Microsoft is likely to outlive Windows, one way or another. Future computers will not resemble current computers indefinitely, including the operating systems. Thus, Microsoft will have to attempt to lead or follow a post-Windows trend - and likely a post-Linux trend.
Obviously new OSes springing forth from Linux will remain open source. (At least, one can hope.) Will Microsoft, on the other hand, attempt to stay with a closed development model in a post-Windows world?
Any question or assertion about Windows itself is beyond boring.
which could easily be removed in an open source windows. Don't think Microsoft could get around that one, even if it wanted to...
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
It will be a sad day when MS release the source code for Windows 8.5 ;-)
Think of the *x hackers that will die of laughter after reading the code!!!
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
So, so pathetic.
The problem with Windows is its backup software is Veritas. Its disk defragmenter is ... I forget who, I think it may be Disk Keeper. Most of the internal tools are licensed from companies that Microsoft doesn't own; you can buy a much better Veritas backup system or a full Disk Keeper license and get network control and everything. They can't open source this, and they can't give it away for free because they have to pay it back somehow; free Windows would be "Windows LE" or "Limited Edition" ... limited in ability to do anything but run programs you'll have to buy.
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I can only imagine the hilarity when we finally get our hands on the Windows source and try to make some sense out of it ;).
I believe the author means 'free', not open source. There are lots of reasons why MS wouldn't do either, but even if you buy the argument, all MS would need to do would be drop the price to $0. That doesn't mean GPL'ing the code! Gosh!
While I really don't see MS taking Windows open source anytime soon (read: hell freezes over), I have sometimes thought what would happen if they did.
Linux would probably be sunk for one, as hobbyists and big business alike dig in to Windows source code. Apple would be annihilated too- theres no way they could compete with free, not if they had a 90% market share to beat. Thoughts of MS ever losing their monopoly would be right out.
The world would be stuck with Microsoft domination forever. Not a happy thought.
Good job Ballmer's on our side.
If/when Windows is no longer bound to x86(-64), x86 will hopefully be dead within a decade.
The game consoles are all doing PPC in some form. The xbox360 ps3 and wii.
Then there is all the network gear that uses arm and ppc
ppc is far from dead.
FTFA:
To neutralize the advantages of Linux and other open source competitors, Microsoft will have to make Windows more like them. If it doesn't, it risks losing the 6-million-plus developer base that's made the Windows platform great.
Uhmm... why would the developer base run away? I don't get it. Because everyone else has? Then what starts them?
Also, why would Microsoft open-sourcing things be good for Microsoft? Either people shift to Linux because they drink the RMS kool aid (that'd include me), or because it's the better product for them (I then found out this also included me).
If they shift because they drink the RMS kool aid, then we can assume that they prefer a completely free OS (including application stack), which MS won't give out (according to the article, at least).
If they shift because Linux is the better product (technically, that is), Windows being open source(d) won't change the fact that Linux is the better product.
In other words, Windows may be what established Microsoft, but Windows can't sustain the company.
Why not? Where are the figures to back this up? I think you'd need to make an assumption about the relative number of OEM XP licenses vs. OEM Office licenses sold with new computers to just get something linking the claim back to the article.
The proprietary file formats that have protected Microsoft apps have been offset by Office Open XML
Here's the spec: if the document says jump, you jump as high as this other unspecified program. I have heard (but beware of echo chamber effects) that it's nigh impossible to write two implementations of the OOXML spec that renders identical outputs. So if people are going to look at $COMPETITOR Office and say "but my documents look all wrong, let me go back to Microsoft", how was the consumer really not locked in?
Blargh. I'm just going to judge this book by its first page. You can find some statistics in the article if you need them, but they seem loosely connected, and the article fails to specify why its predictions are likely to come true.
Article: -1, Overrated.
title of article: Why Windows Must Go Open Source
Fourth sentence of article: "[...]Windows will never become an open source project in the same vein as Linux[...]"
Sixth sentence of article: "[...]I'll concede that some Windows source code probably will never see the light of day."
I think what he really wants to say is that the cost of Windows has to approach zero. That's completely different from being open source. It's the classic "free as in speech" (or as in freedom) versus "free as in beer."
I think it should be fairly obvious that MS can't open-source the whole OS. For one thing, I doubt that they own the copyright of every single line of code in Windows, and they've surely had to license a gazillion patents, make deals involving trade secrets, etc. Look at the situation with Linux and GPL 2 versus GPL 3 -- even if Linus changed his mind and wanted to make it GPL 3, it can't happen, because you won't get thousands of programmers to agree. With Windows it's bound to be even more complex.
Okay, so let's imagine that the price of Windows becomes zero dollars. So what? Then the US would be like China, just another country where everybody runs Windows and nobody pays for it. You'd still have banks telling you their web interface only works with IE. You'd still have people with hard disks full of documents that are in proprietary formats, preventing them from switching to Linux. Things like video encoders and color management would still be patent encumbered. The main effect would probably be to boost MS's market share, and that would probably allow them not just to sell more copies of Office, etc., but to abuse their monopoly more effectively for competitive advantage. That's essentially what the author of the article is talking about by the time he gets to pages 2 and 3.
And is anyone under the illusion that every version of Windows would cost zero dollars? No way. They'd very carefully set up a tiered system of price-differentiated versions of Windows in order to maximize their profits. Then it's like drug dealing: the first hit is free. This is what they're already doing in the third world, turning a blind eye to pirated versions of Windows because it helps to make those countries dependent on MS. The article says preinstalled Win XP is about $34 worth of the price of a new computer, and $34 is close enough to zero that I'd say that we're essentially already in that regime.
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To many of these revenue streams are dependent on the lockin which the OS supplies. If the code is open-sourced for the OS, then it will become much easier to make competing products.
Hell will freeze over before this happens. Are there any benefits for Microsoft that would make them do this at all?
Windows NT 4.0 ran on x86, Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC. Nowadays, there are only (really) x86, x86_64, and IA-64 versions now (I say really because there is a PPC version of sorts -- the 360's OS, which is forked from that of the original Xbox (x86) which itself was forked from Windows 2000).
Windows has in the past not been bound to x86 for desktop use, it just never really caught on.
It would make more sense if they released their own version of Linux. They could EASILY sell support, books and rake in money for it. and if they sold their apps for Linux, again, they would have a huge market as their product would run on Macs as well with little re-engineering.
The damage they would do to the other Linux resellers would be enormous (in the short term) and if they could do a good enough job, they could become a huge longterm player and maybe even kill off the other players.
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I don't think developers have such a big problem with Windows not being open source as users have a problem with it being a crappy OS.
People migrate to Mac OS even though it's not open source (well, not all of it) and even though it costs more. People who migrate to Linux or BSD because they want an open source OS are not that numerous and I doubt Microsoft is fearful because people who cared about open software issue already left the boat a while ago.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
Sparc is dieing.
Hmmm, I thought they made chips on wafers, not dies.
Of course, it doesn't matter since Sparc is dying.
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but not the open source. They could sell 1 complete version for 50 bucks and accomplish the same goal.
The one exception being if they go to a BSD core with their GUI on it...like Apple.
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Microsoft, in the middle of one of the worst depressions since The Great (Old) One, is still reporting a profit. Not a loss, not even a small loss. It wasn't even a significantly lower profit than the ones they usually post. When companies like Intel were posting that their profit margins had slumped 90%, Microsoft's losses went from 4.5 billion to 4.1 billion.
Yes, Microsoft's bosses own a lot of Microsoft's shares, but the share prices will return to what they were and they get to buy back more now at discount rates. So they not only were richer than God to start off with, they'll be richer than most of the major pantheons combined once the market picks up.
So what possible incentive does Microsoft have to go Open Source? They have almost total control over 95-98% of the world's desktops. They have almost total control over virtually every OEM and every hardware manufacturer. People could boycott their entire product range for a decade and Microsoft would still be wealthier than every other OS vendor combined.
But people CAN'T boycott Microsoft. Virtually all manufacturers add in the cost of Windows into their systems. Even bare-bones systems likely carry some of that cost. I don't know how much Microsoft charges for permitting something to be classed as "certified", but no commercial company is going to permit the use of trademarks or promotional labels for free, which means all components will carry a Windows overhead as well.
So if you add up all these overheads that Microsoft gets for Windows, regardless of whether or not you actually buy the damn OS, my suspicion would be that you've paid the development costs long before you've paid the sticker price for the software. In which case, buying the OS is sheer profit for them. They can get along just fine if nobody actually buys a separate boxed copy ever again.
Sure, you can say that that means they have no motive to not switch to Open Source, but given their distaste for the methodology, I'd argue that it gives them even less motive to do so.
If the world's biggest software company can afford to underwrite fines larger than the GDP of some small countries, to the point where they're willing to keep infringing in total defiance of any rulings against them, and can swan through a severe global depression with a workforce cutback less than a third of either IBM or Panasonic (who have alternative revenue streams and no outstanding multi-billion-dollar fines), it's clear they are feeling next to no pressure to change their methods.
In fact, before this recession is over, it would not surprise me if Microsoft kills off the antivirus vendors (through questionable tactics, already well underway) and has made a bid for the software arm of IBM or Sun. They probably have more in loose change in the break rooms than Sun has in the bank, right about now. They might easily buy up Novell as well, crippling any competition SuSE might offer in the aftermath.
If they take out any two of those three, who precisely is going to form the competition?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The thrust of the argument is that MS loses revenue from it's cash cows (mainly Office) when people switch. MS could just release Office on MacOS and Linux to cover all bets - I'd guess that open=sourcing Windows would be a last-ditch event in Microsoft's corporate culture.
Do as you would be done to.
What Microsoft doesn't realize is that fully embracing open source, would be the best thing that happened to them since 1995. Suddenly all those generic errors would have people debugging them and a group of outside developers may see things Microsoft's internal programmers miss, such as the annoyance caused by the original Vista security dialogs. It's not the underlying operating system that is entrenched, but the general layout and graphic user interface.
"The way people expect computers to work" is nearly all graphic user interface. People, in general, don't have expectations about how their TCP/IP stack should behave.
They'll do it by redefining open source. After all, they can wrap a proprietary file format up in XML so that instead of being a bunch of undocumented blobs in a binary stew they're a bunch of undocumented blobs in an XML stew, and manage to convince people to say things like this...
The proprietary file formats that have protected Microsoft apps have been offset by Office Open XML, the default format for Office 2007 and now an international standard.
Meh. That depends on your source. If you are referring to Net Applications data, disregard it. It is more likely 5% Mac, 2% Linux.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
best you'll get out of MS is publication of the entries and expectations of all the APIs for writing to windows.
open source means everybody can tinker with the product from source code.
MS used to give some computer companies OEM rights with the ability to submit modules on MS-DOS, but never in windows.
if you think they got scoured with Vista no-ops in fancy packages that companies have depended on for 15 years, just imagine what the open source world would be like.
telling is that they have NOT open-sourced DOS. but then, vast parts of it are still core code in Windows.
MS is like the junkyard guy down the street... reuses everything, never throws anything out, and there's a nasty big rusting pile of it all over his house and yard.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
..then they can't play highdef movies.
One of the recurring debates among my crowd is: What would things be like today if IBM would have open-sourced OS/2 back in the early 90s? What say you?
It's stunning that the MSIE share of the browser market fell by only 5.8 percent in 2008. This speaks to the power of the default browser setting, and the inertia in the user community. FireFox, Safari and Chrome together only managed to chip away 5.8%? If Microsoft put forth a less than entirely crappy effort, MSIE would probably stop losing ground at all.
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This guy should lay off the crack pipe.
MS still have their hands around the market's throat, but they can't seem to get a good grip.
The "operating system" substrate has grown slippery. Virtual machines, API emulation layers, web, multi-platform development frameworks ... Applications find it increasingly easy to run in numerous places.
The "communications system" substrate has grown slippery, too. Web standards and office document standards are at a practically workable level. Boom, like that, IE has slipped from de facto standard to mere competitor.
You don't need MS anymore. The stranglehold falters.
The OS and protocol lock-ins have been unhealthy for us all, needlessly fragmenting the space in which apps can run. I'll be glad to see it go. I give it 8 years before it's effectively neutralized. Then companies will compete more with the merit of their works than with their influence.
Oh man thanks for this I needed a good laugh today :D
Ave Molech Setting
perhaps you should say "Windows NT 4.0 booted on Alpha, Mips, and PowerPC", as that is true. Running functionally on them is another matter entirely.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Microsoft made 16.37 billion dollars last year selling their server products and bundling everything else. That is a huge chunk of change. They have their finger in every pie and people don't care, they chomp down. Has this guy even looked at the cost of SQL 2008 Enterprise? $25,000 per processor can rake in the cash like none other (than Oracle). When it comes down to business, if MySQL could trade places on who was charging what, they would take it. There is no way Microsoft is giving away the keys to the castle. Too much money involved.
When it comes to Windows, free is still too expensive.
Personally I find it odd to consider platforms as "dead" just because you can't buy a standard desktop with one. I can run Firefox on an IBM Power6. Just because it's a server platform, that makes it "dead"? The iPhone runs an ARM chip. There are thousands of apps being developed, but by your reckoning it's "dead".
There are many, many embedded devices on non-x86 platforms. Routers, phones, TVs, compute blades, etc. There are probably hundreds of thousands (or maybe higher, I don't have good numbers) of developers working on these devices....how does that qualify as "dead"?
I can't run Firefox on a PPC chip on a modern desktop computer.
Well shit. I guess I do the impossible every single day. Where do you bozos come up with this crap? Firefox runs perfectly fine on PPC Macs. And there are pre-compiled community builds of it available for Linux PPC.
It's not about Microsoft going to open source, it's about innovation, and Microsoft gets low marks in that area.
I'll be surprised if Microsoft is anything more than a shell for patents in the future. Their approach to locking down the market with proprietary technology has failed. People like to think Microsoft Office and Exchange will save them, but open source alternatives will eventually become more popular. The very nature of Exchange means they must license the technology and they are.
Windows Mobile or some previous incarnation of it has been around for almost a decade and according to the article, Apple in a fraction of that time has surpassed Microsoft share of the market. Who knows why Microsoft can't get it right, but they've had a long run.
There's a possibility Microsoft will actually innovate and surprise the public, but I doubt it.
Economies of scale and the familiarity of the evil we know will always triumph over superior technology. Intel and AMD are probably spending $1 billion a year improving x86. Even if somebody designs a better CPU, if they can't afford to throw the R&D dollars at it that Intel and AMD are spending, then it will fall behind in a few years. Hence MIPS, Sparc, and PA-RISC, all of which initially showed some promise, have gone by the wayside.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Considering that most Linux machines are embedded (cellphones and the like) where Windows is too fat-assed to play.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I hope Open Source and Linux, and Sun and Apple can bring ms to its crouching duck-walk position as much as many others would like to see. But, MANY open source developers are simply going to have to come up with more polished user interfaces. App installation is STILL going to have to:
-- become as simple as click on the .tar, no yum /apt-get/ whatever
-- be as smart as installing with a click (after permissions have been determined valid and authorized)
-- and the installer will ALSO have to be smart enough to know how to just search for the Internet-available-but-signed-trusted choices of file are
I have on occasion probably used yum and apt-get and to a greater extent rpm and tar files. It SHOULD be easier. I am sure it IS easy. But, for me, it does not always work. If I have a need to get Rhyme working, and not all the deps are there, it's a show-stopper to face "repository not found", "dependencies (collide/incompatible...)"
But, that's just me and i have to sort these things out so i have less to complain about. BUT...
Joe Brockmeier has, :
http://ostatic.com/blog/open-source-windows-dont-count-on-it
"Open sourcing Windows wouldn't be a simple thing -- it took Sun years to comb through Solaris to start open sourcing it. If I recall correctly, Sun announced the initiative about a year before any code was released as open, and then other bits have been coming in dribs and drabs since. Windows would probably take even longer -- so, going from closed to open would take a couple of years and cost the company momentum even if they chose to do it.
There's also the legal bits. It would probably take Microsoft a very long time to review the code and ensure that it can be open sourced. I also suspect the company would be hesitant to show its code to the world in its present state -- no doubt, it'd take a while to go through the code just to scrub the comments. There's also the matter of third-party code that would need to be rewritten or relicensed to open source it. It's much easier to start a project using an open source license than it is to go from proprietary to open source."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
To my mind the only market with a significant portion of customers that actually care about the "openness" of open source software is the business market, and even there it is severely limited.
If it's a matter of pricing to be competitive keep in mind that for the average home user Windows already appears to be free. They bought a computer from Dell and Windows was already on it. I imagine most folks aren't going to care enough to calculate how much of the price they paid for their new computer went toward making that happen. To them Windows == Computer.
No, it just smells that way! ;) MIPS and Sparc are dead. The Cell processor is PPC based, so we may have PPC with us as specialty processors for a while still. I agree, ARM and x86 completely dominate their respective markets; soon Atom will as well.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You do realize that is basically a business model doomed to failure, right? They need the revenue from upgrades to recoup the princely sum wasted on Vista. If people don't upgrade, there's no more revenue until after - they hope - the next version release. Sure, there is still a trickle of new sales, but it's the revenue from repeat business - the upgrades - that really keeps everything afloat.
This is precisely why software publishers are aggressively pushing "Web apps" and even universal thin clients again: it would guarantee no flakes who only pay once and then take the ball and go home. In a subscription model, people either pay them money every month/year, or they don't get to use the software, PERIOD. There's less accountability for bad design in that model.
Given the current software business model, it's VERY bad for business when customers hold developers accountable for mediocre upgrades and simply choose not to buy them. Amazingly, apparently a lot of people do in fact refuse, and hang onto their bucks until an upgrade is offered that provides features they actually want enough to pay for them. Don't believe me? Try asking Philippe Kahn about how it hurt his wallet when people ignored Borland's manic upgrades.
This isn't directed "entirely" at you, so don't feel attacked.
If you price 2 identical computers out on Dell one with Vista Home Premium, one with Ubuntu Linux, there's about a $50 difference.
That should tell you that $240 sticker you see on the retail shelf is a crock of sh*. The reason that it's $240 on the shelf at Staples, is because they don't expect to sell it off the shelf at Staples, but by charging $240 a copy, they can swindle Dell down to the amazing value price of $40 a copy, as long as they agree to buy 1,000,000 copies this year.
The price of an O.S. isn't going to sway anybody except the people who build their own. Get Linux in the schools, and teach kids how to use it instead of Windows from the start if you want to move market share.
Telling your cousin's aunt she should try 'this' instead because it's free and it's good, and you'll have to call me when you want to buy any software for it because they probably don't make it for Linux... and no you can't install any if those crappy $10 programs you like and think are neat you buy at Wal-mart... and no it doesn't have Word, but it has this other thing that's just as good and no, you can't do that, but you can do this.... when for $50 she can get what she's used to... isn't going to work.
Sorry folks, Linus essentially conceded this just yesterday. There will never be a 'year of the Linux desktop' because there will never be a single Linux desktop. Nobody seems to want it - or even to want to try to get as close as possible. Not the various distros, not Linus, not a hell of a lot of Linux fans.
Of course ISV's still want it. Businesses with a need for low-cost IT want it. I want it. So do [some of] you.
But Linus has a point. Yes folks, it is true that diversity is one of our strengths. It has been responsible for Linux becoming as good as it is as quickly as it has (and that's pretty damn good, and pretty damn quick). But let's face up to the downside of that strangth. Incompatible distros and a chaotic development cycle are non-starters as far as mainstream desktops are concerned. ISV's won't target you - ISV's can't target you. But most desktop users still want at least some 3rd party software that's not available from their distro's repositories.
I want it, and so, probably do you. Well, actually I don't want it so bad. I don't run TurboTax or Quicken (though my partner does run them via dual-boot on my machine). I don't run Photoshop or 3D games. But if Flash weren't there, I'd bail. Well, maybe not. Still, you get my point. My desktop essentially is an internet appliance. And (don't shoot me) I was given an iPod for my birthday a few years ago, and I actually like it - and dual-boot to Windows to maintain it. Even used it as an excuse to upgrade to an XP-based box so I could maintain it (linux worked fine on my old 1998-vintage PC before that).
For now, we in appliance land are lucky that there are enough non-desktop'y devices that can use linux that hardware gets at least grudging support from manufacturers. Better where the device applications are more obvious.
I'll end with what should be an obvious point. Why do you think Vista has failed so spectacularly? Because XP is still completely useable 8 years into its life cycle. Of course, if it weren't, then Windows may well have failed too. Backward compatibility is Windows' biggest strength - perhaps its only strength compared to the competition. And Linux will never have it, because it's creators don't want it, or don't understand why it's important, or just don't care. They're having a grand old time rewriting KDE and GNOME from the ground up every 2 years.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Opening Windows does nothing to protect those other revenue streams. If anything, it would weaken them, because then there would be Windows distributions available that included competitors to those packages out-of-the-box, and were supported top-to-bottom by the distribution makers (who may or may not also be the vendor for the competing product.) Sure, Joe's Windows distro with PostgreSQL and no professional support may not be a big threat to Microsoft in the enterprise, but Oracle Unbreakable Windows might be.
As another poster already pointed out, this isnt really true. Windows NT booted on other architectures, but never really provided working systems on them for most purposes. This was a consequence of the unfree characteristics of the Windows ecosystem - the vast majority of the assortment of third party tools that need to be added to Windows to actually do most things never ported over to NT on other archs. The companies that made them had no motivation to allocate resources to port them, because the markets were not large enough, and the markets never grew because the apps werent ported. If you were lucky enough to have an Alpha machine at the time, for instance, you could boot NT on it and run a mean game of solitaire, but precious little more. MS tried to solve this with an emulator, but this worsened the problem - now you could boot NT and run an app, but once you started the app the emulated performance was comparable to an x86 machine you could have gotten at a fraction of the price, while the app makers were even less motivated to make a proper port because they could just tell you to use the emulator.
THIS is one huge advantage a Free OS with Free ecosystem has - the manufacturer doesnt have to allocate resources to port to new and promising architectures. Enthusiasts who use the apps can pitch in unbidden and do it themselves. This allows a promising new arch a chance to grow to critical mass without getting caught in an unsolvable chicken and egg problem.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
1. Get a stranglehold monopoly on a software market.
2. Give that monopoly away for free.
3. ?
4. Profit!
Actually, Windows CE runs on MIPS, ARM and SH4, besides x86. I'm not sure we can call that as OS...
Dilbert RSS feed
...DNF is released.
There's a pile of different CPU ARCHes out there. How many does Windows run on?
Plenty. MS still uses a HAL for Windows. They might not publically release an OS for PPC, MIPS or Alpha anymore, but they're not going to pull out the ability to do it in the future.
1. Get a stranglehold monopoly on a software market
2. Give away control or revenue of that market
3. ?
4. Profit!
write once, run anywhere and all the tralala...
âoePeople of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantageâ - John Kenneth Galbraith
It wouldn't make any sense for Microsoft to go open source at this time. Firstly, the only people who should care about open source should be developers. You hear a lot of people whining in linux about how everything should be open, but barely any supporters (companies and individuals alike) look at the code. And if people aren't going to modify or analyse the code, what's the point? Secondly, developers can already do everything they need to in windows without seeing the source code. What do you guys honestly think developers can add, that they can't now? Windows is quite extendible...
I think most people misunderstand the difference between freeware, and open source. Microsoft may possibly make windows much cheaper one day to eliminate the competition (Mark Shuttleworth himself said, its difficult to compete when windows is free). However, Microsoft has enough developers, they certainly don't need community help. I don't mean to call the author of this article an idiot per say, but he clearly doesn't understand the benefits/cons between open source and freeware. Windows is already extendible enough these days to not require it being open sourced.
Furthermore, OSX Darwin is open, and nobody cares! The only reason Apple cares about open source is because they essentially take a lot of code from the community, but give very little back.
Microsoft isn't going bankrupt anytime soon so its not as though you will be making a risk by purchasing windows, and be unable to maintain it in the future!
Theres very little reason people would need to look at the source code.. Must go Open Source?? HAHAHA. NO! There is little point, both for Microsoft and users. Maybe it will go freeware though...
They are? Hmm not seen anything other then x86 in a serious machine for a long time. ( and a PDA doesn't count as a 'serious' machine )
PPC is the only alternative that had a chance.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Kind of like those annual antivirus program licences that many people who thought about it for half a second stopped paying for, and installed a freeware program instead.
Maybe it would work for Windows, if they found the right price point for a licence fee, but it might also backfire and encourage people to look at Mac or Linux options.
Open source, when used to mean GPL style OSS, means that it will be free, like it or not. You are perfectly welcome to charge for it, however the first person who buys it can redistribute it freely. Thus you can't make money selling software.
An observant person will note that RedHat doesn't make money selling software, they sell support. Likewise other companies in the Linux market make it not on software, but in other ways. When Linksys used Linux on their routers, the money was made on the hardware, not on the software.
So OSS forces the software to be free. You have to find a different model for making money.
> perhaps you should say "Windows NT 4.0 booted on Alpha, Mips, and PowerPC"
Windows NT (in the 3.x versions) was written originally on and for MIPS and was ported to x86, Alpha, etc.
But then NT was originally written to be multi-user until His Billness paniced at the thought of several users only needing to buy _one_ copy instead of one copy each.
Everybody knows that Ninnle Linux does everything Windows ever could, and so much more. I can't understand why anyone would ever fork out the Microsoft tax when Ninnle is so readily and easily available.
The difference is that MacOS is made solely by Apple, which is a company, and can therefore be killed. Linux can't.
The year of the internet is, sadly, 1993.
I actually had to go look that up, since this so-called "eternal September" completely passed me by.
But that's because for me the internet started in 1983 with ARPANET and MILNET.
They do cut dies out of wafers.
Well, he doesn't suggest MSFT should or will open-source Windows "at this time." He suggests they will have to at some future point, and he makes some excellent points in TFA. I think he may well be right, and I used to work at Microsoft, so I know full well how hard it would be to turn that particular oil tanker.
Why open source and not freeware? Making it freeware would remove just as much revenue from the stream as open-sourcing it would, but it would leave both the entire support burden and the entire development burden on Microsoft. Compare that to the Linux model, where support and development (especially support) are very strongly community-oriented. Sure, there are companies paying kernel developers and some other developers, but there are plenty of developers in that ecosystem who contribute much or all of their time for free. Most of them, in fact. Nearly all Linux-support is community-based.
I'm not suggesting that open-sourcing Windows would alter the Windows ecosystem to the point where it would be just like the Linux ecosystem, but it would move somewhat in that direction. Look at all the buzz that OpenSolaris has generated for Sun. I would not be surprised to see Microsoft pursue a substantially identical strategy in the future. OpenWindows, anyone?
Developers already do everything they need to in Windows without seeing the source code? Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiight. They do everything they're *allowed* to do, not everything they need or want.
Speaking of developers, the people who you say are the only ones who should care about open source (I disagree, there are very strong reasons why everyone should care, but those aren't necessarily relevant here, so I'll leave that), one of the main points TFA makes is that it will be necessary to open-source Windows in some form to retain developer mindshare among the over 6 million independent developers who develop for the Windows platform. Open source software is already making inroads there, and will continue to do so. If Microsoft were to open-source not only Windows but much or all of its development environment, that could go a long way to holding those developers to the Windows platform. Why do this? To keep Windows a viable platform for the Microsoft products that (it hopes) will continue to make a lot of money.
Of course, one of those may find its revenue-producing ability reduced to the point where they might as well open-source it or make it freeware: MS Office. If they don't, they'll have to cut the price to a small fraction of what they currently get. Google Docs on one side and OpenOffice.org on the other will prove themselves good enough for most people. At least good enough that paying hundreds of dollars for MS Office will not make sense.
What will they make money on, then? Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL Server, etc. Enterprise products that enterprises will pay for. However, that requires a strong OS ecosystem, something open-sourcing Windows would encourage. Or they can give up on the Windows franchise and sell versions of those products to run on Unix, Linux, and a Windows server product and basically exit the desktop OS business. That would make a lot of sense, but having worked there, I believe they're rather do anything - even open-source Windows - than do that.
I recycle old computers for various social organizations that dont have any money and money IS important to them, just like it is for the people who come to the food bank where I work on weekends.
Money is not important to you but in many countries it is. Heck, in your own country it is.
Just this winter, I had a single mother of two whose kids go at my son's school ask me about the costs of software since she heard I knew computers. She told me she could afford a second hand computer but that the prices of Windows, Office and Norton more than she can budget for. I let her use my backup laptop for a week to see how she liked OO instead of Office on her laptop and she was amazed that for $120 I was able to find her an Intel 2.66Ghz desktop that would run Gnu-Linux nicely.
She's not poor by any stretch but she still has to count her money carefully and a few hundred bucks is a big deal.
Try to think of people who arent in your financial situation when you say no one looks at price or cost.
We do pretty well but I hate spending money when I dont have to.
This won't happen because of only one reason, Windows have lots of third party code with patents, and third parties won't release them to public domain. It is the precise reason Microsoft did not open sourced OS/2.
To the average person buying a computer, Windows is free. It comes already installed on 98% of boxes they can buy off retail shelves. To them, having Windows IS the selling point. They don't want to see Linux or even Mac because then they'd have to learn something new. A good %75 of computer users don't care if their OS is open source. Of course, for MS to survive *among slashdot users* and similar types of people, it would have to be open source. Unfortunately, we only represent a small portion of their customer base.
It is very interesting how this article compares with http://www.cyberconf.org/~cynbe/rants/lastdino.htmThe Last Dinosaur and the Tarpits of Doom, which is just this month a decade old.
If you just look on the surface, the Tarpit predictions were clearly wrong. 2010 is only 10 months away, so if Windows is going to be "as dead as CP/M", it had better get started.
On the other hand, a lot of the predictions in there do seem to be in the process of coming true. For instance, when Tarpit was written, MS never bothered to pay stock dividends because investors were always more than pleased with just the stock's growth. That has changed, and now they are having to pay a relatively huge dividend just to keep stockholders happy. This is the classic sign of a http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/01/microsoft-stock.htmldead growth stock. To top it off, TFA makes a lot of the same predictions. Both have as their thesis that Microsoft will have to OpenSource to survive. The main difference in tone is that Tarpit's author thought they probably wouldn't, and TFA's author thinks they probably will.
You could argue that their logic is just as much BS now as it was a decade ago. Could argue it well in fact. However, one could also argue that Tarpit's main flaw was in trying to "extrapolate the exponential" in the optimistic way it did, and that the rest of the argument is sound and in the process of becoming reality.
*Eventually* is the operative word. Predicting open source Windows 'one of these decades' is not particularly insightful. Though knowing Microsoft I'd imagine they would undercut Wine and ReactOS with something almost, but not quite, a clone of the commercial version of Windows.
Even if they went and open sourced everything where would the extra open source developers come
from that would make a serious attempt at improving/fixing Windows?
No doubt Microsoft spent a lot of money trying to understand their position in the market - and so
they have known for many years that their mindshare in the development community in general is
declining rapidly, and more to the point here: They have attracted little to no original open source
development into what they call the "Windows Ecosystem". If it's open source on Windows, it was
developed for Unix and for the most part ported by a single enthusiast. Never mind that those ports
are almost always reduced in feature set and not nearly as stable as the original. Windows falls
short in too many respects in supporting modern Unix applications, even when taking in account the
Microsoft posix/unix environment add-ons.
The only thing the open source community does have to offer Windows is an improved Wine and that's
where Windows comes around full circle again to it's origins, from a library for drawing shapes
within windowed view ports running on top of DOS to a launcher and a library running on top of a
UNIX-like system.
when we finally see the year of Linux on the desktop.
In other words, don't hold your breath just yet.
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
The same reason that Hilary Clinton does not go out naked, some things are just not meant to be viewed in public.
The author has zero understanding of business and economics and most of his assertions are completely false. It's more likely he's simply trolling for attention.
Developers already do everything they need to in Windows without seeing the source code? Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiight. They do everything they're *allowed* to do, not everything they need or want.
There is good reason for this. The average developer is a _MORON_. Allowing some idiot to change critical windows code is nonsense. To list all the possible security considerations that developers think of (or get tested) while changing windows core source code would fill a large hardcover book of multiple volumes. Even if you may have worked at MSFT in the past, from uttering such nonsene, I can say that you have never seen (let alone understand) 5 lines of kernel or shell code. The core of windows is rock solid and MS doesnt need outside people fucking it up.
It'd be a really really bad idea to release the source code for the most widely attacked OS. Considering it is already heavily under attack from hackers because of its ubiquity (and er vunerability) it would be a worldwide security disaster to release source code on top of that. Microsoft is already rather slow to patch even with tight control of code and spec.
What you first need is the coding community to maintain it. This is rather the reverse of software that has emerged from OSS circles rather than been thrown to it as is (which is fine for a company abandoning something that is still Good but not Profitable). I don't think the author really grasps this amongst all the other rather obvious challenges he fails to address that face moving a completely proprietary stack to a free licence.
It's nice to imagine Windows being free as in beer, but beer really isn't free unless you steal it or brew it yourself.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
nor will they ever. The best you can do is ask Microsoft to open up every API call that Windows XP and below uses so that WINE and ReactOS can be made to support more API calls to be more compatible with Windows XP and people can write their own open source Windows XP compatible operating system while Microsoft moves on to Windows 7.0 8.0 9.0 using new undocumented API calls.
Why Microsoft won't open source Windows, it is not in their business plan. Microsoft is experimenting with open source with smaller projects to see if they can profit from smaller open source projects.
Microsoft still wants Windows pre-loaded with most PCs sold so that they can keep their OS Monopoly via those OEM contracts. They bundle MS-Office, Internet Explorer, Media Player, MSN Network client, Windows Live services, etc with each pre-loaded PC. This is all part of Microsoft's business plan and it works so well that they dominate marketshare and got the DOJ and EU angry at them for pre-loading software and shutting out competitors.
Unless Microsoft can figure out a new business plan that makes money off open sourced Windows, I really doubt they will go that route. ReactOS is your best bet at a Windows XP/2003 compatible open source OS, or use WINE with Linux.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Being an application developer I would be more interested in M$ open sourcing their applications.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
It seems this is a very old tune that I've been hearing for years now. Wasn't this same idea trumpeted like 5 years ago? The weird random demand for wanton open sourcing eventually got so powerful that Sun drank the koolaid and gave away all their software. Now they're basically collapsing. Open sourcing everything is a sign that your business is dead or in the process of dying. I think the only company making money writing open source code as a business model is Red Hat... and that is it.
Although I am sure Microsoft really wants to be Sun right now (with only legacy products and no plan for the future) but somehow I doubt this is going to happen. I know the market is really scary what with linux almost reaching critical mass at 1% and Microsoft's server market share encroaching upon linux at the same time, but somehow I think they're way more scared of Apple than Linux.
> Fortunately most chipsets do not take well to waterboarding and the system is soon out of it's misery.
Actually, they use mineral oil instead of water, but the word mineralboarding sounds funny.
Darwin != OSX
Darwin is the operating system, it is comprised of the open BSD kernel and other FOSS packages (Apache and so on).
OSX is not the operating system, it is a closed proprietry toolkit for accessing the operating system.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Market share != people using the OS. Never did, never will.
If Microsoft put forth a less than entirely crappy effort
I think you hit the nail squarely on the head. The levels of effort being put into so many products is expensive. I don't think anyone except MS can sustain the level of development they've been putting forth. I've used Windows 7 and, despite my complaints, it is a solid improvement. I've used IE8, and despite generally sucking, it shows potential. We use Sharepoint and, despite my loathing, nothing else quite competes. We use Office, Exchange and Communicator and they are really business enabling products.
I love, L O V E, using Linux and BSD. I'm fond of AIX, so fond people might confuse it with love. Despite all that, I believe that Microsoft is a company that can deliver on it's promise to deliver products that make our business better. Nobody except MS is in a position to deliver so much to so many and they really are trying. The question they face on a daily, sometimes hourly basis is how to turn their massive development power into profit.
The year of the Linux desktop isn't coming sometime in the future, it was last year, and it is this year and it is next year. Linux doesn't dominate the desktop percentages, but it is no longer just for the geeks, it is for the average consumer trying to save a buck. Linux is out there and nothing can put the genie back in the bottle. The evolution of the operating system has reached a point where it is no longer possible to lock in a market by doing one thing significantly better than everyone else, there just isn't room. Now you have compete at an affordable price. Microsoft has already reduced the price of the OS to the point where it is competitive, but the next step is to make it the OS chosen because it is easier, not because it is better. Better means doing something other products can't do, for which there is no road map, no plan, and no method. Easier, however, means cheaper. Easier means open source. Easier means that more software you want works on it without effort, it does what you want it to do and it does it well for the programs you want. Open Source is impossible to compete with for closed source software on this ground, but MS can compete by playing the same game. The article tries to outline some reasons they will but in the end it comes down to two things: Do it better, do it easier. MS has the resources, the drive and the market placement to do it better.
Microsoft faces the choice, embrace and compete or die. I don't think they'll give up. I think they will compete in the Open Source OS market, and I think they will do so brilliantly. The only question is how soon.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
IBM cannot open source OS/2 because it paid over 300 different companies to license their code to make OS/2. IBM would have to pay all 300 companies money to own their code to open source it and doubtful all of them will agree with that.
Your best bet is OSFree and people need to donate money, code, time, etc to get their project out of alpha and beta tests to develop an open sourced OS/2 compatible operating system or at least a WINE type program for Linux that runs OS/2 programs.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I love doing this: From the MS Annual Report under "ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS", "To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline."
Mmmmm, original reporting...
Unless Govt mandates Open Source Windows, Microsoft will not do it.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
I meant Darwin, not OSX darwin... OSX sits on top of darwin though.. If Windows can be an operating system, so can OSX. Explorer isn't just an application for accessing the rest of the operating system. So Aqua and the libraries sitting on top of Darwin can be considered its own operating system. And my point was, if it mattered so much, there would be a lot more developers hacking at the Darwin code and changing it.. There isn't.
You, Mr. Charles Babcock, understand nothing about IT world. Forget anything this sir writes. I don't know how Information Week lets you publish on their space stupid thing like this one.
How much do you get paid for each word? That's one reason of the current crisis. People like you must be 6 feet under, at least professionally speaking.
Note that I'm not M$ user...
In the other hand, what can be interesting is the rumor that Google is working on an operating system. That IS something to consider and to talk about, not an utopian desire that a big corp like MS "must" open source their gold egg chicken. HAHAHA! C'mon! you looser!
They already give away lots of the source to the .net framework - Visual Studio, when set up correctly, will download source code to .Net classes as you enter them, so that you can have a better idea of what is going on when you're trying to debug stuff.
Yeah... the last thing I think any of us needs is a hundred different versions of windows that may or may not be compatible with our apps and drivers.
And before you get snarky as say "that's what windows is now", the situation with windows doesn't even remotely compare with linux. Linux might be a great operating system, but windows is by far the most useful OS right now for the average non-technical person, like it or not.
If they had to give it away to protect their market share it's still much different than saying they'd need to open-source it. In the first case they'd still retain total control over the OS. Beyond that what's the advantage to sharing the code? When different flavors of Windows start popping up then they're going to have a huge number of users expecting them to support flavors of Windows that they have no influence or control over.
microsoft can't go open source. after all, then everyone would see their shitty code, am i rite?
its over Bill Gates' cold and still stinking carcass.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
mod down as -1 clueless.
lollololololooloolol. i've never read such a thoughtless miscombobulation of bullshit before in my life! bwahahahahahaha! it is so funny to see you fucks grasping for straws.
for custom apps? what the fuck do you think happens in open sores? that's the entire fucking business model. why the fuck are you too stupid to see that? and who the fuck buys new software for every os release? get a job in a real office and come back in 15 years when you learn what the fuck you're talking about.
Seems like there are a lot of little Napoleons or Nostradamuses on the web making dire or bold predictions about stuff they know little more of than the average Slashdot reader. Is this guy correct? Find out a couple years from now when everyone's forgotten his prediction and no longer cares! Or just cop it up to a desperate IT journalist coming up with the most enticing OSS headline he can think of that is certain to get Slashdotted ...and move on to the next goofy thread.
yea... word on the streets is that the windows source code is rather embarrassing. could be a pile of horse doodie, but there were some good laughs back some hackers got their hands on a copy of the sources and put 'em out there.
If the hyperbole and creative spelling doesn't do it, and if the suspicious links don't, either, then this might.
No, no it cant. Windows is a kernel, like Darwin, Windows Explorer is a toolkit like OS X. Windows Explorer on its own cant be considered its own operating system, neither can OS X.
The same as Gnome and KDE sit on top of the Linux Kernel. Gnome and KDE are toolktis (GDM's) not operating systems in their own rights. Claiming OS X is its own operating system is like saying that Microsoft MMC is its own OS because it allows you to access parts of the Windows Kernel.
There's really two parts to the answer for this question. Firstly the vast majority of BSD development is taking place on other BSD projects, projects which when licenses permit, Apple happily takes code from. The second major reason is that if anyone created anything that could possibly remotely look like OS X the speed at which Apple would sue it out of existence would defy the laws of physics.
In other words, OSS developers have better things to do then tinker with an OS no-one uses except for a company that pushes proprietary software and hardware lock-in and has no hesitation in releasing the lawyers. Why should OSS devs car about Darwin when FreeBSD is already more capable, on the other hand OSS devs do care about Windows as there is a huge install base, gigantic software back-catalogue and the platform is open to developers (free to develop for, not open source)
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I would think microsoft makes a ton by selling there OS to Companies like dell to put on their machines. Also Microsoft is going towards a hugely component based os. ALl they have to do is stop making say the media player and leave that to other companies. Microsoft has better options that will make windows better and make them money without having to go Open source or free. Microsoft is going towards. Making a very base OS with nothing but the ability to run programs and having to pay seperately for the parts that you want. THis will get the EU off their backs and the possibility to make more money.
didn't neal stephenson imply this a decade ago?
the united states is a nation of laws; badly written and randomly enforced -- frank zappa
Going open source will not be limited by financial but reputation or the possible loss of it.
They'd have to go through all comments in the code to see if they are dignifying to a *cough* well respected company. And then the coding style (I see significant refactoring taking pace here.) And then the actual coding will expose their inability to maintain uniformity (Why for instance does copy/paste sometimes include the last \n\r and why mostly not? And why does it seem impossible to see a rule/pattern in this?) and sanity in general.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Windows has consistently failed to deliver what customers want, but free software does that by definition
What, fail to deliver what customers want ?
Of course it is nonsense, but thatÂs the point. Like Dvorak, et. al., this dude knows that writing wild, stupid stuff racks up the page hits far better than any careful, reasoned analysis.
If you spend alot of time on Linux friendly community sites and spend most of your computing time in Linux then it's very easy to start thinking that Linux is bigger than it really is. Then you get out into the real world and realise almost everyone is using Windows and the most people don't even know what Linux is.
I've been thinking this for some time. No matter how slowly, Linux is growing and at some point it will hit critical mass. For me that doesn't feel far away, it seams like I'm meeting more and more Linux users. Some of the artists who have switched, it is exactly because of Vista eating their machine and they don't want to stand still.
When it does reach critical mass, how does MS compete? If WINE and Mono reach critical mass the same kind of time, you could end up being able to run more Windows software under Linux than Windows (Windows 9x and 3.1 stuff that doesn't run under Windows already is likely to run under WINE). Why would anyone buy Windows at that point?
OpenOffice is also a real problem for MS.
The whole of the open source ecosystem seams to be going critical mass. Just as Encyclopedia Britanica is having become like Wikipedia to compete (no matter what it said before hand), MS will have to go open source. It's going to be interesting to watch how long they can hold out. Got to love the GPL.
"Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way."
http://wubi-installer.org/
Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon. -Orson Scott Card
mod parent +1 something, for using "miscombobulation of bullshit".
Best laugh I had all day reading that gem.
Office 2008 isn't a drag and drop install anymore.
They are nice enough to use standard .pkg files, though, Deployment is still easy.
If giving up revenue is the idea, why just not make it free of charge, or, better yet (at least for them) make people pay for an inexpensive lifetime unlimited upgrade and usage permission? No need for re-licensing of components acquired from other sources, no risk of letting people know they use GPL'ed code hidden deep inside stuff etc.
Quick, easy and it solves their problem.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
And why people who still can't tell the difference between free as in speech and free as in beer insist on writing for news sites?
Is the ad revenue so low sites can't hire knowledgeable folks?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
ITYM "MS screwed over everyone who bought into Alpha/NT naively thinking it was a long-term commitment".
Proper Alpha boxes are more desk than desktop though.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
There is no possible way they will every give anything away for free. Not a chance. Its too deep in the culture. They make money selling software (period). They occasionally look at a loss-leader, but not for too long, and only with stipulations. For a very long time now, they have been riding on nothing more than the ignorance of their customers (and those customers not wanting to change or move). Erosion is constant. Linux growth is undeniable. In many places its the only thing (Russia, Brazil). Bill Gates said Microsoft could run for 10 years and not sell anything. The first year is 2009.
"PPC is dead."
Only on PCs, where it never had much market share to speak of anyway. It is however still very much alive in the server and supercomputer world.
"Embedded is owned by ARM almost as completely as x86 rules the desktop."
If of course by "embedded" one means "mobile phones and MP3 players", and not aerospace / space / military systems, medical devices, music synthesizers, automotive control and monitoring systems, video games consoles, printers, routers / switches, security systems, air conditioners, TV sets, set-top-boxes, and a vast number of other embedded applications, where ARM not only doesn't rule, but has no notable presence whatsoever. Strangely, the "dead" PowerPC is still going strong in many of these sectors, together of course with other "dead" chips such as the Hitachi SuperH series, a number of PIC variants, stuff from Rabbit Semiconductor, and the venerable Z80.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I don' care who y'are, tha's funny raht thar.
But XSLT is *so* easy!
And Coca-Cola should open source their recipee too! Cause they already have such a big market share that it would be impossible for anyone to beat them... C'mon!
Everyone here is talking about MS open sourcing, look at what happened to Novell. In the late 80's and early 90's if you wanted to do networking you almost HAD to do Novell. In 2000 they came out with Novell 5.0, too early (still was not production quality) and suffered, they eventually came out with 5.1 which was a great NOS but too late they had lost their control of the network server market. I think that there will be, in the future, some one thing that MS is not prepared for, or does not see as a threat, that will be their undoing, I do not see them going away but they will lose their monopoly control on the desktop.
I am sure there is difference between an Open Office developer's access to Windows internals (undocumented etc.) and MS Office "team members" access.
That gives them advantage and they will never want to lose it. It was also part of "Media Player bundling" issue.
It would seem to me that any developer worth their salt would want access to the OS so they can create better applications.
If all you want is the application, what exactly do you develop?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"It'd be a really really bad idea to release the source code for the most widely attacked OS. "
Really? Really? that's your problem? It would quickly become one of the most secure OS's of all time becasue people would fix it.
Well, they would fix what they can, but MOST attacks are through some sort of social engineering. So how do you solve the 'USer gave permission to run this code' problem? AFAIK you can't stop that, you can only limit the damage.
SO then what, take control away? remind someone it's a risk every time they try to do it?
What if they OS windows 7? That's how I guess it would work anyways, OS an upcoming release.
I don't think they will do it, but for other reasons.
I think if they want to get all those 2000/XP/Vista machines up to windows 7 they should offer a very cheap all inclusive upgrade for 25 - 50 bucks for the desktop version.
There should only be a desktop version and a server version.
The desktop should have a 'light' mode for machines that can't handle Aero.
Only sell the 64 bit version in stores, and let people order the 32 bit version after they register the 64 bit version.
Hmm.. or mayby make the 'light' version 32 bit and non-aero.
I can't imagine MS enjoys paying the cost associated with supporting old version, nor do I imagine they want to keep writing 32 bit applications.
I would also like to get an office version with just Word and Excell for 40 bucks..and also a Corvette.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The author seems to have missed some very important facts.
People don't buy Windows because of Word. People buy Word because of Windows.
If MS loses control of Windows, they jeopardize their entire software business. Can you imagine this world?: MS SQL Server? Meh, my Windows distro comes with Postgres. IE? Nah, my Windows PC came with Firefox. MS Office? It has strange problems on some versions of Windows. The only flavor you're guaranteed on is the one you get directly from MS. But most PCs don't ship with that. Silverlight? Never heard of it. My computer already came with Liquid that handles that stuff automatically.
MS Word did not kill WordPerfect. MS's control of Windows killed WordPerfect. MS VisualStudio didn't kill Borland. MS Windows killed Borland. Netscape? Killed by Windows, not IE. Oracle, Netware, cc:Mail? All killed by Windows, not by any product MS produces in the same space.
Google? Symantec? OpenOffice? Apache? Citrix? VMWare? Well, the only tool MS has that can fend off that competition is Windows itself. On any level playing field, MS loses major market-/user-share across the board. Each of those divisions may not go out of business, but their revenues would be cut by at least half. And that would force major reworking of how you run your business.
Without Windows, MS would disappear to become something more like Adobe. If they could survive the transition they'd still be a viable company, but just one of a crowd. They may or may not be an important company. And their current business practices wouldn't keep them alive. They'd have to reinvent almost everything about the way their company works.
I agree with the overall idea, but in terms of market growth, OSX is taking more from Windows than Linux. OSX is yet another closed platform, albeit a nice one which is loosely based on BSD.
I think Open-Source is important for the same reason NGOs are important, but I don't see NGOs replacing governments.
I think Windows will morph into a proprietary variation of Linux before it goes fully open-source.
And the usual caveat remains true: Free != "OSS"
Microsoft can still give Windows away without open-sourcing it.
Embrace
Extend
Extinguish
Let me guess - you're an average developer, right?
I daresay I've seen (and written) a lot more code than you have.
The core of Windows is rock-solid, hmm? There's so much evidence against that, I won't even bother feeding you. Crawl back under your bridge.
And of course, the fact that anyone who feels like it can modify any part of the Linux or *BSD kernels they want, or any part of the subsystems they want, or any part of KDE, GNOME, etc., they want hasn't prevented all of those systems from being far more solid and secure than Windows.
Keep in mind that if I should patch my kernel in such a way that it becomes unstable, the only person who suffers is me, and all I have to do is reboot and pick a different kernel from my list in GRUB, or if necessary, use GRUB shell code to tell it at the command line which one to boot. No one is going to let me commit that unstable patch, and even if they do, it's not going to be accepted into the kernel. The same would be true if Windows were open-sourced.
But of course, you're such a _MORON_ that basic points like that utterly elude you.
"If Windows was fully open sourced, I'd bet we'd have a fully working Wine within months."
It shouldn't take that long:
1) Wine developers change the boot screen to say Wine instead of Windows.
2) User downloads this new "Wine".
3) Reboots into Windows (er, Wine)
It's interesting that you mention a "BSD Desktop". I think it's just as likely that some company will build a BSD-based OS that doesn't require buying an Apple and have it do just as well or better than Linux on the desktop.
The Dot-Bomb era is over, FOSSies. Get over it. There's STILL no money in giving stuff away for free. And if your business isn't making money, it's OUT of business.
You say people are leaving Windows "in droves"... but the numbers don't bear that out. The only major shift is Lunix users "switching" to OSX... so once again Teh Lunix is hemorhaging market share. On Vista's FIRST DAY of commerical release they exceeded the ENTIRE installed base of Teh Lunix. So explain this- if Vista is supposedly a failure... what does that make Teh Lunix?
Every time I look in the monitor,
All these lines of my FOSS code getting buggier
Stability is gone
It goes by, like dusk to dawn
Isn't that the way
Every FOSS got dues in life, but can't pay
Yeah, I know nobody knows
where the bugs comes and where they goes
I know it's Microsoft's sin
That we got to lose cuz we don't know how to win
Half my life
is in Slashdot's written pages
Lived and learned from fools
pretending to be sages
You know it's true
All the FUD comes back to you
Sing with me, sing for the fear
Sing for the laughter, sing for the free beer
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow, Steve Jobs will come and take you away
Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream until your dreams come true
Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream until your dream comes through
Dream On Dream On Dream On
Dream On Dream On
Dream On Dream On
Windows has consistently failed to deliver what customers want, but free software does that by definition
No, free software delivers what commiters want. Commiters are only some of the users.
The biggest problem threading throughout this entire debate is the feasibility of porting Microsoft's non-OS applications. From the source code that I've seen ('96 all the way up to '08, and don't ask how), the applications that they write are so incredibly intertwined with the OS that they would expend decades worth of man power just to interface with another OS. Yes, there is the Apple stuff, but has anybody closely examined the dependency differences between a win binary & and an Apple binary? Take a look, it's real food for thought...
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
Read the story to which you linked. The words "idiot" and "ioron" are everywhere in the code.
...show you the Windows source code, I mean it SOB!
Oh wait that's the lamest threat ever isn't it?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
There are many, many embedded devices on non-x86 platforms. Routers, phones, TVs, compute blades, etc. There are probably hundreds of thousands (or maybe higher, I don't have good numbers) of developers working on these devices....how does that qualify as "dead"?
You act as if I live in a bubble.
I have an iPod Touch hacked and running an ssh server under its Darwin kernel on my desk, with its ARM chip pulling the weight, which is far faster and has far more RAM and storage than the first computer I ran Linux on. I have a WRT54G in the wiring closet in my house, running a very customized distribution of Linux on its MIPS core from a SD card. I even have an iMac G3 running Ubuntu. My old cable TV box had a dual-core Sparc chip. My current Uverse box is, if I recall, a fast ARM-based platform. And, as I write this, I'm shuffling data in preparation for installing PPC Linux on my PS3, just for fun.
None of these, nor an IBM Power6, are modern desktop computers. They, simply, don't count in the argument that I was attempting to make.
PPC is dead.
Kid-proof tablet..
http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:MSFT
Income Statement Q(Dec '08) (2008) (2007)
Total Revenue 16,629.00 60,420.00 51,122.00
Gross Profit 12,722.00 48,822.00 40,429.00
Put a fork in these guys! They are done! No really not like the first time this prediction was made eight years ago but this time! Really!
Whereas proprietary software delivers what that company wants to better establish its monetary goal, regardless of if they are good or bad for the user.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
I don' care who y'are, tha's funny raht thar.
Technically it's 'rhat' not 'raht'.
I am grammar Nazi of the hicks, hear me rawr!
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