I know how much work it takes to roll out a new platform. Which is why it doesn't surprise me that Win2K hasn't done very well. Rolling out Windows 2000 is a lot of work, and the benefits for most desktop users are minimal. The business that I work for already gets perfectly acceptable uptime from our NT desktops, Windows NT runs all of the software that we need. It works well with our legacy systems, and it is (at this point) quite inexpensive to maintain.
Windows 2000, on the other hand, is an entirely new operating system. With new pitfalls, shortcomings, compatibility issues, training issues, etc. However, as a desktop the only real bonus is that it has a slightly different new GUI. Oh, and it supports USB devices (which we are not particularly keen on supporting either).
That's why Windows 2000 hasn't been very successful. It's too much work for too little benefit. It was worth switching to Windows 95, because Windows 3.1 was so crappy. Likewise Windows NT 4.0 was worth the switch from Windows 9X, not because Windows NT was the best OS on the planet, but because Windows 9X was so bad. Windows 2000, on the other hand, gets you very little that you couldn't accomplish by simply upgrading your web browser.
Monopolies, especially monopolies that are not customer oriented, are always short lived. The oil and railroad monopolies are good examples of this, in fact. The oil monopoly is finished, and the railroad monopoly probably would be finished, but the government got involved and screwed it up (as usual).
You see, monopolies make a lot of money, and those profits draw competitors like flies to honey. Most of these competitors fail, but eventually some sharp guy finds a way to circumvent the monopoly, and the monopoly becomes a commodity product (or worse, it becomes obsolete). Microsoft is in this position now. Operating systems and Office suites are on their way to becoming infrastructure, and not products. People are actually giving away software that is nearly as good as what Microsoft charges hundreds of dollars for. Regulating Microsoft just delays the inevitable. Eventually the software industry is going to realize that they simply can't compete with Microsoft on the Windows desktop, and the survivors will start to use their influence to push customers somewhere where they have a fighting chance.
It is clear that Microsoft plays dirty, stabs their allies in the back, forces crappy software on the public, and a million other unsavory things. However, the solution is not to try and regulate them. This has been tried and has failed miserably. For nearly 20 years the DOJ has been breathing down Microsoft's neck, and Microsoft is more influential now than ever. The solution is to allow them to mistreat their allies and customers until their allies and customers dessert them. As long as software houses feel that they have some legal protection from Microsoft's tactics they will continue to waltz into the alligator's mouth.
You may be rolling out Windows 2000, but the sales numbers are in, and Windows 2000 has sold exceptionally poorly. That's part of the reason that Microsoft is pushing so hard with Windows XP. They need an OS upgrade that will actually entice customers to switch. Hardware sales are down, and preload profits are not going to be enough to give them double digit growth.
What's especially funny is that Microsoft is probably shooting themselves in the foot. What is your company going to do with Windows 2000 now that XP is going to be released shortly. They are probably kicking themselves now, wishing that they had waited another six months. Those companies that are still in the planning stages are probably holding off to see if they should start testing Windows XP instead. Not that it really matters. Chances are good that they have finally got Windows NT (or Windows 98) working well enough. They probably don't really want to upgrade. They are merely worried about falling too far behind the curve.
MS should be able to do whatever they want, and sell it however they want. If they want to give software away, they should be able to. If they want to charge high prices for software that most of their customers don't need, then that should be their prerogative. They are the ones paying the development costs.
If you don't like what Microsoft has to offer, then don't buy it. Plain and simple. Buy from their competitors instead, or write your own software.
Eventually the rest of the software industry will realize that it is impossible to build a business out of competing with Microsoft on their own turf, and they will try something else. If you are in the business of selling software that runs on Windows, and your business begins to do well, you will have one of two options 1) sell out to Microsoft, 2) get crushed when Microsoft bundles a "free" clone of your software with Windows. Either way you take the risks, and Microsoft makes the money.
Microsoft may be chuck full of smart people. But they couldn't compete if the entire software industry was against them. There are plenty of companies that are giving them a run for their money now, and Microsoft essentially controls the playing field. So now Microsoft has released yet another OS, and yet another group of whiners will line up in court to protest, but I personally don't feel sorry for them. Surely they saw this day coming. Microsoft has been stabbing their partners in the back since the beginning of the PC. There are plenty of alternative OSes out their, and any one of them could be a desktop contender if the software industry added their support. Heck, Linux is becoming a fairly useable desktop, and the desktop software companies are doing their best to ignore it. That's fine with me, I am not particularly interested in desktop software, but I certainly get tired of hearing software companies complain about Microsoft when Microsoft's dominance is their own darn fault.
actually, it can be argued that one of the bsds is *nix top dog, its name is darwin. with apple installing os x as the default os on all its machines this summer, bsd will sell in quantities linux can not hope to match. the fact of the matter is that consumers love good software, and the bsd license lets apple improve and innovate and still pay its programmers.
Right now OS X has approximately zero users. You might think that it is cool, and you might even be willing to pay a premium for Mac OS X hardware (and software), but not very many other people are so inclined. Heck, there are probably more Linux installs on former Mac hardware than there are OS X installs. Perhaps in the future this won't be the case, but to say that Mac OS X is top dog in the Free *nix world (especially considering that it isn't a Free *nix but is only based on one) is premature.
unfortunately companies publishing under the gpl have been unable to make a profit. that doesnt say good things about them continuing to advance the software. why shouldnt developers make money for their effort?
Cygnus made money at Free Software for years (as has the FSF, but they made so little money that it hardly counts). RedHat recently broke even, while growing their business at an astounding rate. Considering that 90% of all new businesses fail, Free Software companies aren't doing so bad, and it is not as if they are failing to gain customers. They simply made the same mistake that the rest of the market made and spent too much in pursuit of marketshare. When the stock market was going crazy this sort of made sense because capital was so easy to acquire.
Just remember, more closed source companies have gone spectacularly bankrupt than there will ever be Free Software companies. And Free Software was doing just fine long before there were any corporations involved. Mac OS X is a fine example of this. They have been promising a new OS for years, and it wasn't until Apple "borrowed" the work of Open Source volunteers that they were actually able to produce one. While Apple was busy sprinting from one spectacular failure to the next, the folks creating BSD were cranking out an OS that worked spectacularly, and they were doing it largely in their spare time.
Caldera has always felt that the only way to make money with Linux was to bundle it with proprietary software. In fact, that's probably the reason that they aren't in RedHat's position right now. They have always had a solid, easy to use distribution, but it has also always been more expensive than everyone else's distribution, and it has generally always included proprietary bits that made it illegal to simply burn copies.
Now Caldera is looking to extend Linux in proprietary ways (Volution) and they are finding all of this GPLed software bothersome. The fact of the matter is that the GPL has almost certainly been an asset to Linux. If this weren't the case then one of the BSDs would be top dog in the Free *nix world. The fact of the matter is that software consumers love the GPL. It gives them an unprecedented amount of leverage. And in software, like in all business, the customer is always right.
Actually I don't buy the cost of software compared to the cost of hardware argument. Perhaps if you are talking bundling, but hardly any PC's at less than $1000 come with bundled software of any consequence.
But this hardware could come with software. Specifically it could come with Star Office, which is not nearly as bad as you think. It is a ton better than Microsoft Works, for example. In fact, for most people it is pretty much a drop in replacement for MS Office. It starts a little slower, and it needs a little more hardware to be responsive, but for the hardware OEMs this is actually a good thing. The eMachines already come with Star Office, and as the hardware market continues to become more and more competitive other OEMs will likewise begin bundling Star Office. The fact that Star Office runs on Windows makes it an easy piece of software for the OEMs to bundle.
Believe me, there are plenty of people that find both Linux and Star Office useful, and it isn't the best software that wins out in the end. The software that wins out in the end is the software that is "good enough" at the lowest price. For years people got by with clunky DOS based PCs despite the fact that Macintoshes were tons easier to use, and had niftier software. Apple learned the hard way that most people would rather learn to edit weird text files than pay a couple hundred dollar premium for a computer. Star Office may not be suitable for your needs, but not everyone needs a $500 Office suite.
It will be interesting to see what wacky scheme Microsoft comes up with next to regain their double digit growth.
Actually sharing files between Office 97 and 2000 (other than Access files, which have completely changed) works surprisingly well. This is because most of Microsoft's big customers threatened to switch to another Office suite after the 95 to 97 debacle. That is why nearly 60% of Microsoft's Office customers are still using pre-2000 versions of MS Office.
Microsoft knows that their biggest Office suite competitor isn't Corel, or Sun, it's old versions of their software. If the entire world decided to skip upgrading to Office XP Microsoft would go under just as quickly as if we all switched to Linux. So Microsoft is stuck with the unenviable job of trying to sell the new features of their newest Office Suite during an economic downturn. Even worse, hardly anyone can tell you what the new "features" of this product actually are.
This is precisely why Microsoft wants to get their customers on a subscription model. It would give them a stable income, it would increase the amount of money paid (over the long run) by their customers, and it would completely remove past versions of their old software from the competition. After all, when your Microsoft bill will be the same whether you upgrade or not, you might as well upgrade.
However, Microsoft faces several challenges in their quest to become the software version of the telephone company. The biggest challenge is that over half of their users are perfectly happy with their current (paid for) software. Consumers are also changing the way that they buy PCs. Nowadays consumers are much more likely to spend less than $1000 on a PC than over $2000. The price of the OS and Office license becomes far more noticeable when the margins on the hardware are cut in half. Last but not least Microsoft is starting to have some actual competition. Linux (and more importantly Open Office) are starting to be pretty useful pieces of software, and they are available at a much lower price. Emachines already come with Star Office, and as the hardware market continues to become more competitive other OEMs will almost certainly follow.
There are Open Source "forks" but they generally are due to personality problems. The BSD splits and the Emacs/XEmacs fork are good examples.
The other major difference is that the different Open Source forks generally are highly compatible between themselves, and foster the type of "good" competition that makes both projects better. The Samba/Samba TNG and the former gcc/egcs forks are good examples of forks that have been very healthy for the long term viability of the software in question. All in all I would take a Free Software project fork over the differences in the various versions of Windows any day of the week, but that's just me.
Mundie, on the other hand, is almost certainly referring to the Unix wars. His audience will likewise remember them well. The primary reason that the entire world doesn't run everything on Unix right now is that the various and sundry Unix vendors took the original BSD code and turned it into a pile of incompatible vendor specific versions. If Mundie can get his audience to believe that the same thing will happen to Linux, then he will definitely scare some of them away from Linux.
Personally, I don't see it working very well. Especially since anyone with a brain can see that Linux is actually consolidating the Unix field. Two years from now Linux emulation is going to be a major feature of every commercial Unix.
Actually, most toys get developed first, and then a company is formed around the toy to market it.
The PC is a perfect example of this trend. It wasn't the corporations that created the PC, it was folks working in their garages. Once they had designed their gizmos they formed (or united with) corporations to sell their work.
Corporations aren't bad, but they certainly aren't necessary for the creation of new technologies. This is especially true in the realm of software development where the barrier for entry is so low. A punk kid with $500 can buy all the equipment he needs to start developing software.
Other industries (say pharmaceuticals) require far more expensive research tools, and therefore incur much higher costs. But even these industries have lately been abusing the patent system to a degree where one has to wonder if there is a net gain for the populace. It is very easy to say that without strong intellectual property rights that no research would be done, in the business world this is a truth that they hold to be "self evident." But Free Software currently proves that this is not the case, at least for software. Plenty of interesting advances are being made every day in the Free Software world, and many free software projects are at least as innovative as anything Microsoft has ever done.
In the long run it almost doesn't matter what Mr. Mundie and Mr. Torvalds say. Software is becoming a commodity, despite whatever Microsoft will try to do. The days when you could charge money for something as basic as an operating system (or even an office suite) are coming to a close. Microsoft can drag it's feet all it wants, but if they make things too difficult for their customers their software will be replaced.
Not too mention the big fat pile of money they spent on Hotmail (which apparently gives out free email accounts).
It's not Microsoft's software that makes me sick, it is the smug assurance Microsofties have that everyone that doesn't work for Microsoft must be an idiot. Microsoft treats their customers like thieves and continually insults their intelligence, and then they wonder why so many people are willing to download and use a Unix re-hash written by a Finnish undergrad and supported over the Internet instead of their (arguably) easier to use software.
Linux will continue to gain marketshare until Microsoft finally learns what customer service really is about (and no, it's not about making it hard for them to make MP3s).
I hate to break up your utopian anti-capitalist dream, but the GPL fits into a captitalist society much better than you think. For example, Cygnus was profitable (and growing) for years before anyone had ever heard of RedHat. They used gcc as a battering ram to open the compiler market for them. Had they just been another compiler company they would have disappeared into the annals of time without a trace. Instead they gave away the compiler, and (in many areas) became the de-facto standard. This not only undermined the value of their competitors closed source compilers, but it gave them control (although very benevolent control) over a fairly large portion of the overall compiler support business.
If you think about it, GPL programmers are very much like lawyers. Lawyers aren't paid for creating new laws (well most aren't), but instead they are paid for their knowledge in applying the law. With Free Software the value isn't in the 1's and 0's themselves, but instead it is in the talents of those folks who know how to create solutions with the software. This is bad news for Microsoft (because they sell software), but it is good news for nearly everyone else (especially the freelance hacker and the software consumer).
All of a sudden I can offer my clients robust solutions without having to pay any Microsoft tax. I can even create custom proprietary solutions on top of already existing code (and charge money for this solution). However, if I am not careful one of my competitors will create a similar solution and release it under a Free License. His solution will then almost certainly become the de-facto standard, and his intimate knowledge of the new standard will become more valuable than my knowledge of a proprietary non-standard solution. In other words, at some point it becomes in my best interest to share.
The days when standards could be forced from pure market pressure alone are coming to an end. Even Microsoft with 90% of the desktop market is finding that they have to give software away to have any chance of affecting de-facto standards. The only reason that.Net even has a chance is because they based it on a whole raft of open protocols (complete with open source implementations). The only reason that we aren't all still using Netscape is that Microsoft gave away IE. And now with Microsoft's draconian new licensing scheme for Office XP don't be surprised if small businesses and home users start using StarOffice.
This sort of technique works swimmingly against Microsoft's other commercial software competitors, but it isn't nearly as effective against Linux because Linux can be used without asking for permission from the accountants.
In every business where I have seen Linux used it started off as the basis of a skunkworks project. Linux was chosen because the project had little or no funding. That's the beautty of Linux really, all you need is an idea, and a little bit of time, Linux supplies the rest. It comes complete with an amazing set of tools, and there are plenty of folks out on the Internet that are more than happy to point you in the right direction. The documentation might be spotty at times, but there is plenty of example code to use, and chances are good that someone else has already written the difficult bits for you.
On several occassions I have seen Linux implementations finished before the "official" proprietary software based project that it was competing with was able to even get the necessary software licenses. And once Linux gains a foothold in the company it spreads like the plague. Accountants are not stupid. Part of the reason that Linux is doing so well in the server arena is that accountants know that you don't always get what you pay for. Microsoft's latest tactics will backfire fantastically. In fact, this particular speech will probably be ridiculed almost as much as Alchin's "Un-American" crack.
Perhaps if the government didn't have to pay so much in software licensing fees they could afford to pay their employees more.
The fact of the matter is that it takes equivalent effort to secure both Linux and Windows (actually, that isn't quite true Linux is easier to secure...). The same government employees that are currently setting up insecure Windows boxes would almost certainly set up Linux so that it was insecure as well.
Agreed. I love Python, but I still use Perl for data munging. It is without a doubt the best text processing tool available (and that's not exactly a niche market either).
I would certainly agree that Oracle on Solaris is more scalable, bulletproof, karma-riffic, etc. than MS SQL server, but you only need an aircraft carrier when you are fighter planes at sea. If you are just going fishing, a rowboat is a much more useful craft.
While it certainly is true that Microsoft has hyped their database as being capable of things it really isn't capable of, for most projects it is perfectly adequate. Of course, in that same vein PostgreSQL would probably work as well, and it is a heck of a lot cheaper than either Oracle or SQL Server
The issues with the license are very minor, as you say. Why does the FSF obsess over it so much?
The FSF obsesses over these things because that is the way that the law works. Writing legal documents is a lot like writing complex C memory management code. One off by one error and the entire application segfaults. It's the same thing with the law. One minor detail could cost the case, and when you are talking about something as important to the FSF as the continued "freeness" of the software they have developed you can see why this would make them a little paranoid. Because of this the FSF has worked very hard to make sure that everything that they do is as legal and aboveboard as possible.
That's why they require pen and ink signatures on a legal document assigning them as copyright holder before you can work on GNU software. They know that only the legal copyright holder can press charges in the US, and they want to be sure that they have the power to enforce their license.
Many of the other open source projects (like Python, for instance) have been much more haphazard about the licensing of their product. Guido, for example, failed to make sure before continuing work on Python that it would continue under the same X style license as it always had. His employer got nervous, and their lawyers came up with a license that isn't GPL compatible (at least according to the FSF lawyers).
It is convenient to blame the FSF lawyers, but they didn't change the original Python license. They just pointed out that they don't feel that the new license is GPL compatible. If these details weren't important, then perhaps the people who changed the original license should change it back. The fact of the matter is that the details probably are important enough that neither side is going to bend. The FSF doesn't want to threaten the GPL, and the lawyers at CNRI and Digital Creations don't want to be liable for problems someone might have with Python.
The FSF should be commended for taking care of these details before it starts developing software. If Guido would have done the same, there wouldn't be any problem.
Good programmers indent nested blocks, but that's just to make the code easier to read. The parser doesn't care.
That's really the beautty of Python's whitespace blocks. Both the programmer and the parser are looking at the same cues for block nesting. I am sure you have debugged C code that was missing a brace (or worse that had one misplaced) but was still indented "correctly." Your mind thinks that everything is hunky dory because the code "looks" right. This doesn't happen very often if you are a skilled C coder (with an intelligent text editor), but it does happen. And it happens a lot with newbie programmers. I was teaching my little brother Perl at one point, and he had all sorts of trouble with braces. However, when we switched to Python there was no longer any need for him to think about which braces matched up. I didn't believe that Python's significant whitespace was a good idea either, at first, but I am a believer now.
Oh yeah, and since the Vim % command (jump to matching bracket) doesn't work with Python code, do you know of a macro to replace it?
And Microsoft wonders why Apache and Linux owns the web hosting market. That's the most horrific story I have heard all day.
If Microsoft really wanted to own the web server arena what they would do is release a slimmed down version of Windows 2000 complete with development tools, Commerce server (and all that entails) and then price it low enough that you would be crazy not to use it. Limit it to one processor machines, and cut out nifty stuff like failover, but make it a fairly complete package. As it now stands I can afford the added cost of learning Linux and PostgreSQL and Zope, because I know that it is time invested in tools that I will be able to use over and over again royalty free. If Microsoft were to release a more useful set of tools for a reasonably low price I would be very tempted to rethink my strategy.
They could then upsell to developers and businesses that needed the full version of the tools. As soon as your business got big enough for a dual processor machine, or failover, or even putting the database on a separate machine. Of course, at that point the company probably wouldn't feel nearly as bad about the cost of the full blown version of the tools.
Anyway, check ZDNet about Microsoft's murmuring about a Win XP "Blade Server" edition. Essentially a stripped down web server setup designed to compete with Linux/Unix that will no doubt have it's own specialized set of server hardware. MS has enough resources to keep this project seperate from the XBox (and keep the traditional Windows hardware OEMs happy).
If Microsoft goes into the hardware business, especially the server hardware business, then you can bet your last nickel that the hardware OEMs will go on a media frenzy about how cool their new "Linux application servers" are. The last thing that the OEMs are going to allow is for Microsoft to undercut them in their fastest growing market. Since they won't be able to compete with Microsoft on price (MS gets Windows for free) they will have no choice but to use Linux to make up the difference.
Linux servers made by folks that make inexpensive hardware for a living are very likely to be less expensive than the best that Microsoft can do.
My guess is that the Blade Server edition will simply be a low-cost slimmed down version of Windows 2000. Of course, it will probably have very limited use, and it will still be more expensive than free. Microsoft can try and compete in the low cost arena, but my guess is that they haven't got a prayer. Linux is nearly a match for the best that Microsoft can throw at it in the server arena. A cut rate version of Windows would look positively anemic compared to what you get for free with Linux.
Microsoft's only chance, in the web hosting arena, is to fold more features into the OS. Heck, I wouldn't personally even consider Microsoft for my web servers until it could touch the usefulness I get out of Linux, PostgreSQL, and Zope at a low basic price (and with nicer interfaces). Those tools may be harder to learn, but the knowledge pays for itself easily over time.
There is nothing wrong with the WMA format, other than the fact that it isn't an open format (you can only get a WMA player from Microsoft or one of their licensees), and that is has content management built in (meaning it will be possible to tie your WMAs to one machine).
Now, if you can't imagine a day when you might want to play your music on a non-Microsoft licensed piece of equipment, and you can't imagine ever wanting to move your files from your present computer to a future one, then you are right, the WMA file format is great.
Yes, I realize that this is paranoid, and probably delusional. But why would Microsoft build this sort of stuff into the format if they weren't planning on turning the features on eventually.
Fortunately, we can just as easily use the Ogg Vorbis format, which is also very good, and get most of the benefits of WMA without all of the hassles (and potential hassles). It's patent free, it's licensed under a BSD style license, and it is supported in all of the more popular players (including some upcoming hardware based players). My guess is that WMA will soon be the medium of choice for the music industry, and Ogg Vorbis will be the medium of choice for everyone else.
*sigh*... no. Windows XP will be adopted for the same reason Windows ME is being adopted: OEM bundling. No one buys OSs on purpose, they buy a computer, and it needs an OS. What they get will be whatever Microsoft wants to give them.
And, given that XP is NT-based and ME is still basically a DOS patch, maybe old windows users will be essentially forced to upgrade -- if all the new programs come out "WinXP/2000 compatible," then you are stuck if you don't have an NT-based windows.
Microsoft could guarantee OS penetration with pre-loading when PC sales were going like crazy, but that's simply not the case anymore. For example, there are a lot more people using Windows 95 still than Windows ME, and these two OSes are basically compatible with each other. Meaning that it was perfectly safe for the Windows 9X user to purchase a computer with Windows ME on it and expect that his software would still run.
This isn't the case with Windows XP, and it is going to cause Microsoft more than its share of fits. Unless Microsoft discontinues Windows ME completely there are still going to be some people who will prefer it. Especially if it allows them to buy a less expensive computer.
As for developers, my guess is that they will almost certainly continue to develop software that runs on Win 9X. After all, that's where all of the customers are, and Windows XP doesn't really have any "features" that are so compelling that it would cause developers to want to narrow their market to just Windows XP users. Even Microsoft makes sure that new versions of their desktop software runs on Windows 95.
I think they've got this one in the bag. D'oh.
Once again, we'll see. They have got a lot of momentum, and they have the preload market locked up. But times are tight, and Windows XP is just an OS. In many ways it is less desireable to the home and small business user than Windows 9X, and Microsoft's new draconian IP rights technologies are not going to make people happy. A slow quarter for the computer market that was attributed to customer dissatisfaction with Windows XP would send Microsoft back to the drawing board, and it would accelerate "alternatives" like never before.
At the end of the day the old adage "the customer is always right" is the surest way to maintain your customer base, and if Microsoft keeps their antics up they will eventually learn that the hard way. I am not saying that Windows XP will be the crack in the dam that starts the flood of customers away from Windows. Microsoft still has a fairly commanding lead on the desktop, for now. They would have to push the OEMs fairly hard for there to be any chance of an open revolt. But it's only a matter of time if Microsoft doesn't worry more about their customers.
Remember kids, computer history is littered with companies who failed to get their userbase to upgrade. Now, the real question is MS's grip on the OEMs -- will they switch to XP completely, or will ME remain on the price sheet?
It will be interesting to see what happens, but I am not expecting Microsoft to have to squeeze the OEMs too terribly hard. Especially since it is in the OEMs best interests to have Windows XP do well (it requires beefier hardware).
In the end, it will be up to the customers who decide if Windows XP will fly or not. If Microsoft pushes consumers or OEMs towards Windows XP too hard then you can bet that they will only increase the tendency of their customers to look for alternatives.
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I know how much work it takes to roll out a new platform. Which is why it doesn't surprise me that Win2K hasn't done very well. Rolling out Windows 2000 is a lot of work, and the benefits for most desktop users are minimal. The business that I work for already gets perfectly acceptable uptime from our NT desktops, Windows NT runs all of the software that we need. It works well with our legacy systems, and it is (at this point) quite inexpensive to maintain.
Windows 2000, on the other hand, is an entirely new operating system. With new pitfalls, shortcomings, compatibility issues, training issues, etc. However, as a desktop the only real bonus is that it has a slightly different new GUI. Oh, and it supports USB devices (which we are not particularly keen on supporting either).
That's why Windows 2000 hasn't been very successful. It's too much work for too little benefit. It was worth switching to Windows 95, because Windows 3.1 was so crappy. Likewise Windows NT 4.0 was worth the switch from Windows 9X, not because Windows NT was the best OS on the planet, but because Windows 9X was so bad. Windows 2000, on the other hand, gets you very little that you couldn't accomplish by simply upgrading your web browser.
Monopolies, especially monopolies that are not customer oriented, are always short lived. The oil and railroad monopolies are good examples of this, in fact. The oil monopoly is finished, and the railroad monopoly probably would be finished, but the government got involved and screwed it up (as usual).
You see, monopolies make a lot of money, and those profits draw competitors like flies to honey. Most of these competitors fail, but eventually some sharp guy finds a way to circumvent the monopoly, and the monopoly becomes a commodity product (or worse, it becomes obsolete). Microsoft is in this position now. Operating systems and Office suites are on their way to becoming infrastructure, and not products. People are actually giving away software that is nearly as good as what Microsoft charges hundreds of dollars for. Regulating Microsoft just delays the inevitable. Eventually the software industry is going to realize that they simply can't compete with Microsoft on the Windows desktop, and the survivors will start to use their influence to push customers somewhere where they have a fighting chance.
It is clear that Microsoft plays dirty, stabs their allies in the back, forces crappy software on the public, and a million other unsavory things. However, the solution is not to try and regulate them. This has been tried and has failed miserably. For nearly 20 years the DOJ has been breathing down Microsoft's neck, and Microsoft is more influential now than ever. The solution is to allow them to mistreat their allies and customers until their allies and customers dessert them. As long as software houses feel that they have some legal protection from Microsoft's tactics they will continue to waltz into the alligator's mouth.
Thanks reposter. I couldn't have said it better myself.
You may be rolling out Windows 2000, but the sales numbers are in, and Windows 2000 has sold exceptionally poorly. That's part of the reason that Microsoft is pushing so hard with Windows XP. They need an OS upgrade that will actually entice customers to switch. Hardware sales are down, and preload profits are not going to be enough to give them double digit growth.
What's especially funny is that Microsoft is probably shooting themselves in the foot. What is your company going to do with Windows 2000 now that XP is going to be released shortly. They are probably kicking themselves now, wishing that they had waited another six months. Those companies that are still in the planning stages are probably holding off to see if they should start testing Windows XP instead. Not that it really matters. Chances are good that they have finally got Windows NT (or Windows 98) working well enough. They probably don't really want to upgrade. They are merely worried about falling too far behind the curve.
MS should be able to do whatever they want, and sell it however they want. If they want to give software away, they should be able to. If they want to charge high prices for software that most of their customers don't need, then that should be their prerogative. They are the ones paying the development costs.
If you don't like what Microsoft has to offer, then don't buy it. Plain and simple. Buy from their competitors instead, or write your own software.
Eventually the rest of the software industry will realize that it is impossible to build a business out of competing with Microsoft on their own turf, and they will try something else. If you are in the business of selling software that runs on Windows, and your business begins to do well, you will have one of two options 1) sell out to Microsoft, 2) get crushed when Microsoft bundles a "free" clone of your software with Windows. Either way you take the risks, and Microsoft makes the money.
Microsoft may be chuck full of smart people. But they couldn't compete if the entire software industry was against them. There are plenty of companies that are giving them a run for their money now, and Microsoft essentially controls the playing field. So now Microsoft has released yet another OS, and yet another group of whiners will line up in court to protest, but I personally don't feel sorry for them. Surely they saw this day coming. Microsoft has been stabbing their partners in the back since the beginning of the PC. There are plenty of alternative OSes out their, and any one of them could be a desktop contender if the software industry added their support. Heck, Linux is becoming a fairly useable desktop, and the desktop software companies are doing their best to ignore it. That's fine with me, I am not particularly interested in desktop software, but I certainly get tired of hearing software companies complain about Microsoft when Microsoft's dominance is their own darn fault.
Right now OS X has approximately zero users. You might think that it is cool, and you might even be willing to pay a premium for Mac OS X hardware (and software), but not very many other people are so inclined. Heck, there are probably more Linux installs on former Mac hardware than there are OS X installs. Perhaps in the future this won't be the case, but to say that Mac OS X is top dog in the Free *nix world (especially considering that it isn't a Free *nix but is only based on one) is premature.
Cygnus made money at Free Software for years (as has the FSF, but they made so little money that it hardly counts). RedHat recently broke even, while growing their business at an astounding rate. Considering that 90% of all new businesses fail, Free Software companies aren't doing so bad, and it is not as if they are failing to gain customers. They simply made the same mistake that the rest of the market made and spent too much in pursuit of marketshare. When the stock market was going crazy this sort of made sense because capital was so easy to acquire.
Just remember, more closed source companies have gone spectacularly bankrupt than there will ever be Free Software companies. And Free Software was doing just fine long before there were any corporations involved. Mac OS X is a fine example of this. They have been promising a new OS for years, and it wasn't until Apple "borrowed" the work of Open Source volunteers that they were actually able to produce one. While Apple was busy sprinting from one spectacular failure to the next, the folks creating BSD were cranking out an OS that worked spectacularly, and they were doing it largely in their spare time.
Caldera has always felt that the only way to make money with Linux was to bundle it with proprietary software. In fact, that's probably the reason that they aren't in RedHat's position right now. They have always had a solid, easy to use distribution, but it has also always been more expensive than everyone else's distribution, and it has generally always included proprietary bits that made it illegal to simply burn copies.
Now Caldera is looking to extend Linux in proprietary ways (Volution) and they are finding all of this GPLed software bothersome. The fact of the matter is that the GPL has almost certainly been an asset to Linux. If this weren't the case then one of the BSDs would be top dog in the Free *nix world. The fact of the matter is that software consumers love the GPL. It gives them an unprecedented amount of leverage. And in software, like in all business, the customer is always right.
But this hardware could come with software. Specifically it could come with Star Office, which is not nearly as bad as you think. It is a ton better than Microsoft Works, for example. In fact, for most people it is pretty much a drop in replacement for MS Office. It starts a little slower, and it needs a little more hardware to be responsive, but for the hardware OEMs this is actually a good thing. The eMachines already come with Star Office, and as the hardware market continues to become more and more competitive other OEMs will likewise begin bundling Star Office. The fact that Star Office runs on Windows makes it an easy piece of software for the OEMs to bundle.
Believe me, there are plenty of people that find both Linux and Star Office useful, and it isn't the best software that wins out in the end. The software that wins out in the end is the software that is "good enough" at the lowest price. For years people got by with clunky DOS based PCs despite the fact that Macintoshes were tons easier to use, and had niftier software. Apple learned the hard way that most people would rather learn to edit weird text files than pay a couple hundred dollar premium for a computer. Star Office may not be suitable for your needs, but not everyone needs a $500 Office suite.
It will be interesting to see what wacky scheme Microsoft comes up with next to regain their double digit growth.
Actually sharing files between Office 97 and 2000 (other than Access files, which have completely changed) works surprisingly well. This is because most of Microsoft's big customers threatened to switch to another Office suite after the 95 to 97 debacle. That is why nearly 60% of Microsoft's Office customers are still using pre-2000 versions of MS Office.
Microsoft knows that their biggest Office suite competitor isn't Corel, or Sun, it's old versions of their software. If the entire world decided to skip upgrading to Office XP Microsoft would go under just as quickly as if we all switched to Linux. So Microsoft is stuck with the unenviable job of trying to sell the new features of their newest Office Suite during an economic downturn. Even worse, hardly anyone can tell you what the new "features" of this product actually are.
This is precisely why Microsoft wants to get their customers on a subscription model. It would give them a stable income, it would increase the amount of money paid (over the long run) by their customers, and it would completely remove past versions of their old software from the competition. After all, when your Microsoft bill will be the same whether you upgrade or not, you might as well upgrade.
However, Microsoft faces several challenges in their quest to become the software version of the telephone company. The biggest challenge is that over half of their users are perfectly happy with their current (paid for) software. Consumers are also changing the way that they buy PCs. Nowadays consumers are much more likely to spend less than $1000 on a PC than over $2000. The price of the OS and Office license becomes far more noticeable when the margins on the hardware are cut in half. Last but not least Microsoft is starting to have some actual competition. Linux (and more importantly Open Office) are starting to be pretty useful pieces of software, and they are available at a much lower price. Emachines already come with Star Office, and as the hardware market continues to become more competitive other OEMs will almost certainly follow.
There are Open Source "forks" but they generally are due to personality problems. The BSD splits and the Emacs/XEmacs fork are good examples.
The other major difference is that the different Open Source forks generally are highly compatible between themselves, and foster the type of "good" competition that makes both projects better. The Samba/Samba TNG and the former gcc/egcs forks are good examples of forks that have been very healthy for the long term viability of the software in question. All in all I would take a Free Software project fork over the differences in the various versions of Windows any day of the week, but that's just me.
Mundie, on the other hand, is almost certainly referring to the Unix wars. His audience will likewise remember them well. The primary reason that the entire world doesn't run everything on Unix right now is that the various and sundry Unix vendors took the original BSD code and turned it into a pile of incompatible vendor specific versions. If Mundie can get his audience to believe that the same thing will happen to Linux, then he will definitely scare some of them away from Linux.
Personally, I don't see it working very well. Especially since anyone with a brain can see that Linux is actually consolidating the Unix field. Two years from now Linux emulation is going to be a major feature of every commercial Unix.
Actually, most toys get developed first, and then a company is formed around the toy to market it.
The PC is a perfect example of this trend. It wasn't the corporations that created the PC, it was folks working in their garages. Once they had designed their gizmos they formed (or united with) corporations to sell their work.
Corporations aren't bad, but they certainly aren't necessary for the creation of new technologies. This is especially true in the realm of software development where the barrier for entry is so low. A punk kid with $500 can buy all the equipment he needs to start developing software.
Other industries (say pharmaceuticals) require far more expensive research tools, and therefore incur much higher costs. But even these industries have lately been abusing the patent system to a degree where one has to wonder if there is a net gain for the populace. It is very easy to say that without strong intellectual property rights that no research would be done, in the business world this is a truth that they hold to be "self evident." But Free Software currently proves that this is not the case, at least for software. Plenty of interesting advances are being made every day in the Free Software world, and many free software projects are at least as innovative as anything Microsoft has ever done.
In the long run it almost doesn't matter what Mr. Mundie and Mr. Torvalds say. Software is becoming a commodity, despite whatever Microsoft will try to do. The days when you could charge money for something as basic as an operating system (or even an office suite) are coming to a close. Microsoft can drag it's feet all it wants, but if they make things too difficult for their customers their software will be replaced.
Not too mention the big fat pile of money they spent on Hotmail (which apparently gives out free email accounts).
It's not Microsoft's software that makes me sick, it is the smug assurance Microsofties have that everyone that doesn't work for Microsoft must be an idiot. Microsoft treats their customers like thieves and continually insults their intelligence, and then they wonder why so many people are willing to download and use a Unix re-hash written by a Finnish undergrad and supported over the Internet instead of their (arguably) easier to use software.
Linux will continue to gain marketshare until Microsoft finally learns what customer service really is about (and no, it's not about making it hard for them to make MP3s).
I hate to break up your utopian anti-capitalist dream, but the GPL fits into a captitalist society much better than you think. For example, Cygnus was profitable (and growing) for years before anyone had ever heard of RedHat. They used gcc as a battering ram to open the compiler market for them. Had they just been another compiler company they would have disappeared into the annals of time without a trace. Instead they gave away the compiler, and (in many areas) became the de-facto standard. This not only undermined the value of their competitors closed source compilers, but it gave them control (although very benevolent control) over a fairly large portion of the overall compiler support business.
If you think about it, GPL programmers are very much like lawyers. Lawyers aren't paid for creating new laws (well most aren't), but instead they are paid for their knowledge in applying the law. With Free Software the value isn't in the 1's and 0's themselves, but instead it is in the talents of those folks who know how to create solutions with the software. This is bad news for Microsoft (because they sell software), but it is good news for nearly everyone else (especially the freelance hacker and the software consumer).
All of a sudden I can offer my clients robust solutions without having to pay any Microsoft tax. I can even create custom proprietary solutions on top of already existing code (and charge money for this solution). However, if I am not careful one of my competitors will create a similar solution and release it under a Free License. His solution will then almost certainly become the de-facto standard, and his intimate knowledge of the new standard will become more valuable than my knowledge of a proprietary non-standard solution. In other words, at some point it becomes in my best interest to share.
The days when standards could be forced from pure market pressure alone are coming to an end. Even Microsoft with 90% of the desktop market is finding that they have to give software away to have any chance of affecting de-facto standards. The only reason that .Net even has a chance is because they based it on a whole raft of open protocols (complete with open source implementations). The only reason that we aren't all still using Netscape is that Microsoft gave away IE. And now with Microsoft's draconian new licensing scheme for Office XP don't be surprised if small businesses and home users start using StarOffice.
This sort of technique works swimmingly against Microsoft's other commercial software competitors, but it isn't nearly as effective against Linux because Linux can be used without asking for permission from the accountants.
In every business where I have seen Linux used it started off as the basis of a skunkworks project. Linux was chosen because the project had little or no funding. That's the beautty of Linux really, all you need is an idea, and a little bit of time, Linux supplies the rest. It comes complete with an amazing set of tools, and there are plenty of folks out on the Internet that are more than happy to point you in the right direction. The documentation might be spotty at times, but there is plenty of example code to use, and chances are good that someone else has already written the difficult bits for you.
On several occassions I have seen Linux implementations finished before the "official" proprietary software based project that it was competing with was able to even get the necessary software licenses. And once Linux gains a foothold in the company it spreads like the plague. Accountants are not stupid. Part of the reason that Linux is doing so well in the server arena is that accountants know that you don't always get what you pay for. Microsoft's latest tactics will backfire fantastically. In fact, this particular speech will probably be ridiculed almost as much as Alchin's "Un-American" crack.
Perhaps if the government didn't have to pay so much in software licensing fees they could afford to pay their employees more.
The fact of the matter is that it takes equivalent effort to secure both Linux and Windows (actually, that isn't quite true Linux is easier to secure...). The same government employees that are currently setting up insecure Windows boxes would almost certainly set up Linux so that it was insecure as well.
Linux would at least be less expensive.
Agreed. I love Python, but I still use Perl for data munging. It is without a doubt the best text processing tool available (and that's not exactly a niche market either).
I would certainly agree that Oracle on Solaris is more scalable, bulletproof, karma-riffic, etc. than MS SQL server, but you only need an aircraft carrier when you are fighter planes at sea. If you are just going fishing, a rowboat is a much more useful craft.
While it certainly is true that Microsoft has hyped their database as being capable of things it really isn't capable of, for most projects it is perfectly adequate. Of course, in that same vein PostgreSQL would probably work as well, and it is a heck of a lot cheaper than either Oracle or SQL Server
The FSF obsesses over these things because that is the way that the law works. Writing legal documents is a lot like writing complex C memory management code. One off by one error and the entire application segfaults. It's the same thing with the law. One minor detail could cost the case, and when you are talking about something as important to the FSF as the continued "freeness" of the software they have developed you can see why this would make them a little paranoid. Because of this the FSF has worked very hard to make sure that everything that they do is as legal and aboveboard as possible.
That's why they require pen and ink signatures on a legal document assigning them as copyright holder before you can work on GNU software. They know that only the legal copyright holder can press charges in the US, and they want to be sure that they have the power to enforce their license.
Many of the other open source projects (like Python, for instance) have been much more haphazard about the licensing of their product. Guido, for example, failed to make sure before continuing work on Python that it would continue under the same X style license as it always had. His employer got nervous, and their lawyers came up with a license that isn't GPL compatible (at least according to the FSF lawyers).
It is convenient to blame the FSF lawyers, but they didn't change the original Python license. They just pointed out that they don't feel that the new license is GPL compatible. If these details weren't important, then perhaps the people who changed the original license should change it back. The fact of the matter is that the details probably are important enough that neither side is going to bend. The FSF doesn't want to threaten the GPL, and the lawyers at CNRI and Digital Creations don't want to be liable for problems someone might have with Python.
The FSF should be commended for taking care of these details before it starts developing software. If Guido would have done the same, there wouldn't be any problem.
That's really the beautty of Python's whitespace blocks. Both the programmer and the parser are looking at the same cues for block nesting. I am sure you have debugged C code that was missing a brace (or worse that had one misplaced) but was still indented "correctly." Your mind thinks that everything is hunky dory because the code "looks" right. This doesn't happen very often if you are a skilled C coder (with an intelligent text editor), but it does happen. And it happens a lot with newbie programmers. I was teaching my little brother Perl at one point, and he had all sorts of trouble with braces. However, when we switched to Python there was no longer any need for him to think about which braces matched up. I didn't believe that Python's significant whitespace was a good idea either, at first, but I am a believer now.
I am not a vi user, so I can't help you there.
And Microsoft wonders why Apache and Linux owns the web hosting market. That's the most horrific story I have heard all day.
If Microsoft really wanted to own the web server arena what they would do is release a slimmed down version of Windows 2000 complete with development tools, Commerce server (and all that entails) and then price it low enough that you would be crazy not to use it. Limit it to one processor machines, and cut out nifty stuff like failover, but make it a fairly complete package. As it now stands I can afford the added cost of learning Linux and PostgreSQL and Zope, because I know that it is time invested in tools that I will be able to use over and over again royalty free. If Microsoft were to release a more useful set of tools for a reasonably low price I would be very tempted to rethink my strategy.
They could then upsell to developers and businesses that needed the full version of the tools. As soon as your business got big enough for a dual processor machine, or failover, or even putting the database on a separate machine. Of course, at that point the company probably wouldn't feel nearly as bad about the cost of the full blown version of the tools.
If Microsoft goes into the hardware business, especially the server hardware business, then you can bet your last nickel that the hardware OEMs will go on a media frenzy about how cool their new "Linux application servers" are. The last thing that the OEMs are going to allow is for Microsoft to undercut them in their fastest growing market. Since they won't be able to compete with Microsoft on price (MS gets Windows for free) they will have no choice but to use Linux to make up the difference.
Linux servers made by folks that make inexpensive hardware for a living are very likely to be less expensive than the best that Microsoft can do.
My guess is that the Blade Server edition will simply be a low-cost slimmed down version of Windows 2000. Of course, it will probably have very limited use, and it will still be more expensive than free. Microsoft can try and compete in the low cost arena, but my guess is that they haven't got a prayer. Linux is nearly a match for the best that Microsoft can throw at it in the server arena. A cut rate version of Windows would look positively anemic compared to what you get for free with Linux.
Microsoft's only chance, in the web hosting arena, is to fold more features into the OS. Heck, I wouldn't personally even consider Microsoft for my web servers until it could touch the usefulness I get out of Linux, PostgreSQL, and Zope at a low basic price (and with nicer interfaces). Those tools may be harder to learn, but the knowledge pays for itself easily over time.
Good enough and less expensive always wins.
That's why I think that Windows XP is doomed unless Windows ME is taken off of the market.
There is nothing wrong with the WMA format, other than the fact that it isn't an open format (you can only get a WMA player from Microsoft or one of their licensees), and that is has content management built in (meaning it will be possible to tie your WMAs to one machine).
Now, if you can't imagine a day when you might want to play your music on a non-Microsoft licensed piece of equipment, and you can't imagine ever wanting to move your files from your present computer to a future one, then you are right, the WMA file format is great.
Yes, I realize that this is paranoid, and probably delusional. But why would Microsoft build this sort of stuff into the format if they weren't planning on turning the features on eventually.
Fortunately, we can just as easily use the Ogg Vorbis format, which is also very good, and get most of the benefits of WMA without all of the hassles (and potential hassles). It's patent free, it's licensed under a BSD style license, and it is supported in all of the more popular players (including some upcoming hardware based players). My guess is that WMA will soon be the medium of choice for the music industry, and Ogg Vorbis will be the medium of choice for everyone else.
Microsoft could guarantee OS penetration with pre-loading when PC sales were going like crazy, but that's simply not the case anymore. For example, there are a lot more people using Windows 95 still than Windows ME, and these two OSes are basically compatible with each other. Meaning that it was perfectly safe for the Windows 9X user to purchase a computer with Windows ME on it and expect that his software would still run.
This isn't the case with Windows XP, and it is going to cause Microsoft more than its share of fits. Unless Microsoft discontinues Windows ME completely there are still going to be some people who will prefer it. Especially if it allows them to buy a less expensive computer.
As for developers, my guess is that they will almost certainly continue to develop software that runs on Win 9X. After all, that's where all of the customers are, and Windows XP doesn't really have any "features" that are so compelling that it would cause developers to want to narrow their market to just Windows XP users. Even Microsoft makes sure that new versions of their desktop software runs on Windows 95.
Once again, we'll see. They have got a lot of momentum, and they have the preload market locked up. But times are tight, and Windows XP is just an OS. In many ways it is less desireable to the home and small business user than Windows 9X, and Microsoft's new draconian IP rights technologies are not going to make people happy. A slow quarter for the computer market that was attributed to customer dissatisfaction with Windows XP would send Microsoft back to the drawing board, and it would accelerate "alternatives" like never before.
At the end of the day the old adage "the customer is always right" is the surest way to maintain your customer base, and if Microsoft keeps their antics up they will eventually learn that the hard way. I am not saying that Windows XP will be the crack in the dam that starts the flood of customers away from Windows. Microsoft still has a fairly commanding lead on the desktop, for now. They would have to push the OEMs fairly hard for there to be any chance of an open revolt. But it's only a matter of time if Microsoft doesn't worry more about their customers.
It will be interesting to see what happens, but I am not expecting Microsoft to have to squeeze the OEMs too terribly hard. Especially since it is in the OEMs best interests to have Windows XP do well (it requires beefier hardware).
In the end, it will be up to the customers who decide if Windows XP will fly or not. If Microsoft pushes consumers or OEMs towards Windows XP too hard then you can bet that they will only increase the tendency of their customers to look for alternatives.