Instead, they'll start sueing smaller companies that don't have millions of dollars to pour into a lawsuit. That's my main worry there.
It's pretty hard to get Boies and Co. to get excited about suing "Joe's Linux Hut," there simply isn't enough money to be made. One thing is certain and that is that the lawyers for any SCO-style company are going to want to get paid.
The companies that don't have millions of dollars to pour into a lawsuit also don't have millions of dollars that can be awarded to greedy plaintiffs. SCO targetted IBM because it is theoretically possible to extract "billions" of dollars from IBM. If SCO's story held even a little bit of water IBM would be on the hook for a lot of money. Thanks to the SCO vs. IBM suit even "poor" companies will be able to get excellent legal help against future infringement claims. All of the major distributions have legal defense funds, and the OSDL has one as well. That means that a SCO wannabe could theoretically sue a smaller company, but that wouldn't necessarily change the caliber of the lawyers that they would face in court. Instead it would only change the size of the reward that they would receive should they win their case. Trial lawyers like to play for big money against soft opponents. They aren't nearly as interested in playing for peanuts against well defended opponents.
Once you take profit motives out of the picture you are left with companies like Microsoft that might try and sue Linux users to scare people into sticking with Microsoft software. That strategy sounds good on paper, but it breaks down in the real world. The negative PR that such a move would cause would be devastating. Microsoft would literally be driving customers into the waiting arms of companies like Novell or IBM (or even Red Hat) that have the resources to fight Microsoft in court. Every Microsoft customer would have to reconsider their loyalty if faced with the prospect of being sued by Microsoft because they didn't purchase enough MS software.
That's why while Microsoft has been quick to talk about Linux's "Intellectual Property Issues." Microsoft has also been very clear that it was not talking about Microsoft taking action against Linux users. Microsoft only alluded that "someone" might "someday" sue Linux users.
What about the company who buys the "rights to all of Unix" at the SCO bankruptcy sale?
First of all, just because SCO goes bankrupt doesn't mean that IBM's counterclaims wouldn't still go to trial (including CC10 which would prove that Linux doesn't violate SCO's supposed copyrights). The only difference bankruptcy would cause would be that the legal "team" arguing SCO's case would deteriorate remarkably. You don't get a second bite at the apple simply because you went out of business.
If someone "bought" SCO's supposed rights they would in essence be buying into the SCO lawsuit. There is no way that SCO can, at this point, divorce their supposed ownership of the UNIX copyrights with the current SCO vs. IBM lawsuit. Unlike USL in the old BSD case IBM is unlikely to settle.
Getting buried in a countersuit that completely bankrupts your company without even getting all the way through trial is about the biggest deterrent that I can imagine. The next SCO wannabe will think twice before suing Big Blue. Once SCO is gone the entire question of whether or not Linux is tainted with illegal UNIX code becomes moot. With SCO out of the way the only company that has even a little bit of a shot of using UNIX copyrights against Linux becomes Novell, and Novell has essentially bet the future of the company on Linux.
It was a stretch for Caldera (now SCO), a long time Linux distributor to pretend that they didn't know that their copyrighted code had been included in Linux. After Novell's involvement in the SCO vs. IBM case even the dimmest jury would find it impossible to believe that Novell didn't intend to distribute Linux under the terms of the GPL.
In essence, as long as the folks who own and control the old UNIX copyrights are actively distributing Linux the community has very little to fear.
It would be nice if the GPL was tested in court, if only to shut up all of the GPL naysayers, but that would simply be a bonus.
Why would they not just be paid by people who use the software...which, of course, would therefore NOT be OSS. Like I said contradictory.
That's not quite how it works. This may come as a shock to you, but even Richard Stallman has made a living since starting the Free Software Foundation selling copies of Free Software. In fact, if you go to gnu.org you will be surprised to find that a deluxe GNU software distribution will set you back a cool $5000. Selling software isn't a contradiction at all. As another example Red Hat's entire Linux server product line is available in source form via anonymous FTP. The price that customers pay to Red Hat is a service and support fee and not a license fee.
Free Software developers aren't against making money, they are against software that doesn't come with source code. It's not about Free as in Free Beer, it's about Free as in Freedom to view and modify the source code.
Most Free Software hackers get paid to write Free Software, and some of them get paid very well.
Thanks for the conversation. It allowed me to go back and take another look at SharePoint and take a closer look at InfoPath. I also appreciate the fact that you kept things civil. Clearly we both work with different toolkits, and I must admit that I gave you plenty of opportunity to "take things the wrong way."
I know that Microsoft has got some neat tools, but OpenOffice.org has the basic uses wrapped up pretty neatly and the licensing savings would buy the city of L.A. a lot of custom Zope programming:).
I understand why you would ask about the breadth of my experience, but you yourself are forgetting that Windows 2000, Netware, and even Windows NT still have large chunks of marketshare. Not to mention all of the network attached storage devices running Samba or Microsoft's cut down version of Windows Server (minus SharePoint).
Honestly, why in the world would you think that SharePoint has become the de-facto way to share files? What evidence do you have that this is the case? Seriously, do the math. Take into account all of Microsoft's many filesharing competitors, the old versions of their software, and the folks that have SharePoint Services but don't see the point in setting them up and you'll start to see what I am talking about.
Yes, InfoPath is pretty neat (of course it only comes with the Enterprise Edition and it requires a great deal of development work and piles of auxilary server software before it does anything actually useful).
You should take a look at some of the cool stuff being done with Zope and Plone before you assume that I have handed you such a loaded shotgun. SharePoint, InfoPath and all of the other new MS Office technologies are cool, but they are more along the lines of development tools than part of the MS Office suite. Either way, you can bet that the city of L.A. isn't using any of these tools, and the only way that they can afford them is to spend money that they currently are hoping to spend on police officers.
So, I'm curious about your experience. You say that "Most of the world simply puts their MS Office files on a normal fileshare.", but are you in a proper place to make that kind of claim?
Let me give you a little clue, my friend. Even Microsoft would admit to the fact that half of their MS Office customers are on MS Office 2000 or older.
Personally, I am an IT consultant and 100% of my clients that have Office 2003 use Sharepoint to share files with others in their workgroup.
At the place where I currently work we have a sharepoint portal as well. Interestingly enough, the wiki gets more actual use. People like how easy it is to edit and link documents.
Companies that think the computer is merely a word processor and a file cabinet are really missing the boat.
Precisely, they should be using OpenOffice.org with Zope and Plone:). It's free and it rocks.
Office 97? Office 2000? How about something with at least a comparison to one of the last two versions. However, I guess if you are using Office for basic word processing it makes sense to compare Open Office to Office 2000, since there is feature-parity between those two.
Why? Well over half of Microsoft's customers are still on these two versions of MS Office. OpenOffice.org isn't really competing with the newest versions of MS Office because those people have already spent their money.
If you need business process automation rather than word processing, you'll have to pay for a license, even if it's Star Office.
There is nothing inherent in MS Office that makes it a better fit for business process automation than OpenOffice.org. In fact, Microsoft generally pushes folks that want to use MS Office as part of a business automation process to upgrade to the more expensive "Enterprise Edition" of MS Office so they can use the fancy XML document types.
With OpenOffice.org you get XML document types by default and for free. Combine that with Zope (which handles OO.org formats natively, and has workflow support) and you are most of the way there (you just need some business rules). You certainly are farther along than someone who just has the standard version of MS Office.
For the most part office suites get used as glorified typewriters. One of the advantages of OO.org is that it has a truly opaque XML-based file format. Yes, I know that newer versions of MS Office support XML formats as well (in the even more expensive Enterprise Edition), but OpenOffice.org uses XML formats by default. This allows people to do things with normal OpenOffice.org files that you pay big money for in the MS Office world. You should take a look at the things that the Zope folks are doing with OO.org integration. Basically you get drag and drop content management of OO.org files with indexing, workflow management, and a whole pile of extra goodness, and that's just one example of what's available that happen to know of offhand. Most of the world simply puts their MS Office files on a normal fileshare (or emails them). OpenOffice.org is more than good enough to compete with those sorts of MS Office uses.
The primary technical reason that OO.org isn't well on its way to Total World Domination is that OO.org is not 100% compatible with MS Office. In cases where 100% compatibility isn't necessary then the choice is easy.
The more tricks that Microsoft tries to play, the better Free Software looks. In the long run if Microsoft plans to be competitive against Free Software projects like OpenOffice.org then it is going to have to spend more time making its customers happy and less time dipping its hands in their wallets.
If Los Angeles does decide to stick with MS Office then in two or three years time they are very likely to be in this exact same situation. The only difference will be that OO.org will be that much better. If Microsoft mistreats its customers now then the next round of upgrades will go very poorly for them. That's the best part about this situation. Free Software doesn't need hojillions of dollars in profits just to stay alive, Microsoft, on the other hand does. Microsoft has to convince its userbase to upgrade on a regular basis, or the company goes straight down the toilet.
I don't know about maintenance costs, but the Dutch city of Haarlem switched 2000 desktops from Office 97 and came up with some pretty hard numbers on migrations costs:
Here's the link.
And here's the relevant quote:
The city found its costs for training, development and migration to OpenOffice to be 50 000 euro, roughly 90% lower than its licence costs for an upgrade to Microsoft Office 2000.
Switching to OO.org clearly costs money, but so does upgrading to new versions of MS Office, and that's basically an ongoing cost.
Los Angeles is big enough that they can simply force people to switch. That's what really scares Microsoft. Microsoft knows that everyone has to deal with the government, if OpenOffice.org formats become de-facto government standards then MS Office is dead in the water.
Heck, a savvy politician could easily gain points by simply "giving away" OO.org CDs. A little rhetoric about open formats, "unprecedented public access to government files," and a reminder of the $5.2 million that is now being spent on police officers people and the switch could generate a lot of public approval.
Eventually Microsoft might even have to create OO.org import and export filters:).
No, comparing OpenOffice.org to past versions of MS Office is just good common sense. If Los Angeles were already on the newest version of MS Office then this wouldn't be an issue, as they would have already spent the $5.2 million. The fact of the matter is that not even half of Microsoft's Office customers are on the newest version.
Los Angeles basically has three choices. They can stick with what they currently are using, they can spend $5.2 million and upgrade to the newest MS Office, or they can migrate to OpenOffice.org and pay the one time migration costs. The fact that the politicos have already tied the upgrade "savings" to an increase in their police force means that they are serious about making the switch. There could be very large political ramifications for the politician that took $5.2 million earmarked for more policemen and spent it on software licenses. That's a very hot-button issue in L.A.
No one is going to argue that OpenOffice.org has as many features as the newest version of MS Office. The question is whether OpenOffice.org is better than the version of MS Office that you happen to be using right now. Throw in the fact that OpenOffice.org means that you no longer have to worry about licensing issues for new PCs and OO.o starts to look like a pretty good deal.
The truly scary part, at least for Microsoft, is that if Los Angeles switches to OO.o then lots of other businesses and communities that deal with Los Angeles (and there are piles of them) are also likely to experiment with OO.o. Everyone has to deal with the government.
Only a loony would consider taking Windows desktops and replacing them with Linux desktops. The true savings come from moving to some sort of Linux thin client. It's the PC that's the true expense. The trick is to replace all of those clunky, insecure, failure-prone PCs with what are essentially disposable thin clients. If your Linux client stops working the Janitor comes and throws it in the trash and you get another thin client, plug it in and start working.
All administration then becomes centralized around a handful of servers. Software upgrades become a piece of cake, and hardware upgrades mean that you get a new faster server. You don't touch the client systems ever (well, perhaps you might upgrade the monitor).
The truly ironic bit is that Microsoft already has tools that make this sort of setup possible for Windows. However, Microsoft's thin-client licensing is ridiculously expensive. Microsoft knows that in the long run their business is tied to the PC, and so they don't want to make thin clients an attractive proposition. Linux, on the other hand comes complete with a truly impressive array of software all available at little or no cost.
Of course Wal-Mart is doing it because they don't want to pay the Microsoft tax. Wal-Mart has a long history of not going into a business until they can offer the lowest price, and Wal-Mart simply can't compete with Dell as long as Windows is part of the bargain. Remove Windows from the bargain, however, and all of a sudden Wal-Mart is a serious contender.
Heck, I know that I am interested. A low end Linux-compatible laptop is exactly what I want. Now I won't have to buy something that's been used. Personally I am glad to see Wal-Mart stepping up to the plate to make me the offer.
Lots of people want to be able to buy hardware without paying for software. Many of them already have a Windows license. Purchasing a computer with Linux pre-installed is about the only way there is to get a new computer without paying the Microsoft tax.
Sure, these laptops will almost certainly promote software piracy, but that's hardly Wal-Mart's problem.
Nothing personal, but you got fired for an accute case of stupid. Technical skills are no substitute for a bit of political sense. With one blog entry you made your direct superior, and everyone involved in hiring him look like idiots in a public forum. The folks that got you run would have run you no matter where or how you made the remark (assuming that it got back to them), they simply would have used a different excuse. Too many technical folks think that their technical skills mean that they don't have to learn some people skills, and in today's market that simply isn't the case.
The reason that you were fired is that you made people with power and authority over you look bad in public, terrorism was just the excuse that they used. Coming up with an excuse to fire someone is not nearly as hard as you would think, especially to folks that have access to all of your email, Internet sites you visit during work, and whatever else.
The worst part is that with a little bit of political knowledge you could easily have had your direct superior run, but you could probably have received his job as a promotion as well.
Yes, you could sit down with all of the various and sundry licenses (the OSI lists nearly 60 of them) and feed each of these licenses to a lawyer and see what comes out. However, the OSI does that for you, and the folks that they have looking at licenses know a lot more about software licensing than you do (they probably know more than your lawyer too).
That's why when the OSI complained about Apple's Apple Public Source license Apple changed their license. The OSI's complaints made sense, and lots of hackers that cared about licenses agreed with the OSI. Open Source developers need an organization like the OSI to be able to bargain collectively with companies like IBM, Apple, or Sun, and the OSI has done a pretty good job. Before you criticize the OSI read their Open Source Definition and spell out precisely what you disagree with. Chances are very good that you will have little or nothing to add.
Yes, not all software licenses are created equal. However, making sure that you stick with OSI-approved licenses will get you a long way towards licensing nirvana with a minimum amount of work. Not only is the OSI more likely to catch small gotchas in licenses, but they are also more likely to get those problems fixed. That's a net win in my book.
The point that you are missing is that Microsoft isn't really competing with WordPerfect or OpenOffice.org in the office suite arena. When it comes to office suites Microsoft is primarily competing with old versions of MS Office. Most MS Office users are still using MS Office 2000 (or earlier) that don't read the fancy new XML formats. If Microsoft can get the U.S. (and other) governments to adopt their new XML formats then millions of MS Office users will have to upgrade to a new office suite that reads the new formats. Some of these folks might take advantage of OpenOffice.org or WordPerfect's ability to read these file formats (assuming that these programs do a fairly good job of reading and writing these formats), but most will simply purchase new copies of MS Office.
When Microsoft changed their MS Office formats in Office 97 lots of Microsoft customers were very very upset. This time around Microsoft knew that it couldn't force customers into a format change, and so it is doing everything in its power to convince folks to start using the new formats. Everyone deals with the government, and so making the XML formats a government standard actually works in Microsoft's best interests. The fact that the formats are open is basically a red herring. Microsoft knows that its competitors are going to reverse engineer their formats no matter what happens. Microsoft also knows that using the patents that they have offensively would be an expensive PR disaster. Lots of large organizations would get nervous about MS formats if Microsoft started suing people.
Microsoft wants people to use their XML formats. The fact that this also will help keep OpenOffice.org's formats out of the government sector is nothing more than a bonus. Microsoft is far more worried that people will continue to use Office 97 indefinitely than it is about OpenOffice.org taking over the world.
HCI really only comes into play when you have two competing products that have the same cost of acquisition. That means that the two competing products must either deal with precisely the same formats and protocols, or they must have essentially the same market share.
Designers and programmers think that HCI is important, and they are often willing to pay extra for a more consistent interface. Normal people, on the other hand, won't. That's why IBM PCs running DOS crushed the early Macs. There was no question that the Macintoshes where nicer systems, but the IBM PCs were "good enough" at a lower price. That is also why Windows beat out OS/2. OS/2 was a superious system, but consumers didn't care. Windows was good enough, and it was cheaper. If IBM had flooded the market with inexpensive OS/2 development tools, and priced OS/2 so that PCs with OS/2 had a competitive advantage over PCs with Windows then the computer world would be a different place now.
OpenOffice.org doesn't need to be the functional equivalent of MS Office to achieve total world domination. It simply has to be good enough at a lower price. Unfortunately, Microsoft's current market share means that "good enough" for many people has to include nearly seamless sharing of documents with MS Office users. On the bright side Microsoft has to keep forcing its users to upgrade in order to stay in business. For example, Microsoft is getting ready to push all of its existing MS Office users to an incompatible new set of XML-based formats. When this happens millions and millions of MS Office users with older versions of MS Office are going to find out that they are out in the cold unless they are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to update their software. Many of these folks are likely to find that OpenOffice.org is "good enough."
Microsoft has already shown with the XBox how pathetic they are when it comes to hardware manufacturing. Microsoft lost billions on the XBox despite the fact that they had some of the most popular games. Microsoft simply doesn't have the skills necessary to compete in a low margin market, especially when facing well-financed opponents like Sony or even Nintendo.
Whatever happens, Microsoft isn't going to get into the PC business. If Microsoft did try to get into the PC business all of the folks that currently make a living bundling Windows with PC hardware would have little choice but to start actively promoting Linux desktops. Every system builder from Dell on down would have to rethink their alliance with Microsoft if Microsoft had a line of PCs of their own. If Dell started pushing low cost PCs running Linux Windows would be in for a real race. Heck, Dell could simply start promoting OpenOffice.org and do enough damage to Microsoft's bottom line that Microsoft would running yelling and screaming from the PC business.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is almost entirely dependent on third party vendors like Dell, consulting firms, and small time hackers to sell its software. The more Microsoft tries to compete with these third party vendors the more likely these vendors are to use the already existing Free Software alternatives. If Dell, HP, the local computer guy down the street, and consulting firms (large and small) all started hawking Linux then Microsoft would see the bottom drop out of its market in a hurry.
In the end commodity software is going to win out, and Microsoft's dominance of the PC business is going to come to a screeching halt. Don't get me wrong, Linux might never achieve total world domination, but if it doesn't it will only be because Microsoft started working a lot harder to keep its partners happy.
It's not that Media Centers are revolutionary that makes them interesting to Microsoft. It's the fact that there is the potential to sell millions more copies of Windows. Right now almost no one has a computer hooked up to their TV, and those few folks that do have computers hooked up to their TVs aren't generally using any Microsoft software. Instead they are using something like Tivo.
Microsoft sees the Media Center as a potential market nearly as big as the DVD player market, and Microsoft's marketshare in this potentially huge new market is miniscule. Microsoft is desperate for growth opportunities that would justify its price/earnings ratio of over 30, and Windows Media Center is one of the few Microsoft products currently available that has the potential to build new revenue streams.
Personally, I think that the Media Center idea is several years away from being ubiquitous, but then again I don't have cable television either. I know lots of folks that would give up their firstborn son before they gave up their Tivo. It is entirely possible that eventually the home entertainment computer could even be a bigger market than the normal personal computer that we all know and love.
More importantly, the home entertainment computer is very likely to become a very strategic piece of the overall media puzzle. For example, Microsoft is betting that if it can score big with its Media Center that it could sell the ability to do workable DRM to Hollywood. Microsoft understands the power of controlling the platform, and it knows that they could make billions if they could put Microsoft in a position to become the DRM gateway for all of Hollywood.
Not to mention the fact that Linux-based computers hooked up to the television could easily morph into game consoles. All the pieces are there already.
This isn't about hacking your digital hub, this is about the economics of operating systems. Basically HP is telling Microsoft that they like the Windows Media idea, but that HP doesn't like the idea of paying Microsoft to implement it. HP has finally realized that the average Joe isn't interested in running MS Word on their television, and so there isn't really any reason to pay Microsoft for the privilege of using Windows. This isn't an issue of Free Software, but of commodity software. That's why HP isn't using QNX. HP isn't interested in paying the folks that develop QNX any more than they are interested in paying the folks in Redmond.
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It's pretty hard to get Boies and Co. to get excited about suing "Joe's Linux Hut," there simply isn't enough money to be made. One thing is certain and that is that the lawyers for any SCO-style company are going to want to get paid.
The companies that don't have millions of dollars to pour into a lawsuit also don't have millions of dollars that can be awarded to greedy plaintiffs. SCO targetted IBM because it is theoretically possible to extract "billions" of dollars from IBM. If SCO's story held even a little bit of water IBM would be on the hook for a lot of money. Thanks to the SCO vs. IBM suit even "poor" companies will be able to get excellent legal help against future infringement claims. All of the major distributions have legal defense funds, and the OSDL has one as well. That means that a SCO wannabe could theoretically sue a smaller company, but that wouldn't necessarily change the caliber of the lawyers that they would face in court. Instead it would only change the size of the reward that they would receive should they win their case. Trial lawyers like to play for big money against soft opponents. They aren't nearly as interested in playing for peanuts against well defended opponents.
Once you take profit motives out of the picture you are left with companies like Microsoft that might try and sue Linux users to scare people into sticking with Microsoft software. That strategy sounds good on paper, but it breaks down in the real world. The negative PR that such a move would cause would be devastating. Microsoft would literally be driving customers into the waiting arms of companies like Novell or IBM (or even Red Hat) that have the resources to fight Microsoft in court. Every Microsoft customer would have to reconsider their loyalty if faced with the prospect of being sued by Microsoft because they didn't purchase enough MS software.
That's why while Microsoft has been quick to talk about Linux's "Intellectual Property Issues." Microsoft has also been very clear that it was not talking about Microsoft taking action against Linux users. Microsoft only alluded that "someone" might "someday" sue Linux users.
First of all, just because SCO goes bankrupt doesn't mean that IBM's counterclaims wouldn't still go to trial (including CC10 which would prove that Linux doesn't violate SCO's supposed copyrights). The only difference bankruptcy would cause would be that the legal "team" arguing SCO's case would deteriorate remarkably. You don't get a second bite at the apple simply because you went out of business.
If someone "bought" SCO's supposed rights they would in essence be buying into the SCO lawsuit. There is no way that SCO can, at this point, divorce their supposed ownership of the UNIX copyrights with the current SCO vs. IBM lawsuit. Unlike USL in the old BSD case IBM is unlikely to settle.
Getting buried in a countersuit that completely bankrupts your company without even getting all the way through trial is about the biggest deterrent that I can imagine. The next SCO wannabe will think twice before suing Big Blue. Once SCO is gone the entire question of whether or not Linux is tainted with illegal UNIX code becomes moot. With SCO out of the way the only company that has even a little bit of a shot of using UNIX copyrights against Linux becomes Novell, and Novell has essentially bet the future of the company on Linux.
It was a stretch for Caldera (now SCO), a long time Linux distributor to pretend that they didn't know that their copyrighted code had been included in Linux. After Novell's involvement in the SCO vs. IBM case even the dimmest jury would find it impossible to believe that Novell didn't intend to distribute Linux under the terms of the GPL.
In essence, as long as the folks who own and control the old UNIX copyrights are actively distributing Linux the community has very little to fear.
It would be nice if the GPL was tested in court, if only to shut up all of the GPL naysayers, but that would simply be a bonus.
Free Software developers aren't against making money, they are against software that doesn't come with source code. It's not about Free as in Free Beer, it's about Free as in Freedom to view and modify the source code.
Most Free Software hackers get paid to write Free Software, and some of them get paid very well.
Thanks for the conversation. It allowed me to go back and take another look at SharePoint and take a closer look at InfoPath. I also appreciate the fact that you kept things civil. Clearly we both work with different toolkits, and I must admit that I gave you plenty of opportunity to "take things the wrong way."
I know that Microsoft has got some neat tools, but OpenOffice.org has the basic uses wrapped up pretty neatly and the licensing savings would buy the city of L.A. a lot of custom Zope programming :).
I understand why you would ask about the breadth of my experience, but you yourself are forgetting that Windows 2000, Netware, and even Windows NT still have large chunks of marketshare. Not to mention all of the network attached storage devices running Samba or Microsoft's cut down version of Windows Server (minus SharePoint).
Honestly, why in the world would you think that SharePoint has become the de-facto way to share files? What evidence do you have that this is the case? Seriously, do the math. Take into account all of Microsoft's many filesharing competitors, the old versions of their software, and the folks that have SharePoint Services but don't see the point in setting them up and you'll start to see what I am talking about.
Yes, InfoPath is pretty neat (of course it only comes with the Enterprise Edition and it requires a great deal of development work and piles of auxilary server software before it does anything actually useful).
You should take a look at some of the cool stuff being done with Zope and Plone before you assume that I have handed you such a loaded shotgun. SharePoint, InfoPath and all of the other new MS Office technologies are cool, but they are more along the lines of development tools than part of the MS Office suite. Either way, you can bet that the city of L.A. isn't using any of these tools, and the only way that they can afford them is to spend money that they currently are hoping to spend on police officers.
Let me give you a little clue, my friend. Even Microsoft would admit to the fact that half of their MS Office customers are on MS Office 2000 or older.
At the place where I currently work we have a sharepoint portal as well. Interestingly enough, the wiki gets more actual use. People like how easy it is to edit and link documents.
Precisely, they should be using OpenOffice.org with Zope and Plone :). It's free and it rocks.
Why? Well over half of Microsoft's customers are still on these two versions of MS Office. OpenOffice.org isn't really competing with the newest versions of MS Office because those people have already spent their money.
There is nothing inherent in MS Office that makes it a better fit for business process automation than OpenOffice.org. In fact, Microsoft generally pushes folks that want to use MS Office as part of a business automation process to upgrade to the more expensive "Enterprise Edition" of MS Office so they can use the fancy XML document types.
With OpenOffice.org you get XML document types by default and for free. Combine that with Zope (which handles OO.org formats natively, and has workflow support) and you are most of the way there (you just need some business rules). You certainly are farther along than someone who just has the standard version of MS Office.
For the most part office suites get used as glorified typewriters. One of the advantages of OO.org is that it has a truly opaque XML-based file format. Yes, I know that newer versions of MS Office support XML formats as well (in the even more expensive Enterprise Edition), but OpenOffice.org uses XML formats by default. This allows people to do things with normal OpenOffice.org files that you pay big money for in the MS Office world. You should take a look at the things that the Zope folks are doing with OO.org integration. Basically you get drag and drop content management of OO.org files with indexing, workflow management, and a whole pile of extra goodness, and that's just one example of what's available that happen to know of offhand. Most of the world simply puts their MS Office files on a normal fileshare (or emails them). OpenOffice.org is more than good enough to compete with those sorts of MS Office uses.
The primary technical reason that OO.org isn't well on its way to Total World Domination is that OO.org is not 100% compatible with MS Office. In cases where 100% compatibility isn't necessary then the choice is easy.
The more tricks that Microsoft tries to play, the better Free Software looks. In the long run if Microsoft plans to be competitive against Free Software projects like OpenOffice.org then it is going to have to spend more time making its customers happy and less time dipping its hands in their wallets.
If Los Angeles does decide to stick with MS Office then in two or three years time they are very likely to be in this exact same situation. The only difference will be that OO.org will be that much better. If Microsoft mistreats its customers now then the next round of upgrades will go very poorly for them. That's the best part about this situation. Free Software doesn't need hojillions of dollars in profits just to stay alive, Microsoft, on the other hand does. Microsoft has to convince its userbase to upgrade on a regular basis, or the company goes straight down the toilet.
I don't know about maintenance costs, but the Dutch city of Haarlem switched 2000 desktops from Office 97 and came up with some pretty hard numbers on migrations costs: Here's the link.
And here's the relevant quote:
Switching to OO.org clearly costs money, but so does upgrading to new versions of MS Office, and that's basically an ongoing cost.
Los Angeles is big enough that they can simply force people to switch. That's what really scares Microsoft. Microsoft knows that everyone has to deal with the government, if OpenOffice.org formats become de-facto government standards then MS Office is dead in the water.
Heck, a savvy politician could easily gain points by simply "giving away" OO.org CDs. A little rhetoric about open formats, "unprecedented public access to government files," and a reminder of the $5.2 million that is now being spent on police officers people and the switch could generate a lot of public approval.
Eventually Microsoft might even have to create OO.org import and export filters :).
No, comparing OpenOffice.org to past versions of MS Office is just good common sense. If Los Angeles were already on the newest version of MS Office then this wouldn't be an issue, as they would have already spent the $5.2 million. The fact of the matter is that not even half of Microsoft's Office customers are on the newest version.
Los Angeles basically has three choices. They can stick with what they currently are using, they can spend $5.2 million and upgrade to the newest MS Office, or they can migrate to OpenOffice.org and pay the one time migration costs. The fact that the politicos have already tied the upgrade "savings" to an increase in their police force means that they are serious about making the switch. There could be very large political ramifications for the politician that took $5.2 million earmarked for more policemen and spent it on software licenses. That's a very hot-button issue in L.A.
No one is going to argue that OpenOffice.org has as many features as the newest version of MS Office. The question is whether OpenOffice.org is better than the version of MS Office that you happen to be using right now. Throw in the fact that OpenOffice.org means that you no longer have to worry about licensing issues for new PCs and OO.o starts to look like a pretty good deal.
The truly scary part, at least for Microsoft, is that if Los Angeles switches to OO.o then lots of other businesses and communities that deal with Los Angeles (and there are piles of them) are also likely to experiment with OO.o. Everyone has to deal with the government.
Only a loony would consider taking Windows desktops and replacing them with Linux desktops. The true savings come from moving to some sort of Linux thin client. It's the PC that's the true expense. The trick is to replace all of those clunky, insecure, failure-prone PCs with what are essentially disposable thin clients. If your Linux client stops working the Janitor comes and throws it in the trash and you get another thin client, plug it in and start working.
All administration then becomes centralized around a handful of servers. Software upgrades become a piece of cake, and hardware upgrades mean that you get a new faster server. You don't touch the client systems ever (well, perhaps you might upgrade the monitor).
The truly ironic bit is that Microsoft already has tools that make this sort of setup possible for Windows. However, Microsoft's thin-client licensing is ridiculously expensive. Microsoft knows that in the long run their business is tied to the PC, and so they don't want to make thin clients an attractive proposition. Linux, on the other hand comes complete with a truly impressive array of software all available at little or no cost.
Of course Wal-Mart is doing it because they don't want to pay the Microsoft tax. Wal-Mart has a long history of not going into a business until they can offer the lowest price, and Wal-Mart simply can't compete with Dell as long as Windows is part of the bargain. Remove Windows from the bargain, however, and all of a sudden Wal-Mart is a serious contender.
Heck, I know that I am interested. A low end Linux-compatible laptop is exactly what I want. Now I won't have to buy something that's been used. Personally I am glad to see Wal-Mart stepping up to the plate to make me the offer.
Lots of people want to be able to buy hardware without paying for software. Many of them already have a Windows license. Purchasing a computer with Linux pre-installed is about the only way there is to get a new computer without paying the Microsoft tax.
Sure, these laptops will almost certainly promote software piracy, but that's hardly Wal-Mart's problem.
Nothing personal, but you got fired for an accute case of stupid. Technical skills are no substitute for a bit of political sense. With one blog entry you made your direct superior, and everyone involved in hiring him look like idiots in a public forum. The folks that got you run would have run you no matter where or how you made the remark (assuming that it got back to them), they simply would have used a different excuse. Too many technical folks think that their technical skills mean that they don't have to learn some people skills, and in today's market that simply isn't the case.
The reason that you were fired is that you made people with power and authority over you look bad in public, terrorism was just the excuse that they used. Coming up with an excuse to fire someone is not nearly as hard as you would think, especially to folks that have access to all of your email, Internet sites you visit during work, and whatever else.
The worst part is that with a little bit of political knowledge you could easily have had your direct superior run, but you could probably have received his job as a promotion as well.
Yes, you could sit down with all of the various and sundry licenses (the OSI lists nearly 60 of them) and feed each of these licenses to a lawyer and see what comes out. However, the OSI does that for you, and the folks that they have looking at licenses know a lot more about software licensing than you do (they probably know more than your lawyer too).
That's why when the OSI complained about Apple's Apple Public Source license Apple changed their license. The OSI's complaints made sense, and lots of hackers that cared about licenses agreed with the OSI. Open Source developers need an organization like the OSI to be able to bargain collectively with companies like IBM, Apple, or Sun, and the OSI has done a pretty good job. Before you criticize the OSI read their Open Source Definition and spell out precisely what you disagree with. Chances are very good that you will have little or nothing to add.
Yes, not all software licenses are created equal. However, making sure that you stick with OSI-approved licenses will get you a long way towards licensing nirvana with a minimum amount of work. Not only is the OSI more likely to catch small gotchas in licenses, but they are also more likely to get those problems fixed. That's a net win in my book.
The point that you are missing is that Microsoft isn't really competing with WordPerfect or OpenOffice.org in the office suite arena. When it comes to office suites Microsoft is primarily competing with old versions of MS Office. Most MS Office users are still using MS Office 2000 (or earlier) that don't read the fancy new XML formats. If Microsoft can get the U.S. (and other) governments to adopt their new XML formats then millions of MS Office users will have to upgrade to a new office suite that reads the new formats. Some of these folks might take advantage of OpenOffice.org or WordPerfect's ability to read these file formats (assuming that these programs do a fairly good job of reading and writing these formats), but most will simply purchase new copies of MS Office.
When Microsoft changed their MS Office formats in Office 97 lots of Microsoft customers were very very upset. This time around Microsoft knew that it couldn't force customers into a format change, and so it is doing everything in its power to convince folks to start using the new formats. Everyone deals with the government, and so making the XML formats a government standard actually works in Microsoft's best interests. The fact that the formats are open is basically a red herring. Microsoft knows that its competitors are going to reverse engineer their formats no matter what happens. Microsoft also knows that using the patents that they have offensively would be an expensive PR disaster. Lots of large organizations would get nervous about MS formats if Microsoft started suing people.
Microsoft wants people to use their XML formats. The fact that this also will help keep OpenOffice.org's formats out of the government sector is nothing more than a bonus. Microsoft is far more worried that people will continue to use Office 97 indefinitely than it is about OpenOffice.org taking over the world.
HCI really only comes into play when you have two competing products that have the same cost of acquisition. That means that the two competing products must either deal with precisely the same formats and protocols, or they must have essentially the same market share.
Designers and programmers think that HCI is important, and they are often willing to pay extra for a more consistent interface. Normal people, on the other hand, won't. That's why IBM PCs running DOS crushed the early Macs. There was no question that the Macintoshes where nicer systems, but the IBM PCs were "good enough" at a lower price. That is also why Windows beat out OS/2. OS/2 was a superious system, but consumers didn't care. Windows was good enough, and it was cheaper. If IBM had flooded the market with inexpensive OS/2 development tools, and priced OS/2 so that PCs with OS/2 had a competitive advantage over PCs with Windows then the computer world would be a different place now.
OpenOffice.org doesn't need to be the functional equivalent of MS Office to achieve total world domination. It simply has to be good enough at a lower price. Unfortunately, Microsoft's current market share means that "good enough" for many people has to include nearly seamless sharing of documents with MS Office users. On the bright side Microsoft has to keep forcing its users to upgrade in order to stay in business. For example, Microsoft is getting ready to push all of its existing MS Office users to an incompatible new set of XML-based formats. When this happens millions and millions of MS Office users with older versions of MS Office are going to find out that they are out in the cold unless they are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to update their software. Many of these folks are likely to find that OpenOffice.org is "good enough."
Microsoft has already shown with the XBox how pathetic they are when it comes to hardware manufacturing. Microsoft lost billions on the XBox despite the fact that they had some of the most popular games. Microsoft simply doesn't have the skills necessary to compete in a low margin market, especially when facing well-financed opponents like Sony or even Nintendo.
Whatever happens, Microsoft isn't going to get into the PC business. If Microsoft did try to get into the PC business all of the folks that currently make a living bundling Windows with PC hardware would have little choice but to start actively promoting Linux desktops. Every system builder from Dell on down would have to rethink their alliance with Microsoft if Microsoft had a line of PCs of their own. If Dell started pushing low cost PCs running Linux Windows would be in for a real race. Heck, Dell could simply start promoting OpenOffice.org and do enough damage to Microsoft's bottom line that Microsoft would running yelling and screaming from the PC business.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft is almost entirely dependent on third party vendors like Dell, consulting firms, and small time hackers to sell its software. The more Microsoft tries to compete with these third party vendors the more likely these vendors are to use the already existing Free Software alternatives. If Dell, HP, the local computer guy down the street, and consulting firms (large and small) all started hawking Linux then Microsoft would see the bottom drop out of its market in a hurry.
In the end commodity software is going to win out, and Microsoft's dominance of the PC business is going to come to a screeching halt. Don't get me wrong, Linux might never achieve total world domination, but if it doesn't it will only be because Microsoft started working a lot harder to keep its partners happy.
Very well said. Thanks.
That just goes to show that for all her faults Carly has a pretty good grasp of marketing.
It's not that Media Centers are revolutionary that makes them interesting to Microsoft. It's the fact that there is the potential to sell millions more copies of Windows. Right now almost no one has a computer hooked up to their TV, and those few folks that do have computers hooked up to their TVs aren't generally using any Microsoft software. Instead they are using something like Tivo.
Microsoft sees the Media Center as a potential market nearly as big as the DVD player market, and Microsoft's marketshare in this potentially huge new market is miniscule. Microsoft is desperate for growth opportunities that would justify its price/earnings ratio of over 30, and Windows Media Center is one of the few Microsoft products currently available that has the potential to build new revenue streams.
Personally, I think that the Media Center idea is several years away from being ubiquitous, but then again I don't have cable television either. I know lots of folks that would give up their firstborn son before they gave up their Tivo. It is entirely possible that eventually the home entertainment computer could even be a bigger market than the normal personal computer that we all know and love.
More importantly, the home entertainment computer is very likely to become a very strategic piece of the overall media puzzle. For example, Microsoft is betting that if it can score big with its Media Center that it could sell the ability to do workable DRM to Hollywood. Microsoft understands the power of controlling the platform, and it knows that they could make billions if they could put Microsoft in a position to become the DRM gateway for all of Hollywood.
Not to mention the fact that Linux-based computers hooked up to the television could easily morph into game consoles. All the pieces are there already.
This isn't about hacking your digital hub, this is about the economics of operating systems. Basically HP is telling Microsoft that they like the Windows Media idea, but that HP doesn't like the idea of paying Microsoft to implement it. HP has finally realized that the average Joe isn't interested in running MS Word on their television, and so there isn't really any reason to pay Microsoft for the privilege of using Windows. This isn't an issue of Free Software, but of commodity software. That's why HP isn't using QNX. HP isn't interested in paying the folks that develop QNX any more than they are interested in paying the folks in Redmond.