Microsoft is a monopolist who has been convicted of abusing the market, using their position for leverage
I know this may sound bizarre, but could you please explain to me how M$ is a monopoly? I can buy any whitebox pc with no OS, load whatever non-M$ software I want, and never send a dime to M$. This has always been the case. The court's decision is a result of fine lawyering on the part of the plaintiffs, with a big dose of politics thrown in. (Remember this is the same system that said United Airlines and US Air shouldn't merge since they would be too dominant, now both are in Chapter 11.)
As the Linux dollars get bigger, you can only expect people to start examining their potential for filing claims, like it or not. This is exactly what happened to M$, (and IBM, silicone manufacturers and others with deep pockets.) I personally think the SCO suit is BS, but I thought the same thing of the M$ suit. I would not care to predict how this will turn out. Like the original poster, however, I agree that this is exactly what M$ competitors did to it. Well, they set a precedent, and now it may be coming back to bite the *nix community.
I hope you didn't intend to include me in that group of narcissists. Idealist maybe, but not narcissist.
You certainly are not in that category! If you were, you would not have responded to heretical statements that suggest Jobs or Gates deserve credit for anything!
Far from hating Jobs and Gates, I feel we're indebted to them for how commonplace PCs are today. If not for them, I believe we'd be a decade behind and who knows...we might not even have the Linux that we have today.
I share that belief.
I tend to avoid people who adopt the "high-priest" attitude towards computing. I'm much more comfortable with someone that's willing to say, "Hmm, ya know I don't really know the answer to that question. Let's see if we can figure it out." vs. the bullshit artist asshole that says, "The answer to your question is over your head and I don't have the time to explain it to you."
So you know the type! I worked with one of these priests once. He certainly knew Unix, made damn sure everyone knew he had a 220 IQ, and made you do a song & dance before he would answer a question. One day a friend of mine decided to hit the capslock key while his screensaver was active. His keyboard didn't have a capslock light, so it wasn't obvious what happened. The priest spent at least 2 hours trying to figure out what happened, starting remote sessions, wading through config files, looking at network packets, etc. Sure was amusing to watch him outsmart himself, and he never found out who did it. One can only imagine what would have happened to our accounts if he did.
But paradigms can shift...the game can change. How else would we have arrived at this point where code is intellectual property when, at one time, everyone shared their code with each other?
Actually code sharing is the anomaly. In the 60s, 70s and even the 80s, software was highly proprietary. If you bought IBM mainframes, you were only going to use IBM hardware, software and service. Same for DEC, Unisys, Wang, etc. Then Unix migrated out of the lab with this odd notion of networking built in, which meant that different machines could share data. The OSs were still proprietary, however, as were the apps. It was a still a big deal though, since a DEC machine could now talk to an IBM machine. The merits of distributed computing began to overcome the vendor exclusive business model. Things were great for *nix. In the meantime, PCs were becoming slightly more that interesting than hobby devices, enough so that IBM finally decided to make one just so the competition wouldn't get some kind of marketing advantage. The PC project wasn't given much budget though, and IBM didn't expect to sell many of them. The designers of the PC figured they better make the hardware architecture open, since IBM wasn't going to spend any effort offering peripherals to make the PC more attractive. Funny thing, though, Bricklin had to go off and invent the spreadsheet, which was a huge productivity tool and only required a PC to run.
Once it was obvious how important the PC was, what did IBM do? Invent the Microchannel architecture, which was proprietary, in an effort to gain dominance over the PC market. By then it was too late; the market could ignore IBM products if necessary. Whew! So in fact, hardware was the first open standard in the commercial world, and not for altruistic reasons.
It's also interesting to note that IBM was fending off DOJ anti-trust back then, a case that was eventually dropped as the PC took off. The DOJ went after IBM because they were thought to be hegemenonic, even though the market was undoing that dominance under their noses. I view the recent anti-trust actions against M$ the same way. The difference in outcome is that IBM knew how to play the Washington game much better than M$, so M$ lost the decision. Many on/. proclaim "M$ is evil" as though it were uttered by the Prophets because of this, but they are fools to think the decision is without question. Just recently the DOJ proclaimed that United Airlines and US Air should not merge, as the combination would be too dominant. Now both are in bankruptcy. Some dominance!
The only obstacles to that future that I perceive are the battles we're fighting today: DRM, infinite copyright, software patents and obtuse litigation
As for philosophical matters, we are in total agreement regarding DRM and ownership/use of intellectual property. The idea that organizations such as the RIAA should be able to "tax" ISPs because some use the Internet to trade files, or that anything I create on my PC may not actually be entirely mine is pretty disturbing to say the least. The good news is that there is healthy debate about these subjects!
So, we meet again! Remember what I said about the *nix vendors in the other thread? Behold, it's deja vu all over again. The really amusing thing to me is that I was going to mention MR as one of the people who will probably take Linux down the same path the old *nix vendors took, but then I thought that might not be a fair assessment on my part.
Yeesh, a couple of days later I'm reading a confirmation of my thinking here on/. Since you said your father has worked with Unix for a long time, ask him if any of this looks familiar. I bet it does...
I think your belief is misdirected. The *nix community is heavily populated by narcissists who have always hated Gates and Jobs for bringing powerful computing to the unwashed consumer, and especially to the untouchable non-annointed programmers who make a living using things like Flash, VB, Office and Mac DTP/video editing apps. MR is by any definition undeserving of recognition by the *nix priesthood, and he is not the first one to try to make his *nix the 'nix. This is an old game with new players, that's all. In general, it's important to recognize that tech is an extremely difficult business proposition. There are really only four people I can think of who know how to execute it well: Gates, Jobs, Chambers, and Ellison.
As for Linux, I still think its most compelling application is as an embedded OS. Just look at TiVo. How may other devices have been called "God's Machine" by government officials? Note also that TiVo/Linux has a consistent UI, is almost plug and play, provides a valuable service, and, is more affordable since it does not carry a big license load from a proprietary OS. If you want to hit it big in the Linux game, get to know some hardware people! It's a waste of time to get into this desktop conflict. You know what is said about those who ignore history...
Actually I think we are saying the same thing, but we are reaching different conclusions. I still think I'm comparing Apple(s) to apples (pun intended!)
I say distro variation options. -Same thing was said by advocates of the *nix's back then.
And, based on recent articles I've read, I believe that Microsoft is pretty worried about the threat of free and/or open-source software They are, which will inspire them to make better products, which is exactly how they prevailed over much better OSs years ago.
In fact, in 1994 I was telling people M$ would get sued for anti-trust in "about 5 years" simply because their product mix would blow the competition out of the water. I also added that I didn't think they would deserve it, but it would happen because of their eventual market predominance. Sho nuff...
Perhaps your belief that there "can be only one" is rooted in the quasi-reality of today. Or maybe you've just watched The Highlander too many times.:) Just as you go to a store and find the pair of jeans that not only fit you but that are comfortable...the same concept can apply to the operating system on your computer. That's why Levis come in so many flavors: 501, 505, etc.
Highlander? Nah, did listen to Steve Jobs though. Remember when he mandated that all apps for the Mac would would have the "File / Edit / View..." structure? I thought it was dumb at the time to limit choice, but he recognized the immense consumer appeal of UI consistency. So, while as technologists we may not like this, it's the kind of restriction that made the Mac and (horror) AOL so popular. BTW, last I looked, 50x jeans major feature difference is button or zip. There are some cosmetic differences, but functionally they are identical, and all are made from the same cotton substrate. (Hey, this is a site for nerds!)
I don't know if there will ever be "one distro to rule them all" but I for one certainly hope not. That philosophy (combined with closed-source and utter greed) is what created the monolith of mindshare that is Microsoft today.
Nah, the utility of COM, VB, and cheap OS & SDK prices made M$ what it is today. Later on they did play some questionable games with OEM licensing, but if they had been thinking they would have resolved this w/o getting dragged into anti-trust action. But, as I have already stated, I figured it was inevitable that they would be hit with anti-trust. If anything, the greed and closed mindset of Sun, IBM, AT&T and the other *nix vendors guaranteed the success of M$.
I agree with you about the value of choice of distro-from a technical perspective. It's just that I have seen that the broader market does not really want it so far.
Here at/. I read a lot of debate between KDE users and GNOME users. Rather than pit the two against each other, I tend to view them as choices. (And that's only GUI-related; MAC OS X and *BSD are also great choices.)
I agree, but the broad market does not. Non-technical users probably look at these arguments the same we look at the clothes at fashion shows: "Interesting, but who would ever wear that?!?" So, while Vuitton, Fendi, Armani, Givenchy and the rest argue over "who is best", the mass market cruises the Gap and buys jeans...
10 years ago, people were comparing System V, HP Unix, BSD, Solaris, OS2, etc.
Here I am reading the same thing about Linux as if the "distro" variation problems were new. They aren't, so I would guess M$ has little to worry about, given that they prevailed over vastly superior OSes many years ago. If Linux is going to be a serious desktop contender, there can be only one distro that is broadly supported. Whether that will ever happen, I don't know, tech-politics being what they are.
Regardless of what one thinks of M$, this looks like the tobacco shakedown to me. (I don't smoke, never have, and wouldn't miss Philip Morris and the rest if they were gone tomorrow.) In my view, the state of CA went to M$ and said "Pay off and we will stop bugging you." Later the AG will run for governor, bleating about his "big win."
It may sound strange, but I still don't see how M$ is a monopoly. You say yourself that you reloaded the OS on your systems, so how is M$ able to enforce its "monopoly?" Well, you were "forced" to buy the preloaded version of Windows.
What's not recognized, IMHO, is that if it were not for the cost/feature ratio of Windows 3.X, 9.X, and NT, PCs would have been sold in much lower volumes, for much higher cost. In addition, if it weren't for AOL (gasp!), Internet usage would never have taken off the way it did. So, in essence, that copy of Windows you are "forced" to buy probably is a much cheaper alternative than if M$ never existed.
I started programming *nix in the 80s, and always thought Windows was kind of a joke, especially given the segmented memory addressing requirement. When it came time to beef up the computer at home, I thought Sun box, OS, maybe gcc and an X/Motif GUI tool. Then I priced all of this... I've been mostly programming Windows ever since. (Did some OS2, firmware,and occasionally *nix.) For me, Linux is compelling as an embedded OS, not on the desktop. If I use an install of Windows and office for a few years, the license cost is more than offset by the global compatibility with drivers, hardware and in the case of Office, others I may wish to communicate with. For some strange reason, *nix people and IBM (in terms of OS2), never figured this out; they tried to extract maximum dollar from the customer and killed their markets. If Linux is ever going to make it on the desktop, there can only be one distro that matters.
Now to get back to that part about the shakedown: Whether talking about M$, tobacco, asbestos class actions, medical malpractice insurance or unintended negative consequences from telecomm anti-trust activity, I note a pattern of abuse by some trial lawyers and their political cronies that is damaging our economy. Before everyone jumps up and down about every settlement M$ makes or other penalties it faces, think about these events in the broader context of litigation in general.
After losing the lawsuit the RIAA filed against MP3.com, then forking over 200 million dollars of MP3.com investor equity to the RIAA, do you think he really cares about legal problems? The funny part of this occurred when MP3.com sued their law firm for giving them bad advice. Huh, wonder what ever happened to that suit?
Linux is new? Anyone remember all of the *nix'es back late 80s, early 90s? Linux isn't new, just the pricing is. Linux has the same problems *nix has always had: too many variations. Actually, Windows is much newer than Linux.
Seems to me we have seen this contest before, when amazingly enough, a 16 bit segmented memory model OS blew *nix and OS2 out of the water. Linux is much more interesting as an embedded OS than a desktop OS.
You are exactly right. In business, one can do pretty well just by not making catastophic mistakes. Sooner or later your competitors will, and the market will eliminate them for you. The Linux community is doing M$ a big favor by copying the Windows interface, which will have exactly the effect that you mention. Linux will become the K-Tel not-the-original-artists crap knock-off product that the general public will avoid.
On the other hand, there is an original, very powerful, intuitive Linux UI that I use every day. It happens to be rendered by my TiVo. While Linux is fun to tinker with, that is irrelevant to me from a business perspective since I write software and enjoy this kind of activity. When non-tech people ask me what kind of PC to buy, I tell them to watch the Dell site for deals and buy the lowest cost XP machine that suits their needs. Why? Easy: it will run the software they already have, easy to install new hardware since drivers aren't a problem (generally), and lots of "idiots" and "dummy" books to explain the basics.
I tell the M$ haters to go buy a white box at the local hole-in-the-wall and load Red Hat. Then they find out it doesn't run some esoteric program they have and complain. In the end, they refuse to buy XP and give M$ the money, they can't get their dog weight estimator software for Linux, so they stick with '98 or '95! The best thing about Linux ideas is that they keep M$ spooked, which means M$ isn't going to turn stupid the way IBM and all of the moronic *nix companies did in the 80s-90s.
From a business model perspective, Linux is best suited for mass-produced hardware devices where cost is a major consideration. All the talk about KDE/Gnome/XPde, etc is just a re-hash of the time when Windows 3.1 came out and Sun, HP, IBM and others were pushing their UI of the day. -Been there done that-
Speaking of Sun "Innovation-Through-Litigation" Microsystems, who are they going to sue next? Philip Morris? Gee, if they could get the Java VM shipped with every pack of Marlboros, they might actually make money on Java!
Regardless of what one thinks of Microsoft, what do these move say about Sun? I've been in the tech biz for some time, and I know of no one who can tell me what Sun's biz model is. Selling software? Guess not. Selling hardware? Fine, go compete with Dell if you want to. My guess is that there will be two major software companies in the future: Microsoft and IBM, guessing that IBM buys Red Hat.
I stopped getting sick after I replaced my chair with my old 19" CRT (kinda like sitting on one of those backless Swedish chairs) and expensed the 6 x 19" display.
Has anyone addressed the Windows v. *nix cost of software development? Every *nix IDE I have used sucks compared to Visual Studio / VB. (Yeah, yeah, real programmers wouldn't use VB...) While Linux is very cool from an economist's point of view, serving as an example of peer production and all, what does it say when an OS has to be free to get people to accept it?
Is *nix too tied to Java? As a developer, I like C# and the.Net framework far more than J2EE, but does it matter? Is the cost of the OS more important than development cost/efficiency? Clearly OS2 and *nix were better OSes than Windows 3.1, but dev tools for Windows were far better and cheaper. That was the biggest reason for the demand for Windows. IMHO, Windows dev tools are still better, but Linux is almost free now. What good is an OS if the app I want doesn't run on it? I'm still not certain as to how this will be resolved. I could imagine a situation in the future where lots of utility stuff is written for Linux and Windows, but the high value added stuff is written for Windows.
Seems to me the Spanish have apparently run into one manifestion of this situation. I can imagine the conversation now: "OK, we will keep the Windows systems until someone writes XYZ for Linux." But as long as there is an XYZ.x for Windows first, there will always be a need for Windows, and as long as the dev tools for Windows are better than those for Linux, there will always be an XYZ.x.
So it was not illegal for Netscape to offer a free browser, but it was illegal for Softee to do so?
What stops anyone using Windows from downloading another browser? What stops you from loading Linux or OS2 on your Intel system?
Where exactly is the monopoly here?
My point is that Jackson's technology arguments in support of his monopoly decision are pretty questionable.
If Jackson were the judge in your cousin's case, he would find the auto manufacturer guilty of making a car desireable to a thief.
If you read his Findings of Fact, you will find it is full of illogic such as that stated in section V.G.2:
----
V. MICROSOFT'S RESPONSE TO THE BROWSER THREAT
G. Microsoft's Success in Excluding Navigator from the Channels that Lead Most Efficiently to Browser Usage
2. Excluding Navigator from the OEM Channel
152. Moreover, many consumers who need an operating system, including a substantial percentage of corporate consumers, do not want a browser at all. For example, if a consumer has no desire to browse the Web, he may not want a browser taking up memory on his hard disk and slowing his system's performance. Also, for businesses desiring to inhibit employees' access to the Internet while minimizing system support costs, the most efficient solution is often using PC systems without browsers.
----
I see, a browser is useless without the web, and it hampers corporate efficiency because it takes up too much disk space and IT time. Meanwhile, we have Worldcom perpetrating a multi-BILLION dollar fraud, Enron cooking their books and ripping off California power customers for a few hundred million. So what does Judge Jackson find important? Free browsers.
Softee was dumb not to settle this thing from the beginning, but the DOJ was certainly going after the wrong company in terms of "harm to the consumer." Guess that's what happens when lawsuits are instigated by competitors.
Sun offers PCs running Linux. (Not much profit here!)
This is all great unless:
You own SUNW
You own Sun debt
You work for Sun
Must be McNealy's scorched earth policy. How long until SUNW is delisted and the biz reviews start flowing? Sad to say, I think this company is going the way of Cray Research.
Have a look at "Professional C#" published by Wrox, and "Programming Microsoft Windows with C#" by Charles Petzold. I'd recommend any book by Petzold, though!
Lessee... *nix is fragmented, Windows is the most widely used GUI, Apple is the interesting contender, must be '92! Just that this time WABI is called OO or something.
Wonder if Redmond is thinking OSX could be a good way to spike OS2, I mean Red Hat, on the desktop. Worked before...
My guess is that Sun's mis-management of Java will be studied in business schools for years to come. The moronic notion of launching lawsuits to beat the competition is also worthy of discussion. (Think RIAA here, too.)
I still don't buy the Softee is a monopoly argument, either. I can switch drives in a minute and have a completely non-'Soft machine, and I always used the free version of Netscape. Standard Oil... Now that was monopoly! Guess they don't make 'em like they used to.
If you want to buy a server from Dell, you have the choice of Win2K or Red Hat, so it's not entirely true that Linux isn't available.
It's amazing how many people flame Softee over the "monopoly" they acquired by selling good enough OSes for much, much less than the idiots at Sun and IBM. I remember telling friends in the early 90s that Soft would be sued on anti-trust grounds by the end of the decade. Not because of anything monopolistic they were doing, but due to the fact that their competitors were busy trying to overcharge customers for compiler and OS licenses, let alone 'nix hardware. I thought NT would be popular for all of the right reasons; popular enough to clock Sun and the rest.
Look at it this way: If Soft didn't encourage the volume demand for PC's, the Internet would still be an academic curiosity and Linux wouldn't exist. Can Soft stop me from running Linux on any of my machines? Obviously not, it takes me about a minute to switch disks, so how exactly does that make Soft a monopoly? "But what about IE?" Never stopped me from downloading the free version of Netscape.
FWIW, my guess is that eBay gets a call from the DOJ people in a few years. If eBay is smart, the attys are working on a response today.
You should hang around attorneys a little more. The threat of litigation is an effective tool. If one doesn't have or want to spend the money to defend oneself, the patent isn't worthless. Note the battle over the Gemstar EPG patents.
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Microsoft is a monopolist who has been convicted of abusing the market, using their position for leverage
I know this may sound bizarre, but could you please explain to me how M$ is a monopoly? I can buy any whitebox pc with no OS, load whatever non-M$ software I want, and never send a dime to M$. This has always been the case. The court's decision is a result of fine lawyering on the part of the plaintiffs, with a big dose of politics thrown in. (Remember this is the same system that said United Airlines and US Air shouldn't merge since they would be too dominant, now both are in Chapter 11.)
As the Linux dollars get bigger, you can only expect people to start examining their potential for filing claims, like it or not. This is exactly what happened to M$, (and IBM, silicone manufacturers and others with deep pockets.) I personally think the SCO suit is BS, but I thought the same thing of the M$ suit. I would not care to predict how this will turn out. Like the original poster, however, I agree that this is exactly what M$ competitors did to it. Well, they set a precedent, and now it may be coming back to bite the *nix community.
I hope you didn't intend to include me in that group of narcissists. Idealist maybe, but not narcissist.
You certainly are not in that category! If you were, you would not have responded to heretical statements that suggest Jobs or Gates deserve credit for anything!
Far from hating Jobs and Gates, I feel we're indebted to them for how commonplace PCs are today. If not for them, I believe we'd be a decade behind and who knows...we might not even have the Linux that we have today.
I share that belief.
I tend to avoid people who adopt the "high-priest" attitude towards computing. I'm much more comfortable with someone that's willing to say, "Hmm, ya know I don't really know the answer to that question. Let's see if we can figure it out." vs. the bullshit artist asshole that says, "The answer to your question is over your head and I don't have the time to explain it to you."
So you know the type! I worked with one of these priests once. He certainly knew Unix, made damn sure everyone knew he had a 220 IQ, and made you do a song & dance before he would answer a question. One day a friend of mine decided to hit the capslock key while his screensaver was active. His keyboard didn't have a capslock light, so it wasn't obvious what happened. The priest spent at least 2 hours trying to figure out what happened, starting remote sessions, wading through config files, looking at network packets, etc. Sure was amusing to watch him outsmart himself, and he never found out who did it. One can only imagine what would have happened to our accounts if he did.
But paradigms can shift...the game can change. How else would we have arrived at this point where code is intellectual property when, at one time, everyone shared their code with each other?
Actually code sharing is the anomaly. In the 60s, 70s and even the 80s, software was highly proprietary. If you bought IBM mainframes, you were only going to use IBM hardware, software and service. Same for DEC, Unisys, Wang, etc. Then Unix migrated out of the lab with this odd notion of networking built in, which meant that different machines could share data. The OSs were still proprietary, however, as were the apps. It was a still a big deal though, since a DEC machine could now talk to an IBM machine. The merits of distributed computing began to overcome the vendor exclusive business model. Things were great for *nix. In the meantime, PCs were becoming slightly more that interesting than hobby devices, enough so that IBM finally decided to make one just so the competition wouldn't get some kind of marketing advantage. The PC project wasn't given much budget though, and IBM didn't expect to sell many of them. The designers of the PC figured they better make the hardware architecture open, since IBM wasn't going to spend any effort offering peripherals to make the PC more attractive. Funny thing, though, Bricklin had to go off and invent the spreadsheet, which was a huge productivity tool and only required a PC to run.
Once it was obvious how important the PC was, what did IBM do? Invent the Microchannel architecture, which was proprietary, in an effort to gain dominance over the PC market. By then it was too late; the market could ignore IBM products if necessary. Whew! So in fact, hardware was the first open standard in the commercial world, and not for altruistic reasons.
It's also interesting to note that IBM was fending off DOJ anti-trust back then, a case that was eventually dropped as the PC took off. The DOJ went after IBM because they were thought to be hegemenonic, even though the market was undoing that dominance under their noses. I view the recent anti-trust actions against M$ the same way. The difference in outcome is that IBM knew how to play the Washington game much better than M$, so M$ lost the decision. Many on /. proclaim "M$ is evil" as though it were uttered by the Prophets because of this, but they are fools to think the decision is without question. Just recently the DOJ proclaimed that United Airlines and US Air should not merge, as the combination would be too dominant. Now both are in bankruptcy. Some dominance!
The only obstacles to that future that I perceive are the battles we're fighting today: DRM, infinite copyright, software patents and obtuse litigation
As for philosophical matters, we are in total agreement regarding DRM and ownership/use of intellectual property. The idea that organizations such as the RIAA should be able to "tax" ISPs because some use the Internet to trade files, or that anything I create on my PC may not actually be entirely mine is pretty disturbing to say the least. The good news is that there is healthy debate about these subjects!
So, we meet again! Remember what I said about the *nix vendors in the other thread? Behold, it's deja vu all over again. The really amusing thing to me is that I was going to mention MR as one of the people who will probably take Linux down the same path the old *nix vendors took, but then I thought that might not be a fair assessment on my part.
Yeesh, a couple of days later I'm reading a confirmation of my thinking here on /. Since you said your father has worked with Unix for a long time, ask him if any of this looks familiar. I bet it does...
I think your belief is misdirected. The *nix community is heavily populated by narcissists who have always hated Gates and Jobs for bringing powerful computing to the unwashed consumer, and especially to the untouchable non-annointed programmers who make a living using things like Flash, VB, Office and Mac DTP/video editing apps. MR is by any definition undeserving of recognition by the *nix priesthood, and he is not the first one to try to make his *nix the 'nix. This is an old game with new players, that's all. In general, it's important to recognize that tech is an extremely difficult business proposition. There are really only four people I can think of who know how to execute it well: Gates, Jobs, Chambers, and Ellison.
As for Linux, I still think its most compelling application is as an embedded OS. Just look at TiVo. How may other devices have been called "God's Machine" by government officials? Note also that TiVo/Linux has a consistent UI, is almost plug and play, provides a valuable service, and, is more affordable since it does not carry a big license load from a proprietary OS. If you want to hit it big in the Linux game, get to know some hardware people! It's a waste of time to get into this desktop conflict. You know what is said about those who ignore history...
IMHO, Sun now thinks lawyers produce better solutions than engineers.
- I say distro variation options.
- And, based on recent articles I've read, I believe that Microsoft is pretty worried about the threat of free and/or open-source software
In fact, in 1994 I was telling people M$ would get sued for anti-trust in "about 5 years" simply because their product mix would blow the competition out of the water. I also added that I didn't think they would deserve it, but it would happen because of their eventual market predominance. Sho nuff...-Same thing was said by advocates of the *nix's back then.
They are, which will inspire them to make better products, which is exactly how they prevailed over much better OSs years ago.
Perhaps your belief that there "can be only one" is rooted in the quasi-reality of today. Or maybe you've just watched The Highlander too many times. :) Just as you go to a store and find the pair of jeans that not only fit you but that are comfortable...the same concept can apply to the operating system on your computer. That's why Levis come in so many flavors: 501, 505, etc.
Highlander? Nah, did listen to Steve Jobs though. Remember when he mandated that all apps for the Mac would would have the "File / Edit / View ..." structure? I thought it was dumb at the time to limit choice, but he recognized the immense consumer appeal of UI consistency. So, while as technologists we may not like this, it's the kind of restriction that made the Mac and (horror) AOL so popular. BTW, last I looked, 50x jeans major feature difference is button or zip. There are some cosmetic differences, but functionally they are identical, and all are made from the same cotton substrate. (Hey, this is a site for nerds!)
I don't know if there will ever be "one distro to rule them all" but I for one certainly hope not. That philosophy (combined with closed-source and utter greed) is what created the monolith of mindshare that is Microsoft today.
Nah, the utility of COM, VB, and cheap OS & SDK prices made M$ what it is today. Later on they did play some questionable games with OEM licensing, but if they had been thinking they would have resolved this w/o getting dragged into anti-trust action. But, as I have already stated, I figured it was inevitable that they would be hit with anti-trust. If anything, the greed and closed mindset of Sun, IBM, AT&T and the other *nix vendors guaranteed the success of M$.
I agree with you about the value of choice of distro-from a technical perspective. It's just that I have seen that the broader market does not really want it so far.
Here at /. I read a lot of debate between KDE users and GNOME users. Rather than pit the two against each other, I tend to view them as choices. (And that's only GUI-related; MAC OS X and *BSD are also great choices.)
I agree, but the broad market does not. Non-technical users probably look at these arguments the same we look at the clothes at fashion shows: "Interesting, but who would ever wear that?!?" So, while Vuitton, Fendi, Armani, Givenchy and the rest argue over "who is best", the mass market cruises the Gap and buys jeans...
10 years ago, people were comparing System V, HP Unix, BSD, Solaris, OS2, etc.
Here I am reading the same thing about Linux as if the "distro" variation problems were new. They aren't, so I would guess M$ has little to worry about, given that they prevailed over vastly superior OSes many years ago. If Linux is going to be a serious desktop contender, there can be only one distro that is broadly supported. Whether that will ever happen, I don't know, tech-politics being what they are.
Regardless of what one thinks of M$, this looks like the tobacco shakedown to me. (I don't smoke, never have, and wouldn't miss Philip Morris and the rest if they were gone tomorrow.) In my view, the state of CA went to M$ and said "Pay off and we will stop bugging you." Later the AG will run for governor, bleating about his "big win."
It may sound strange, but I still don't see how M$ is a monopoly. You say yourself that you reloaded the OS on your systems, so how is M$ able to enforce its "monopoly?" Well, you were "forced" to buy the preloaded version of Windows.
What's not recognized, IMHO, is that if it were not for the cost/feature ratio of Windows 3.X, 9.X, and NT, PCs would have been sold in much lower volumes, for much higher cost. In addition, if it weren't for AOL (gasp!), Internet usage would never have taken off the way it did. So, in essence, that copy of Windows you are "forced" to buy probably is a much cheaper alternative than if M$ never existed.
I started programming *nix in the 80s, and always thought Windows was kind of a joke, especially given the segmented memory addressing requirement. When it came time to beef up the computer at home, I thought Sun box, OS, maybe gcc and an X/Motif GUI tool. Then I priced all of this... I've been mostly programming Windows ever since. (Did some OS2, firmware,and occasionally *nix.) For me, Linux is compelling as an embedded OS, not on the desktop. If I use an install of Windows and office for a few years, the license cost is more than offset by the global compatibility with drivers, hardware and in the case of Office, others I may wish to communicate with. For some strange reason, *nix people and IBM (in terms of OS2), never figured this out; they tried to extract maximum dollar from the customer and killed their markets. If Linux is ever going to make it on the desktop, there can only be one distro that matters.
Now to get back to that part about the shakedown: Whether talking about M$, tobacco, asbestos class actions, medical malpractice insurance or unintended negative consequences from telecomm anti-trust activity, I note a pattern of abuse by some trial lawyers and their political cronies that is damaging our economy. Before everyone jumps up and down about every settlement M$ makes or other penalties it faces, think about these events in the broader context of litigation in general.
Right, now family hour will be in the back seat of the car. Makes sense, that's where many families got started! Or should I say, "instantiated"...?
Michael Robertson worried about legal action?
After losing the lawsuit the RIAA filed against MP3.com, then forking over 200 million dollars of MP3.com investor equity to the RIAA, do you think he really cares about legal problems? The funny part of this occurred when MP3.com sued their law firm for giving them bad advice. Huh, wonder what ever happened to that suit?
Linux is new? Anyone remember all of the *nix'es back late 80s, early 90s? Linux isn't new, just the pricing is. Linux has the same problems *nix has always had: too many variations. Actually, Windows is much newer than Linux.
Seems to me we have seen this contest before, when amazingly enough, a 16 bit segmented memory model OS blew *nix and OS2 out of the water. Linux is much more interesting as an embedded OS than a desktop OS.
You are exactly right. In business, one can do pretty well just by not making catastophic mistakes. Sooner or later your competitors will, and the market will eliminate them for you. The Linux community is doing M$ a big favor by copying the Windows interface, which will have exactly the effect that you mention. Linux will become the K-Tel not-the-original-artists crap knock-off product that the general public will avoid.
On the other hand, there is an original, very powerful, intuitive Linux UI that I use every day. It happens to be rendered by my TiVo. While Linux is fun to tinker with, that is irrelevant to me from a business perspective since I write software and enjoy this kind of activity. When non-tech people ask me what kind of PC to buy, I tell them to watch the Dell site for deals and buy the lowest cost XP machine that suits their needs. Why? Easy: it will run the software they already have, easy to install new hardware since drivers aren't a problem (generally), and lots of "idiots" and "dummy" books to explain the basics.
I tell the M$ haters to go buy a white box at the local hole-in-the-wall and load Red Hat. Then they find out it doesn't run some esoteric program they have and complain. In the end, they refuse to buy XP and give M$ the money, they can't get their dog weight estimator software for Linux, so they stick with '98 or '95! The best thing about Linux ideas is that they keep M$ spooked, which means M$ isn't going to turn stupid the way IBM and all of the moronic *nix companies did in the 80s-90s.
From a business model perspective, Linux is best suited for mass-produced hardware devices where cost is a major consideration. All the talk about KDE/Gnome/XPde, etc is just a re-hash of the time when Windows 3.1 came out and Sun, HP, IBM and others were pushing their UI of the day. -Been there done that-
Speaking of Sun "Innovation-Through-Litigation" Microsystems, who are they going to sue next? Philip Morris? Gee, if they could get the Java VM shipped with every pack of Marlboros, they might actually make money on Java!
Regardless of what one thinks of Microsoft, what do these move say about Sun? I've been in the tech biz for some time, and I know of no one who can tell me what Sun's biz model is. Selling software? Guess not. Selling hardware? Fine, go compete with Dell if you want to. My guess is that there will be two major software companies in the future: Microsoft and IBM, guessing that IBM buys Red Hat.
I stopped getting sick after I replaced my chair with my old 19" CRT (kinda like sitting on one of those backless Swedish chairs) and expensed the 6 x 19" display.
Odd, now my boss is calling in sick a lot...
Has anyone addressed the Windows v. *nix cost of software development? Every *nix IDE I have used sucks compared to Visual Studio / VB. (Yeah, yeah, real programmers wouldn't use VB...) While Linux is very cool from an economist's point of view, serving as an example of peer production and all, what does it say when an OS has to be free to get people to accept it?
Is *nix too tied to Java? As a developer, I like C# and the .Net framework far more than J2EE, but does it matter? Is the cost of the OS more important than development cost/efficiency? Clearly OS2 and *nix were better OSes than Windows 3.1, but dev tools for Windows were far better and cheaper. That was the biggest reason for the demand for Windows. IMHO, Windows dev tools are still better, but Linux is almost free now. What good is an OS if the app I want doesn't run on it? I'm still not certain as to how this will be resolved. I could imagine a situation in the future where lots of utility stuff is written for Linux and Windows, but the high value added stuff is written for Windows.
Seems to me the Spanish have apparently run into one manifestion of this situation. I can imagine the conversation now: "OK, we will keep the Windows systems until someone writes XYZ for Linux." But as long as there is an XYZ.x for Windows first, there will always be a need for Windows, and as long as the dev tools for Windows are better than those for Linux, there will always be an XYZ.x.
So it was not illegal for Netscape to offer a free browser, but it was illegal for Softee to do so?
What stops anyone using Windows from downloading another browser?
What stops you from loading Linux or OS2 on your Intel system?
Where exactly is the monopoly here?
My point is that Jackson's technology arguments in support of his monopoly decision are pretty questionable.
If Jackson were the judge in your cousin's case, he would find the auto manufacturer guilty of making a car desireable to a thief.
Sarcasm, take II!
If you read his Findings of Fact, you will find it is full of illogic such as that stated in section V.G.2:
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V. MICROSOFT'S RESPONSE TO THE BROWSER THREAT
G. Microsoft's Success in Excluding Navigator from the Channels that Lead Most Efficiently to Browser Usage
2. Excluding Navigator from the OEM Channel
152. Moreover, many consumers who need an operating system, including a substantial percentage of corporate consumers, do not want a browser at all. For example, if a consumer has no desire to browse the Web, he may not want a browser taking up memory on his hard disk and slowing his system's performance. Also, for businesses desiring to inhibit employees' access to the Internet while minimizing system support costs, the most efficient solution is often using PC systems without browsers.
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I see, a browser is useless without the web, and it hampers corporate efficiency because it takes up too much disk space and IT time. Meanwhile, we have Worldcom perpetrating a multi-BILLION dollar fraud, Enron cooking their books and ripping off California power customers for a few hundred million. So what does Judge Jackson find important? Free browsers.
Softee was dumb not to settle this thing from the beginning, but the DOJ was certainly going after the wrong company in terms of "harm to the consumer." Guess that's what happens when lawsuits are instigated by competitors.
I thought this was supposed to be the anti-WinTel, free-the-silicon-proletariat chip.
Guess the Chinese proletariat must be more lumpen than ours.
Time for a new distro: Lumpen Linux!
Let's think about this for a sec...
This is all great unless:
Must be McNealy's scorched earth policy. How long until SUNW is delisted and the biz reviews start flowing? Sad to say, I think this company is going the way of Cray Research.
My guess: 3-4 years from now there will be Windows, Mac, and Red Hat.
Everything else will be hobby desktops. Cherished by the clubs that form around them, but never selling in volume.
Have a look at "Professional C#" published by Wrox, and "Programming Microsoft Windows with C#" by Charles Petzold. I'd recommend any book by Petzold, though!
Wonder if Redmond is thinking OSX could be a good way to spike OS2, I mean Red Hat, on the desktop. Worked before...
WABI? Jedi? Enron must be hiring again!
...that will mark the end of the dot-com bubble.
My guess is that Sun's mis-management of Java will be studied in business schools for years to come. The moronic notion of launching lawsuits to beat the competition is also worthy of discussion. (Think RIAA here, too.)
I still don't buy the Softee is a monopoly argument, either. I can switch drives in a minute and have a completely non-'Soft machine, and I always used the free version of Netscape. Standard Oil... Now that was monopoly! Guess they don't make 'em like they used to.
Look at it this way: If Soft didn't encourage the volume demand for PC's, the Internet would still be an academic curiosity and Linux wouldn't exist. Can Soft stop me from running Linux on any of my machines? Obviously not, it takes me about a minute to switch disks, so how exactly does that make Soft a monopoly? "But what about IE?" Never stopped me from downloading the free version of Netscape.
FWIW, my guess is that eBay gets a call from the DOJ people in a few years. If eBay is smart, the attys are working on a response today.
What's that flaming thing heading this way?!?
You should hang around attorneys a little more. The threat of litigation is an effective tool. If one doesn't have or want to spend the money to defend oneself, the patent isn't worthless. Note the battle over the Gemstar EPG patents.