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Jeremy Allison Calls Microsoft Dangerous Elephant
oranghutan writes "At the annual Linux.conf.au event being held in Wellington, NZ, one of the lead developers for the Samba Team (and Google employee) Jeremy Allison described Microsoft as 'an elephant that needs to be turned to stop it trampling the open source community.' Allison has been an outspoken critic of the vendor since he quit Novell over a deal it did with Microsoft that he saw as dangerous to open source intentions. And now he has evolved his argument to incorporate new case studies to explain why Microsoft's use of patents and its general tactics on free software are harmful.
It wouldn't be a problem if the FLOSS community would stop stealing from legitimate patents holders. I know you FLOSS developers are busting your ass, writing code, and what not and not getting paid for it, but.....God! What a bunch of losers!
How about inventing something of your own instead of stealing ideas from others!
If you were any good you'd be getting paid for what you're doing.
Apparently under the latest version Alistair can hurl insults at Morrigan under WINE, so it's all good.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
sorry, there are no European elephants....
A. A. Milne saw this coming. :-)
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
"Microsoft produces software that competes with FOSS" is basically the headline. Well who knew?!
Something they're also learning is that the above statement doesn't necessarily mean they can't work with FOSS in areas that are mutually beneficial. This, believe it or not, is happening too.
throw new NoSignatureException();
And I - being no one of significance, am going to call Microsoft a small, fluffy, harmless kitten that needs to be petted.
Take THAT.
Want Open to win? Stop being bloody purists. See, Ubuntu Software Commercial Survey for a pragmatic approach. Ubuntu is a bridge, get the Windows people over first and once they know what they're doing they can compile their own Gentoo. Commercial software on Linux is also such a bridge, let it in: as long as the core operating system is Open who gives a crap. If the commercial is amazingly good compared to the Open then it will survive while the Open matures. But don't deny your users the commercial because you're being a dick about it. Follow the Linux philosophy: Openness, including commercial. Then work with it yourself, I have converted two of my family-members desktops over to Ubuntu within the last month, not including my own. If I wasn't using a "stupid" distribution it wouldn't have happened because I have no idea of the required options while building your kernel. Support the bridges, they all lead into Open.
Shh.
Microsoft is a software company, selling proprietary software, with a business model based around lock-in and obscurity on file formats and the like. Open source is the complete opposite of what MS's business model needs. Now obviously MS's business model is (was) a pretty good one considering they got very very rich with it (one of the richest companies in the world, if not the richest). Business wise they're a winner, no contest. Open source is breaking that.
Absolute winners for MS are of course Office with their doc format lock-in (slowly being eroded by OOo), and the Windows/Exchange/Outlook combo for which I don't know of any true competitor. Plus the many windows-only games of course. MS needs to keep their sources closed, their standards theirs and theirs alone, and needs to keep competitors out of their network. The network situation is improving but it is still very much everything except Windows talks easily to everything except Windows, and Windows talks easily to Windows alone.
When I'm at it, I was thinking of their two most high-profile competitors.
Apple: they couldn't care less about open/closed source and will likely go with the wind. Except maybe iTunes but then that contains DRM which requires the closed-source obscurity to not be cracked before it's released. OS-X is largely open-source even. Apple is a hardware company, after all. They make software to sell their hardware.
Google. Google appears to love open source: they are all about interoperability. Everyone on the Internet, everything on the Internet, the browser is the platform. Which browser? Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari? What would they care. Operating system? Irrelevant. Hardware platform? The cheaper the better, whether it's a laptop, phone, desktop or "slate". As long as the device understands standards. And open source is pretty good at exactly that: standards.
Yahoo is likely in the Google camp, being an Internet company. Though I don't hear much of any software developments coming from there. And they are quite friendly with Microsoft.
Then there is Microsoft's Bing. Gaining market share rapidly, got some positive comments a few stories ago here on /.. Makes me wonder where that stands really, as Bing just needs a standards-compliant browser. I haven't used the site, but I understand from the comments that it is pretty standards-compliant at the moment. And with the current market share of non-IE browsers, they will have to. You can't afford to lose 30% or so of your market, especially as that 30% will tell their friends "Bing sucks, doesn't work properly, use Google, that works good". People don't tend to try again later.
Mr. Allison, What is Googles software patent policy in regards to things like the recent map/reduce patent?
I think a threat that intimidates many is Novell's progress supporting .NET with Mono because they can't see MS supported at all. They've done a fairly decent job of it, of late. The interoperability between the visual studios development environment then to instantly port to Linux, is getting better and better. This opens the possibility of making Windows compatible with Linux, and keeps the developer platform of choice soundly on a window's box.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I teach a computational physics class for freshmen.
When I was going over our syllabus, I said: "Email your homework here. Don't send us Microsoft Word documents. My TA and I don't have Word, we're probably not on a computer that does when we grade your homework, and we can't be arsed to go find a decoder for whatever the newest obscure Microsoft format is."
The students were shocked -- you don't have Word? Really? How is this possible? (Answer: LaTeX.)
(Except for the one guy with the Ubuntu laptop, in the back, who chuckled...)
"So you see this especially in the appliance market where Microsoft will go to a company — off the record as this is never ever done in public — and say 'this product you have there, shame if someone brought a patent suit. So you have two options you can re-architect — here is Windows — or the other thing is why don't you give us a cut on all the free software you are using?'.
This is very common business practice in the U.S. not exclusive to Microsoft. Bigger companies want two things from the smaller companies they intimidate, revenue and market penetration information. If they don't get it privately, they certainly get it with patent/trademark litigation.
I'm not calling Microsoft out exclusively on this, but it should give the average /. an idea of how fundamentally frozen the American economy is by patent and trademark law.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
How do you moderate a story Flamebait?
You vote it down in the firehose.
Free Martian Whores!
I have no love for Microsoft.
But in the last decade I've seen Linux on the Desktop split between two different competing environments and API's, usability experts not being able to get any meaningful traction early on in FLOSS projects, newbies being flamed on IRC for asking questions, legitimate criticism of user experience issues being written of as FUD, billions of FLOSS company dollars going to enterprise systems buyouts and kernel hacker salaries instead of high quality user testing labs (and then saying FLOSS has no money for such things like evil proprietary companies do), etc.
When I look at Microsoft, I don't see FLOSS's greatest enemy; I see a boogeyman and a scapegoat used to explain FLOSS' lack of success at getting outside of a server room.
what do you call "Subverting an international commitee" (re: OOXML fiasco)? is that flamebait? If so, what isn't flamebait? When GPL advocates just roll over dead? Or when MS's proprietary specifications become world standards at the behest of MS? color me confused.
But then, I'm not on the MS 'turfing payroll
Do you happen to have any idea how I can get on the MS Apologists' payroll?
:(
I'm too broke to keep doing this for free
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
My favorite part though, as per TFA:
"We have a system that is absolutely free that we can do anything with, so why are we so obsessed with picking on Microsoft? ... Shouldn't we leave the elephant alone and stop poking it with sticks? Well, the problem is they aren't going to leave us alone."
Of course Microsoft is going to compete with your solutions. They're a god damned software company that makes every type of application they can produce without getting [successfully] sued by their competitors. I've never actually said this before, but...
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
What's .NET?
A TLDN, duh.
Here's a cookie... *psst* it's MAGIC
No, the headline is "Microsoft bullies FOSS with patents and conspiratorial coersion."
When Microsoft patents obvious things, then uses those patents to threaten law suits, that is a threat.
If Microsoft was competing by building great software, we would be having a different conversation. This conversation is about Microsoft competing without building software.
engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff
That is why I have never understood this "ZOMG! M$ is gonna destroy teh Linux!!!" BS. How do you destroy something that isn't owned by anybody? They can buy corps from now until Xmas, it isn't gonna stop Linux. There are plenty of corps supporting it that I can never see selling out (RH comes to mind) and there really isn't a "target" for them to do the classic embrace-extend trick to, as many in the Linux camp wouldn't take squat from MSFT.
So I'm sorry, but this whole piece smells like FUD to me. Especially when it is coming from a Google employee hot on the heels of Apple talking to MSFT about switching to Bing. FLOSS has never had more companies supporting it, Linux can be found on devices in just about everyone's homes, and frankly even with all the cash MSFT has I don't see them being able to buy out enough Linux corps to even do long term damage, so I have to call FUD on this article.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah. I mean it's not like companies are still using IE6 on Windows years after both have been shown to be security challenged, and being offered better free alternatives and rejecting them because Microsoft marketing has sold upper management a bunch of FUD or anything. If the Chinese hacked corporate computers by leveraging such a vulnerability and people still kept using their stuff instead of switching to well established secure FOSS alternatives that might be seen as some order of success squashing FOSS, but as things stand now they have been entirely unsuccessful!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I was in Dennys at the weekend and couldn't help listening to a conversation that was taking place on the table behind me. Some woman was proud of her new netbook that she had to buy because her old laptop had too many windows virusses to run (fast) any more. Clearly she was one of those people that surf everywhere and click yes to everything.
I had the revelation that she actually represents nearly all 'normal' people (us techies definately aren't normal). Most 'normal' people have already been conditioned by companies like Microsoft, Dell and Apple to view laptops as appliances, not something user-maintainable. Many people can't even differentiate between hardware and OS.
Also, most people are already familiar the windows environment, and also don't like change. Even a slightly different desktop menu layout or whatever is enough to make them feel uncomfortable enough to not want to go further. Just a new version of Windows represents a significant learning curve to these people. I mean most people still use IE for christ sake even after all the warnings and free alternatives one mouse-click away. They just want their PC to plug and play. When it runs slow, in their ignorance they prefer to throw it away and blow $1500 on another laptop rather than change their behavior or just learn about their PC.
These are most consumers, and if we want them to adopt Linux we have to take their natural behavior and all their preconceptions into account.
The only way to get desktop Linux to the majority is to beat Microsoft at being able to plug in any hardware or application and have it just work, which means getting hardware manufacturers and app developers to stop blindly developing stuff for Microsoft-based OS only. As long as hardware suppliers don't provide Linux drivers and, for example, games developers still use DirectX and not OpenGL, Linux will never be in a position to reach the public consciousness, even though its technically and intrinsically better. Linux has clearly already won that war but obviously thats not enough as still no mass migration from Windows to Linux desktop that we'd all like to see.
The thing is, most people still have never heard of Linux. We need to stop hoping people will join our community just because its technically better, and start spending money on advertising.
Linux needs to be shoved into the public perception through the TV and media at least as hard and frequently as Microsoft do with their products. Advertising is the only way that desktop Linux will ever get to critical mass, which it needs to do so that its obvious to all HW and SW manufacturers that they will quickly loose out if they continue to only target Windows. Furthermore 'Normal' consumers need to at least know that Linux exists before they can try it.
I absolutely agree with this person and I wish I had mod points. While I don't love Micro$oft, but just to be fair, can we start to look at Microsoft as "competition" and move on. They have every right to protect their business; if we can produce better, more appealing software, we don't need to worry about all this bullshit. We need to win hearts with great products, not FUD--I hate to say it, like Micro$oft. I think our priorities are out of order here. Whenevr I see a Micro$oft bashing post on slashdot, I just have to roll my eyes over. Grow up, people, please..o.k., pretty please?
No, he was referring to Data's brother. He just forgot to hit the shift key.
Free Martian Whores!
The vast majority of freshman enter college believing that there a is Microsoft software monoculture. This requirement forces them to open their minds when they learn that alternatives do exist. Once so enlightened, it is short leap from realizing that they don't have to depend on a corporation to meet their needs to realizing that they don't have to depend on a government to meet their needs.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
They don't need to own every corporation in the world, just make sure Linux (OSS) screw up big time someday and DROP a shitload of money into shills and PR so creating a big issue for something that is not so relevant or FUD all the way... lets see, what do you think of this headlines in the mass media for over a week/month:
"Microsoft discovers terrorist cell using Linux apps to forgue ID theft of children"
"McAfee says pedophile networs are the #1 *customers* of Linux and open source software"
You can still develop you open software but PHBs and regular sheep just frown to you for using Firefox. You can get fired for proposing open source. Think about it.
In a corporate world you can kill anything just manipulation the media.
Most formal standards have some sort of reference implementation somewhere, but Microsoft doesn't even implement the OOXML standard as written.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
My first Linux install was RH 5.1; it was a bit of a bumpy ride getting X to work, and there were some other issues, so I didn't do much with it- just stuck to Windows. I tried again a year later, and RH 6.x was much better- the 2.2 kernel series made a big difference, GNOME was new and exciting, most things just worked, etc. I did more dual-booting and thought that surely the pace of improvement would make it so after the next release or two I'd always be booting into Linux. But from my point of view the past decade brought very little improvement in making Linux more palatable to use- in some ways it's worse now than it was in 2000.
As someone else mentioned, the purism issues and the hostility towards those developing proprietary software for Linux have been a major detriment. Plenty of old programs that worked well and shipped with earlier distros but had not-quite-free licenses (many of which used Xt or Motif) have just recently started to get decent RMS-approved replacements. In 1999-2000, with Corel making a serious WordPerfect for Linux push, Loki doing ports of most of the biggest games, etc. it looked like a market for consumer Linux software was developing, and I thought that it wouldn't be long before one could find Linux versions of most software on the shelves of box stores. Piracy, hostility towards those developing proprietary software for Linux, ABI churn, Loki going nova, the end of RH's commercial desktop distro (after a couple of less-than-stellar releases), and other factors scared developers away.
Usability is little better than it was then. Having a cadre of self-proclaimed UI experts arguing about button order doesn't help anything, and many of the actions that have been taken in the name of usability have been major steps backward (GNOME 2.0, anybody?). While there are things to be learned from real, long term usability studies, it's counterproductive to make changes based on an assumption that all users are stupid and thus can't be trusted to do anything outside of the most common tasks or on the basis of what someone unacquainted with the software said in their first 5 minutes of trying to familiarize themselves with it.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with Chrome OS. It's possible that a company the size of Google will be able to overcome the worst offenses of the modern Linux desktop scene and create a viable ecosystem for the development of 3rd-party consumer software, taking the good points of how Apple made a similar move in the OS X transition while keeping things more open than Apple has. I don't know that any other company or group is really in a position to bring Linux to desktop relevance.