Linux user dissects Microsoft's 'weak value proposition'
By Ranger Rick, Slashdot Reader
THE INTERNET, Worldwide -- Think of it as a burst of cold international rain on the Microsoft parade. In a far-reaching interview this week with himself, Slashdot reader Ranger Rick sounded off on the closed-source operating system, outlining what he considers are fundamental flaws with the Microsoft business model and the OS itself.
"I see it as more of a threat to Macintosh. Windows is a challenge, a competitor," Rick said. "The more I study Windows, the weaker I think the value proposition is to customers."
Technical misgivings
Rick delineated two main technical reasons why he believes Windows will not succeed with corporate customers.
First, a broad base of support for applications -- especially small, interoperable, easily-customizable, instantly-available applications, with modern internet distributions channels -- is necessary for an operating system to compete in today's market, he said.
"Five years ago, everything was shrink-wrapped, and the trend since then has been to customize standard shrink-wrapped software for individual business needs," Rick said. A "closed-design" ethos will not work in corporations, he said, where open standards ease interoperability and customizability.
The second failing, Rick believes, is an extreme level of integration between the OS and its applications. It's a point that touches on ground where holy wars are fought.
Indeed, some Microsoft advocates say Microsoft's integration of one large codebase with everything in one package is what makes it appealing. Reed disagrees.
"People want less integration," he said. "They want a choice between tools to use, with an open standard of interoperability. On the server side they want strong queuing and security. This is all done through a comprehensive set of tools that can be customized to their needs, which use open protocols for talking to each other. Microsoft has a high degree of integration, and therefore is more rigid and uncontrollable. Microsoft is basically a big step backward for those two reasons plus others."
Economies of scale
Rick next turned to the economics of Microsoft. He said his preliminary cost analysis showed Microsoft actually costs end users more than Linux.
"We have very little concern we can't compete with Microsoft on a TCO level," Rick said. "We think the total cost of ownership of Linux is lower than NT, but it's still hard to do good TCO studies because at the moment they're hard to compare since a large majority of Linux applications are free and have been developed, debugged, and improved upon for years, while NT supports so few Internet standards out of the box."
"Let's say, for discussion, they are equally scalable," he said. "And let's assume applications are available for both, and setup time is the same. Given all these factors, the best you could hope for is about the same cost per transaction between servers."
But Ranger Rick turned that argument on its ear.
"The problem with that is there are fewer applications available with the base NT install, there's a shaky development road map (with the Windows 2000 release date being pushed back again and again), and there's a higher technical risk in using it," he said. "You could cut NT some slack if it were sharply lower in cost per transaction than Linux, but that's not the case."
Acknowledging the phenomenon
Ranger Rick did acknowledge the myriad marketing forces that have propelled Windows NT into the spotlight, to the point that the OS was even featured in major print and online publications.
Ranger Rick attributed the closed-source hype to a number of factors, including a lack of fairness in media coverage of Windows NT.
"We're all in the business of wanting the customer to have the information needed to make informed choices," Rick said. "We haven't seen a flavor of NT coverage that addresses that. Some criticalness is needed.
For example, "some people say positive things about NT when their message is anti-Linux," he said. "But I wonder, in 36 months is this the next [Network Computer] or is it a viable OS? We don't see people question the NT numbers."
Ranger Rick pointed out that it's hard to track shipments of an open-source platform and its applications when they can be downloaded for free from any number of Web sites. "We feel that 2 to 20 percent of Windows NT shipments turned out to be 'shelfware,'" he said. "From what we can tell, many servers come bundled with Windows and then have Linux installed instead. In fact," he continued, "many supposed Windows NT file and print servers are actually running Linux, and the users can't tell the difference!"
As for the recent vendor support at Windows conferences, Rick wasn't suprised, adding that the media needs to apply the same critical eye to this trend.
"Take IBM," he said. "They have long supported multiple OSes on X86. They are fundamentally in the service business. You would expect them to support Windows and Linux. But the deep investment is in services. It's a human investment -- developers, support -- the operating system is irrelevant. You have to separate out what OS they will install if you ask them and what investments they make."
But Ranger Rick's most passionate argument came on the development, where he said skill and enjoyment is the wild card that many observers have been ignoring.
"I find it hard to believe that some of the best computer scientists in the world will want to do their work in a stuffy corporate environment, missing deadlines, making code compromises, sitting in meetings," he said. "Without a long-term road map, programmers are free to make the best possible technical decisions, without worrying whether deadlines must be met, and worrying if the marketing department is happy. I have a hard time believing these visionary programmers and developers would get the same satisfaction just being another cog in the machine. I do not believe in that vision of the future."
But hey, it's competition
For all its shortcomings, Windows NT is part of a larger competitive landscape in the server realm, Rick said. "In the OS market, a fair person would see extraordinary barriers to competition," he said. "And the competition exists in terms of business model and channel model, and NT is a very interesting case."
For linux, that's key, since the question of whether it faces "real" competition in the OS market has been a contentious issue.
Linux has done well in server market share, Muth said, but "we have lots to do in some parts of the market. Take the $100,000 to $1 million server range."
"There is extraordinary competition," he reiterated. "The market is a rich mosaic of parry and thrust from the vendors, with competing OEM service deals in the way of a free OS marketplace where choice rules. We have to earn our stripes every day. That's how it should be."
> Have you tried to surf todays web using > Netscape or IE 2? Half the web sites do not > work, and a lot of the ones that do look > terrible. People will upgrade their browsers if > the web becomes unworkable with their current > one.
That's just the thing, they don't. *You* know that the web isn't supposed to look like that, but they don't... Not to mention, there are plenty of people like my mom who have a 386 just for word an a little browsing to check the weather... try putting Netscape 4.x or the IE4 beastie on it. Watch it crawl.
> How many people do you see still using Mosaic > because they are affraid Netscape is buggy?
Do you run a web site that gets a decent amount of hits? Check your logs, you'd be amazed.
Heh, yeah, our company is currently migrating it's Netware servers to NT. They have (I think) somewhere along the lines of 4,000 netware servers, and are now already at about the 10,000 mark with NT, and they're not even finished yet!
> If you need to see whether a person you are > looking for is currently online, or not, you > use finger. If you need "Instant Messaging", > there's always ytalk. Chat? IRC, and so on...
So you're saying I have to always be telnetted into my server, and paying attention to my telnet session to talk to people? Or do I have to make people go to my web site to get my IP, and maybe I'm booted into Linux to answer them, and maybe they have a talk client... and...
The nice thing about instant messaging is just that. Instant messaging. As a program, ICQ is pretty much a piece of crap, but it has the advantage that a LOT of people use it. You can be fairly sure to get ahold of friends online. Even when your webpage changes, your email address changes, whatever, you always have that "ICQ number", and people can get ahold of you.
Maybe someday we can "convert" all those ICQ users over to something that works better, but most people are content where they are. Until then, I'll have to live with ICQ when I want to get ahold of my friend from another state easily...
Slashdot Mirror
By Ranger Rick, Slashdot Reader
THE INTERNET, Worldwide -- Think of it as a burst of cold international rain on the Microsoft parade. In a far-reaching interview this week with himself, Slashdot reader Ranger Rick sounded off on the closed-source operating system, outlining what he considers are fundamental flaws with the Microsoft business model and the OS itself.
"I see it as more of a threat to Macintosh. Windows is a challenge, a competitor," Rick said. "The more I study Windows, the weaker I think the value proposition is to customers."
Technical misgivings
Rick delineated two main technical reasons why he believes Windows will not succeed with corporate customers.
First, a broad base of support for applications -- especially small, interoperable, easily-customizable, instantly-available applications, with modern internet distributions channels -- is necessary for an operating system to compete in today's market, he said.
"Five years ago, everything was shrink-wrapped, and the trend since then has been to customize standard shrink-wrapped software for individual business needs," Rick said. A "closed-design" ethos will not work in corporations, he said, where open standards ease interoperability and customizability.
The second failing, Rick believes, is an extreme level of integration between the OS and its applications. It's a point that touches on ground where holy wars are fought.
Indeed, some Microsoft advocates say Microsoft's integration of one large codebase with everything in one package is what makes it appealing. Reed disagrees.
"People want less integration," he said. "They want a choice between tools to use, with an open standard of interoperability. On the server side they want strong queuing and security. This is all done through a comprehensive set of tools that can be customized to their needs, which use open protocols for talking to each other. Microsoft has a high degree of integration, and therefore is more rigid and uncontrollable. Microsoft is basically a big step backward for those two reasons plus others."
Economies of scale
Rick next turned to the economics of Microsoft. He said his preliminary cost analysis showed Microsoft actually costs end users more than Linux.
"We have very little concern we can't compete with Microsoft on a TCO level," Rick said. "We think the total cost of ownership of Linux is lower than NT, but it's still hard to do good TCO studies because at the moment they're hard to compare since a large majority of Linux applications are free and have been developed, debugged, and improved upon for years, while NT supports so few Internet standards out of the box."
"Let's say, for discussion, they are equally scalable," he said. "And let's assume applications are available for both, and setup time is the same. Given all these factors, the best you could hope for is about the same cost per transaction between servers."
But Ranger Rick turned that argument on its ear.
"The problem with that is there are fewer applications available with the base NT install, there's a shaky development road map (with the Windows 2000 release date being pushed back again and again), and there's a higher technical risk in using it," he said. "You could cut NT some slack if it were sharply lower in cost per transaction than Linux, but that's not the case."
Acknowledging the phenomenon
Ranger Rick did acknowledge the myriad marketing forces that have propelled Windows NT into the spotlight, to the point that the OS was even featured in major print and online publications.
Ranger Rick attributed the closed-source hype to a number of factors, including a lack of fairness in media coverage of Windows NT.
"We're all in the business of wanting the customer to have the information needed to make informed choices," Rick said. "We haven't seen a flavor of NT coverage that addresses that. Some criticalness is needed.
For example, "some people say positive things about NT when their message is anti-Linux," he said. "But I wonder, in 36 months is this the next [Network Computer] or is it a viable OS? We don't see people question the NT numbers."
Ranger Rick pointed out that it's hard to track shipments of an open-source platform and its applications when they can be downloaded for free from any number of Web sites. "We feel that 2 to 20 percent of Windows NT shipments turned out to be 'shelfware,'" he said. "From what we can tell, many servers come bundled with Windows and then have Linux installed instead. In fact," he continued, "many supposed Windows NT file and print servers are actually running Linux, and the users can't tell the difference!"
As for the recent vendor support at Windows conferences, Rick wasn't suprised, adding that the media needs to apply the same critical eye to this trend.
"Take IBM," he said. "They have long supported multiple OSes on X86. They are fundamentally in the service business. You would expect them to support Windows and Linux. But the deep investment is in services. It's a human investment -- developers, support -- the operating system is irrelevant. You have to separate out what OS they will install if you ask them and what investments they make."
But Ranger Rick's most passionate argument came on the development, where he said skill and enjoyment is the wild card that many observers have been ignoring.
"I find it hard to believe that some of the best computer scientists in the world will want to do their work in a stuffy corporate environment, missing deadlines, making code compromises, sitting in meetings," he said. "Without a long-term road map, programmers are free to make the best possible technical decisions, without worrying whether deadlines must be met, and worrying if the marketing department is happy. I have a hard time believing these visionary programmers and developers would get the same satisfaction just being another cog in the machine. I do not believe in that vision of the future."
But hey, it's competition
For all its shortcomings, Windows NT is part of a larger competitive landscape in the server realm, Rick said. "In the OS market, a fair person would see extraordinary barriers to competition," he said. "And the competition exists in terms of business model and channel model, and NT is a very interesting case."
For linux, that's key, since the question of whether it faces "real" competition in the OS market has been a contentious issue.
Linux has done well in server market share, Muth said, but "we have lots to do in some parts of the market. Take the $100,000 to $1 million server range."
"There is extraordinary competition," he reiterated. "The market is a rich mosaic of parry and thrust from the vendors, with competing OEM service deals in the way of a free OS marketplace where choice rules. We have to earn our stripes every day. That's how it should be."
Actually, to anyone who's seen it, KDE looks waaaay more CDE-derived than it does Windows-derived. Windows just copied CDE... ;)
> Have you tried to surf todays web using
> Netscape or IE 2? Half the web sites do not
> work, and a lot of the ones that do look
> terrible. People will upgrade their browsers if
> the web becomes unworkable with their current
> one.
That's just the thing, they don't. *You* know that the web isn't supposed to look like that, but they don't... Not to mention, there are plenty of people like my mom who have a 386 just for word an a little browsing to check the weather... try putting Netscape 4.x or the IE4 beastie on it. Watch it crawl.
> How many people do you see still using Mosaic
> because they are affraid Netscape is buggy?
Do you run a web site that gets a decent amount of hits? Check your logs, you'd be amazed.
:)
Heh, yeah, our company is currently migrating it's Netware servers to NT. They have (I think) somewhere along the lines of 4,000 netware servers, and are now already at about the 10,000 mark with NT, and they're not even finished yet!
And that's on better hardware.
*shudder*
Maybe you should read "Lord of the Token Rings", it has some startling insights. ;)
No, he meant "happy". :)
When's 2.4 coming out?!?
(grin)
> If you need to see whether a person you are
> looking for is currently online, or not, you
> use finger. If you need "Instant Messaging",
> there's always ytalk. Chat? IRC, and so on...
So you're saying I have to always be telnetted into my server, and paying attention to my telnet session to talk to people? Or do I have to make people go to my web site to get my IP, and maybe I'm booted into Linux to answer them, and maybe they have a talk client... and...
The nice thing about instant messaging is just that. Instant messaging. As a program, ICQ is pretty much a piece of crap, but it has the advantage that a LOT of people use it. You can be fairly sure to get ahold of friends online. Even when your webpage changes, your email address changes, whatever, you always have that "ICQ number", and people can get ahold of you.
Maybe someday we can "convert" all those ICQ users over to something that works better, but most people are content where they are. Until then, I'll have to live with ICQ when I want to get ahold of my friend from another state easily...