I didn't forget TrollTech, I just don't consider them to be "major." Although I will say this about TrollTech. I bet that TT's management is kicking itself that it didn't switch to the GPL sooner. If TT would have switched to the GPL before Gnome got off to a concrete start this whole discussion would be academic now.
I suppose that if you define "quite successful" as about half as much marketshare as RedHat and a lot less revenue and profits, then I supose SuSE Linux has been "quite successful." Novell's Linux desktop venture is pretty inextricably aligned with Gnome at this point. All of the software used in the Novell Linux desktop is either part of Gnome or allied with Gnome. The OpenOffice.org folks are mostly concerned with Gnome integration and Mono (Novell's development answer) is also closely aligned with Gnome. Heck, even Firefox is a GTK application. Novell executives knew that they had to do some cutting, and so they lined up with the rest of the commercial Linux world and will now primarily support Gnome. This should help the Novell sales folks too. Now they don't have to worry about talking about two different desktops and can simply concentrate on Gnome.
It really was only a matter of time before this happened. Novell was essentially the last corporate sponsor that hadn't thrown its weight behind Gnome. With Novell moving into the Gnome camp which distribution do you plan to give your money to if you want to continue supporting KDE? Linspire is still KDE based, I suppose.
Accessability is likely to be the piece of the puzzle that stops the Massachussets OpenDocument Format deal. For companies that want to sell to government institutions it is a huge big deal (this is why Sun paid to get it done for Gnome). It's not a big deal to me, I can see fine (and if I couldn't see, I would use EmacsSpeak:), but I am not buying quadzillions of dollars of software.
That's it exactly. Novell is desperate to sell Linux desktops. They have a pretty good offering, but all of the stuff that makes their Linux desktop go is either Gnome software or software that is strategically aligned with Gnome (OpenOffice.org, Mono). Everyone else in the Linux community is pushing Gnome, and more importantly RedHat is pushing Gnome, and SuSE is losing marketshare to RedHat both on the desktop and the server.
Investors were pushing for cuts and the Novell folks started wondering why they were paying so much to support KDE when their future is so tied up in Gnome.
The problem is that QT is GPLed while GTK is LGPLed. That might not seem like a big difference but it is a huge difference to the commercial software developer. I can create commercial closed source software using Mono+GTK. Mix in QT and I either have to purchase a commercial QT license or I have to create GPLed applications.
Novell is finally realizing that it doesn't make sense to develop and maintain two completely separate desktop environments (that don't interoperate particularly well) when it can simply choose *one* environment (the same one that the rest of the commercial Linux world has chosen) and save a pile of money while giving its sales folks a simple message to sell.
Yes, KDE will still probably be on the CD. However, Novell is not going to be paying for KDE development to the same extent that they have in the past. Since Novell was basically the last big KDE development sponsor this is going to make it harder for KDE to compete in the long term with Gnome.
This is almost certainly why Google has staff members that are working with Firefox and with OO.org. Google's execs know that as long as Microsoft's Windows and Office businesses are safe that Microsoft will push relentlessly into any new business that appears profitable. If OO.org starts grabbing marketshare, or if developers start building Firefox specific applications, then Microsoft's investors will demand that Microsoft's execs focus on Microsoft's "core business," and side ventures like MSN will be de-priortized.
IMHO if Windows Vista and Office 12 gain a lot of traction then Google is in trouble. Vista will replace Google's desktop search and Microsoft's new products will almost certainly be fairly hard-wired in MSN for internet search.
Microsoft is currently going out of its way to build a Free Software community around it's.NET technologies. The reason that Microsoft is doing this is simple. Microsoft has seen how important the Free Software Java community has been to the continued success of Java, and Microsoft wants to replicate that. If Microsoft can get outside hackers to improve the.NET platform then they would be foolish *not* to encourage that sort of behavior. DNN is a perfect example. If someone installs DNN then they are going to have purchase Windows Server at the very least, and they might very well buy SQL Server as well. This is a huge win for Microsoft if the alternative is to run your CMS system on Zope, or PHPNuke, or some other system that runs on a completely Free (as in Freedom) platform.
Microsoft doesn't have a problem with Free Software, it just has a problem with Free Software that can be used to replace software that it sells.
Those are all excellent points. Helping and promoting projects like OO.org and Firefox makes perfect sense for Google. Not only does it keep Google in the spotlight, but it undermines Microsoft's play to control important markets. In the long run if Microsoft controls the desktop and the office suite it is going to find a way to leverage those markets into the search and advertising markets that Google currently dominates.
Google is investing in OO.org for the same reason that Sun, Red Hat, Novell, and even IBM (to a certain extent) are investing in OO.org. If Google can make OO.org a more useful competitor to MS Office for a nominal investment then that investment is definitely money well spent. This has little or nothing to do with Google's use of Free Software, and everything to do with the fact that with Microsoft Office is vulnerable. OO.org is actually pretty competitive, and Microsoft's upcoming format shift means that people are going to have to deal with format incompatibilities no matter what they decide to use.
Google execs know that Microsoft begins to lose sales of its ridiculously profitable office suite to OO.org that investors will demand that Microsoft stop focusing on new endeavors (like MSN) and focus on its bread and butter businesses. Increasing the viability of OO.org is almost certainly Google's most cost effective weapon in its fight against Microsoft.
That's essentially Microsoft's modus operandi. It provides technology that can be used to build cool things, and it then waits for someone else to actually have the ideas and do the work. Once Microsoft's "partners" have determined, through trial and error generally, what businesses are the most profitable Microsoft swoops in and takes the business. Microsoft's partners are essentially doing market research for Microsoft. If the partners become successful enough to catch Microsoft's attention they are doomed.
IMHO, that's the biggest reason to avoid Microsoft software at all costs. If you are in the software business you are either currently competing with Microsoft or you are soon to be competing with Microsoft. If you try to compete with Microsoft using its tools you are going to lose by default.
My comment was even less insightful because Sun is part of this new storage team. I missed that. I saw Cisco and figured that IBM, Cisco, and a bunch of bit players got together to create a standards-based market that would allow all of them to gain share. The fact that Sun is on the team means that someone at Sun understands the importance of commoditization.
Make no mistake though, the future of storage isn't "kick ass" performance but rather price/performance ratio, and the commodity guys are the ones that are likely to win that race. That's really the problem that I see with Sun. Improving StorageTek's integration with Solaris might help Sun sell more Solaris and more ST gear (possibly), but even the folks at Sun are having a hard time fighting the perception that Linux is the future. More than half of Sun's x64 servers ship with Linux. Sun would have been far better off to take the nearly $2 billion that it spent on StorageTek and simply go for a much less expensive commodity storage play.
IBM can make this sort of a play because it has such a wide array of services and a support arm that is right in the trenches. So, for example, it can see that its UNIX gear is selling well, but a lot of IBM's UNIX customers are opting for EMC storage. IBM's service arm is happy to set that up for you, but its sales arm is not nearly as happy. So IBM gets to work at making storage a commodity and then providing service, support, and hardware. This is a win for IBM because it no longer needs EMC's help to sell an IBM solution. The profit that used to go into EMC's pocket now goes into IBM's pocket. The margins probably aren't as large as EMC used to get, but IBM doesn't have to share. IBM is more than happy to shrink the size of a market that it happens to compete in if it thinks that it can get a bigger slice of the pie or more service revenue. Interestingly enough, commoditizing a market usually causes it to grow because more people can afford the good or service. By creating a commodity IBM can often finagle both a bigger market *and* a larger slice of the pie.
The best part is that this sort of strategy doesn't necessarily mean that IBM has to give up its current data storage products. With a little bit of differentiation IBM might still be able to sell "high end" storage gear that works well with their specialty OSes and hardware while offering a lower-cost standards-based solution that competes favorably with IBM's competitors. Just because IBM is pushing Linux certainly hasn't made its AIX business go away. Just like Linux gives IBM more ammunition when competing with Microsoft commodity storage gives IBM more ammunition when competing with EMC.
This also goes to show how the folks at IBM are much smarter than the folks at Sun. Sun was facing the same problem as IBM in the storage arena (people wanted EMC's gear instead of Sun's gear). Sun is trying to remedy that through the purchase of another storage vendor (StorageTek) that is likewise having trouble competing. IBM, on the other hand, has opted to kick the bottom out of the market and see if it can't dominate over a commodity storage field.
Yeah, and which one is likely to get tenure at a University full of "scientists" that are currently pimping Global Warming. Scientists that go against the grain have *never* been welcomed in academia. That's why so many of the really great thinkers have come from outside of academia. Scientists play politics too.
Any time that you can get hundreds of thousands of people fired up over a cause you have something that can become a potent political tool. In Europe there are entire political parties that are dedicated to environmental causes, and doomsday prophecies help these political causes a great deal. That's worth a great deal of money in and of itself, and don't forget that at least some researchers are probably motivated by a chance to wield political power. It's the same thing in the U.S. where certain political elements use these "the end is near" scenarios to rally supporters to their cause.
Researchers are not stupid. They know that people are more than willing to pay exhorbitant research fees for research that may push the right political buttons. Global Warming pushes all sorts of political buttons. Its tendrils reach into nearly every aspect of World Politics, from the War in Iraq to money policies in the third world. If you believe that Global Warming is a threat to civilization then a whole array of political issues immediately fall into line.
Look at it this way. Even the dimmest bulbs would agree that lowering pollution levels is a good thing. I mean, you don't have to know hardly anything about climatology to know that smog isn't good for you. You can make your own experiment simply by jogging in L.A. on a high smog day. If these scientists simply said, "let's lower emissions because pollution is bad," then I wouldn't have a problem with their message. However, that's not nearly politically charged enough. So instead they use incomplete models (some of which have been proven faulty in various ways) to show how the end is nigh, and they shout down anyone that says, "hey wait a minute, you aren't accounting for all of the variables." In my opinion that's hardly different from the preacher that points to Revelations and says that the end is near and that you should send a check or money order to his P.O. box.
Fah, you are missing my point completely. Columbus may have been wrong, but at least he did the experiment. He could have just as easily been 100% right. The Global Warming crew (on both sides) spend way more time arguing about their interpretations of the small body of data we have today than they do looking up more data. With the small amount of information that we currently have on global climatology over the millenia it is very likely that there is a "continent" just over the horizon, and yet the current climatology crowd wants to spend all of its time arguing over models that they know are horribly incomplete.
Magellan *did* sail to India using technology very similar to what Columbus had simply because he was able to use a bit of information that Columbus discovered, and that was that there was a continent to the west that could be used to resupply your ships.
An excellent point, and I am definitely of the opinion that we should work at lowering pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Heck, we should do this whether or not we have any effect on global warming just because pollution is bad. I have a problem, however, with scientists that do sloppy science and resort to scare tactics for political purposes.
For example, in 2000 a group of UN scientists on an icebreaker at the North Pole observed standing water. These scientists then reported to the New York Times that "the last time scientists could be certain that the Pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago." Well, it turns out that in reality you can find open water at the North Pole at the end of most summers, but these "researchers" didn't even bother to ask anyone about this known fact. The New York Times printed the original story on the front page of the paper with the title "The North Pole is Melting." It later retracted the story, but not on the front page. Did this debacle ruin the academic careers of these fools, of course not.
In my opinion there is little difference between these sorts of "scientists" and the bible thumper that tells his congregation that New Orleans was destroyed because it was "wicked," and that in the last days calamaties would fill the earth. Heck, the book of Revelations is probably more likely to be correct than some of these idiot "scientists." Many of the so-called scientists on both sides of the fence in this issue are nothing more than media whores looking to put their names on the front page of the newspaper.
Columbus was correct in that you can get to India by sailing west from Europe. He was wrong, however, that this was a shorter route than going around Africa. The intelligentsia in Columbus' day might have known that the earth was round, but that didn't lead them to look for a Western route to India. The reason that the Columbus example is a good one because unlike Columbus' contemporaries Columbus had a theory and was willing to actually try the experiment instead of simply saying that it was impossible. In the end Columbus was wrong, but as in many cases it isn't the guy with the correct theory that gets remembered, but the guy whose incorrect assumption lead to interesting new knowledge.
James Leowen's book is an excellent example of how often scholars and scientists get things 100% wrong. Washington Irving was a very bright guy, and yet he got this important fact wrong. His take on the history of Columbus is still being taught years and years after his death and despite the fact that he was wrong. That's why it is ridiculous to simply take the assumptions of a group of scientists (in a ridiculously politically charged field) as gospel when the honest among those researchers would acknowledge that they aren't even close to having a complete picture. Chances are good that these researchers are wrong, and if they are right it's probably just coincidence. There simply isn't enough data, and there are far too many variables.
Global warming obviously needs more study, and likewise it's almost certainly a good idea to try and lower pollution levels and greenhouse gas emissions (just to be safe). I am simply saying that I wouldn't be surprised if *all* of our current theories on Global Warming are completely off the mark in the same way that Columbus was off the mark sailing west to India.
If you can't see the political motivations of the global warming climatologists then you are very naive. Let me give you a hint. Forty years ago did politicians give a flying fig about anything climatologists had to say, and twenty years ago the "prevailing wisdom" among climatologists was that the earth was in danger of another ice age. Climatology matters today, and climatologists are drowning in research money, because they have managed to convince people that, "the end of the world is nigh."
Now, it may be true that the end of the world truly is right at our doorstep, and it also may be true that man is the cause of global warming, but that's hardly conclusive. The fact of the matter is that the temperature of the earth has *always* fluctuated, and climatologists only really understand a small piece of the picture. Because this is such a hot button political issue research money goes to the climatologists that say what their poltical backers want to hear. These sorts of politics have *always* played out in science (see Tesla's history as an example), and they frequently taint the actual search for "truth" a great deal.
It wasn't so long ago that the "consensus" of the physics community held Newtonian physics to be immutable, and before Newton the "consensus" included all sorts of things that we know today to be 100% false. Climatology is one of the most politicized of the hard sciences and there are more missing pieces to the puzzle than hard information. It's quite likely that the "odd man out" could be interpretting the little data we have correctly in the same way that Columbus was right and his many detractors were wrong. Heck, like Columbus the guy that's proven "correct" will probably eventually find out that he didn't end up where he thought he was going.
That's the interesting bit about science. In the long run it is not a popularity contest. Just because 100 scientists believe that something is so does not make it true, especially when these scientists have political axes to grind. Both sides of the "global warming" debate have political and economic motivations. As more data is amassed and better models are made most of the theories we have today will be proven to be more incorrect than correct.
Actually, even if Microsoft doesn't raise the price of Windows squeezing money out of the cost of Windows solutions still helps Microsoft sell more copies of Windows. It also leaves money on the table for other Microsoft extras, and it will almost certainly help Microsoft sell more "enterprise" software to keep track of virus updates, infected computers, etc.
Heck, Symantec and friends make billions of dollars a year. If customers no longer have to spend that money on security software then they have more money to spend on Microsoft's software. It also makes it that much easier to stack Windows solutions up against Mac OS X solutions or Linux solutions. When push comes to shove Microsoft wants all software revenue to go to into Microsoft's coffers, and it also wants to keep hardware margins as low as possible so that customers aren't forced to spend too much on hardware.
What Microsoft and IBM want and what they are likely to get are two different things. For example, Microsoft and IBM would like there to be a cap on the amount of damages that can be assessed. Both of these companies are perfectly happy spending $100 million a year defending themselves against patents, but they neither want to see Eolas-style suits where $500 million is on the table for a single patent case. The problem is that the American Trial Lawyer lobby is unlikely to be happy with that, and those guys know how to lobby.
IBM and Microsoft would also like patents to be harder and more expensive to file and receive. However, that's basically the opposite of what everyone else is asking for, and it's still not likely to stop the patent trolls from making a living patenting ideas that large corporations are very likely to need in the near future.
Bingo. Microsoft can't attack other large corporations with their patent arsenal because if they do they risk a patent war that they can't win. Any way you slice the pie Microsoft makes more profit distributing software than anyone else and so it will always be the primary target of offensive patents. What's more, Microsoft can't really go after smaller developers because Microsoft still depends heavily on the good will of the developer community. Many small developers and value added resellers would rethink their allegiance to Microsoft if Microsoft went on a patent offensive.
Microsoft supports patents currently because it hopes to build the sort of patent licensing juggernaut that IBM has built. That and patent licensing is one of the few tactics that has shown any sign of slowing Free Software growth. However, it wouldn't take many more Eolas style decisions before Microsoft was forced to rethink its stance on patents. Quite a bit of money is currently being poured into "think tanks" that patent ideas to be used offensively against large software companies like Microsoft. If this idea grows legs then patents could easily become very dangerous to Microsoft's business model.
That's the reason that Microsoft is going to end up opposing patents. It used to be that large companies like IBM could use their patent portfolios against smaller companies. If a smaller company began to see some success a bunch of guys in suits would descend on them and demand a portion of the proceeds. That strategy worked fine as long as the basic strategy for getting rich involved releasing and distributing software, but that's not really the point any more. These days lots of companies are using patents as their path to fame and fortune. Instead of actually writing software these companies like Eolas (and others) simply patent ideas and then wait for someone else (preferrably someone wealthy like Microsoft, IBM, or Sun) to infringe on their patents. Eolas and friends can't be bullied in the traditional manner because they don't release software and aren't infringing on any of Microsoft's patents.
Eolas' patent was recently held up in court, and that means that Eolas' $500 million lawsuit is that much closer to requiring a big fat check from Microsoft. Multiply that lawsuit times the 35 to 40 patent lawsuits that are filed against Microsoft each year and you start to see why it is that Microsoft (and IBM, and the rest of the large players software industry) want patent reform. Any lawyer worth his briefcase would give a large portion of his or her genitalia to get a shot at Microsoft's huge coffers.
The best part is that these IP-only companies aren't more than a minor concern to Free Software projects. Eolas isn't going to go after Firefox because there simply isn't any money to be had.
The answer to that is simple. Free Software allows the small custom developer and the in-house developer to deliver large and complex custom applications (based on Free Software frameworks) with more functionality and a lower cost than proprietary software. Parts of these applications will probably always remain "secret" to the company, but it is almost always advantageous to share improvements to the framework and core application. As someone who has tried to maintain their own parallell version of a popular Free Software library I can guarantee you that it is often easier to simply share and in return get some help maintaining your patches.
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I didn't forget TrollTech, I just don't consider them to be "major." Although I will say this about TrollTech. I bet that TT's management is kicking itself that it didn't switch to the GPL sooner. If TT would have switched to the GPL before Gnome got off to a concrete start this whole discussion would be academic now.
I suppose that if you define "quite successful" as about half as much marketshare as RedHat and a lot less revenue and profits, then I supose SuSE Linux has been "quite successful." Novell's Linux desktop venture is pretty inextricably aligned with Gnome at this point. All of the software used in the Novell Linux desktop is either part of Gnome or allied with Gnome. The OpenOffice.org folks are mostly concerned with Gnome integration and Mono (Novell's development answer) is also closely aligned with Gnome. Heck, even Firefox is a GTK application. Novell executives knew that they had to do some cutting, and so they lined up with the rest of the commercial Linux world and will now primarily support Gnome. This should help the Novell sales folks too. Now they don't have to worry about talking about two different desktops and can simply concentrate on Gnome.
It really was only a matter of time before this happened. Novell was essentially the last corporate sponsor that hadn't thrown its weight behind Gnome. With Novell moving into the Gnome camp which distribution do you plan to give your money to if you want to continue supporting KDE? Linspire is still KDE based, I suppose.
Accessability is likely to be the piece of the puzzle that stops the Massachussets OpenDocument Format deal. For companies that want to sell to government institutions it is a huge big deal (this is why Sun paid to get it done for Gnome). It's not a big deal to me, I can see fine (and if I couldn't see, I would use EmacsSpeak :), but I am not buying quadzillions of dollars of software.
That's it exactly. Novell is desperate to sell Linux desktops. They have a pretty good offering, but all of the stuff that makes their Linux desktop go is either Gnome software or software that is strategically aligned with Gnome (OpenOffice.org, Mono). Everyone else in the Linux community is pushing Gnome, and more importantly RedHat is pushing Gnome, and SuSE is losing marketshare to RedHat both on the desktop and the server.
Investors were pushing for cuts and the Novell folks started wondering why they were paying so much to support KDE when their future is so tied up in Gnome.
The problem is that QT is GPLed while GTK is LGPLed. That might not seem like a big difference but it is a huge difference to the commercial software developer. I can create commercial closed source software using Mono+GTK. Mix in QT and I either have to purchase a commercial QT license or I have to create GPLed applications.
Novell is finally realizing that it doesn't make sense to develop and maintain two completely separate desktop environments (that don't interoperate particularly well) when it can simply choose *one* environment (the same one that the rest of the commercial Linux world has chosen) and save a pile of money while giving its sales folks a simple message to sell.
Yes, KDE will still probably be on the CD. However, Novell is not going to be paying for KDE development to the same extent that they have in the past. Since Novell was basically the last big KDE development sponsor this is going to make it harder for KDE to compete in the long term with Gnome.
This is almost certainly why Google has staff members that are working with Firefox and with OO.org. Google's execs know that as long as Microsoft's Windows and Office businesses are safe that Microsoft will push relentlessly into any new business that appears profitable. If OO.org starts grabbing marketshare, or if developers start building Firefox specific applications, then Microsoft's investors will demand that Microsoft's execs focus on Microsoft's "core business," and side ventures like MSN will be de-priortized.
IMHO if Windows Vista and Office 12 gain a lot of traction then Google is in trouble. Vista will replace Google's desktop search and Microsoft's new products will almost certainly be fairly hard-wired in MSN for internet search.
Microsoft is currently going out of its way to build a Free Software community around it's .NET technologies. The reason that Microsoft is doing this is simple. Microsoft has seen how important the Free Software Java community has been to the continued success of Java, and Microsoft wants to replicate that. If Microsoft can get outside hackers to improve the .NET platform then they would be foolish *not* to encourage that sort of behavior. DNN is a perfect example. If someone installs DNN then they are going to have purchase Windows Server at the very least, and they might very well buy SQL Server as well. This is a huge win for Microsoft if the alternative is to run your CMS system on Zope, or PHPNuke, or some other system that runs on a completely Free (as in Freedom) platform.
Microsoft doesn't have a problem with Free Software, it just has a problem with Free Software that can be used to replace software that it sells.
Those are all excellent points. Helping and promoting projects like OO.org and Firefox makes perfect sense for Google. Not only does it keep Google in the spotlight, but it undermines Microsoft's play to control important markets. In the long run if Microsoft controls the desktop and the office suite it is going to find a way to leverage those markets into the search and advertising markets that Google currently dominates.
Google is investing in OO.org for the same reason that Sun, Red Hat, Novell, and even IBM (to a certain extent) are investing in OO.org. If Google can make OO.org a more useful competitor to MS Office for a nominal investment then that investment is definitely money well spent. This has little or nothing to do with Google's use of Free Software, and everything to do with the fact that with Microsoft Office is vulnerable. OO.org is actually pretty competitive, and Microsoft's upcoming format shift means that people are going to have to deal with format incompatibilities no matter what they decide to use.
Google execs know that Microsoft begins to lose sales of its ridiculously profitable office suite to OO.org that investors will demand that Microsoft stop focusing on new endeavors (like MSN) and focus on its bread and butter businesses. Increasing the viability of OO.org is almost certainly Google's most cost effective weapon in its fight against Microsoft.
That's essentially Microsoft's modus operandi. It provides technology that can be used to build cool things, and it then waits for someone else to actually have the ideas and do the work. Once Microsoft's "partners" have determined, through trial and error generally, what businesses are the most profitable Microsoft swoops in and takes the business. Microsoft's partners are essentially doing market research for Microsoft. If the partners become successful enough to catch Microsoft's attention they are doomed.
IMHO, that's the biggest reason to avoid Microsoft software at all costs. If you are in the software business you are either currently competing with Microsoft or you are soon to be competing with Microsoft. If you try to compete with Microsoft using its tools you are going to lose by default.
My comment was even less insightful because Sun is part of this new storage team. I missed that. I saw Cisco and figured that IBM, Cisco, and a bunch of bit players got together to create a standards-based market that would allow all of them to gain share. The fact that Sun is on the team means that someone at Sun understands the importance of commoditization.
Make no mistake though, the future of storage isn't "kick ass" performance but rather price/performance ratio, and the commodity guys are the ones that are likely to win that race. That's really the problem that I see with Sun. Improving StorageTek's integration with Solaris might help Sun sell more Solaris and more ST gear (possibly), but even the folks at Sun are having a hard time fighting the perception that Linux is the future. More than half of Sun's x64 servers ship with Linux. Sun would have been far better off to take the nearly $2 billion that it spent on StorageTek and simply go for a much less expensive commodity storage play.
IBM can make this sort of a play because it has such a wide array of services and a support arm that is right in the trenches. So, for example, it can see that its UNIX gear is selling well, but a lot of IBM's UNIX customers are opting for EMC storage. IBM's service arm is happy to set that up for you, but its sales arm is not nearly as happy. So IBM gets to work at making storage a commodity and then providing service, support, and hardware. This is a win for IBM because it no longer needs EMC's help to sell an IBM solution. The profit that used to go into EMC's pocket now goes into IBM's pocket. The margins probably aren't as large as EMC used to get, but IBM doesn't have to share. IBM is more than happy to shrink the size of a market that it happens to compete in if it thinks that it can get a bigger slice of the pie or more service revenue. Interestingly enough, commoditizing a market usually causes it to grow because more people can afford the good or service. By creating a commodity IBM can often finagle both a bigger market *and* a larger slice of the pie.
The best part is that this sort of strategy doesn't necessarily mean that IBM has to give up its current data storage products. With a little bit of differentiation IBM might still be able to sell "high end" storage gear that works well with their specialty OSes and hardware while offering a lower-cost standards-based solution that competes favorably with IBM's competitors. Just because IBM is pushing Linux certainly hasn't made its AIX business go away. Just like Linux gives IBM more ammunition when competing with Microsoft commodity storage gives IBM more ammunition when competing with EMC.
This also goes to show how the folks at IBM are much smarter than the folks at Sun. Sun was facing the same problem as IBM in the storage arena (people wanted EMC's gear instead of Sun's gear). Sun is trying to remedy that through the purchase of another storage vendor (StorageTek) that is likewise having trouble competing. IBM, on the other hand, has opted to kick the bottom out of the market and see if it can't dominate over a commodity storage field.
Yeah, and which one is likely to get tenure at a University full of "scientists" that are currently pimping Global Warming. Scientists that go against the grain have *never* been welcomed in academia. That's why so many of the really great thinkers have come from outside of academia. Scientists play politics too.
Any time that you can get hundreds of thousands of people fired up over a cause you have something that can become a potent political tool. In Europe there are entire political parties that are dedicated to environmental causes, and doomsday prophecies help these political causes a great deal. That's worth a great deal of money in and of itself, and don't forget that at least some researchers are probably motivated by a chance to wield political power. It's the same thing in the U.S. where certain political elements use these "the end is near" scenarios to rally supporters to their cause.
Researchers are not stupid. They know that people are more than willing to pay exhorbitant research fees for research that may push the right political buttons. Global Warming pushes all sorts of political buttons. Its tendrils reach into nearly every aspect of World Politics, from the War in Iraq to money policies in the third world. If you believe that Global Warming is a threat to civilization then a whole array of political issues immediately fall into line.
Look at it this way. Even the dimmest bulbs would agree that lowering pollution levels is a good thing. I mean, you don't have to know hardly anything about climatology to know that smog isn't good for you. You can make your own experiment simply by jogging in L.A. on a high smog day. If these scientists simply said, "let's lower emissions because pollution is bad," then I wouldn't have a problem with their message. However, that's not nearly politically charged enough. So instead they use incomplete models (some of which have been proven faulty in various ways) to show how the end is nigh, and they shout down anyone that says, "hey wait a minute, you aren't accounting for all of the variables." In my opinion that's hardly different from the preacher that points to Revelations and says that the end is near and that you should send a check or money order to his P.O. box.
Fah, you are missing my point completely. Columbus may have been wrong, but at least he did the experiment. He could have just as easily been 100% right. The Global Warming crew (on both sides) spend way more time arguing about their interpretations of the small body of data we have today than they do looking up more data. With the small amount of information that we currently have on global climatology over the millenia it is very likely that there is a "continent" just over the horizon, and yet the current climatology crowd wants to spend all of its time arguing over models that they know are horribly incomplete.
Magellan *did* sail to India using technology very similar to what Columbus had simply because he was able to use a bit of information that Columbus discovered, and that was that there was a continent to the west that could be used to resupply your ships.
An excellent point, and I am definitely of the opinion that we should work at lowering pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Heck, we should do this whether or not we have any effect on global warming just because pollution is bad. I have a problem, however, with scientists that do sloppy science and resort to scare tactics for political purposes.
For example, in 2000 a group of UN scientists on an icebreaker at the North Pole observed standing water. These scientists then reported to the New York Times that "the last time scientists could be certain that the Pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago." Well, it turns out that in reality you can find open water at the North Pole at the end of most summers, but these "researchers" didn't even bother to ask anyone about this known fact. The New York Times printed the original story on the front page of the paper with the title "The North Pole is Melting." It later retracted the story, but not on the front page. Did this debacle ruin the academic careers of these fools, of course not.
In my opinion there is little difference between these sorts of "scientists" and the bible thumper that tells his congregation that New Orleans was destroyed because it was "wicked," and that in the last days calamaties would fill the earth. Heck, the book of Revelations is probably more likely to be correct than some of these idiot "scientists." Many of the so-called scientists on both sides of the fence in this issue are nothing more than media whores looking to put their names on the front page of the newspaper.
Columbus was correct in that you can get to India by sailing west from Europe. He was wrong, however, that this was a shorter route than going around Africa. The intelligentsia in Columbus' day might have known that the earth was round, but that didn't lead them to look for a Western route to India. The reason that the Columbus example is a good one because unlike Columbus' contemporaries Columbus had a theory and was willing to actually try the experiment instead of simply saying that it was impossible. In the end Columbus was wrong, but as in many cases it isn't the guy with the correct theory that gets remembered, but the guy whose incorrect assumption lead to interesting new knowledge.
James Leowen's book is an excellent example of how often scholars and scientists get things 100% wrong. Washington Irving was a very bright guy, and yet he got this important fact wrong. His take on the history of Columbus is still being taught years and years after his death and despite the fact that he was wrong. That's why it is ridiculous to simply take the assumptions of a group of scientists (in a ridiculously politically charged field) as gospel when the honest among those researchers would acknowledge that they aren't even close to having a complete picture. Chances are good that these researchers are wrong, and if they are right it's probably just coincidence. There simply isn't enough data, and there are far too many variables.
Global warming obviously needs more study, and likewise it's almost certainly a good idea to try and lower pollution levels and greenhouse gas emissions (just to be safe). I am simply saying that I wouldn't be surprised if *all* of our current theories on Global Warming are completely off the mark in the same way that Columbus was off the mark sailing west to India.
If you can't see the political motivations of the global warming climatologists then you are very naive. Let me give you a hint. Forty years ago did politicians give a flying fig about anything climatologists had to say, and twenty years ago the "prevailing wisdom" among climatologists was that the earth was in danger of another ice age. Climatology matters today, and climatologists are drowning in research money, because they have managed to convince people that, "the end of the world is nigh."
Now, it may be true that the end of the world truly is right at our doorstep, and it also may be true that man is the cause of global warming, but that's hardly conclusive. The fact of the matter is that the temperature of the earth has *always* fluctuated, and climatologists only really understand a small piece of the picture. Because this is such a hot button political issue research money goes to the climatologists that say what their poltical backers want to hear. These sorts of politics have *always* played out in science (see Tesla's history as an example), and they frequently taint the actual search for "truth" a great deal.
It wasn't so long ago that the "consensus" of the physics community held Newtonian physics to be immutable, and before Newton the "consensus" included all sorts of things that we know today to be 100% false. Climatology is one of the most politicized of the hard sciences and there are more missing pieces to the puzzle than hard information. It's quite likely that the "odd man out" could be interpretting the little data we have correctly in the same way that Columbus was right and his many detractors were wrong. Heck, like Columbus the guy that's proven "correct" will probably eventually find out that he didn't end up where he thought he was going.
That's the interesting bit about science. In the long run it is not a popularity contest. Just because 100 scientists believe that something is so does not make it true, especially when these scientists have political axes to grind. Both sides of the "global warming" debate have political and economic motivations. As more data is amassed and better models are made most of the theories we have today will be proven to be more incorrect than correct.
Actually, even if Microsoft doesn't raise the price of Windows squeezing money out of the cost of Windows solutions still helps Microsoft sell more copies of Windows. It also leaves money on the table for other Microsoft extras, and it will almost certainly help Microsoft sell more "enterprise" software to keep track of virus updates, infected computers, etc.
Heck, Symantec and friends make billions of dollars a year. If customers no longer have to spend that money on security software then they have more money to spend on Microsoft's software. It also makes it that much easier to stack Windows solutions up against Mac OS X solutions or Linux solutions. When push comes to shove Microsoft wants all software revenue to go to into Microsoft's coffers, and it also wants to keep hardware margins as low as possible so that customers aren't forced to spend too much on hardware.
What Microsoft and IBM want and what they are likely to get are two different things. For example, Microsoft and IBM would like there to be a cap on the amount of damages that can be assessed. Both of these companies are perfectly happy spending $100 million a year defending themselves against patents, but they neither want to see Eolas-style suits where $500 million is on the table for a single patent case. The problem is that the American Trial Lawyer lobby is unlikely to be happy with that, and those guys know how to lobby.
IBM and Microsoft would also like patents to be harder and more expensive to file and receive. However, that's basically the opposite of what everyone else is asking for, and it's still not likely to stop the patent trolls from making a living patenting ideas that large corporations are very likely to need in the near future.
Bingo. Microsoft can't attack other large corporations with their patent arsenal because if they do they risk a patent war that they can't win. Any way you slice the pie Microsoft makes more profit distributing software than anyone else and so it will always be the primary target of offensive patents. What's more, Microsoft can't really go after smaller developers because Microsoft still depends heavily on the good will of the developer community. Many small developers and value added resellers would rethink their allegiance to Microsoft if Microsoft went on a patent offensive.
Microsoft supports patents currently because it hopes to build the sort of patent licensing juggernaut that IBM has built. That and patent licensing is one of the few tactics that has shown any sign of slowing Free Software growth. However, it wouldn't take many more Eolas style decisions before Microsoft was forced to rethink its stance on patents. Quite a bit of money is currently being poured into "think tanks" that patent ideas to be used offensively against large software companies like Microsoft. If this idea grows legs then patents could easily become very dangerous to Microsoft's business model.
That's the reason that Microsoft is going to end up opposing patents. It used to be that large companies like IBM could use their patent portfolios against smaller companies. If a smaller company began to see some success a bunch of guys in suits would descend on them and demand a portion of the proceeds. That strategy worked fine as long as the basic strategy for getting rich involved releasing and distributing software, but that's not really the point any more. These days lots of companies are using patents as their path to fame and fortune. Instead of actually writing software these companies like Eolas (and others) simply patent ideas and then wait for someone else (preferrably someone wealthy like Microsoft, IBM, or Sun) to infringe on their patents. Eolas and friends can't be bullied in the traditional manner because they don't release software and aren't infringing on any of Microsoft's patents.
Eolas' patent was recently held up in court, and that means that Eolas' $500 million lawsuit is that much closer to requiring a big fat check from Microsoft. Multiply that lawsuit times the 35 to 40 patent lawsuits that are filed against Microsoft each year and you start to see why it is that Microsoft (and IBM, and the rest of the large players software industry) want patent reform. Any lawyer worth his briefcase would give a large portion of his or her genitalia to get a shot at Microsoft's huge coffers.
The best part is that these IP-only companies aren't more than a minor concern to Free Software projects. Eolas isn't going to go after Firefox because there simply isn't any money to be had.
The answer to that is simple. Free Software allows the small custom developer and the in-house developer to deliver large and complex custom applications (based on Free Software frameworks) with more functionality and a lower cost than proprietary software. Parts of these applications will probably always remain "secret" to the company, but it is almost always advantageous to share improvements to the framework and core application. As someone who has tried to maintain their own parallell version of a popular Free Software library I can guarantee you that it is often easier to simply share and in return get some help maintaining your patches.