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Microsoft Claims 'We Love Open Source'
jbrodkin writes "Everyone in the Linux world remembers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's famous comment in 2001 that Linux is a 'cancer' that threatened Microsoft's intellectual property. While Microsoft hasn't formally rescinded its declaration that Linux violates its patents, at least one Microsoft executive admits that the company's earlier battle stance was a mistake. Microsoft wants the world to understand, whatever its issues with Linux, it no longer has any gripe toward open source."
Ten years ago some people really thought that Linux was going to replace Windows on everyone's desktop, open source projects were going to kill Office, etc.
Which never happened.
I've been noticing more companies are dropping the Bundled Office for a discounted price and using OpenOffice instead. Don't get me wrong, I agree with windows being unlikely to disappear. But I could see Office becoming a free product included with Windows in order to stay competitive with the Open Source Alternatives.
And if by some magical cosmic occurence that everyone switches to Ubuntu overnight, I could even see Windows becoming free (as in beer) to stay afloat, while they pull something out of their hat to make enough money to sustain themselves.
Microsoft is the enemy of open source, pure and simple.
I think that used to be the case, but Microsoft seems to have a more nuanced view now. They recognize that Linux is a strategic threat, but that doesn't mean that any and all open source projects are similarly dangerous to their core interests. They have far more than Linux to contend with these days, and they're finding allies in unlikely places.
That said, Microsoft has flip-flopped so many times on open source it remains to be seen whether they truly understand that they've lost the ideological war over open source (and more importantly, free software).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Not troll, just, at least partially, wrong.
Your vision of Linux is rather laughable, and reminds me of Linux fanboys that think of Windows as a Win95 box. Both OS's have progressed passed that point in history.
I just spent a week of evenings fixing up two Windows XP comptuers because they were completely unusable. Windows isn't some holy "it just works" operating system.
Another example, my mom is now running Ubuntu, at least temporarily. When I setup her computer I set it up with Dual Boot capabilities in case something happened to her Windows. Well it started slowing to a crawl, and I couldn't figure out why. I ran out of time to diagnose, so she's setup in Ubuntu and is doing what she did before just fine. I showed her how to get back into Windows if there's something she needs, and watched her do it to make sure how, but so far she hasn't felt the need.
Another example is XBMC's Live CD, where I was able to get a fully functional Media Center PC by simply putting in a CD, everything just worked. Now install Windows 7 and their Media Center offering. It'll work, and it'll work great, but I'll already be done watching a couple episodes by then in XBMC.
No, I don't go around installing Linux for my friends and family, Windows has real advantages over Linux (and vice versa). but to dismiss it without a second thought is doing yourself a diservice.
I thought the Four Stages of Microsoft were:
1) Ignore
1a) while quietly fighting in the dark
2) Embrace
3) Extend
4) Extinguish
We're well into #2 right now. All the efforts to "embrace" have done nothing in the long run but help Microsoft further, while curtailing competition: Mono is still nowhere near viable, and neither is Samba 4. Novell is stumbling. So-called open projects Microsoft has released or contributed have only gone to fuel their closed technologies, contributing nothing substantial to the IT environment as a whole. Their "embrace" has solely been a token gesture.
Side thought: Wouldn't it be funny if Microsoft released a Linux-based phone?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Speaking of business, most are still loading up on Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server, IIS, Active Directory, etc., and the pace of change is not heading to Linux at an appreciable rate.
Server 2008 is for MS only shops, SQL Server is an also-ran to Oracle, Postgres and MySQL, IIS is just a joke. Unless it is an MS product it does not go on IIS. We have far more linux boxes than MS ones, and most of those MS ones are VMs. Letting MS software touch metal is crazy.
They have helped open source in the past, when it suited them. The original port of GNU Emacs to Windows NT was done by interns at Microsoft to show that real Unix software could be easily ported to their new OS.
Who's the Ford today (equaling the Ford of the past)? Who's the Standard Oil today? Certainly no American company.
And, it is total fiction that we'd have some other company doing the same thing. Microsoft got where it was by abusing it's monopoly power. We all know that. If we didn't have a Microsoft we'd have more markets with more players in each market and competition would be greater providing us with more innovative products propelling computing to a much more sane plateau.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
If you've been here 30 years then you'll know that the various Eternal Septembers were unavoidable. GUI was going to come to wipe out the more efficient text interfaces; personal computers would have to climb the long slog to mainframe-like architecture one baby step at a time; the network effect was destined to come along and wipe out whole sectors of competition in word processors, spreadsheets, operating systems, and network protocols.
Essentially everything not made by Microsoft was better in a technical sense, but for every user willing to spend ten minutes to learn how their software worked there were a hundred users who just wanted to click on the first thing they saw and then complain to the help desk when they had no clue what was going on.
Microsoft raked in the cash, but it was the users in the end who were to blame.