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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.
sorry, there are no European elephants....
"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.
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
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.
Google does not yet have a huge number of patents, but that will change in the future, and they will become likely become more general. Already, IIRC, they have patent on in game advertising. I can see a time when we might a OSS game engine that allows in context game advertising. I wonder if Google would sue.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
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?
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.