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Motley Fool on Microsoft vs. Linux
Simon Janes writes "In a two part article series, Rob Landly (aka TMF_Oak) discusses Network Effects and how they make a product more valuable to users. Rob continues his series the next day with a discussion of Microsoft vs. Linux. This is excellent 'outside of the industry' press for Linux because 'Fools' are people like nurses, teachers, accountatnts and retirees who are not normally exposed to this."
- stupid
- commercial
- server
- business server
- goes wrong
I could ask similar questions about the part I didn't quote, too, as in "win", "apps", "win apps", and "non-commericial use". (Note that "win" as you used it is a nice example of a single-word oxymoron.)The fear of taking responsibility for one's own choices, and for solving one's own problems, has reached epidemic status in our litigious society. It's a wonder anything ever gets done at all with so many cowards and crybabies running to their licences and lawyers every day.
Ehh. No. COBOL is the legacy language of business. It's still being used because it's too costly to replace. However with the ever increasing cost of maintaining COBOL programs (due to lack of COBOL programmers), that will sooner or later change...
Take a deep breath..... relax.
whew!
In "anti-Microsoft-monopoly," I meant for monopoly to apply Microsoft. I'm sorry that I didn't make this clear. Linux is the opposite of a monopoly; there are so many different organizations/companies/individual hackers that drive Linux, and so many different distributions (a new one comes out almost biweekly) that Linux could be thought of (by the DoJ & Associates) as a model of how a non-monopolistic 'organization' can succeed. I can't see into the minds of the big guys in this case, but I can guess that a few of them at the DoJ are thinking that if Linux can succeed as an assortment of different individual entities, why not make Microsoft into the same thing? Imagine if there were twenty different distributions of Windows, each by a different Baby Gates company.
ken
PS - Again, just my opinion. You are permitted to disagree.
What's wrong with a Microsoft accent? I think that Linux will eventually become everything that's good about Microsoft's OSes and more without the bad parts of MS.
True, nothing I list is really inherent to the kernel, which is what Linux technically is. I was targetting the specifics of Linux on the desktop. As I said, I'm sure that I missed a few things. Linux on the desktop is what the average Joe Computer User is going to see, not the kernel and stuff like that. If Linux is to succeed, Joe has gotta be happy with it. It seemed like the remote apps thing didn't hit the right target. Remote applications could be the future of business computing. Each user could have even a spare 386 running the SVGAlib version of the VNC viewer connected by a decently fast network to a few powerful computers managed by people who really know what to do with really powerful computers. The question is return on investment. It is not very difficult to add another user with VNC server on the main server and put a spare 386 in their office, but in today's business world where most everyone has their own computer, installing a new computer means going through complicated setups and other time-wasting things and then having to upgrade it when users start using an app that requires more speed. And of course there are calls for help and stuff that require the IT folks to go to the employee's office. Wtih a centralized server, upgrading would be done to only a few server computers. Money would be saved because the fast processors would almost always be in use, instead of wasting clock cycles in employees' computers when they are not in full use. Everyone would get the same, powerful computer (although it would probably be possible to set process priorities to favor the executives) and any calls for help could be answered on the phone while the IT guy looks at the employee's desktop on their own computer. It's all about return on investments. Think about it, guys. And remember that the VNC approach works almost flawlessly on Linux, okay on Win95, and (from my experience) barely acceptable using MacOS as the server.
About the free OSes: sure there are a lot of Unices that are free besides Linux (FreeBSD comes immediately to mind), but Linux has the widest user base among them, and the most developers concentrating specifically on it, and a few other good things that make the three contenders really MacOS, Windows, and Linux. I can see a future where Linux is on the top. Microsoft could sell Windows 2000 for free and still have hoardes of money. But they don't, for now.
Gotta go, Ken
Then you go talking about this figmentational "desktop" bogosity again. I won't waste time talking about it again. I've done that a bunch lately. Check other threads.
Virtually no one writes anything for the Linux kernel. And very few people write anything for Linux-based operating systems. You're just seeing people work on Unix stuff, and you see it running on some vendor-supplied, Linux-based operating system and figure it's something specifically for the Linux OSes. In 99.98% of the cases, you're wrong in this.
And as for business computing... huh? What does that have to do with anything? Now you're coming very close to talking about the marketing world of lies and avarice. Geeks have no trek with that crap without losing their souls.
But quibbling aside, you're right about a good bit of this. For example, the need to have highly competent people managing the computers and the computing environments of the highly incompetent ones. You can never make computing easy enough for the idiots. The stupid shall be with us always. So you have to establish set-ups so that they have professional caretakers. System adminstration is as important as it ever was, if not more so. Show me a system that even an idiot can adminstrate, and I'll show you one that only idiots would ever use.
System adminstrators shouldn't have to be in the same hemisphere as their user unless new hardware requires installation. Anything else sould be location independent. Also, the number of sysadmins should be related more to the number of users than the number of machines. If you find that merely adding another host to your net incurs significantly more admin overhead, something's wrong. A professional sysadmin automates everything, so one more machine shouldn't matter very much. One more user, however, does, because it's the routine human interaction that takes all the non-exceptional-event time.
Linux is so similar to other Unices in the development environment that you could argue that everything targetted specifically for Linux (except for some of the low-level stuff, and very few people are working on that) is really targetted for the entire Unix community. You can't see the exact motives for writing the software. But what happens is that most of the people who actually use the software happen to be running Linux. How Linux got to that point is beyond me because I did not personally experience it (Hey, what can you expect from a 14-year-old?) but I think it has something to do with the driver support, being free, and being fun, but that's just what I glean from other people. I just can't accept a 99.98% figure without a little contesting.
Business computing is the kind of computing that makes money. There are a lot of people who spend their spare time messing around with their computers and trying OSes like Linux, but what do they do to get their money? They work. And what do they use at work to (hopefully) boost their productivity? Computers. And there are a lot of people who use computers at work who couldn't care less about them once they walk out to their car. If you want to address the largest number of users, you have to get into the field of business computing. There are exceptions to everything.
Ken is done arguing.
PS - What goes up and never comes down? Tom C.'s karma! Are you some super-nerd? You have something to say about practically every news story in the past few weeks at least, if not the last year or so. How do you get a karma of 74 (last time I checked)? Well, for someone who wrote a book on Perl, that's sort of a given, but...
Free isn't a price - most people take the "open source" models version of free to simply encompass the actual monitary value of the product - this is however not the case. The application actually gains a freedom to evolve and be developed by many people -- we all know this model. It appears to work with many different products. This makes the services that the people provide very very valuable to the company because it weeds out the tinkerers from the real hard coders. People who can really get into the nitty gritty of the code will be paid more because they have evolved a piece of software so far - it's essentially democracy in the computer industry - we don't see it yet because Linux or another open source OS hasn't become the dominant player, or even a large one. Why would companies restructure in this model? For one because it's new ground, for two it does cut TCO and Total Cost of Development. It will, oddly enough I think it will be money that makes Linux the lead player in the future and not Windows.
;-)
At any rate, just my opinions
(RHAT closed today at 213.5, was as low as 45 or so when it opened, $14 was the IPO price; MSFT has been hovering around 85-95 for what seems like ages.)
I can't figure out why so many investors want in on RHAT, and I've been happily using (and developing for) GNU/Linux since 1992 or so.
But this huge NASDAQ run-up of late doesn't seem to have swept MSFT along in its wake -- it's almost as if people don't consider MSFT to be a likely beneficiary of the continuing Internet revolution!? Weird.
(Disclaimer: a relative of mine works at MSFT as Lead PM for MSIE.)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Sorry for the typo. Obviously anyone that can not spell or sometimes hits the wrong key has no clue about anything in the world and should be ignored completly.
I happen to have used the same Operating Systems book for my OS class in college that Linus used to help write Linux. If I had not been so lazy I would have looked up the correct spelling.
-- soldack
Point taken. RH's stock has had incredible performance. It is a bit strange when you look at their financials but I guess the value is based on believed future earnings. At least they make a small profit. Amazon continues to lose money every quater and their stock keeps going up. Strange indeed!
MS still makes ton's of money. They closed at 91 1/8, off from their one year high 100 3/4 but way up from their one year low of 59 5/16. Their stock has not really gone down since the findings of fact. They are still showing no change in their business practices that are bringing tons of money.
My point is that MS is not even hurting until their stock or bottom line starts to show it.
-- soldack
Do you mean <like this>?
RTFM.
Their Linux coverage is even more interesting because they've been rather anti-DOJ with regards to the anti-trust case against Microsoft (not strange, since Microsoft has made a lot of money for a lot of investors...). They are showing more and more interest, though. And while there are lots of naysayers on their Redhat discussion board (they have a discussion board, by ticker symbol, for most (all?) stocks on Nasdaq and NYSE), there's also some Linux enthusiasts there.
So you have shown, in great detail, that you haven't the foggiest *idea* what linux has or does not have today. You also highly over-value the MSDN/ MS ide approach (can you say buggy api? can you say inconsistant documentation? can you say eye-candy wrapped around a flawed language (VB) --- I knew you could). And you deprecate systems that you don't understand (ie command-line and makefiles, usenet support) without any evidence of what is wrong. These systems may be older, but they are well understood and successfully used on projects well beyond the scope of and MS based system (ie *many* large scale multi-platform builds 50M + loc) 'Each of MS languages solves different sets of problems'... indeed. And each one *creates* different sets of problems, as well. Spend a little time getting a clue, and you won't look such and idiot when you post. If all you are going to do is repeat MSDN FUD and drivel, don't bother.
Linux does have organized testing, and it DOES have hundreds of engineers that make their living on improving it, employed by companies such as Redhat, SuSE, Caldera, Cygnus (being bought by Redhat), Corel, IBM, Compaq, VA Research, SGI, and lots of others.
We also have lots of good development tools, from companies such as Cygnus, IBM, and lots of others.
We have a choice of component models, from Corba, to Windows style DCOM (allthough who in their right mind would *use* that except for porting Windows applications), XPCOM (Mozilla project), and more.
If you've tried using Microsoft documentation and Linux documentation, I can't for my bare life imagine why you'd prefer Microsofts' (I've used both - I've been unfortunate enough do work on Windows projects a few times).
Support is available from lots of companies, including Cygnus, Redhat, Caldera, SuSE, IBM, LinuxCare and more.
As you can see, the main difference is that we rely on many providers, none which are vital to use, while Microsoft users are at the whim of Microsoft.
That's the main reason Linux is good for companies too: They aren't at the mercy of a 500 pound gorilla with no manners when they need help...
As for Redhat becoming a new MS: They can't. Microsoft only became what it did because it managed to get a monopoly of OSs, and noone easily could compete. With open source software Redhat can only differentiate themselves by being better, and doing better marketing, not by ignoring their users problems and insisting they know best - if they did users will just flock to another distribution, such as Mandrake, which is Redhat based.
You know we keep hearing about how such and such a side effect of open sourcing something makes it better: well you can put some energy into answering phones instead of coding all day and increase its value. You can conceptually increase its value by expanding its user base. You can sell t-shirts with your product's name on it and increase its value. It seems as people get more experienced with software they find engineering to amount to less and less of a product's value. When do we finally tell engineers to shove it and focus on marketing instead?
Now you are lying. MSDN is the best there is. The only thing that even comes close in the Linux world is documentation Troll provides with Qt.
...
As to the tools. Sure there are things like DDD which are very usable but they don't even come close to the level of integration provided by MS IDEs. (KDevelop is very very close to the MS level..I hope they continue with this and provide us with stable version.)
Basically, the only hope for Linux is provided by KDE team. Eveything else is pretty much uncoordinated mess
There is no patter developing here. Sure, developers tend to switch to Linux ( mostly Unix guys anyway) but users ??
Will come back to this discussion when we start seeing people in offices use Linux.
> 2. Most people who are not STUPID want their business servers to run an OS that is COMMERICAL so someone is liable if something ever goes wrong!
So, you think you can actually sue Microsoft, Sun, or ANY other software vendor when their software crashes and screws up your business? Have you ever bothered to read the licences for this software? They specifically state the manufacturer is NOT liable for any losses that might occur when the software fails. Have you ever heard of such a case? They simply do not happen, because of the licences. If I had someone working under me who proposed using any software because we could sue if something went wrong, I would consider firing them, because they would clearly be ignorant and incapable.
Eric Geyer
corduroy@sfo.com
Microsoft has done so much for us, like create the internet, bring down the price of PCs and software, make an easy to use operating system. Without microsoft we would still be using DOS applications.
They have done so much for the world, brought PCs to a vast majority of people. Made it easy to connect to internet, all I have to do is load internet explorer, and internet is there.
Also, they have made programming easier, with Visual Basic. Even I can program applications, and I'm not particularly good with computers. Alot of applications look the same, so I don't have to go learning new interfaces all the time.
Many people complain about MS bad tackits, but I think what they have given us, the world, is easier use of computing. I think, other companies could not do this, because each would be inventing there own standards - there would be no one common interface, common look and feel of applications.
We should be thanking microsoft, thank you very much Bill Gates, your wonderful!
Before you start firing off yet another knee-jerk flame to this guy, look closely at the message and try to pick out the sarcastic bits.
Wrong. Take PeopleSoft, a major ERP vendor, for example. It has a Windows interface that can be programmed via a drag-n-drop app builder that can also be used to generate Web-based 'self-service' apps. What does it use on the backend? An SQL database, the SQR scripting language for reports, and COBOL for the number crunching. The major thing keeping it from running the application server portion from running on linux is the lack of the necessary COBOL compiler.
Some people like to think COBOL is only for mainframes and written by old crusty programmers (and I do work with some old mainframe COBOL programmers). I know more COBOL programmers that are under 30 than I do the ones over 50. COBOL is still used for business because it was designed to fit the needs of business and has evolved to keep up with those needs. Like FORTRAN, it stays around because it works very well for what it was designed for. A huge codebase and lots of trained programmers also help, but they aren't the only factors.
BTW, there are at least two free (as in speech) COBOL projects in the works and have been posted to Slashdot in the past. Alan Cox is a contributor to one of them.
It's nice to see sites such as fool.com actually recgonizing that Linux is really attacking Microsoft. Not to mention the entire open source model as a viable option to the current software development model. I love hearing things such as "212% annual growth" and "will eventually surpass windows about three years". There are only two places I actually deal with Windows one is a terminal at work (the one I write this comment from) and the other an NT server at another ISP I help maintain -- just fyi Linux has all but replaced NT since I got there. Microsofts garbage about TCO and crap is summarized by the "Windows NT Hique"
..."Free plus free
equals more than
NT"
Interesting note: www.fool.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
A cogent question, but it must be remembered that the anti-trust trial is about far more than Microsoft vs. Linux.
Firstly, just because this particular source has predicted that Linux will overtake Windows on the desktop within three years, does not mean that it will even come to pass, let alone that it can be considered evidence that Microsoft does not wield monopoly power now. As one of the anti-trust experts interviewed for Slashdot recently put it: "The existence of a potential competitor does not prove competition."
Secondly, the desktop space is far from the only one in which Microsoft is competing -- or in which it is stifling competition. Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact cites not just one "smoking gun" but a veritable arsenal of them: documented efforts by Microsoft to stifle the existence of competitors in various market spaces -- or even to stifle the emergence of new market spaces that would threaten its dominance, such as middleware. Sun's Java and Apple's QuickTime are examples where Microsoft made unambiguous attempts to surpress technologies that would benefit competition and the consumer, but weaken the power Microsoft derives from having the dominant OS.
As a developer I must say that getting good feedback from users and getting resect from users is far more important than earning (a lot) of money with the software.
So Open Source software benefits the author probably more than traditionally selling the product. (It always nice if you can get a living outof it, but that's never been the main issue I believe.)
Wouldn't you be doing the same stuff if you were not paid for it? (developers view)
a-quite-happy-soft-dev
StarTrek.org Free Webmail
> 3 comments and a karma of -11
Well, he didn't ask for postive karma, did he?
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So he says, but he's pretty much ignoring everything that happened in the anti-trust trial. I don't want to go over the trial analysis that everyone here is sick to death of, but MS do have the resourses -- both in terms of money and influence -- to damage whomever they wish, including Linux.
However,
Microsoft's high end is the desktop, and that's the last market Linux will take over.
This is a telling point, and one that is rarely made in analyses of Linux. We'll get there in the end, but only after all the other markets have fallen.
I'm quite familiar with TFM. I suppose I was silly enough to think "plain old text" would mean, well, plain old text.
I forget what 8 was for.
Not quite ....
Do a poll: if network admins could fix bugs as they came up, would they? The people who did the 3D water effects for the Titanic movie used a huge Linux cluster for processing. The kernel had limitations on the Alpha platform that prevented it from working right, but considering the money they'd saved over an NT based solution, they just put some ressources into making it work properly (and better than NT). Everyone now has a more stable Alpha platform.
As for documentation and some of the other comments you've made, the man pages and other Linux documentation are often more complete and more TRUE than MS' documentation on any given issue.
- Michael T. Babcock <homepage>
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Yet another comfirmation that the reign of MS is over (or going to be over soon). It's only a matter of time, and everybody (ie., people other than slashdotters, tech-junkies, and other members of their species ;-) ) will be aware of the defiencies of MS products and the availability of better, cheaper alternatives.
However, an interesting thought is the observation that nothing lasts forever. Witness the crash of a century-old bank in England not long ago, for example. Will the age of Linux come to an end too? Computers are moving so fast that what took a century to fall may take a much shorter time (eg. MS). What will happen when the age of Linux is over? Just food for thought... :-)
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
Only, you're number 6, dork-boy.
Even after their fantastic IPO, RedHat is still nothing compared to MS. They could buy every single distributer of Linux and then stop pushing it out. I don't think that they could kill Linux but they could really slow down its growth or weaken it. They have nearly unlimited resources and have shown repeatedly that they are willing to use them.
This is why the trial is so important. If this trial fails, MS will come lash out at Linux and all of Microsoft's competitors with a vengence. MS will try to force the OEMs to go back to only MS software. Their power, if unrestrained, is absolute. Absolute power corrupts absolutly so they need to be restrained.
Let's hope that they are not above the law.
-- soldack
> Now you are lying. MSDN is the best there is.
...
Not lying. Be careful in your choice of words. Simply expressing an opinion, which you do not agree with. Its a standard tactic of a poor rhetoritician to call a disagreement a lie. I personally do not agree with you either. I have spent many, many hours seaching MSDN CDs and the online Knowledgebase for information, without finding what I want. The information may indeed be there, but it is so poorly organized that it is impossible to find. Often, what I was looking for simply was not there. On the other hand, I can ALWAYS find what I want in online Linux resources - Usenet, HOWTO's, webpages, etc.
> Basically, the only hope for Linux is provided by KDE team. Eveything else is pretty much uncoordinated mess
Once again, your OPINION. I am not a fan of MS's IDEs and development tools. There are plenty of well coordinated and organized development teams in the Open Source world. There are even COMMERCIAL alternatives that run on Open Source platforms.
Eric Geyer
The article gives a good explanation of why open source & linux will overtake the desktop in roughly three years. So I'm reading and waiting for the part where it says the court doesn't need to intervene because of this argument, and then comes along a short one-paragraph conclusion that totally contradicts the whole article! What gives?
This seems to be the case with much of the PC world. The best marketed software because the most popular and it feeds on itself. This "network" effect is very powerful. Although I consider Linux to be of high quality some of its current success comes from quantity. At my old university I saw lots of CS student installing Linux. This sounds great but I was a bit disheartened when I realized that many of them were just trying it because all the other CS people were using it. I would rather Linux win than lose but if I could choose I would rather it win by quality than quantity.
-- soldack
No, this is not true.
IIRC Linus based his original kernel on Minix..
And he in no way "reverse engineered" anything..
COBOL **was** the language of business. There's a whole other world outside your place of employment.
The article points out that, if current patterns continue, Linux users will out number Windows user very soon.
Yes... and in 1978, sales of Disco records had increased 300% from previous years; if this trend continues, Barry White records will account for 99.98% of all records sold by 2000, making him the richest man in the world.
(Sorry, bad analogy - I realize that Linux is not a fad.. but I just had to point out the flaw in his logic.)
MS has had several class action suites placed against it for not delivering what their software promises. Also, they have been sued for charging to fix things that were advertised to work in the first place. All of these things were either lost in appeals court or settled out of court. Either way, MS payed money from their unlimited supply to get out of it. Luckily they can not (legally) offer money to the Doj but there are those appeals...
Companies have been sued for making faulty products before and have lost even with "iron" contracts that are supposed to protect them. MS could be next. The trial and findings of fact may open the flood gates.
Wouldn't it great if companies were required by law to make software that works?
-- soldack
- Ease of use
- Rapid Prototyping
- Power
- Speed
:+)
Personally, I think you should go for the middle ground under Windoze - use Delphi, which has the RAD and Drag/Drool frontend of VB, but with almost as much power as C - not to mention that for many years, Borland^WInprise^WBorland had the fastest and most optimising compiler in existance for the Intel platform - I don't have any current stats, but imagine it must still be pretty goodVB is VASTLY easier to use than VC - so much is just click-drag-and-drool that in VC takes a week of headscratching to find the obscure MS-Specific call that does $FOO
With VB, you can have a "look and feel" prototype, will all screens in their final configuration but "dummy" fixed-text data, in about ten minutes. you can single-step in interpreted mode without having to recompile, you can add and remove forms, modules and so forth quickly and easily without having to recode half your calls.
With VC++, you can do anything the OS is willing to let you; in return for not having a pretty button for everything, you get a list a screenfull of buttons couldn't cover.
Compiled C is just faster and smaller than VB - and less files. there isn't a why, it just is
--
-=DaveHowe=-
Check the stock price...MS is going where that stock is going so until it heads south they are not in trouble. MS is a corporation where general public opinion doesn't matter that much and technical opinion matters even less. What really effects their bottom line is corporate and financial market optinion. They don't seem to even see the cracks in the empire yet. Heck, I bet that all the pundits predicting their demise are buying stock right now.
All things do come to an end but I don't think that MS is going anywhere soon. There is still one tactic that they have not tried yet: making high quality, inexpensive software. MS could do it. They do have a lot of smart people working there. Their products lack quality often due to unreasonable deadlines and impossible requirements. I don't blame the programmers. I blame the managers and higher ups.
What if MS decided to give all those softies a chance to do things right?
-- soldack
Sorry.
You are right about my poor choice of words.
Linux is based on Minux. Minux was written in part to give students a version of Unix simple enough to study completely. In that sense Linux was "reverse engineered" in that it was based on Minux and Minux implemented many of the features of Unix. This is similar to how Compaq reverse engineered IBM's PC bios. They studied what the code did, not the code. Then they tried to write code that did the same thing. Linux falls into this catagory.
-- soldack
Not true. COBOL is still used widely for very important but un-sexy accounting, order entry and inventory management programs. It's really very good for this purpose. I'd MUCH rather write one of these in COBOL than, say C++ or Java. The exciting cutting edge stuff is elsewhere, but the real boring stuff people depend on for their day-to-day work is still COBOL.
The implication would be that there are no Open Source projects that have "died out" for lack of continued development. This is just plain silly.
Open Source project will continue as long as people are interested in the effects, but the network effect that he describes is important here. If another alternative is available and better, then the development will stop or never start.
This is a demonsration that Linux (and Free Software in general) is unFUDable. If a project dies it is because of a REAL problem, not because the competing company says that it is dead technology.
Do you know of any Free Software project that dies because his competitors where saying it is dead technology, or it is "hobbyist" software...? Personnaly I can't think of any (but maybe you can).
Would GIMP have started if Photoshop was free (or even dirt cheap) and available on many platforms?
Yep, because Photoshop still wouldn't be free (speech), but the project most probably would have begun at a later date, because there wouldn't have been such a need for it (because of the proprietary alternative).
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
How would Linux constitute a monopoly? First off, there are a lot of different distributions. This it self constitutes competition Secondly, and most importantly, it's not a company, and therefore, it can't be a monopoly.
"To save the planet, I had to go to the worst spot on Earth, and that was Philadelphia." -- Sun Ra
As long as Linux remains an open source project, its success will be limited to only a niche.
Linux has already gone beyond niche status in the server market, and is currently attracting a great deal of attention in the desktop, point-of-sale, embedded systems, and supercomputing markets. And its presence seems to be growing in all these areas (one of which, BTW, does not have any MS presence at all).
Oh, yeah, about your "as long as" -- Linux will always be an open source project, due to the nature of its license.
Linux lacks organized and official testing, and it lacks paid engineers who make their living improving it.
Microsoft has both, and look at the two decades worth of crap that they have released on the public.
As far as "make their living" goes, you must be thinking about some other species if you don't think more quality goes into a labor of love than what goes into a labor for wages.
But this is the real world, and people only do so much bona fide work.
They've already done enough to create a robust and multifeatured operating system and a whole pile of utilities and applications to run on it. In fact, they had already done so long before Linux came over the public's horizon. And now the coder base seems to be expanding faster than before.
they will fail due to lack of integration bonuses that you get with Windows.
Windows only "integrates" with other Windows systems. Linux integrates with almost anything. The biggest problem is the deliberate incompatibilities Redmond introduces with each new release of a product.
Windows will have the stability and reliability that Linux has
Sorry, but stability and reliability are not optional add-on features. The only way Windows will ever become S&R is when Redmond decides to re-write it from scratch with S&R in mind.
Of course they might. They're talking about S&R now that people are citing that as a reason for ditching their NT servers. But they started talking about "ease of use" the day they heard about the Mac, and it took them 12 years to get an approximation of what the original Mac offered. I think there is extremely small risk that Windows is going to undercut the competition in terms of S&R anytime during the next decade.
The recent Linux craze is a flash in the pan and will not result in significant change.
Linux has already been around for 8 years, and is already resulting in significant changes.
Microsoft is a tenacious foe, and will continue improving its products at an amazing rate.
Continue? Microsoft has never improved its products "at an amazing rate". Unless you're willing to be amazed at how slowly they improve things. The only thing they're tenacious about is maintaining their market share, and they've always done that by means uncorrelated with the quality of their products.
One thing Microsoft understands that Linuxers do not is the importance of excellent developer tools and support. Microsoft has excellent IDE's for each of its languages
If Microsoft's tools are so wonderful, how come their products are so crappy? (I think you have just presented an argument that handcrafted code is the way products should be developed!)
support for these tools are horrible
No, it's wonderful. When's the last time you wrote directly to a Microsoft developer and got help with a problem? What's the average turnaround time between the discovery of a bug in a Microsoft product and delivery of a fix?
source code licensing is ambiguous
No, it's perfectly clear.
Linux lacks a component model beyond shared libraries (basically, DLL's)
DLLs are a caveman's attempt at shared libraries. For some reason Linux's shared libriaries never resulted in a phrase like "DLL hell."
Linux needs something like COM
Linux has "something like COM." And just as with DLLs, the Linux variants are better thought out.
Microsoft has a lot of weapons on its side
Well, yes, here's something we can agree on. A monopolist's grip on the market. All the lawyers, marketers, astroturfers, and congressmen that money can buy. A paranoid monomaniacal asshole coordinating all their efforts against any competition that peeps up out of its foxhole. Yessir, they have lots of weapons. But nothing that would seem to lead to a better product.
Linux advocates should seek to emulate them.
No, Linux advocates should view them as damage and route around them.
The word on the street is that the recording + sorftware industries are making thier money by contracting thier licences departments to the devil ;-) seriously reading software licences is as bad as reading the back of a medicine bottle "warning this contract may cause headaches, nausia and cases of extreme reactions stroke and cardiac arrest, read at own risk"
Corel appear to be trying all the stuff you mention except 1 (which is impossible since so much of Linux is owned by hundreds of different people) and 2 which would be throwing away the biggest advantage that they have - free maintenance of the stuff which is already there.
> Why the hell would my aunt want to concern herself with GCC?
I don't know, you tell me, why would your aunt want to concern herself with GCC?
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Indeed, If if weren't for Microsoft, many people using PC's at home just for fun or even professional wouldn't have bought a PC. I don't say it's all the effort of MS (others played a big role in this) but they brought it out and commercialized it. They created an environment that anyone can use. Nowadays, many (even better) others are coexisting. (BeOS, Linux, ...) SO now we have the choose, WELL choose and don't whine. Remember i'm talking PC here (not mac or anything else) 'BE the difference that makes a difference' - JEWEL
>In what way does Microsoft prevent you from running Linux and running
>your huge library of Linux apps like XEyes and XCalc and XTerm?
It doesn't, but it probably got $89 out of him/her when he bought his computer.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
IIRC, at the time "Linus Torvalds" (now why did the fools put his name between quotes?) started his project, a lot of patches to make Minix 1.5 (I think that was the version that Prentice Hall was selling on a sh**load of _5.25" floppies_) more usefull were flying around.
Stuff like virtual consoles, the Bruce (who?) 32-bit patches, the bootable-from-the-HD patches and so forth... No one was running a run-of-the mill MINIX setup anymore.
The pressure was mounting on Andrew T. to incorporate patches back into the MINIX source code, to add support for news, TCP/IP... he refused.
That's when people like Fred Van Kempen started their "super Minix" (? name?) project... and Linus started Linux. The impression I had at the time he was yet another guy who wanted a better MINIX, could not get it from Andrew T. and simply started writing his own kernel. His take on the "you've got the source code, fix it" item in the MINIX FAQ, I guess.
But Linux did not reverse-engineer anything, he simply said _IMO_ "I'll build a better MINIX, I'll do it from scratch".
Anyway, that's what I remember from the time...
p.s.: Anyone still has their MINIX 1.5 mini-binder complete with floppies? I think it's still at my parents. (Egads, t'was the first piece of software I bought! ) Aaahh, the good ol' days of downloading all those MINIX patches over a 1200 baud modem using Kermit...
Some say Beta lost because you couldn't get a two-hour movie on one tape, or because Sony were being such buttheads about licensing (everyone made VHS decks instead because that's what they could afford to make).
[Insert I have no moderator points, but consider this an outstanding posting here]
WTF is up with using an open-caret close-caret sequence? I've seen other people do it. I gave up just now, but does one need to use HTML entities to make that work even with "plain old text" formatting?
I forget what 8 was for.
About the stability, X crashes on me about as much as Windows. Yes, Linux doesn't require a reboot, but it does close all my apps, and I have to go and kill it. How the average user is supposed to know how to kill things is beyond me.
I have had to use Visual Basic at work since the version 3 days. Although it has come a long way, I do not feel that it is a truely reliable language. If it is so good, then how come MS does not use it for its own applications? VB is really built on C/C++ active-x controls anyway. Why not just use Visual C++?
Basic would probably be dead if it was not for MS pushing it. Since they control it they have no competition in making compilers for it. Other languages, like C, C++, COBOL, Algol, Pascal, LISP, Java, etc. have competition. Their are choices and this forces the manufactures to imporove their systems to compete better. MS doesn't have to do that with VB.
The basic language does not support many things that programmers need. The implementations of many of their types are hidden from the vb programmer. A good programmer needs to know these things in order to write efficient code. For example, variants and arrays are totally hidden from the vb write. I have worked with passing VB types to C DLLs and have seen how these types are implemented. It is pretty ugly. One line of basic code can turn into many lines of C code and even more lines of assembly.
Finally VB forces the developer to rely on vast array of active-x components that are also hidden from developers. Only by trial and error can a developer guess how a control is implemented. If there is a problem a developer has two choices: write their own control or work around it. Either choice takes a considerable amuont of time.
VB represents everything that is bad in Microsoft. All flashy and pretty on the outside but ugly on the inside.
-- soldack
anyone remember dos 4? I still have nightmares about it ^__^
i doubt it. most new software is either c, c++ or java and/or plain SQL. all those systems are legacy and being replaced slowly.
check out - metalab.unc.edu/LDP
Microsoft has done so much for us, like create the internet, bring down the price of PCs and software, make an easy to use operating system. Without microsoft we would still be using DOS applications.
Another post answered this but I just have to point this out again. Good try troollboy.
Also, they have made programming easier, with Visual Basic. Even I can program applications, and I'm not particularly good with computers.
If there is any reason to hate MSFT it is because people like U can make comments like this and see nothing wrong with such statements.
Die Microsoft Die
Bad Command Or File Name
Disco Stu: [making indescribable body motions] Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continue... A-y-y-y!
[kicks his feet up on his desk wearing see-through platforms with water and fish inside]
Homer: Uh, your fish are dead.
Disco Stu: Yeah, I know. I... can't get them out of there.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Read your license bud. First of all it's not your software. You might own your computer but not your OS (it is licensed to you). Second of all the license basically states that the software might not work, might crash your entire network and destroy your data, burn down your house and anything else (it's quite possible currently that bugs or flaws in the OS or app for an MS Windows X-10 home automation program could end up doing that) but that no matter what happens the manufacturer of the software is ENTIRELY blameless. Take a look at Minasi's "The Software Conspiracy" for a critique of crappy software, IP law, and legal framework governing software as a product. This is from the perspective of a guy who make his living with NT - it's not pretty.
Customization: How many window managers are there for Windows? How many are there for Linux?
The term window manager really doesn't apply to Windows, at least not 9x, you'd have to totally rewrite USER, GDI, and possibly parts of KERNEL.
People get mad when their apps crash. People notice that for some reason their apps don't crash as much when they run them under Linux. Netscape seems to be an exception, at least for me.
FWIW, the glibc version seemed to crash quite a bit on my Caldera 2.2 system. I replaced it with the libc5 version and problems seemed to have been resolved...
If two things were equal in every way except that one was $90 and one was free, which one would you buy? And what if it turned out that the free one was better?
At least for corporations, Linux really isn't free (beer.) You have to pay for support, and having a CD and dead tree manual is really, really a good idea.
My journal has hot
TRU DAT!
My housemate, Yikuan Lee, recently received her management PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for a thesis on network effects and marketing. Some of you may be interested in reading this. It'll probably take a month or two before her thesis is available in the library, however. Amitha Perera Dept Comp Sci RPI
Nope, sorry but Usenet and web pages are a poor substitute for a real developers knowledgebase. Web pages tend to disappear, and Usenet posts get flushed. And, if you are having trouble using MSDN to find information, you apparently don't know how to search intelligently. MSDN offers a lot of search options, and has always led me to what I am looking for. Sorry, your opinion is weak and unsubstantiated.
The implication would be that there are no Open Source projects that have "died out" for lack of continued development. This is just plain silly. Open Source project will continue as long as people are interested in the effects, but the network effect that he describes is important here. If another alternative is available and better, then the development will stop or never start. Would GIMP have started if Photoshop was free (or even dirt cheap) and available on many platforms?
Actually, just picking some nits here, but there are viable cheap alternatives to Photoshop in the closed source world...
Two are entirely commercial: Micrografx Picture Publisher used to be very very expensive, but is now a viable alternative to PS for most uses for about $50. Recent versions of Corel Photopaint ($100) are really really nice and have good features to rival Adobe's product...
Another is shareware: Paint Shop Pro is available fo a fraction of PS's $800 street price and it supports special effects, layers and masks like the other packages I mentioned...the usual features you look for in a PS replacement...
My journal has hot
I have been trying to explain this whole thing to my wife, who is not computer savvy. I told her that most people were sick of 95/98/NT because it was unstable and slow. Now I know this looks like a troll; however, this is what I have experienced personally and professonally. I told her why I run Linux and FreeBSD on all *my* machines and why an os war exists on the internet. What sparked this conversation? Our free pc (www.freepc.com) locked up when my wife clicked next on an etoy.com link. The free pc runs windows 98 and IE 4.0. After 2 hours of online shopping I had to reboot for her explaining that I had never seen *nix freeze once. She argued that linux was hard to use (I was having her dialup with ppp and starting netscape from the command prompt in fwvm way back when we had a modem.) I told her things had changed and she should see the new versions of linux and the various window managers. I think GNOME will blow her socks off when I get my 466 celeron, toss RH 6.1, Gnome and some propaganda backgrounds on it. I hope someday I will turn her towards the light (understanding computers and not hating them). -- generic, slashdotting after a nice turkey feast.
No, I agree more with the original post, though I think he/she is a bit extreme. Linux API documentation and knowledgebase management is indeed disorganized compared to Microsoft's MSDN.
Yes, but the availability of source code is a powerful countervailing factor. Microsoft is famous for giving the developers incomplete API specifications and then releasing their own appplications which have performance made possible only through the use of undocumented system calls. The result in user space is applications from ISV's that use undocumented API calls merely to be competitive. This leads to upgrade incompatability issues.
Having open source is the ultimate insurance of complete knowledge of the OS. Microsoft can have the fanciest 'Knowledge Base' imaginable, but if they choose to make some os functions 'undocumented' this Knowedge Base is in fact corrupt and untrustable.
If Linux gets an "LDN" sort of system going, it would definitely be a good thing.
Design of a real LDN would be I think nearly impossible given the nature of Linux development.
I have started using linux this year, (mainly due to the fact I am a (was) a unix admin cadet (I am now a database (on unix) admin), and have seen almost all the other computer students I know at uni running linux alongside windows. Mainly for something compile decently in as the standard linux compilers give far more information than a windows one any day (And that is somethign I must congratulate the open source community for). But you say windows 2000 wipes the floor with linux? How is this? And if so, those gaps will be closed relatively quickly. I think I heard it described best in the SGI article, "Linux was what other OS's were mid 1980's, but it's rate of growth will see it at around 1991 by the end of the year" (Probably a bad quote), but I think it highlights how quicky linux is evolving. I don't see a 100% growth sustained over 3 years unfeasible either. I think you should also realise companies like SGI, quite reputable, are banking on linux sustaining that 100% growth over 3 years. I don't think it's impossible, as more users try it and like it, it spreads as they suggest it to others. I know a lot of people that have installed it simply because I have and they wanted to see it for themsleves and went "Hey, this is quite good at this or that", and so they use it for it. namely compiling as I mentioned before, but also for network stuff. I find myself fielding more questions from non-tech aquaintances asking because they have heard about it in the media and by word of mouth. You also seem to be overlooking one other important aspect that I think will effect the sales of MS windows, the home pc user will not be able to run the new latest and greatest (yeah right), M$ OS (ie windows 2000), I forget the actual spec, but a pentium II would be the minumum at best would it not? I don't know about you, but some families may not see the the benefie in getting windows 2000 simply for the "new features". Look at windows 98, a flop in sales that M$ expected, and don't quote me M$ sales figures, look at it realistically, would people be making games for windows 95 machines if there weren't a lot out there still? Sure windows 2000 will sell, but I see people buying it, seeing it's not what they wanted and just sticking with windows 98, or looking elsewhere. Linux is really the flagship for open source, it has made the most media coverage which has raised awareness in the community of other alternatives. And also in response to your statement of poor architecture, etc in the linux kernel I can only say it works, it has a lot more customisations that can be performed and it doesn't corrupt it's own filesystem during general use.... And before you claim "Oh no, it's never do that", guess again, it has done so here, running our DHCP, and incidentally, it must have a poor network implementation if it can't handle 100Mb/s at full duplex. So I think it's fair to say all OS's have weak points, which I guess is the point I am trying to make. Windows may suit your useage, I know I use it for gaming, something that won't have to be done for too much longer I hope. Another point while I think of it, you might like to clarify your "open source movement" statement, linux is by no means the limit to open source, albeit it is most certainly the most touted, but I wouldn't like to detract from the good work being done in the *BSD community, etc.
Beeep, wrong answer...
Have your ever heard of Visual Basic???? It is the Cobol of tomorrow...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
It's a nice article and good for Linux and Open Source in general, but I do take objection to some of the statements.
Both Linux and Windows CE are small on embedded systems, but of the two I would suggest that CE is the more widely used. It is certainly true of most devices that readers of the Fool will come into daily contact with, e.g. the handheld PDA (Palm, CE, no linux?) and the cell-phone (Symbion, CE, no linux?)
The implication would be that there are no Open Source projects that have "died out" for lack of continued development. This is just plain silly. Open Source project will continue as long as people are interested in the effects, but the network effect that he describes is important here. If another alternative is available and better, then the development will stop or never start. Would GIMP have started if Photoshop was free (or even dirt cheap) and available on many platforms?
But, again, it is a good article and great PR for Linux and Open Source.
Hi!
There is a "law" or marketing that basically says, "Name recognition = $"
The way suits think, MS is right just because they make money. It's the same way IBM was before.
However, according to the rules for the new economy, the more money you make, the more money you make. This is because this is a war for standards. Why do you think VHS won out over BETA? There were more VHS products out there. Not that VHS was better. People didn't want to buy a product that you couldn't get movies for.
That's different for Linux. Linux adapts to "standards" because it has a user-driven development process. If there is a need for any kind of product, that product will appear. It just depends on attaining critical mass of people with know-how and people with use-how.
Everything is a matter of time. I think the user-driven development can succeed in the long run because it has a faster turn-around time than conventional marketing-driven development.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Interesting piece, though I think it skirts one of the more interesting aspects of network effects. Namely that companies often have the ability to make network-type products compatible with others if they choose.
If some way of ensuring interoperability is guaranteed, e.g. via open communication standards, then *everyone* benefits from the network effect. It ceases to be a case of "my network vs. your network" since users can gain the advantages of both without being tied to either.
Of course, companies with potential monopoly power don't want competition, so may deliberately place barriers in the way of interoperability. This reduces competition, allows them to reap monopoly profits but most seriously prevents consumers from being able to gain the advantages of a unified network. The internet wouldn't be as great as it is today if it was fragmented into incompatible proprietary segments.
As I see it, if antitrust legislation in the next century is going to be effective then it will have to adapt to take this into account. Specifically, it should be made illegal to artificially create barriers to isolate your network from others in order to gain monopoly power in any sector. Such incompatibilities are an enormous source of consumer harm.
The relevance of this to the Microsoft case is pretty obvious, and I am sure everyone can think of a hundred other examples where companies have abused their ability to build barriers to interoperability. This is likely to become more and more important as networked technology plays a larger part in our lives.
Therefore, open standards are definitely the way forward from an economic perspective. If that occurs, then true market competition will reign.
My two cents. I think, that if the gun/linux/bsd "community" really wants to get a significant share of the core desktop business, the "community" has to do two things: 1. come up with a (possibly) gnu (if not free at least very cheap ala Kahn's original marketing of pascal) COBOL compiler, with the hooks for the programmers to use sql backends. Business programs have a long life and have to adapt to a constantly changing environment. COBOL programs have shown that they can be maintained in this environment. COBOL is the language of busienss. :-) 2. low cost mid level accounting program systems(enterprise, fund, and write-up) that are solid and character based. (the windowing stuff takes so many keystrokes to enter data that you end up killing your productivity) I am NOT talking about the Quicken/Quickbooks level of software, I am referring to the Business Works, Blackbaud, and CPA-11 type packages. CEO's may choose the windowed garbage on its looks, but working accountants buy on cold blooded cost benefit. Top management may change it's tastes on whim, the accountant usually stays with the things that do the job.
Microsoft probably won't want to try to conquer Linux. Sure they have the money and the influence, but Linux, to the DoJ and friends, embodies anti-Microsoft-monoply, and if Microsoft starts messing with Linux, DoJ will jump on them. Microsoft knows this.
GNOME and KDE have made significant strides on making Linux a contender in the desktop environment. In some ways Linux has already overtaken Windows:
I'm sure I missed a few. Sure, Win has its advantages. But they are probably not going to stay for long.
Ken
No, I agree more with the original post, though I think he/she is a bit extreme. Linux API documentation and knowledgebase management is indeed disorganized compared to Microsoft's MSDN. If Linux gets an "LDN" sort of system going, it would definitely be a good thing.
:Spend a little time getting a clue, and you won't look such and idiot when you post. If all you are going to do is repeat MSDN FUD and drivel, don't bother. It sounds to me like he's got a clue, just that he's clued in the MS arena of things. I wouldn't take it so personally if I were you. He likes his MSDN, so let him live with his delusions.
Yes, hundreds of uncoordinated engineers who most likely don't get paid to fix their bugs. CORBA does not perform good enough to be a substitute for COM. COM is suited towards almost anything (both client side and server side) while CORBA is mostly suited toward server side only. (In other words, try programming your 3D graph control in CORBA) Companies *like* Microsoft because MS provides real paid-for support. Linux relies on pro-bono work from underpaid engineers and college students. Companies like sure things; if they can pay X$ for guaranteed support and a secure upgrade path, they go for it. Companies don't like to deal with entities that have no one in charge who can make real decisions. Microsoft has become huge for this reason. For Linux to truly compete for the desktop, a company must: 1) OWN a branch of Linux entirely 2) Abandon open source standards to protect its intellectual property 3) Pay multiple 9-5 engineering staffs to maintain and improve their piece of the code. 4) Test the hell out of everything, including the setup, which still needs tons of work. 5) Sell a retail-ready version of Linux for profit. Until this happens, consumers won't be happy recompiling kernels, creating boot images, and tweaking XF86CONFIG timings. Why the hell would my aunt want to concern herself with GCC?
Yeah! Die Linux Die!
In what way does Microsoft prevent you from running Linux and running your huge library of Linux apps like XEyes and XCalc and XTerm?
Just a niggling point: [A] Unix [variant that]... started as the Free Software Foundation's GNU project and was completed (well, first made independently usable; Open Source development and improvement never ends) by a graduate student at the University of Helsinki in Finland named "Linus Torvads." Who is this Linus Torvads? Is he related to Linus Torvalds?
People write free software out of non greedy motives. How many people in the entire world have ever have written cobol for fun? so far i have counted about one, you.
well since it seems to make you horny
i think YOU should invest your time in creating
the best free cobol compiler in existence. If i was doing it i think i'd choose cobol as the development language because of it's cold blooded cost benifit.
After all isn't that an important element
of this "community", accounting?
I'm sorry i have some serious cobol issues.
Have you considered that Linux is overtaking the server market and not the client market? When you have to pay thousands for NT server, getting something more reliable, less expensive, and easily administered remotely from anywhere is something any sane administrator would do in a heartbeat.
Granted, Linux doesn't fit everywhere yet, but it can be used for many server applications right now.
It also adds to your skillset, and your employer loves you if you're saving money, so you can demand more money for your skills.
The desktop market is a different story. Given enough time, it can certainly gain market share there as well.
Okay, you're obviously new to the use of FUD. Here's a couple of quick tips. FUD is more successful when directed at those who don't posess adequate knowledge of a topic. That's not the case here on /. as most of us have been using Linux for some time. Secondly, but no less important, successful FUD relies on half-truths as opposed to patently false statements. So, next time, do a bit more research and be more subtle. Also, find a less knowledgeable audience.
Oh gee, and the same level of support and bugfixes we've come to expect from Microsoft.
I like free software. I would pay lots of money for it if I had to. It's about being able to get a problem fixed as soon as it happens.
A monopoly is only 'bad' and regulated if it stifles any possible competition yet gouges consumers.
If AT&T had put their earnings into research on how to lower long distance rates, and had consistently dropped price, nobody would have tried to break them up.
If MS had made something like BeOS, small, fast, stable, pretty, and charged $45 for it, and published the APIs, etc, nobody would hate them.
The problem is that AT&T gouged consumers and user unfair trade practices to stop competitors. Much the same as Microsoft.
Even if Linux became a virtual monopoly, with it being hard to buy a PC without Linux installed, it wouldn't matter.
A company can't demand money for their distribution, so they can't hold companies at ransom with license fees. It doesn't cost the consumer any more to have Linux preinstalled. It would be done during testing anyways, at no cost.
Linux is served by being open, accessible... APIs are published and documented because they benefit from the same network effect as everything else.
Nobody would be harmed by Linux even if it was on 99.9% of new computers. Thus, nobody cares if it becomes a monopoly. Not only is there no central company to exploit it, but GNU/Linux (the GPL is important in this) can't be leveraged this way.
The only ones who could lose are Microsoft and other companies seeking to limit information.
Name: tide70.microsoft.com
Address: 131.107.3.70
Aliases:
>
Sure, a truly unbiased "independant third party" comment. Can you say Astroturf?
Say no to software patents.
I think MS found the ArtX story...
But..I was not impressed with win200 bloat, and I've seen it crash already. Not even to mention the ridiculous pricing or the fact that a gamesOS doesn't need apps.. Word for Nintendo.. yippee!
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Yes, It is good to see outside write-ups of linux, praising it. But it seems that they are just trying to jump on the bandwagon, without really understanding. Eather that, or they just heard of the "Slashdot Effect" and needed banner ad hits. Point in case:
;)
www.fool.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
Also the bit about:
"It explains how software can be developed not by a team of highly trained professionals, but by a loose association of hobbyists organized through the Internet as a kind of fan club."
Uhm...the hobbyists are the highly trained professionals. It kindda makes the Linux developers sound like a Lemonade stand run by kids
its interesting to me to observe the lengths of time it takes the (market|public) to allow technology to saturate it. R. Buckminster Fuller estimated that it took 60-80 years (i forget exact numbers) for new technologies in the construction field to reach 90% market saturation. linux is, to me, one example of the much more rapid acceptance times that software demonstrates.
i wonder, is it generally a fixed rate that is obtained for technology advancements in various disciplines? it seems that the rate of acquisition of information is speeding up (terence mckenna's timewave zero theory, others) - a concept that has really been illustrated to me by the explosive growth of information exchange on the internet, or even watching slashdot grow over the past few years. is it inevitable, since we now have a global information network, that new technologies and methods will always reach market acceptance, assuming that they are useful? how much does advertising influence market perception and neophilia?
just some thoughts
They seem to imply that Linux was the result of the reverse-engineering of at&t unix, by those who couldn't afford it.. is this true?
with M$, they know who they can't sue, with linux this is a little harder.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
w3rd! you muthaZ! keep linux for the homeyZ
Seriously, anyone who thinks that buying software from a company (be that Microsoft or RedHat or anyone) will prevent any failure of their system deserves such failures. This is what support contracts are for. I wonder how many decision makers confuse buying software with buying support. Microsoft propaganda certainly aims at spreading such misinformation (dare I say FUD).
-- ESH
Continue? Microsoft has never improved its products "at an amazing rate". Unless you're willing to be amazed at how slowly they improve things. The only thing they're tenacious about is maintaining their market share, and they've always done that by means uncorrelated with the quality of their products.
To be fair, Microsoft has shown tremendous capabilities for improving some of their products. The two prime examples are Windows 3.1-->Windows 95,and Internet Explorer. They have the deep pockets to be able to add features to a product at a prodigious rate. I think it is accurate to say that no organization -- commercial or OSS group, has ever demonstrated the ability to integrate complex features onto a project at a rate like MS can.
I believe that there is a fundamental bug in the MS revenue model that requires them to lead customers into to new technologies, not to adhere closely to customer's real world needs. Once you've sold everybody in the market a word processor, where is your next buck coming from? If quality were a matter of having the largest feature set, and innovation a matter of making rapid changes, Microsoft would have the best software in the world.
Microsoft's revenues are dependent upon their making rapid changes in their products -- the more frequent the releases the more frequent the revenue. But this is not necessarily the sames as continuous improvement. The OSS model is extremely fast at making patches to specific defects, but otherwise relatively slow. It's ready when it's ready. How long have I been salivating over KOffice? On the other hand, if you look at what now appears to be an extraodinary rate of improvementin KDE and Gnome, I think it is very clear that it isn't the raw rate at which features accrete into the system, but the surety that each step is a clear improvement over the last. When strung together these amount an impressive rate of improvement over the long haul.
If MS and OSS were chess players, the MS would make moves very rapidly, defeating its opponents by throwing them off balance and leading them into mistakes. OSS would be play with more deliberation, at each step improving its strategic position. If you set these players down at a chessboard, non-chess players would first be impressed by the speed with which MS made its moves, in seconds versus minutes for OSS. They might at first think that MS was a better player, but inevitably, MS would start to lose strategic position (e.g. a year ago MS was poised to capture the server market, now nobody thinks that's going to happen), followed eventually by material losses. It gets worse when you figure that MS is actually playing a game of simultaneous chess against an array of opponents, each OSS project has its own game running against MS, whereas MS's games have to be linked by a common strategy (e.g. dominance in tools is linked to dominance in OS).
I don't think that Microsoft is ever going to be forced out of the game. However, OSS is going to change the nature of the game it plays, force it to produce better products at a more deliberate rate, to listen more to their customers. I think that perhaps in five years there will probably be some MS products that I actually use because I like them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"It's only a matter of time, and everybody (ie., people other than slashdotters, tech-junkies, and other members of their species ;-) ) will be aware of the defiencies of MS products and the availability of better, cheaper alternatives."
Interestingly this is exactly how the author of the article described FUD: just wait and everything will get better!
The way I see it is that OSS works for software commodities, that is software that has been around long enough to loose its initial attractiveness. Once this attractiveness is lost people are no longer willing to pay enormous amounts of money for it.
Categories of software that can be classified as such are operating systems, word-processors, spreadsheets and so on. Interestingly this also applies to serverside stuff: mail servers, ftp servers, webservers and even database servers.
Companies selling software in the above list all use the same tactic: they somehow add value to the default functionality of the product thus making it special: ms bundles all sorts of stuff with their OS (which is still dos), they also bundle all their office stuff in one integrated package which in its turn mixes very well with the before mentioned OS. IBM and Oracle add management tools to their databases. Webservers are made attractive by offering management tools and integrating it with other stuff. The same applies to mailservers and ftp servers.
OSS is moving into new territories. The desktop, ms greatest added value to their OS, is becoming a commodity. So OSS will take over that too. MS has long realized this and has started to integrate all sorts of stuff in their OS. So far this tactic is working very well since the most used argument not to migrate to linux (on the desktop) is that windows applications just integrate better and are more feature rich. In due time this tactic will no longer work since OSS can provide users with the same level of integration (KDE) and functionality (many companies are working on or pondering linux version of their products).
What I hope I showed with this is that OSS is not suitable for all software, only the commodity software. Luckily, increasingly more software falls in that category.
Jilles
This whole article is riddled with inaccuraices about Linux.
Shame , really.
It wasn't reverse-engineered from AT&T products and it didn't leap straight into multiprocessor machines. Ask the people who ran the multiprocessor tests against NT (the fairer ones).
I wish people would use scare quotes every time they used "desktop environment" with the restrictive and dedicated sense of that computing environment used by people who don't really know anything at all about computers and who don't want to, as opposed to the more intuitive and generic use in which it means "the set-up on people's personal computers", which obviously isn't what you meant even though it's what you said. It's as strange to many of us as using the term "personal computer" to mean "Intel-based IBM PC using whatever Microsoft wants you to use" rather than the more intuitive and generic "computer used by a particular person".
Sometimes it's really as though the Linux people were speaking Unix with a Microsoft accent. Be very afraid. That's how they want you to speak, and thus, to think. :-(
Not everyone derives their working vocabulary from the insidious Microsoft propaganda virus, you know--especially in this forum of all places. The whole idea of controlling the word-choice in order to control the implicit agenda and by entension, the entire world view is surely some Orwellian nightmare invented by somebody's marketing department trying to create tacit corporate branding on innocuous, general-purpose words. It's like the pro-life/pro-choice spin. Or the PC police (please take that in multiple senses) all over again trying to weed out choices that have a message they don't like.
Nothing you list there is inherent to the Linux kernel, nor even to any of the dizzying panoply of Linux-based operating systems that use some flavor of the same. I certainly don't see how any of these GUI toys really have anything to do with Linuces in particular rather than any of the myriad other Unix systems running X11.The only thing that seems to distinguish itself is the price-point criterion, but it's unclear how important that truly is. First off, the Linux-based family of operating systems are hardly the only free OSes around. But more important, really, is that the price for even costly OSes continues to go down. So I can't see that, even if it were one today, this would long remain that distinguishing a factor. For many situations, a two-digit dollar amount is hardly enough to notice compared to all the other factors. It just gets lost in the noise.
The article points out that, if current patterns continue, Linux users will out number Windows user very soon. And more importantly, the network effect will become an advantage to Linux and a hinderance to MS.
An important implication is that Microsoft's strategy of embracing and extending will no longer be viable. Without the network effect to make MS proprietary protocols de facto standards, people simply won't adopt non-standard and non-interoperable software from MS. And most importantly, all the existing proprietary extentions will become a giant liability!
Perhaps this is why Microsoft has at least given lip service to openess, with HTML/XML file formats and the supposed standards complience of IE6.
As long as Linux remains an open source project, its success will be limited to only a niche. Linux lacks organized and official testing, and it lacks paid engineers who make their living improving it. People are expected to fix bugs for free. But this is the real world, and people only do so much bona fide work. Sure Red Hat might begin to address some of these problems, but they will fail due to lack of integration bonuses that you get with Windows. By the time Linux gets the ease of use and ease of integration that Windows has, Windows will have the stability and reliability that Linux has, *AND* will still have 90% market share. The recent Linux craze is a flash in the pan and will not result in significant change. Microsoft is a tenacious foe, and will continue improving its products at an amazing rate. One thing Microsoft understands that Linuxers do not is the importance of excellent developer tools and support. Microsoft has excellent IDE's for each of its languages. Each of MS's language tools targets a specific type of developer. Each of MS's language solves differents sets of problems. And MS keeps a great on-CD Web-available knowledge base and reference called MSDN. Linux, on the other hand, has a rag-tag bunch of disparate tools, rely on the command line and makefiles, and has only Usenet has a poor excuse for a knowledge base. Furthermore, support for these tools are horrible, source code licensing is ambiguous, and documentation is a confusing array of man pages, which is nothing compared to the hyperlinked MSDN web interface. Finally, Linux lacks a component model beyond shared libraries (basically, DLL's). Linux needs something like COM to help organize its uncoordinated development efforts. Microsoft has a lot of weapons on its side, and Linux advocates should seek to emulate them. Linux advocates should be learning from Microsoft, not blindly bashing everything they do.
That's just fine. You are more than welcome to do as youo please. It is a shame that MS and it's followers are unwilling to give the rest of us the same courtesy.