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Gates: "Linux will have Limited Impact"
tomas writes ""Addressing an audience of information technology professionals in Houston, Gates said there was clearly a
market for free software but this was mainly confined to relatively simple applications such as word processing and spreadsheets".
Get the full story and read the full comments. Geez-someone wrap him in asbestos, methinks.
For US (not U.S but for us geeks) Gates is irrelevant, he would be relevant if he had SO much power that he could control protocols.. but that will never happen. MS will be split up, or not.. it doesn't matter cause Linux and the Free BSD's will not die. And for all those poeple whining: "Welcome to the Real World, where commercial software development blablabla..". I just don't care about your silly "real word". I know it, I live in it, doesn't mean I have to like it do I?
Don't you get it? There's NO WAY Windows will ever outpower Linux/BSD because it's decisions are based on marketing instead of pure technical issues, making Linux unbeatable.
So please, stop posting stuff about anti-Linux FUD, about misleading Benchmarks etc. Peace Slashdot brothers and sisters!
Well, there you go.
In the 80s, they said that free software was OK for simple stuff, but it would never come out with anything "production quality".
Then gcc came out, and it was production quality.
In the early 90s, they said that it would be limited to hacker tools, and nobody would ever make things for real users.
Then gimp, kde, enlightenment, gnome and the rest of them came out, and real users started using them.
Now they say free software will be limited to simple applications, and it'll never be able to make anything with more than a few features.
*yawn*. I'm off to hack Mozilla some more.
If spreadsheets and wordprocessors are such simple apps that can be developed for free than why does MS charge such an insane price for Office (which is one of their biggest money makers)
;)
If they are so simple, maby gates should make them open source... Im mean after all, they cant be worth much and it would be a great pr move
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Let's take this article apart:
Addressing an audience of information technology professionals in Houston, Gates said there was clearly a market for free software but this was mainly confined to relatively simple applications such as word processing and spreadsheets.
Like Office 97, which costs more than Windows 98 and is MS's cash cow? It sounds to me like MS thinks that Windows' best applications don't come from Microsoft!
The Microsoft chairman noted, for example, that early Internet browsers had been distributed for free, but said that modern browsers were far more sophisticated and could no longer be developed in a noncommercial environment.
So what's Mozilla, then? It sounds like he's saying that Mozilla doesn't count as a "modern browser". Oh wait, didn't he mean to say "browsing technology"!?!?
``Today the browsers have gotten rich enough that it's not the kind of software that you can develop and test in a university-type of environment,'' he said.
He's trying to make people think that Open Source software is written only by college students. What a crock.
Gates said Microsoft took Linux seriously but felt that most customers would continue to favor Windows because it was a more homogenous product than Linux, development of which is in the hands of a diffuse band of programmers.
Ha! As if MS's own programmers were any less diffuse. Since when has a corporation's programmers had any direct accountability to the users? Say you find a printing bug in Excel. Can you call the developer who wrote that code at Microsoft and ask him why he screwed up? Of course not! Besides, John Dvorak wrote that a lot of ex-MS programmers have said that the build environment for Windows is so confusing that there isn't any one person in charge of it all.
Gates said, for example, that there were five different windowing systems that run on Linux.
And every version of Windows has a different look to it! I wonder how much money those corporations spent on retraining their employees when they switched from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.
``The fact that you don't have a central testing point to control ultimately how to build these things probably means that the impact will be fairly limited,'' Gates said.
Testing!?!?!? Did I just hear Bill Gates tout the testing of Windows 98 as an advantage?!?! If those people really tested their software, would it be as buggy as it is?
``People really do want something that's been tested against all the different applications, so that they know exactly what is out there,'' he said.
The only time MS tests with other vendor's applications is when they want to find a way to break them.
This has led some industry observers to suggest that the system, originally created by a Finnish college student, could one day challenge the supremacy of Microsoft's Windows.
I don't use Linux since OS/2 is my OS of choice, but I think Linux is already challenging Windows. That sentence should read "could one day defeat the supremacy of Microsoft's Windows."
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Want to see a real story? Check this out. Big corporation steals, walks all over the law, and when confronted about it shows only contempt for the accusers, mouthing bald-faced lies about what it is doing.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You realize that it doesn't matter what Gates says, right? I mean, the man was on a roll for a long time, but he and his company are losing credibility these days. No...let me rephrase that...they're hemmoraging credibility. The main stream press reports what He says, and the main stream press also reports what He does. They also report all the DOJ shenanigans, etc etc etc.
What Gates does or does not say will have Zero impact on this movement. Nothing Gates can say will impact the quality of Open Source code. Nothing Gates can say will stop people who know what they're doing from turning to Linux and Apache for their file server and web server solutions. Nothing Gates can say will stop the growing throng of people who are turning to Linux and Open Source Software.
People who know computers know that Microsoft stuff sucks. Nothing Gates can say can stop that. There are more computers out there than ever before, and the number is growing. There are more people out there using computers. There are increasing numbers of people who understand computers and are experienced with them.
Gates/Microsoft continues to try to keep users from becoming skilled computer users by hiding all the "hard stuff" from them. This is in their best interest, of course, because people who know computers know that Microsoft sucks.
Nothing Gates can say or do can stop this. His company's success in making the computer more prolific is dooming him where it should have created a Microsoft world. You know what their failures are:
1) They make crappy software.
2) They market to the lowest common denominator.
The second anyone tries to do anything with their computer that is outside of M$'s narrow little definition of the "average user" they realize just how horrible and limiting and frustrating MS products can be.
Anyhow...I'll wrap up by repeating myself: it doesn't matter what Gates says. He cannot stop us, so ignore him. Not even the main stream press really takes him seriously anymore...not with everyone in the world launching a lawsuit against 'em.
- dria
5 windowing systems? Last I saw, there was only one windowing system on Linux and that's X11 ( Berlin doesn't seem to be going anywhere in the near future ). There's a dozen or so window managers, but I haven't met an app yet that cared much about the window manager. Some of the desktop environments might be a different matter, but even there it looks like apps are going to be relatively independent of the desktop. Worst case seems to be that you lose things like drag-and-drop between apps if you aren't running a desktop that supports the right protocol.
Bill, get a clue: Linux isn't Windows and we don't have to live with a tightly-bound mess like the one you created. So we have multiple window managers, so what? They all talk ICCCM and similar standard protocols at this point, so from the app's POV it's irrelevant which one is running.
And if Linux is only going to have limited impact, why's it growing 8 times as fast as NT?
I think your missing a very important factor that is vital to the success and life of Linux.
:)
It doesn't matter what Microsoft attempts to do to Linux. Linux is not just some corporate entity, burdened with the rules enforced by some CIO. Linux has existed for years without any corporate recognition or support. Although Linux does have support now, it could be taken away and Linux would still live.
Linux doesn't play by Microsoft's rules, and it never has. Let MS bring out the full guns, they can't destroy Linux
"Who them? They don't worry us here at MS."
Another way of stating this is: Marginallize it until we do it.
It's part of the "never let 'em see you sweat" school of thought.
Many of the early RDBMSes didn't do record level locking. When pressed, they'd say users didn't really need the feature [marginallize it]. Then they'd implement it, and charge extra for it [until we do it].
I once had the please of listeneing to an Oracle sales/marketing type discuss the archetecture of their Release 1.0 Oracle Web Server.
"Release 1 is a single process architecture, because that's more performant [sic].
Release 2 will be a multiprocess architecture, because that's more performant [sic]."
Remember: Marginallize it until we do it.
My Heart Is A Flower
Answer me this....
Does the population of computer users who truly excel in the field prefer Linux or Windows?
How quickly is that population growing?
(I should be a reporter)