My employer might as well have been one of those surveyed in the study. We are looking at "sourcing for maximum value". This translates to, "we'll pay the lowest bidder to the work." At this point, I'm not scared of layoffs; our company is growing, and my former developer job will effectively become project manager (I'll manage the development done by some offshore group).
This does disturb me a bit, as I see the real technical job opportunities at my company diminishing. Based on my first hand experience, I tend to believe that the study's results are true, and that "programming" jobs will continually become scarce in the US.
Support does NOT mean Forums or RTFM. They want real people. The fact is most people are not IT people. They just want it to work and forget about it. If it breaks they want someone to call to get it working again.
As a manager, though, I want people working for me who can read forums, who are willing to subscribe to mailing lists, who can R-and understand-TFM.
I agree that most people are not technical in nature, and most probably don't care about the manuals, or any details about the system, but you have to have someone in your organization who can work in that capacity.
Would you pay your own in-house tech support to have zero knowledge of your application and be nothing but the folks who call the commercial tech support?
And if you want to completely outsource all of your technical work, fine, but you better pray that noone takes advantage of your ignorance.
Case in point: the number of truly technical people in your organization should be proportional to the number of systems for which you expect support.
Though, from my young, limited experience, corporate America seems as though it would rather pay outrageous one-time fees for support rather than pay a competant staff a reasonable salaray.
It would be interesting if we anticipated Mr. Taylor's replies, and posted them on a site somewhere---before the actual interview.
Rarely have I seen such a high profile interview that gave any kind of meaningful answers or insights as to what the interviewee is actually doing/thinking/feeling. It's just a game of lipservice and wordsmithing: just like politicians, when asked a difficult question, the answers are always vague and nonspecific. God forbid any recognizable figure actually speak their mind!
As interesting as this interview could potentially be, I'm afraid that the OSS/Linux community really won't gain anything from it. But Microsoft will benefit: they'll get to go around talking about how they are "cooperating" with the Open Source community.
I have always thought it would be interesting to have live, face-to-face debates between Microsoft (represented by Gates, Ballmer, senior management and engineers, etc) and some prominent OSS figures (who to send would be a debate in and of itself, but you get the point). The debates should be broken up by topic, i.e. economics, security, innovation, marketing, etc.
These PR types are pretty much all the same. Their job is just to make their company/product look good---they don't even need to know anything about it. Take the top PR guys from ten random major corporations, and shuffle them around to different companies. I bet they only need one day to resume their pace. Why? Their job is totally formulaic: when asked a difficult question, (1) restate the question, but downplay its significance, (2) cite an example of where you did something good -or- talk about some initiative to stop a (minor, unrelated) problem, (3) make really general statements that are true, but don't really have any meaning. Repeat steps (1) through (3) until the issue has been clouded enough to talk about how great your company/product is, and how your high-level goals/initiatives support this right behavior.
Back to my original point: given that I think we ought to be able to predict Mr. Taylor's answers, here's my crystal ball:
Slashdot: If Microsoft does not see Linux as a threat, why has such an investment made to discredit it?
Taylor:Laughing. Microsoft has a commitment to its customers and stockholders. In that regard, it is our obligation to constantly assess market conditions and provide the best value to our costomers. We listen to our customers. And a lot of customers have been asking about Linux! We cannot affect customer curiosity, and we certainly encourage competition. Therefore, all we can do is educate our customers, to make sure they make the best decisions. Numerous case studies have shown that Windows has a lower total cost of ownership than Linux; in many cases it is also more secure and better performing. We simply want to dispel the myth that Linux is a legitimate alternative.
Slashdot: Microsoft has recently made statements suggesting that it is an interoperability champion; even moreso than Linux. How can you achieve such a great deal of interoperability with closed, proprietary standards, and threats of patent lawsuits?
Taylor: Interoperability is an increasingly important aspect of technology. Microsoft backs its products with a greater degree of customer support than any other software company, guaranteeing the greatest deal of interoperability. We believe strongly in intellectual property protection because we've made huge investments in the innovation we've brought to the market. The open source community does not respect intellectual property rights, and as such, our products must be protected accordingly. However, we have the most competitive and exhaustive collection of licensing options for third party developers who wish to use our technology in their own product. The same cannot be said for open source, which offers neither support nor idemnification.
Technical arguments aside, there's something to be said for not buying Microsoft simply out of principle. Why would you want to deploy a tool that is forever tied to one platform (Windows/.NET) and subject to the wily licensing antics of Microsoft?
No offense to the Mono folks, but I just don't see them ever having 100% cross-platform capability. It will never be possible to seamlessly change your development and deployment environments from Microsoft.NET to GNU Linux/Mono. And if it ever does become that easy, Microsoft will be ready with some kind of nastiness (patent lawsuits, forced upgrades, etc).
The group I work in writes custom engineering (design and anlaysis) applications for our company (Fortune 100). Some of these applications have been ported several times over the years as the flavor-of-the-week OSes/platforms changed. And today we're still porting applications to Windows using MFC! What happens when Microsoft obsoletes MFC, or Linux becomes the standard for engineering desktops, or even Apple starts supplying top-of-the-line technical workstations? We'll port again! But now is the time to take advantage of open source, cross-platform development environments.
Spend your time working on a solution for your customer, rather than worrying about future portability issues. I just feel that if you go Microsoft now, you'll regret it in the future; I just don't see how anyone can make a reasonable justification for going with Microsoft and claim to have a solid long-term vision.
Even Microsoft's lame slogan, "Where do you want to go today?" supports their obvious short-term approach. Today just isn't as important as tomorrow: I know where I need to be tomorrow; once I figure out how to get there, what I do today will naturally be right.
I sincerely hope this is a hoax. On the one hand, it would be great to point to the Windows source code and say, "See how terribly written, buggy, crufty, etc closed-source code is?" And the rash of exploits, worms and virii that would follow would only underscore that comment.
But, it only takes one person to look at the Windows source, then go do something vaguely similar in Linux (or any OSS project for that matter). The result would be devastating: Microsoft would litigate Linux to death.
As many have said, the principle behind these copyright suits is awful. Looking at code, then doing something somewhat similar (because of inspiration) should not be a copyright violation. But with Microsoft's legal and financial resources, the laws will "adapt" to what is most beneficial to them.
I can only echo what many other have said: for the sake of Linux and OSS in general, do not look at the Windows source!. That's a very conservative and overly-paranoid policy, but it's a invaluable measure for protection.
To me, general acceptance of open-source software is similar to political elections: every last spec of dirt is drug out and put under the spotlight. Any potential or suspect or even misunderstood characteristic is scrutinized, and the naysayers always manage to put a negative spin on it.
Open source only stands a chance if it can maintain the straight and narrow path... I hate to sound preachy, but any slight mishap, no matter how innocent or accidental, quickly turns into a major catastrophic disaster. There's just too much money and power interested in seeing OSS fail.
To me it seems that source-based package management is more efficient, at least in (very broad) terms of storage utilization. Package source files are currently represent the most "standard" package format available. Most OSS projects offer a vanilla source tarball for the roll-yer-own crowd. Likewise, source-based distros use these same source archives as their actual "packages".
On the other hand, binary distributions maintain their own compiled packages. Think about how many different binary packages are available for all your favorite programs across all the different distributions. How much aggregate storage space is being wasted for what is really redundant (yet slightly different) data?
Source-based distributions (Gentoo, FreeBSD) only have to maintain their build scripts. I'm sure that the complete collection of any source-based distros' build scripts is significantly smaller than any binary-based distros' complete collection of binary packages.
Now I'm not arguing for the superiority of source-based distros (they're certainly not for everyone). But the source package should be the standard base upon which each distribution builds its packages. For example, instead of Debian maintaing all those binary packages, why not maintain a method (i.e. a script) for creating those packages?
This would effectively give every binary-distribution a source-based option. My concept is that every distribution would start with a Gentoo- or FreeBSD-like source distribution system, but also maintain a cache of pre-compiled binaries. Gentoo already does this with a few huge packages (e.g. you can download and install a pre-compiled OpenOffice.org package).
In short, I'm suggesting that all the distributions could change their internal infrastructure by adding a source/build script layer, but not affect the actual installation, administration and/or use of the system. Standard disclaimer: I have never worked intimately with any package manager, so much of this is speculation/brainstorming.
The company presented the results not to the geeks that can interpret them, but directly to the executives that still think 'Clippy' is a great product.
To me, this is a sign of continually degrading manager-employee trust in the workplace. My interpretation of the above sentance is that your (previous) employer trusted an outside company more than they trusted you. It's an all too blatant case of not being able to see past the billfold.
Security administration is the pinnacle of a trust relationship. Cleartly, the security administrator has the potential to do an enormous amount of harm; naturally, he's a risk. I can't believe consulting firms profit from telling people that! That concept is so fundamental, so basic, so intuitive. Furthermore, security is like insurance: the benefits aren't tangible; to an accountant, security just looks like an expense. Sorry folks, it's the cost of doing business these days.
And to have some firm come along, pronounce the obvious, and get someone fired for it is ridiculous. Why did this company trust the outside firm more than their own employees?
Language barrier. I'm not talking about "English as a second laguage" or figures of speech; I'm talking about the laguage of business. This consulting firm came along, excited the company's management with fear, and swiftly calmed those fears by speaking in terms only a manager can understand: bottom line. Sadly, security is an issue whose technical details are every bit as important as the financial details.
This fits hand-in-hand with my most outrageous conspiracy theory to date: the USA is the home of a giant power struggle, a fight between the managers-accounts-lawyers (MAL) and everyone else. (Why else would "mal-" be a prefix that usually implies something bad? <grin>) The MAL group is interested only in profit, making money, and considers greed a legitimate and essential part of the American Dream. The mal-people have created the convoluted infrastructure upon which we operate; they are the only ones who understand it, and can therefore manipulate it to maintain their power.
The rest of us are seen as a threat. Education, free speech, free thought, individuality are the chaos that keep mal-people from having total control. Still, they do their best to suppress such threats. Labor unions of olde are a nice example: a group of people who simply wanted fair compensation for their work. And as the years have gone by, the power of labor unions has dissolved considerably. The tech savvy are the new threat to the mal-power; geeks posses great knowledge and capability; they potentially have the power to unseat the MAL. So what does the MAL do? Work the system (their system) so that the geeks' power and influence is kept at bay (or, more appropriately, kept offshore).
Judging by the article, it appears that Microsoft is creating a specialized team whose responsibility will be the "core" operating system. Isn't "core operating system" just another term for kernel? Or am I playing too loose with the wording?
If not, it was always my understanding (based entirely of heresay of course <grin>) that the Nt 4.0/Win2k/WinXP kernels were actually pretty good. Wasn't the original NT kernel jointly developed with IBM and OS/2? Again, my hearsay-based understanding has always been that all the "cruft" that is duct-taped to Windows accounts for the lockups and security issues.
I'm too lazy to dig out the links, but I'm sure many Slashdot readers are familiar with Microsoft's legal use of the term "core operating system" (or similar terms anyway). Remember all the stink about bundling Internet Explorer with Windows? Didn't Microsoft claim that IE is an intrinsic part of Windows, that it cannot be removed without breaking the OS? More recently, the Europeans want Microsoft to unbundle Windows Media Player from Windows XP. I'm sure Microsoft is claiming that WMP is part of their "core" operating system.
In short, Microsoft has been criticized so often for bundling applications with Windows. Their response is usually along the lines of "it cannot be unbundled". I call anything that cannot be unbundled part of the core system.
So it looks like this new division will work on the entire Windows product!
Unfortunately, too many people don't care or don't understand the subtleties of this discussion, and will never realize that---yet again---Microsoft says one thing but does another.
My point is that computers in general are not easy for an old fashioned 75 year old who rather write snail mail letters than to use email. So that excuse is not a good one.
Agreed. In fact, I think the popular opinion should be "Linux is easier for the senior citizen" as opposed to our current "Well, my grandma wouldn't be able to use Linux". For the inexperienced computer user, I belive a (properly setup and configured [1]) Linux system is just as easy to learn and use as a Windows system. Linux is hard for those born of Windows, to those who passionately think the Windows way is the better way, etc.
My dad and I setup a computer for my grandma (pieced together from leftover parts from our own upgrades <grin>). Without really thinking, I myself fell victim to the popular "Windows is easier" mantra and put Windows 2000 on my grandma's computer. As you may have guessed, she has random problems from time to time. On the upside, any one of my dad, uncles or I can fix problems on her machine. But in hindsite, I think Linux would have been a better choice for her. Granted, I would be the only one in the family who could fix any problems, but I'm confident that I could setup the box in such a way that no problems ever came up. All she does is email and write church bulletins; I could make her linux box do that and only that quite easily.
An "open source purist" of sorts probably shouldn't concern himself with Linux's desktop market share, beating Microsoft or whatever... but, for semi-selfish reasons, I desparately want to see Linux have a reasonable desktop market share (say 20%). The reasons being are as follows:
Hardware/driver support. To be fair, I'd say that a lot of hardware is supported, particularly at the "core computer component" level. But as you get farther from computer components, e.g. media devices, PDAs, cameras, etc., you have to pay much closer attention to whether or not you can use it with Linux. In other words, using these toys with Linux still requires you to do some homework before you buy. I think that serious market share would make it much easier to find Linux-supported hardware.
Open data formats. I long for the day when I no longer receive MS Word documents in email. I know, I know, OpenOffice.org can open most of them. But OOo can't open all documents correctly. Besides, the principle of the matter really burns me: some corporation essentially has a degree of control over the flow of information. And in the same vein, all these web sites that are designed for Internet Explorer that don't work or display correctly under Mozilla & friends. I was searching for community volunteer opportunities tonight. So many of these small-time sites were clearly only checked with IE (because I'm sure the people designing them know nothing about Mozilla); they looked terrible, and in many cases were almost hard to read.
I wish some major OEMs would get behind Linux to promote it on the desktop. I'm confident that it's ready. Maybe not for everybody, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who would like it if they knew about it, if it came on their new computer, if someone installed it for them, and/or they had a kind of "getting started" tutorial. My intuition says that the majority of people don't upgrade Windows, they just buy a new PC.
Of course I'm only speculating, but I think someone like Dell or HP could sell PCs with Linux pre-loaded and pass on savings to the customer. I know some OEMs do this, but none of them actively promote it or make their Linux offerings obvious. I've heard Microsoft advocates tout that OEMs dont' push Linux because there is no demand for it. I think the demand is there, it just hasn't been properly exploited. Lindows is doing it through the "minor league" channels. But I think it's pretty evident that Microsoft essentially owns the major OEMs.
I try to make regular backups of my "critical" data to CD. I have less than a CD's worth of data, so it's cheap, quick and easy to "backup early, backup often." The only problem is, I'm generating an ever-increasing collection of CDs. I have other random stuff archived on CD as well.
A reasonable person would probably just throw out old stuff, and stuff that will never be used. But I'm unreasonable:)
So what I'm looking for is an extendable, cheap way to store lots of CDs. I want something a little more flexible than a spindle. I'm currently thinking about getting one of those CD "bins" reminiscant of the old 3.5 in floppy drive bins (they are plastic containers that hold the disks upright, so you can flip through them like files; they usually have a hinged top). I plan to put all my CDs in those individual tyvek sleeves, and put them in a CD bin. This might require me to buy a lot of those sleeves, but it seems like a decent solution.
Anyone else have any other ideas, thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc?
One of the greatest advances Microsoft is going to offer in Longhorn is the abstraction of data storage. In the future (which should be now), you won't have to categorize files into folders.
Ahh, that makes sense, and I think it's something that is needed. I guess I was aware of that to some degree, but never saw it put as concisely as you did.
I'm positive there would be an uproar in the open source/NIX community when you start saying things like there should be no/usr and no/bin, it should just work. Crazy, radical, non-traditional thoughts like that are needed for the future of computing, but will never be accepted by old timers who insist that a well-organized hierarchy-based file system is the way to go (which I read in replies many times when people mention this type of abstraction).
Well, perhaps I'm just too much of an idealist, but I think it should be possible to have the best of both worlds. I don't think a well-organized file hierachy and some kind of abstract layer should be mutually exclusive. I'm thinking along the lines of a layered approach, ala networking protocols.
I think it's pretty interesting, though, because the way people store files (currently) is probably very similar to the way people store their physical stuff. At some point in their life, everbody will want something they know they have, but can't remember where they put it. Same way with files. I'm a pretty anal person, so I have a fairly structured directory tree that really acts as metadata/abstraction for me. It's the same way with my physical stuff, I (pretty much) have a place for everything. But at the same time, there are a handful of my things I can never find (because I haven't defined a place for them), and there's always a handful of files I have to go digging for.
I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it, but I haven't been able to conjure up an elegant abstract storage solution. (Maybe my imagination just sucks.) But it all seems to come back to having some kind of metadata layer. The back-end could be a filesystem on a local disk, a network share, a database, a tape, etc, but this abstraction layer gives me the ability to create "collections". I.e., "my Pink Floyd music" could be a collection of streamed media, locally stored files, etc. But that set could also be a part of the "my classic rock music" set/collection; part of "my Pink Floyd music" could belong to the "songs by Roger Waters" collection...
My example is basically saying that all the metadata and abstraction in the world isn't going to keep me organized... it might help, and might make for intuitive and or "smart" information searches, but I still have to use and apply it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against such technology or even trying to be argumentative. I just think it's an interesting problem. Here I'm basically thinking out loud.
Has Microsoft published any kind of official or semi-official list of new features for Longhorn? If so, the open source community should look at that as a software requirements document. Here is the opportunity to show the world that, not only is open source often of higher quality than commercial software (at least Microsoft's), but now it's faster to market. Traditionally, open source is viewed as "playing catch-up" with commercial software (at least in the desktop arena). I think now is the time to release everything Longhorn will have.
It looks like Microsoft is already playing catch-up with Linux in some respects. The "sidebar"? What about Windowmaker's dock apps? What about gkrellm? What about the various panel apps for Gnome and KDE? I haven't seen any details about the WinFS file system, but I'm betting that whatever Microsoft comes up with could easily be done with some combination of MySQL, OpenOffice.org's document architecture, a pretty GUI and some glue to hold it all together. (It's an obvious point, but in case anyone has forgotten, developers have choices choices choices with open source: the GUI could be motif, Tcl/Tk, GTK, Qt, OpenGL,...; the "glue" for this could be PHP, Perl, Python, shell scripts,...)
In brief, unless Microsoft has a huge ace up their sleeve, whatever they want to do or come up with has already been done or can be done quite quickly with the enormous, comprehensive open source infrastructure that is available today.
Defending its copyright and software license does not make the Free Software Foundation an ogre, as it is portrayed by the article "Linux's Hit Men" by Daniel Lyons.
The "Free" in Free Software Foundation refers to free speech and freedom of choice (as opposed to getting something without paying). GPL software has a specific license to which the user must abide if he is to use and modify it. If these terms are unacceptable to the user, he does not have to use the software. Everyone---individuals and companies---should understand the license of a software product before using it. GPL software is *not* public domain.
The association with Communism suggested by statements such as "Such a pity, comrade" are unfounded. GPL'ed software represents freedom; it is an alternative to closed-source, proprietary software that must be bought with cash. I see nothing un-American about the ability to choose among different options.
Those who disapprove of the GPL should simply ignore it; those people are no worse off than if it did not exist.
If I were to take a non-free program, such as Microsoft Word, modify it, then re-distribute it as my own, I can guarantee legal action by Microsoft! If the Free Software Foundation's copyright and license are not to be respected, then neither should any other company's. (Please note that, although difficult, it IS possible to modify a binary (i.e. compiled) program.)
Based on personal observation, it appears that the average MS Windows user has low expectations. What a great situation for Microsoft: a monopoly and apathetic customers. (Unfortunately, I think this characterizes the non-tech savvy majority: uninformed and/or uncaring.)
I'm suprised there aren't more class action lawsuits against Microsoft for their woefully insecure products. Whether or not the alternatives are more secure is not the issue! The courts have ruled that Microsoft has a monopoly. Because of this, I think they should be held to a higher standard, be that much more accountable for their actions, and have a greater obligation to customer/consumer needs.
Microsoft has no shortage of money; they probably employ the majority of the better software developers. And yet they continue to get away with paying little more than lip service to security issues. True, many of Microsoft's security problems are related to user error, but it's the principle of the matter: I see no reason why they can't do better. It's only self-interest that keeps Microsoft from being more proactive about security and customer education.
Like it or not, Microsoft is the dominant software provider---the monopoly software provider. They should be held to higher expectations and have greater responsibility.
There are downsides as well: tougher administration, increased chance that any particular vulnerability will be present in your organization, etc.
I don't see much "Linux vs. Windows ease-of-administration" discussions these days, although I think it is still relevant. In general, I think "easy" administration is overrated.
For desktop and casual users, systems should be simple, intuitive and allow work to be done quickly. But making a server "user friendly" is just a way of reducing configurability (and sometimes capability). In the light of IT outsourcing, worms, virii and general heresay, I think everyone is expecting system administration to be trivial.
When people talk about "which is easier to administer" I cringe. When something isn't easy, at least for me, it usually means it isn't well-understood. Do we want folks administering mission critical systems when they don't even understand them? And when they're using Windows, and they think they understand what they're doing, they're really being deceived by pretty GUIs and dumbed-down configuration interfaces.
I see a lot of articles here on Slashdot that suggest many US companies are afraid of competition (Microsoft being the best example, Intel a close second). These corporations rise to the top of their industry, hailing the American capitalism that enables their growth. But when the creativity runs out, stagnation occurrs and money-hungry managers take over. A young, emerging company, who once sang the tune "Let's Invent Technology" matures into the grumpy old ogre sining "How Do We Hold Onto Marketshare?" The seeds of invention have long since vanished, and the marketing folks try to sell the manager's version of invention: "innovation".
Companies who were once concerned with pushing new technology and ideas now want to crush anyone or anything that threatens their cushy seat built on the ideas and creativity of yesterday.
Of course, to be fair, their are companies who, from their birth, don't care about science or technology, or bettering life for their fellow man; they are inherently sinister. But the once idealistic corporations described above are eventually consumed by the malaise of greed, and decay into equally sinister entities.
The point is: how can companies such as Microsoft and Intel, who are so quick to equate open source software with communism, call themselves capitalists, when they try so desparately to hinder competition? It is in the competition that we see the real invention. The market should decide whether or not that invention will be successful, not some greedy old millionaires who feel threatened by change and new ideas.
These companies quickly bastardize the same system that enabled their growth and success.
Dan Leach, Microsoft's lead product manager for Office, said rights management features were built into the new Office based on ongoing discussions with customers.
"We asked people what types of things would you like to do that you can't do now, and what they said is they'd like to spread large amounts of information around to more of their people--but they have concerns that the wider they spread information, the more likely it is to become available to the wrong people," he said.
...So they cooked up the least compatible solution possible. Sorry, I'm either preaching to the choir or just venting, but Microsoft's business strategy is a game of answering the following question:
What can we do to best eliminate competition or exploit our monopoly while passing it off as innovation or being customer driven?
I feel that the article actually puts Microsoft's new scheme in a positive light! This needs as much bad press as possible! When will the general population realize that Microsoft is very rarely innovative? And that virtually every business move of theirs is in the interest of stifling competition?
If Microsoft didn't have a monopoly, they couldn't pull off half of the stuff they do.
There are many ways to solve the user's problem above that do not involve vendor lock in or forced obsolescence. In fact, this could be the killer app for Linux and all of open source: integrated crypto for the Linux kernel and OpenOffice.org. Make security inherent in the total system, but use established crypto systems. DRM can be delivered with open source!
I once heard that Burger King never does location research. They just wait for McDonald's to build a restarant and then BK builds their own nearby. Well, open source might as well use the market research that Microsoft makes available---let open source deliver customer solutions that actually benefit the consumer.
I believe there is something to be said for not caring whether or not open source gains market share. Well, I don't care about market share, but I would like to be able to use my Linux desktop and not worry about compatability with everyone else. I'd like to be able to receive documents from my friends and co-workers and not have to request a non-proprietary data format. I'd like to be able to buy hardware with OEM-level Linux support. I'd like to be able to recommend Linux to my friends without caveats. Unfortunately, these things won't be possible until Linux has significant "market share". I would nearly bet my life that Microsoft's Office monopoly is what keeps open source from gaining significant market share. I think that, any more, MS Office enables the Windows monopoly! Microsoft knows this and they are milking it for all it's worth.
Microsoft is no different from any other company faced with a similar situation: they recognize a critical event in their market (the emergence and spiraling popularity of open source) and they realize they must take drastic measures to keep or increase their market share (lock everyone else out at any cost). Such a monumentous undertaking will require Microsoft to put a lot at stake. Unless open source---and educated consumers in general---respond with equal effort, Microsoft will come to own your digital world.
I've got to hand it to Microsoft, they're pretty smart in the marketing department. I just mentored an intern who's only a couple years behind me (from the same school). He said that Microsoft is giving away.Net for CS majors and I think even giving away Office for students in general.
I'd applaud Microsoft if closed/proprietary data formats weren't their game. It just infuriates me that Microsoft is working so hard to make their products incompatible with other products. Sorry to echo what is already a chant, but they are exploiting their monopoly. If they didn't have a monopoly, they couldn't get away with this extreme incompatibility with non-MS products.
My Microsoft-loving, open source-hating co-worker loves to say that proprietary data formats are just good business---it's intellectual property, and un-American and anti-comptetetive to say otherwise. WTF! How do MS Office's cryptic file formats offer Microsoft any competetive advantage other than keeping competetors out of the market?
I'm convinced that if there were three or even two office software suits with relatively even market share, they'd all do a pretty darn good job of reading each other's formats. I'm sure they'd also be a few generations ahead of MS Office---not just "little" features, but hugely useful stuff, like voice dictation, character recognition, integrated document database management, instant Internet publication, inherent crypto, authentication, security, etc.
The fact that Microsoft tries so hard to break compatability with non-MS products is proof enough that they do not compete on innovation. If their products are really so good, why hide the APIs?
Another thing that blows my mind is that people have become brainwashed to accept this as status quo. I work for a Fortune 100 company, and our IT director has actually said, "We can't do business without Microsoft." Man, that's a sweet deal for Microsoft! How many multi-billion dollar companies are saying they need Microsoft? Congratulations, Microsoft, on creating a drug-like dependancy!
What baffles me is that there seems to be some folks who are taking SCO seriously (not the open source community, of course). Why can't the general public see SCO for the ridiculous group they are?
If they really wanted to be compensated for this "stolen code" or "contract infringement" or whatever complaint-of-the-week they may have, wouldn't they be pushing this harder through the official channels? Anyone who is wronged wants a quick resolution. SCO seems content to just sit around and release a lot of anti-open source press.
The overwhelming majority of their claims has been debunked, except that which can't be seen (the "offending code" and the contract with IBM). I doubt an entire million lines of code is stolen. No way! Sometimes I think that SCO may actually believe that there is stolen code in Linux. Somewhere, someone made some assumptions, and used these assumptions to demonstrate that Linux uses stolen code. And now they seem to have people working off of these assumptions, finding even more illicit code! I can see where there might be a few shady or questionable areas of the kernel, but a million lines? Pshaw!
Every week or so, SCO seems to come out with a more outrageous claim. Sometimes I think that maybe they are playing the open source community against itself: there's so much talk about the legality of the GPL, SCO's claims, intellectual property, etc. SCO at least knows how passionate the Linux community is about its operating system; they are using this fact to keep their smear/FUD campaign alive. SCO is just a school yard bully. This whole affair has become the reality TV of the open source world.
I don't see it happening (as I myself am just as guilty of wanting to know "what's next" with this ordeal), but we need to just ignore SCO. And by we I mean everybody who is not SCO. Until they are willing to actually work with anyone (outside of an NDA or the courts), there's nothing we can do except keep making better software.
Of course, the other side is that there's always an argument for "any publicity is good publicity". If a few more people know about Linux/open source than who are turned off by the propaganda, it works to our benefit.
This is a stretch, but I think this is another Microsoft ploy to own email: let's kill Outlook Express, then concentrate on getting everyone on Outlook, MSN and/or Hotmail. Unfortunately, between their marketing and obscenely huge cash reserves, they might be able to pull this off. Or at least, let's get an identifiable critical few hooked on these systems and change the standard to Microsoft proprietary. Microsoft would be so happy if it could start to whittle away the number of people not using Microsoft products to read their email.
I wish that a few large, influential companies would stand up to Microsoft and call them on their lame business strategy: closed, proprietary standards that keep everyone else out of the game. Microsoft simply does not compete on innovation. Why doesn't this get more press? Why does the main stream media not criticize Microsoft more often? They appear to be going out of their way to keep data formats and protocols both closed and unnaturally complex just to keep other systems out of the game. I think that alone says that they recognize that their software is not superior!
I work at a large Fortune 100 company and we use Lotus Notes as our groupware. I hate Lotus Notes: it has the worst user interface I've ever encountered, is fairly buggy, and just generally kind of sucks. Everyone at work wishes we'd switch to Outlook! In my mind, that's the only advantage Lotus Notes has: it's not Outlook! That's all Microsoft wants: a few large influential companies to use Outlook so they can play the vendor lock-in card, start changing standards, and have another Office-like monopoly on their hands... but with email.
The Internet Explorer monopoly is scary enough. Now Microsoft is working on email. Microsoft is working very hard at destroying the openness of the Internet; they want to own the Internet.
As much as I like to see Microsoft get slammed, it scares me to think what might happen if these patent-enforcement lawsuits were directed at the open source community. I didn't bother to actually research the details of that patent referenced in this case, but what if Mozilla or Konqueror or another open source browser infringes on the same patent?
Microsoft is a nice target for lawsuits: they're big, visible and have lots of money. However, what if an open source browser had a more significant market share? Wouldn't that same patent-portfolio group come demanding royalties?
This is a more general concern that scares me; it may be tested by the SCO-IBM case(s). Say a company patents some software technology. What if the developers working on that code go home at night and use the same concepts in some open source projects? I emphasize concepts because the developers are smart enough not to copy code, but a patent covers an idea, not a specific implementation.
A lot of this paranoia comes from my co-worker, who is pro-Microsoft and very much anti-open source. He is absolutely convinced that open source is communism, and that it clashes with capitalism. He loves to suggest the above scenario and predict that the GPL will ultimately fail in court...
...because it blocks someone's right to profit. Not only can you not get anything for free in the U.S., but it's getting to the point where you can't give anything away!
Finally, back to Microsoft: don't they have over $40 billion in cash? So $500 million is 1/80th of $40 billion. That's like having $400 and being fined $5. Oh, that hurts. Is anyone here an accountant? How much of that gets written off in taxes? It's really a joke, in my mind.
Of course I don't know the details of the case, but $500 million seems weak. Microsoft has said that IE is now a critical part of Windows. Windows and Office are the only two sources of revenue for Microsoft... doesn't that somehow make IE a critical part of their income stream? And they only got fined five bucks for it?
I wonder if IBM will ever migrate any OS/2 code into Linux, or at least GPL it. Isn't OS/2 known for its stability? Surely there's something useful in that codebase that could benefit the open source community.
Actually, weren't OS/2 and Windows NT one and the same at one time? I wonder how ugly that licensing is!
What is the legality of taping phone conversations? In a situation such as the one described here, you are expecting to go to court; therefore, you need lots of documentation/hard evidence. Why not tape every phone conversation you have with the customer service representatives? (I would also transcribe the conversation so the judge can easily read it.) The intent, though, is to have undisputable evidence about conversations you may have had with the computer manufacturer.
Back when I was in school, both the local and long distance phone service providers flat out lied on the phone (more than once). It's for times like these I wish I would have recorded the conversation to have sufficient evidence in small claims court. I don't want to get into a his word versus my word situation when I'm going up a huge, rich company. I want to have the hard evidence right up front: you lied, here's proof.
So what is the legality of recording phone conversations? If it's okay, where can I get a good phone recorder?
Of course, the problem with Linux-Windows interoperability is Microsoft's closed standards. I'm convinced that if Microsot's products were built on open standards, we'd see the open source adoption of which we all dream. Microsoft knows this; when they're not spreading FUD, they're working hard at creating closed systems that don't work with anything non-Microsoft.
What we need to do is to market information as infrastructure. Electronic data these days is ubiquitous as roads and cars. Electronic information needs the same kind of standardization that the highway system has, or that electricity in your home has. By monopolizing on data formats and information exchange, Microsoft effectively owns the information infrastructure (at least in the US).
Unfortunately, companies like Microsoft are now lawsuit-happy with intellectual property issues. Unfortunately, Microsoft can market their closed systems as "security features" and "competetive advantage". Do the Word or Excel data formats really provide competetive advantage? Yes, only because no other software offers 100% compatibility. Look at the great security offered by the closed-ness of Outlook/Exchange, IE, XBox, Passport... Courts buy this crap!
Without more active consumer involvement or corporate backing, the web will slowly become owned by Microsoft. Our great open source browsers will be able to view a trite portion of the web; while the featureless and horrendously insecure IE will be required to see any interesting content.
Common data formats, documents, spreadsheets, web content, and even presentations drastically need to be standardized. I'm afraid to say it, but, again, without mass consumer awareness or corporate backing, we need the government to mandate standards for information exchange.
If there was at least one other dominant web browser, and at least one other dominant office suite, I'm sure we'd see standardization occur at a breakneck pace. The parties involved would tire of supporting each other's formats to maintain cross-compatibility (and go broke doing so), and would eventually agree on some standard format. The business could then focus on offering a better product.
Information systems are are becoming part of the world's infrastructure. That infrastructure should not be controlled by a single corporation.
Nobody cares
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The article quotes John Bloom as saying the following. The big media companies, holding the copyrights of dead authors, have said, in effect, that Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton were wrong and that we should go back to the aristocratic system of hereditary ownership, granting copyrights in perpetuity.
As another poster pointed out, it's plain and simple greed. The big media companies want perpetual copyright so they can continue to milk those works as long as possible. Copyright to a media company is the same as a manufacturing company's raw materials or even inventory. Manufacturing organizations are taxed on their inventory; if the big media companies want to own all that copyright, they should be taxed on it.
The real issue here is that the overwhelming majority of people at large are not aware of these issues. Anyone attempting to educate the masses on such things are immediately shut out as hippie radicals. The only people really working at these issues are the ones who stand to make a profit on them (i.e. the big media companies). Those same people working relentlessly for profit via copyright are the ones who are so quick to equate Linux, open source, anything public domain, etc to communism.
The cruel irony here is that the very people who label public domain as communism are the same people who are robbing our freedoms.
Sigh. Linux and the Internet were great while they lasted.
Slashdot Mirror
This does disturb me a bit, as I see the real technical job opportunities at my company diminishing. Based on my first hand experience, I tend to believe that the study's results are true, and that "programming" jobs will continually become scarce in the US.
As a manager, though, I want people working for me who can read forums, who are willing to subscribe to mailing lists, who can R-and understand-TFM.
I agree that most people are not technical in nature, and most probably don't care about the manuals, or any details about the system, but you have to have someone in your organization who can work in that capacity.
Would you pay your own in-house tech support to have zero knowledge of your application and be nothing but the folks who call the commercial tech support?
And if you want to completely outsource all of your technical work, fine, but you better pray that noone takes advantage of your ignorance.
Case in point: the number of truly technical people in your organization should be proportional to the number of systems for which you expect support.
Though, from my young, limited experience, corporate America seems as though it would rather pay outrageous one-time fees for support rather than pay a competant staff a reasonable salaray.
Rarely have I seen such a high profile interview that gave any kind of meaningful answers or insights as to what the interviewee is actually doing/thinking/feeling. It's just a game of lipservice and wordsmithing: just like politicians, when asked a difficult question, the answers are always vague and nonspecific. God forbid any recognizable figure actually speak their mind!
As interesting as this interview could potentially be, I'm afraid that the OSS/Linux community really won't gain anything from it. But Microsoft will benefit: they'll get to go around talking about how they are "cooperating" with the Open Source community.
I have always thought it would be interesting to have live, face-to-face debates between Microsoft (represented by Gates, Ballmer, senior management and engineers, etc) and some prominent OSS figures (who to send would be a debate in and of itself, but you get the point). The debates should be broken up by topic, i.e. economics, security, innovation, marketing, etc.
These PR types are pretty much all the same. Their job is just to make their company/product look good---they don't even need to know anything about it. Take the top PR guys from ten random major corporations, and shuffle them around to different companies. I bet they only need one day to resume their pace. Why? Their job is totally formulaic: when asked a difficult question, (1) restate the question, but downplay its significance, (2) cite an example of where you did something good -or- talk about some initiative to stop a (minor, unrelated) problem, (3) make really general statements that are true, but don't really have any meaning. Repeat steps (1) through (3) until the issue has been clouded enough to talk about how great your company/product is, and how your high-level goals/initiatives support this right behavior.
Back to my original point: given that I think we ought to be able to predict Mr. Taylor's answers, here's my crystal ball:
Slashdot: If Microsoft does not see Linux as a threat, why has such an investment made to discredit it?
Taylor: Laughing. Microsoft has a commitment to its customers and stockholders. In that regard, it is our obligation to constantly assess market conditions and provide the best value to our costomers. We listen to our customers. And a lot of customers have been asking about Linux! We cannot affect customer curiosity, and we certainly encourage competition. Therefore, all we can do is educate our customers, to make sure they make the best decisions. Numerous case studies have shown that Windows has a lower total cost of ownership than Linux; in many cases it is also more secure and better performing. We simply want to dispel the myth that Linux is a legitimate alternative.
Slashdot: Microsoft has recently made statements suggesting that it is an interoperability champion; even moreso than Linux. How can you achieve such a great deal of interoperability with closed, proprietary standards, and threats of patent lawsuits?
Taylor: Interoperability is an increasingly important aspect of technology. Microsoft backs its products with a greater degree of customer support than any other software company, guaranteeing the greatest deal of interoperability. We believe strongly in intellectual property protection because we've made huge investments in the innovation we've brought to the market. The open source community does not respect intellectual property rights, and as such, our products must be protected accordingly. However, we have the most competitive and exhaustive collection of licensing options for third party developers who wish to use our technology in their own product. The same cannot be said for open source, which offers neither support nor idemnification.
Slashdot: With the proliferatio
No offense to the Mono folks, but I just don't see them ever having 100% cross-platform capability. It will never be possible to seamlessly change your development and deployment environments from Microsoft.NET to GNU Linux/Mono. And if it ever does become that easy, Microsoft will be ready with some kind of nastiness (patent lawsuits, forced upgrades, etc).
The group I work in writes custom engineering (design and anlaysis) applications for our company (Fortune 100). Some of these applications have been ported several times over the years as the flavor-of-the-week OSes/platforms changed. And today we're still porting applications to Windows using MFC! What happens when Microsoft obsoletes MFC, or Linux becomes the standard for engineering desktops, or even Apple starts supplying top-of-the-line technical workstations? We'll port again! But now is the time to take advantage of open source, cross-platform development environments.
Spend your time working on a solution for your customer, rather than worrying about future portability issues. I just feel that if you go Microsoft now, you'll regret it in the future; I just don't see how anyone can make a reasonable justification for going with Microsoft and claim to have a solid long-term vision.
Even Microsoft's lame slogan, "Where do you want to go today?" supports their obvious short-term approach. Today just isn't as important as tomorrow: I know where I need to be tomorrow; once I figure out how to get there, what I do today will naturally be right.
But, it only takes one person to look at the Windows source, then go do something vaguely similar in Linux (or any OSS project for that matter). The result would be devastating: Microsoft would litigate Linux to death.
As many have said, the principle behind these copyright suits is awful. Looking at code, then doing something somewhat similar (because of inspiration) should not be a copyright violation. But with Microsoft's legal and financial resources, the laws will "adapt" to what is most beneficial to them.
I can only echo what many other have said: for the sake of Linux and OSS in general, do not look at the Windows source!. That's a very conservative and overly-paranoid policy, but it's a invaluable measure for protection.
To me, general acceptance of open-source software is similar to political elections: every last spec of dirt is drug out and put under the spotlight. Any potential or suspect or even misunderstood characteristic is scrutinized, and the naysayers always manage to put a negative spin on it.
Open source only stands a chance if it can maintain the straight and narrow path... I hate to sound preachy, but any slight mishap, no matter how innocent or accidental, quickly turns into a major catastrophic disaster. There's just too much money and power interested in seeing OSS fail.
On the other hand, binary distributions maintain their own compiled packages. Think about how many different binary packages are available for all your favorite programs across all the different distributions. How much aggregate storage space is being wasted for what is really redundant (yet slightly different) data?
Source-based distributions (Gentoo, FreeBSD) only have to maintain their build scripts. I'm sure that the complete collection of any source-based distros' build scripts is significantly smaller than any binary-based distros' complete collection of binary packages.
Now I'm not arguing for the superiority of source-based distros (they're certainly not for everyone). But the source package should be the standard base upon which each distribution builds its packages. For example, instead of Debian maintaing all those binary packages, why not maintain a method (i.e. a script) for creating those packages?
This would effectively give every binary-distribution a source-based option. My concept is that every distribution would start with a Gentoo- or FreeBSD-like source distribution system, but also maintain a cache of pre-compiled binaries. Gentoo already does this with a few huge packages (e.g. you can download and install a pre-compiled OpenOffice.org package).
In short, I'm suggesting that all the distributions could change their internal infrastructure by adding a source/build script layer, but not affect the actual installation, administration and/or use of the system. Standard disclaimer: I have never worked intimately with any package manager, so much of this is speculation/brainstorming.
To me, this is a sign of continually degrading manager-employee trust in the workplace. My interpretation of the above sentance is that your (previous) employer trusted an outside company more than they trusted you. It's an all too blatant case of not being able to see past the billfold.
Security administration is the pinnacle of a trust relationship. Cleartly, the security administrator has the potential to do an enormous amount of harm; naturally, he's a risk. I can't believe consulting firms profit from telling people that! That concept is so fundamental, so basic, so intuitive. Furthermore, security is like insurance: the benefits aren't tangible; to an accountant, security just looks like an expense. Sorry folks, it's the cost of doing business these days.
And to have some firm come along, pronounce the obvious, and get someone fired for it is ridiculous. Why did this company trust the outside firm more than their own employees?
Language barrier. I'm not talking about "English as a second laguage" or figures of speech; I'm talking about the laguage of business. This consulting firm came along, excited the company's management with fear, and swiftly calmed those fears by speaking in terms only a manager can understand: bottom line. Sadly, security is an issue whose technical details are every bit as important as the financial details.
This fits hand-in-hand with my most outrageous conspiracy theory to date: the USA is the home of a giant power struggle, a fight between the managers-accounts-lawyers (MAL) and everyone else. (Why else would "mal-" be a prefix that usually implies something bad? <grin>) The MAL group is interested only in profit, making money, and considers greed a legitimate and essential part of the American Dream. The mal-people have created the convoluted infrastructure upon which we operate; they are the only ones who understand it, and can therefore manipulate it to maintain their power.
The rest of us are seen as a threat. Education, free speech, free thought, individuality are the chaos that keep mal-people from having total control. Still, they do their best to suppress such threats. Labor unions of olde are a nice example: a group of people who simply wanted fair compensation for their work. And as the years have gone by, the power of labor unions has dissolved considerably. The tech savvy are the new threat to the mal-power; geeks posses great knowledge and capability; they potentially have the power to unseat the MAL. So what does the MAL do? Work the system (their system) so that the geeks' power and influence is kept at bay (or, more appropriately, kept offshore).
If not, it was always my understanding (based entirely of heresay of course <grin>) that the Nt 4.0/Win2k/WinXP kernels were actually pretty good. Wasn't the original NT kernel jointly developed with IBM and OS/2? Again, my hearsay-based understanding has always been that all the "cruft" that is duct-taped to Windows accounts for the lockups and security issues.
I'm too lazy to dig out the links, but I'm sure many Slashdot readers are familiar with Microsoft's legal use of the term "core operating system" (or similar terms anyway). Remember all the stink about bundling Internet Explorer with Windows? Didn't Microsoft claim that IE is an intrinsic part of Windows, that it cannot be removed without breaking the OS? More recently, the Europeans want Microsoft to unbundle Windows Media Player from Windows XP. I'm sure Microsoft is claiming that WMP is part of their "core" operating system.
In short, Microsoft has been criticized so often for bundling applications with Windows. Their response is usually along the lines of "it cannot be unbundled". I call anything that cannot be unbundled part of the core system.
So it looks like this new division will work on the entire Windows product!
Unfortunately, too many people don't care or don't understand the subtleties of this discussion, and will never realize that---yet again---Microsoft says one thing but does another.
Agreed. In fact, I think the popular opinion should be "Linux is easier for the senior citizen" as opposed to our current "Well, my grandma wouldn't be able to use Linux". For the inexperienced computer user, I belive a (properly setup and configured [1]) Linux system is just as easy to learn and use as a Windows system. Linux is hard for those born of Windows, to those who passionately think the Windows way is the better way, etc.
My dad and I setup a computer for my grandma (pieced together from leftover parts from our own upgrades <grin>). Without really thinking, I myself fell victim to the popular "Windows is easier" mantra and put Windows 2000 on my grandma's computer. As you may have guessed, she has random problems from time to time. On the upside, any one of my dad, uncles or I can fix problems on her machine. But in hindsite, I think Linux would have been a better choice for her. Granted, I would be the only one in the family who could fix any problems, but I'm confident that I could setup the box in such a way that no problems ever came up. All she does is email and write church bulletins; I could make her linux box do that and only that quite easily.
An "open source purist" of sorts probably shouldn't concern himself with Linux's desktop market share, beating Microsoft or whatever... but, for semi-selfish reasons, I desparately want to see Linux have a reasonable desktop market share (say 20%). The reasons being are as follows:
I wish some major OEMs would get behind Linux to promote it on the desktop. I'm confident that it's ready. Maybe not for everybody, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who would like it if they knew about it, if it came on their new computer, if someone installed it for them, and/or they had a kind of "getting started" tutorial. My intuition says that the majority of people don't upgrade Windows, they just buy a new PC.
Of course I'm only speculating, but I think someone like Dell or HP could sell PCs with Linux pre-loaded and pass on savings to the customer. I know some OEMs do this, but none of them actively promote it or make their Linux offerings obvious. I've heard Microsoft advocates tout that OEMs dont' push Linux because there is no demand for it. I think the demand is there, it just hasn't been properly exploited. Lindows is doing it through the "minor league" channels. But I think it's pretty evident that Microsoft essentially owns the major OEMs.
A reasonable person would probably just throw out old stuff, and stuff that will never be used. But I'm unreasonable
So what I'm looking for is an extendable, cheap way to store lots of CDs. I want something a little more flexible than a spindle. I'm currently thinking about getting one of those CD "bins" reminiscant of the old 3.5 in floppy drive bins (they are plastic containers that hold the disks upright, so you can flip through them like files; they usually have a hinged top). I plan to put all my CDs in those individual tyvek sleeves, and put them in a CD bin. This might require me to buy a lot of those sleeves, but it seems like a decent solution.
Anyone else have any other ideas, thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc?
Ahh, that makes sense, and I think it's something that is needed. I guess I was aware of that to some degree, but never saw it put as concisely as you did.
I'm positive there would be an uproar in the open source/NIX community when you start saying things like there should be no
Well, perhaps I'm just too much of an idealist, but I think it should be possible to have the best of both worlds. I don't think a well-organized file hierachy and some kind of abstract layer should be mutually exclusive. I'm thinking along the lines of a layered approach, ala networking protocols.
I think it's pretty interesting, though, because the way people store files (currently) is probably very similar to the way people store their physical stuff. At some point in their life, everbody will want something they know they have, but can't remember where they put it. Same way with files. I'm a pretty anal person, so I have a fairly structured directory tree that really acts as metadata/abstraction for me. It's the same way with my physical stuff, I (pretty much) have a place for everything. But at the same time, there are a handful of my things I can never find (because I haven't defined a place for them), and there's always a handful of files I have to go digging for.
I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it, but I haven't been able to conjure up an elegant abstract storage solution. (Maybe my imagination just sucks.) But it all seems to come back to having some kind of metadata layer. The back-end could be a filesystem on a local disk, a network share, a database, a tape, etc, but this abstraction layer gives me the ability to create "collections". I.e., "my Pink Floyd music" could be a collection of streamed media, locally stored files, etc. But that set could also be a part of the "my classic rock music" set/collection; part of "my Pink Floyd music" could belong to the "songs by Roger Waters" collection...
My example is basically saying that all the metadata and abstraction in the world isn't going to keep me organized... it might help, and might make for intuitive and or "smart" information searches, but I still have to use and apply it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against such technology or even trying to be argumentative. I just think it's an interesting problem. Here I'm basically thinking out loud.
It looks like Microsoft is already playing catch-up with Linux in some respects. The "sidebar"? What about Windowmaker's dock apps? What about gkrellm? What about the various panel apps for Gnome and KDE? I haven't seen any details about the WinFS file system, but I'm betting that whatever Microsoft comes up with could easily be done with some combination of MySQL, OpenOffice.org's document architecture, a pretty GUI and some glue to hold it all together. (It's an obvious point, but in case anyone has forgotten, developers have choices choices choices with open source: the GUI could be motif, Tcl/Tk, GTK, Qt, OpenGL,
In brief, unless Microsoft has a huge ace up their sleeve, whatever they want to do or come up with has already been done or can be done quite quickly with the enormous, comprehensive open source infrastructure that is available today.
The "Free" in Free Software Foundation refers to free speech and freedom of choice (as opposed to getting something without paying). GPL software has a specific license to which the user must abide if he is to use and modify it. If these terms are unacceptable to the user, he does not have to use the software. Everyone---individuals and companies---should understand the license of a software product before using it. GPL software is *not* public domain.
The association with Communism suggested by statements such as "Such a pity, comrade" are unfounded. GPL'ed software represents freedom; it is an alternative to closed-source, proprietary software that must be bought with cash. I see nothing un-American about the ability to choose among different options.
Those who disapprove of the GPL should simply ignore it; those people are no worse off than if it did not exist.
If I were to take a non-free program, such as Microsoft Word, modify it, then re-distribute it as my own, I can guarantee legal action by Microsoft! If the Free Software Foundation's copyright and license are not to be respected, then neither should any other company's. (Please note that, although difficult, it IS possible to modify a binary (i.e. compiled) program.)
I'm suprised there aren't more class action lawsuits against Microsoft for their woefully insecure products. Whether or not the alternatives are more secure is not the issue! The courts have ruled that Microsoft has a monopoly. Because of this, I think they should be held to a higher standard, be that much more accountable for their actions, and have a greater obligation to customer/consumer needs.
Microsoft has no shortage of money; they probably employ the majority of the better software developers. And yet they continue to get away with paying little more than lip service to security issues. True, many of Microsoft's security problems are related to user error, but it's the principle of the matter: I see no reason why they can't do better. It's only self-interest that keeps Microsoft from being more proactive about security and customer education.
Like it or not, Microsoft is the dominant software provider---the monopoly software provider. They should be held to higher expectations and have greater responsibility.
I don't see much "Linux vs. Windows ease-of-administration" discussions these days, although I think it is still relevant. In general, I think "easy" administration is overrated.
For desktop and casual users, systems should be simple, intuitive and allow work to be done quickly. But making a server "user friendly" is just a way of reducing configurability (and sometimes capability). In the light of IT outsourcing, worms, virii and general heresay, I think everyone is expecting system administration to be trivial.
When people talk about "which is easier to administer" I cringe. When something isn't easy, at least for me, it usually means it isn't well-understood. Do we want folks administering mission critical systems when they don't even understand them? And when they're using Windows, and they think they understand what they're doing, they're really being deceived by pretty GUIs and dumbed-down configuration interfaces.
Companies who were once concerned with pushing new technology and ideas now want to crush anyone or anything that threatens their cushy seat built on the ideas and creativity of yesterday.
Of course, to be fair, their are companies who, from their birth, don't care about science or technology, or bettering life for their fellow man; they are inherently sinister. But the once idealistic corporations described above are eventually consumed by the malaise of greed, and decay into equally sinister entities.
The point is: how can companies such as Microsoft and Intel, who are so quick to equate open source software with communism, call themselves capitalists, when they try so desparately to hinder competition? It is in the competition that we see the real invention. The market should decide whether or not that invention will be successful, not some greedy old millionaires who feel threatened by change and new ideas.
These companies quickly bastardize the same system that enabled their growth and success.
Dan Leach, Microsoft's lead product manager for Office, said rights management features were built into the new Office based on ongoing discussions with customers.
"We asked people what types of things would you like to do that you can't do now, and what they said is they'd like to spread large amounts of information around to more of their people--but they have concerns that the wider they spread information, the more likely it is to become available to the wrong people," he said.
I feel that the article actually puts Microsoft's new scheme in a positive light! This needs as much bad press as possible! When will the general population realize that Microsoft is very rarely innovative? And that virtually every business move of theirs is in the interest of stifling competition?
If Microsoft didn't have a monopoly, they couldn't pull off half of the stuff they do.
There are many ways to solve the user's problem above that do not involve vendor lock in or forced obsolescence. In fact, this could be the killer app for Linux and all of open source: integrated crypto for the Linux kernel and OpenOffice.org. Make security inherent in the total system, but use established crypto systems. DRM can be delivered with open source!
I once heard that Burger King never does location research. They just wait for McDonald's to build a restarant and then BK builds their own nearby. Well, open source might as well use the market research that Microsoft makes available---let open source deliver customer solutions that actually benefit the consumer.
I believe there is something to be said for not caring whether or not open source gains market share. Well, I don't care about market share, but I would like to be able to use my Linux desktop and not worry about compatability with everyone else. I'd like to be able to receive documents from my friends and co-workers and not have to request a non-proprietary data format. I'd like to be able to buy hardware with OEM-level Linux support. I'd like to be able to recommend Linux to my friends without caveats. Unfortunately, these things won't be possible until Linux has significant "market share". I would nearly bet my life that Microsoft's Office monopoly is what keeps open source from gaining significant market share. I think that, any more, MS Office enables the Windows monopoly! Microsoft knows this and they are milking it for all it's worth.
Microsoft is no different from any other company faced with a similar situation: they recognize a critical event in their market (the emergence and spiraling popularity of open source) and they realize they must take drastic measures to keep or increase their market share (lock everyone else out at any cost). Such a monumentous undertaking will require Microsoft to put a lot at stake. Unless open source---and educated consumers in general---respond with equal effort, Microsoft will come to own your digital world.
I'd applaud Microsoft if closed/proprietary data formats weren't their game. It just infuriates me that Microsoft is working so hard to make their products incompatible with other products. Sorry to echo what is already a chant, but they are exploiting their monopoly. If they didn't have a monopoly, they couldn't get away with this extreme incompatibility with non-MS products.
My Microsoft-loving, open source-hating co-worker loves to say that proprietary data formats are just good business---it's intellectual property, and un-American and anti-comptetetive to say otherwise. WTF! How do MS Office's cryptic file formats offer Microsoft any competetive advantage other than keeping competetors out of the market?
I'm convinced that if there were three or even two office software suits with relatively even market share, they'd all do a pretty darn good job of reading each other's formats. I'm sure they'd also be a few generations ahead of MS Office---not just "little" features, but hugely useful stuff, like voice dictation, character recognition, integrated document database management, instant Internet publication, inherent crypto, authentication, security, etc.
The fact that Microsoft tries so hard to break compatability with non-MS products is proof enough that they do not compete on innovation. If their products are really so good, why hide the APIs?
Another thing that blows my mind is that people have become brainwashed to accept this as status quo. I work for a Fortune 100 company, and our IT director has actually said, "We can't do business without Microsoft." Man, that's a sweet deal for Microsoft! How many multi-billion dollar companies are saying they need Microsoft? Congratulations, Microsoft, on creating a drug-like dependancy!
It's hilarious, really.
If they really wanted to be compensated for this "stolen code" or "contract infringement" or whatever complaint-of-the-week they may have, wouldn't they be pushing this harder through the official channels? Anyone who is wronged wants a quick resolution. SCO seems content to just sit around and release a lot of anti-open source press.
The overwhelming majority of their claims has been debunked, except that which can't be seen (the "offending code" and the contract with IBM). I doubt an entire million lines of code is stolen. No way! Sometimes I think that SCO may actually believe that there is stolen code in Linux. Somewhere, someone made some assumptions, and used these assumptions to demonstrate that Linux uses stolen code. And now they seem to have people working off of these assumptions, finding even more illicit code! I can see where there might be a few shady or questionable areas of the kernel, but a million lines? Pshaw!
Every week or so, SCO seems to come out with a more outrageous claim. Sometimes I think that maybe they are playing the open source community against itself: there's so much talk about the legality of the GPL, SCO's claims, intellectual property, etc. SCO at least knows how passionate the Linux community is about its operating system; they are using this fact to keep their smear/FUD campaign alive. SCO is just a school yard bully. This whole affair has become the reality TV of the open source world.
I don't see it happening (as I myself am just as guilty of wanting to know "what's next" with this ordeal), but we need to just ignore SCO. And by we I mean everybody who is not SCO. Until they are willing to actually work with anyone (outside of an NDA or the courts), there's nothing we can do except keep making better software.
Of course, the other side is that there's always an argument for "any publicity is good publicity". If a few more people know about Linux/open source than who are turned off by the propaganda, it works to our benefit.
I wish that a few large, influential companies would stand up to Microsoft and call them on their lame business strategy: closed, proprietary standards that keep everyone else out of the game. Microsoft simply does not compete on innovation. Why doesn't this get more press? Why does the main stream media not criticize Microsoft more often? They appear to be going out of their way to keep data formats and protocols both closed and unnaturally complex just to keep other systems out of the game. I think that alone says that they recognize that their software is not superior!
I work at a large Fortune 100 company and we use Lotus Notes as our groupware. I hate Lotus Notes: it has the worst user interface I've ever encountered, is fairly buggy, and just generally kind of sucks. Everyone at work wishes we'd switch to Outlook! In my mind, that's the only advantage Lotus Notes has: it's not Outlook! That's all Microsoft wants: a few large influential companies to use Outlook so they can play the vendor lock-in card, start changing standards, and have another Office-like monopoly on their hands... but with email.
The Internet Explorer monopoly is scary enough. Now Microsoft is working on email. Microsoft is working very hard at destroying the openness of the Internet; they want to own the Internet.
Microsoft is a nice target for lawsuits: they're big, visible and have lots of money. However, what if an open source browser had a more significant market share? Wouldn't that same patent-portfolio group come demanding royalties?
This is a more general concern that scares me; it may be tested by the SCO-IBM case(s). Say a company patents some software technology. What if the developers working on that code go home at night and use the same concepts in some open source projects? I emphasize concepts because the developers are smart enough not to copy code, but a patent covers an idea, not a specific implementation.
A lot of this paranoia comes from my co-worker, who is pro-Microsoft and very much anti-open source. He is absolutely convinced that open source is communism, and that it clashes with capitalism. He loves to suggest the above scenario and predict that the GPL will ultimately fail in court...
Finally, back to Microsoft: don't they have over $40 billion in cash? So $500 million is 1/80th of $40 billion. That's like having $400 and being fined $5. Oh, that hurts. Is anyone here an accountant? How much of that gets written off in taxes? It's really a joke, in my mind.
Of course I don't know the details of the case, but $500 million seems weak. Microsoft has said that IE is now a critical part of Windows. Windows and Office are the only two sources of revenue for Microsoft... doesn't that somehow make IE a critical part of their income stream? And they only got fined five bucks for it?
Actually, weren't OS/2 and Windows NT one and the same at one time? I wonder how ugly that licensing is!
Back when I was in school, both the local and long distance phone service providers flat out lied on the phone (more than once). It's for times like these I wish I would have recorded the conversation to have sufficient evidence in small claims court. I don't want to get into a his word versus my word situation when I'm going up a huge, rich company. I want to have the hard evidence right up front: you lied, here's proof.
So what is the legality of recording phone conversations? If it's okay, where can I get a good phone recorder?
What we need to do is to market information as infrastructure . Electronic data these days is ubiquitous as roads and cars. Electronic information needs the same kind of standardization that the highway system has, or that electricity in your home has. By monopolizing on data formats and information exchange, Microsoft effectively owns the information infrastructure (at least in the US).
Unfortunately, companies like Microsoft are now lawsuit-happy with intellectual property issues. Unfortunately, Microsoft can market their closed systems as "security features" and "competetive advantage". Do the Word or Excel data formats really provide competetive advantage? Yes, only because no other software offers 100% compatibility. Look at the great security offered by the closed-ness of Outlook/Exchange, IE, XBox, Passport... Courts buy this crap!
Without more active consumer involvement or corporate backing, the web will slowly become owned by Microsoft. Our great open source browsers will be able to view a trite portion of the web; while the featureless and horrendously insecure IE will be required to see any interesting content.
Common data formats, documents, spreadsheets, web content, and even presentations drastically need to be standardized. I'm afraid to say it, but, again, without mass consumer awareness or corporate backing, we need the government to mandate standards for information exchange.
If there was at least one other dominant web browser, and at least one other dominant office suite, I'm sure we'd see standardization occur at a breakneck pace. The parties involved would tire of supporting each other's formats to maintain cross-compatibility (and go broke doing so), and would eventually agree on some standard format. The business could then focus on offering a better product.
Information systems are are becoming part of the world's infrastructure. That infrastructure should not be controlled by a single corporation.
As another poster pointed out, it's plain and simple greed. The big media companies want perpetual copyright so they can continue to milk those works as long as possible. Copyright to a media company is the same as a manufacturing company's raw materials or even inventory. Manufacturing organizations are taxed on their inventory; if the big media companies want to own all that copyright, they should be taxed on it.
The real issue here is that the overwhelming majority of people at large are not aware of these issues. Anyone attempting to educate the masses on such things are immediately shut out as hippie radicals. The only people really working at these issues are the ones who stand to make a profit on them (i.e. the big media companies). Those same people working relentlessly for profit via copyright are the ones who are so quick to equate Linux, open source, anything public domain, etc to communism.
The cruel irony here is that the very people who label public domain as communism are the same people who are robbing our freedoms.
Sigh. Linux and the Internet were great while they lasted.