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."

Comments

"First, shoot all the lawyers." --Bill X

[Tom Christiansen]

A couple of words...[...] 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!

On those words, could you please define precisely what you mean by

1. stupid
2. commercial
3. server
4. business server
5. 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.

After the trial...

[kcarnold]

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.

Microsoft's high end is the desktop, and that's the last markey Linux will take over.
That's a telling point ... only after all the other markets have fallen.

GNOME and KDE have made significant strides on making Linux a contender in the desktop environment. In some ways Linux has already overtaken Windows:

• Customization: How many window managers are there for Windows? How many are there for Linux?
• Remote Apps: What's X designed for? And why does the VNC server work best on Linux? Remote connectivity was a core design element for X.
• Stability: 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.
• Cost: 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?

I'm sure I missed a few. Sure, Win has its advantages. But they are probably not going to stay for long.

Ken

Re:OSS only works for commodity software

[jilles]

"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.