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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.
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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The world is moving away from x86 arch
Like Apple did?
I can see where this would be difficult to implement. Beetle larvae are too young for sexual reproduction.
Windows 7 is coming out and people will be migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Windows Market Share Climbing
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?
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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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.
Windows Market Share Climbing
Windows 7 market share is climbing. From your linked article:
Although the beta of Windows 7 quickly grabbed one-tenth of 1% of the operating system market share last month, Microsoft Corp.'s operating system continued its downward trend...
You can't have a period of substantial increase for alternative OSs without that being indicative of something critical: true choice. If the alternatives are indeed practically viable, then the OS market has reached a tipping point. Expect all hell to break loose.
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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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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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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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)
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.
I have a theory that most closed source remains closed source simply because the authors would die of embarrassment if anybody else saw what a steaming pile of crap they had written. Microsoft's "ship it when it is 'good enough' and let the customer complete the beta testing" philosophy probably doesn't allow for cleaning up old code bases to make them presentable.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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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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.
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Nah, if this was Dvorak it would have been like:
"Why Linux Must (and Will) Run on Windows By 2011"
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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"
I do not think that MS is able to release Windows as Open Source. Most likely there is too much stuff in it that cannot be opened up (same issue as Sun had with Java).
If there was a day where Windows would be free, it would be free without source.
But honestly, I do not think that is going to happen. Free Windows comes with any new PC (consumer perception), so why throw a perfectly good revenue stream.
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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...
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.
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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.
Windows has consistently failed to deliver what customers want, but free software does that by definition
What, fail to deliver what customers want ?