What's the Business Case for Microsoft and Open Source? 539
Friend of perl developers everywhere, Jeremy Zawodny, has an intriguing question: "If you had to explain to Microsoft why they should change their
attitude toward Open Source, what would you say?" For more about this, read on...
From Jeremy: "If you had to explain to Microsoft why they should change their
attitude toward Open Source, what would you say? More to the point,
how can Microsoft benefit from better supporting or even adopting
Open Source in their business? (Replace IIS with Apache, for
example.) Does it make sense for them? Are there ways that they can
use Open Source as a competitive advantage without pissing off the
Open Source community in the process? Which of their products would
make sense on Open Source platforms? How can the Open Source
community help Microsoft? Or is this a lost cause? IBM has made it
work. Can Microsoft?
I ask these questions because I may have the chance to talk with folks at Microsoft about Open Source. And it only makes sense that I look to the community for input. So let's hear it. Flames won't help. Thoughtful answers and ideas very well could."
Don't Fool Yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:3, Insightful)
This entire thing smells like a pat on the back for OSS if you ask me. I'm not saying they don't need one, because damn you guys are awesome (not sarcastic, seriously), I'm just saying that you may be going about this the wrong way.
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
What's needed is a change in the way MS developers think, with this I mean the people using Visual Studio etc to build solutions for the MS platform. If they start adapting Open Source more, then THEY will start pushing MS. With most MS platform developers being used to buying, and selling, their apps without source code and with a restrictive license, there's no demand on MS at the moment to go Open Source.
However, it's not likely to happen as long as Open Source is pushed by zealots (*cough* RMS *cough) who have nothing to say about MS (or M$) apart from some rant about how they suck, preferably in 1337 5p34k.
There are a lot of gains from sharing source and solutions, but, that culture just doesn't exist in the MS platform developers mind, thus there's little pressure on MS to even consider it as a policy.
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:2, Funny)
Re:OS license cost (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes?
"Do you want this built in a month using VB, or in 6 months using C?"
"I don't have the money to support a development team for 6 months"
But, point was, I don't really care what platform I use, or what language, or what technology, I use the one I feel comfortable with and that allows me to provide a working solution to the person requesting a job done. I don't cling to MS because they're MS, I stick to MS for the moment because that's what I know best. People should stick to Linux (or whatever) because they feel comfortable with it, not because of some zealous religious conviction. If Apache is the best webserver for a job, I'll go with it, it's just a damn webserver, if VB can do the same thing as a C program can, I'll use VB, it's just a damn language. To me these small MS/Linux/Mac fights are utterly pointless, use the tool that you feel comfortable with. A program is just code to make a computer do something useful, it's not a means to itself, no matter how lyrical people are about *their* language.
VB for UNIX (Score:2)
Do you want this built in a month using VB, or in 6 months using C?
"Do you want this built in a month using Microsoft Visual Basic, or in a month using GNOME Basic?" This will be the situation once GNOME Basic [gnome.org] progresses some more.
Even if "you can take the developer out of VB, but you can't take the VB out of the developer", you can take the developer out of a Microsoft environment while leaving the developer in what is essentially still VB. If you want to see this happen, fund the GNOME Basic project.
Re:OS license cost (Score:4, Informative)
Once this was the case, however the real importance of C# is that it finaly merges the Basic and C code development lines. At this point C# provides the full power of C (with some bizare omissions like structure initializers) plus the convenience of VB. The market perception that C# is about Java is only really 40% right, C# is pitched against Java because Java is the language to beat, but the real target audience is Visual Basic programmers who would like a programming language that is as easy to prototype in as a scripting language while still allowing very large projects to be supported.
Equally the suggestion in the intro to the article that Microsoft should switch from IIS to Apache is amazingly clueless. Apache is a great Web server for UNIX boxes, but IIS is a better Web server for NT. IIS is integrated into the O/S at a very fundamental level so that for example the Web server can use the system level file protections to control access to Web resources.
The features that have caused security problems with both Apache and IIS are active code. In the case of IIS three scripting langauages are integrated into the Web server (and more can be added). In the case of Apache the security weaknesses inherent in the CGI design (particularly when a CGI module is written in csh) leads to predictable problems. I don't see that a real difference can be made between the OSS and Microsoft approach here, both groups adopted what is an intrinsically insecure architecture for reasons of expediency and ignorance. Once the feature was in there was no way for the grown ups to take it out again because people used the feature.
I recently started using Visual C#, its the best program development environment I have seen since the VAX LSE. The editor does have some iritating features (like the lack of mouse-less editing), but it does have a lot of cool features like bringing up the template for a method as you enter it - even for user defined methods. The IDE looks and feels like a professional tool, there are few traces of ego-centric features that looked cool to the designer but are not so great for the user - although as with XMLSpy the editor makes the bizare assumption that my preference for editing XML Schemas is through some bizare graphical language of the authors invention rather than as XML schema.
Compare Visual Studio with the UNIX - Emacs - Make IDE and I am afraid the comparison is not favorable to open source.
I am much less interested in open source than I am in extensibility. Unless you want to do a security audit the only reason to want source is to maintain or extend a program. I much prefer a well written and supported extension mechanism than someone chucking a few meg of code at me. The .NET extension mechanisms allow me to write my own language and then use Visual Studio as my IDE for it - and get all the debugging, assistant etc. features for free. That seems somewhat better to me than creating a fork of the emacs and gcc tree for my new language and recreating all those features.
YMMV, but those people who believe that OSS is the one true faith are wrong. There is plenty of room for both models in the market of ideas.
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:2, Insightful)
Has RMS ever used 1337 5p34k? Have you ever seen RMS refer to Micro$oft?? For that matter, has anyone ever seen RMS praise "Open Source"???
Acceptance of Open Source and/or Free Software is not likely to happen as long as their basic concepts and speakers remain so poorly heard.
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:2)
No, I didn't mean to imply that RMS is a 14yr old boy who has just managed to install SuSe and is now about to learn C and assembly and Perl and Java and MS Sucks! But, those are the people you most often see advocating open source (read Linux, they haven't managed to understand that there is a difference). However, I don't think anyone can deny that RMS is a zealot when it comes to his campaigns and opinions.
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:2)
From m-w.com:
zealot: 2. a zealous person; especially: a fanatical partisan.
zealous: filled with or characterized by zeal
zeal: eagerness and ardent interest in pursuit of something; synonym see PASSION
So if you are saying that RMS is pasionate about Free software, and shows eagerness and ardent interest in pursuing his goals, then I (and I suspect most others) will agree with you. I fail to see though how this is bad for the acceptance of Free software.
If you, however, want to imply that RMS is a fanatical partisan, I'll have to ask you to provide some evidence of this. Fanaticism implies ideas without reason, and everything I've seen and read about RMS shows that his opinions and ideas are well reasoned.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Wouldn't you want to have some say or credit in naming a piece of software where you have > 60% of the contribution?
At least he does not want to name it Richarm.
Linus named it all after himself!
Having GNU in the name is a credit not just to GNU, but to the thousands of developers who have contributed to the GNU system.. RMS is fighting for credit for you and me, and you don't even realize that.. It sucks that people choose to bash the same guy who brought you the very GPL which has led to all this Linux-success.. singlehandedly, and sometimes without an apartment to live in because of his insistence...
If you are so opposed to GNU and RMS, Why don't you stop using GNU/Linux and write your own GNU/Linux, Iamthefallen? And of course, GCC, , GDB, Emacs and all other GNU tools.. written by GNU (and again, largely by RMS)...
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
open source != free as in beer
open source != free as in speech
Open source means the source is open, yes, this means it might be used without permission. open source to me is sharing information, not giving away work for free. Allow people to view the sourcecode, but license and charge for the app.
Mostly like any HTML page is today. Design theft occurs occasionally, but still there are plenty of people who pay web developers to build a site for them. If HTML code was compiled and unreadable, what would the web be today? Didn't most of us learn website coding by copying HTML/CSS/Script snippets from other pages? Has the webdesign industry died because of it?
Problem is, we (as in MS developers) are used to HTML being open source, but anything else must be hidden or someone will steal it for sure!
We need a change of culture and way of thinking is all.
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:2)
you bring up a great point- html would, I guess, be opensource. Anyone who says *opensource* is doomed to fail, then say "oh yea, obviously, that whole HTML thing was just a fluke, sure glad it died out in the earily 90's after every READ EVERYONE ELSE'S CODE, LEARNED HTML AND MADE THEIR OWN PAGES!"
you're correct- that html is by nature opensource. I have a new sig. if I could, I'd mod this parent up.
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:2)
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:4, Informative)
HTML was not open source. It is an open specification. There are open source browsers writen to that specification but the specification is not the code.
Also the libwww code written at CERN is not open source, it is public domain. There is a big difference. If you modify libwww there are no limits on what you do with it, you can make the modification closed source.
We did not write the license that way because we were ignorant of RMS's politics, far from it. The license was written that way so that companies such as Spyglass and Microsoft could build systems built on our code if they wanted to.
As for reading people's HTML to write code - thats a bug not a feature. The original idea was that the browsers would have the ability to edit Web pages so the end users did not have to learn HTML. Also HTML was originally much cleaner than the current spec which has countless enhancements added in by Netscape in an attempt to make the spec proprietary during the pre-Microsoft browser wars against Spyglass and the Web Consortium. Thats why we have six incompatible mechanisms to change fonts but none of the standard browsers support math markup - bit of a lose for a technology meant to be for scientific publication eh?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't Fool Yourself (Score:2)
How does open source make a profit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How does open source make a profit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Open source is great for the consumer (as defined by those who USE it, which can mean businesses), as evidenced by how quickly Linux is making its presence known in the server room, but it's not as great for the vendor, as evidenced by Linux-related stock prices. Slashdot posters get so frustrated because they can't draw the line between the two. We all agree it's great for the consumer - but as this Ask Slashdot post will point out, it's a lot harder to make sense for the vendor.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How does open source make a profit? (Score:2)
And, in the many years of the open source movement, I have not seen many open source projects that are highly profitable.
On their own. I MAKE MONEY FROM OPEN SOURCE. I AM NOT ALONE. There are thousands of us developers that build systems on open source platform for corporations that are making money.
Look at IGS (IBM Global Services). Imagine how little it would effect anything if IBM opensourced MQSeries. No one can use it without IGS due to the complexity, so IBM would still be making money even if they opensourced MQSeris (and hopefully fix a few bugs too!).
Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
They can keep closed sourced programs and user interface portion, but why not open up the kernel?
Ciryon
Re:How does open source make a profit? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is an interesting claim, until four years ago MSFT did not exist in the server market. They did not really believe in the model, Bill is a peer to peer sorta guy who hates mainframes.
Sun and EMC do not appear to agree with you. According to them MSFT is to blame for their current woes and threatens their survival. Personaly I think Linux is killing Sun and the EMC model of charging mainframe prices for disk storage was bound to fail sooner or later as network atached storage was comoditized.
My expereience suggests that MSFT servers rarely compete with UNIX. Most NT servers are serving a domain of Windows boxen, few unix boxes serve that role.
The one area of competition is in Web Servers and there Microsoft appears to have a pretty strong hold. Mainly through Frontpage and Active Server Pages.
Security, for starters (Score:5, Insightful)
I know what their answer is going to be, though. They don't want to open up IIS because it will expose all of the existing installations to attacks until patches are written. They'd rather keep it closed to protect the morons who don't apply patches than to open it up to fix the rest of the holes.
I'm confused (Score:3)
Wouldn't it be easier to just start using Apache?
Re:I'm confused (Score:2)
Not when all the sites are built in VBscript ASP pages that rely on com objects and Crystal Reports. You can certainly convert, but it's a long ugly process that doesn't mean any additional revenue for the company, so it's a hard sell.
Re:I'm confused (Score:2, Insightful)
I sure hope those aren't PUBLIC sites!
To date, I have only heard two reasons to use anything other than W3C and open standards. The first is always "I learned to do it Microsoft's way, it has cost me a lot of pain and effort and I do not want to go through that again." The second is more substantial, "those standards don't do what I need."
How about lower operating costs, fewer medical expenses for you (headaches, migranes, ulcers), and almost immessurably more modular and more standards compliant design? A more nimble design that can take any changes you want to make quickly and elegantly, instead of a six month jaunt through gehenna [m-w.com]?
Then, you must consider if you really enjoy being tied to a platform because you've put so much effort into it for such fragile results. Consider the psychological game gone into this, binding you to an inferior platform through your blood, sweat, and time. You're tied to IIS because you've already spent for it. In the future, you'll have to spend more time, money, blood, and sweat, just to make up for the ground being lost to competitors using better implimentations.
I, personally, would probably break down and cry after going through all that effort and realizing it was so much wasted time and effort, that you could have done it SO much faster, with better tools, and had better results. I know most people become violent rather than facing the possibility, nevermind considering it.
Re:I'm confused (Score:3, Troll)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Security, for starters (Score:3, Insightful)
They claim your company should adopt IIS because they can pay you less for your job (easier job) or even fire you (no need for good cs graduates anymore. Microsoft is easy. Anyone can admin everything).
And then you come by and blame all fault on lazy admin or untrained admin and even on non-admins? I guess the problem comes right from the MS attitude towards bastardization of the entire cs degrees and the anti-good-admin lower-cost PR.
Yes, you need a good admin. No Microsoft product is going to solve the need for admins. It's unavoidable. A good admin is productive.
While you are patching IIS some guy near your town/city doing something profitable...
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Security, for starters (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not keeping the source closed "to protect the morons who don't apply patches." They are keeping the source closed to protect everyone using the product from all the security flaws which they either haven't patched (because nobody has reported them) or the security flaws that come from terrible design and no patch is possible without redesigning they product.
Remember, Microsoft use the security by obscurity model, which Jim Alchin himself admitted in Appeals Court recently would make their software extremely vulnerable if they were forced to make the source code available.
This isn't just for the idiots that don't patch, this is for the idiots that choose to use software based on a security model that relies on Microsoft keeping the source a secret. God forbid what might happen if the source was to be leaked.
Re:Security, for starters (Score:2)
Like what? We switched to IIS where I work, but that was only because we're a Windows web hosting company and people were asking for things that needed IIS. All of our internal operations (including our own website) will be moving away from Windows entirely... to Apache/Linux and/or Apache/*BSD.
Choice (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a laptop which is a Sony Vaio, with WinXP Home, and it has one email client and one browser, among other one things.
I also have a dual-boot desktop (Win2K and Mandrake 8.2), and I enjoy working on the Mandrake side, because there's a choice of applications.
If I want to browse the web, I have Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx... I'm not tied to one browser EVER. Even when an url is highlighted, I can choose which browser to open it into.
With email, again, there are many choices for me. I also have many security choices easily found, like do not display HTML email, do not allow JavaScript or popups, etc.
I prefer choice packaged with my OS. Not that I choose which ONE I get when I install, but the ability to choose them after install, using the best software for the task at hand.
With Microsoft, I'd wish that they'd embrace this notion, packaging not only their products, but also open source alternatives, so people can choose. And they should also take the notions that many of the open source projects have taken, and allow people to decide on their own security, and install with max security and let them open themselves as they desire.
Re:Choice (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, you are not limited to just Microsoft office. You can still buy WordPerfect office, or Sun's StarOffice 6, or like me, you can download and use OpenOffice (which I'm liking more and more!).
The problem in the Windows world is not so much that Microsoft killed all of it's competition, it's that user's perceived that Microsoft products were the best choice and choked-off the other products. If more people would wake up to the fact that there are still choices in the Windows world, you would see competition again!
Re:Choice (Score:2)
Sure I can download any number of browsers or email clients for my machine, but Microsoft's will still be the "dominant", never going away ever. That's not exactly choice, but a struggle.
And I use WordPerfect for an office suite, since I refuse to put up with the annoyances of Office. However, there's no office suite which comes preinstalled on any Windows package that I'm aware.
These are the choices I'm talking about. Why can't there be a Windows for Offices with like WordPerfect, Office and another office suite all included? Etc.? Hard drives are large enough, bulk licensing could be cheap, and I'm certain people would jump at the chance of being installed on a normal Windows install on a disc.
But again, Microsoft probably has considered these and has not gone with them. It's disappointing, too.
Re: They could adopt OS just to destroy it :) (Score:2)
Bill: ok, this Linux thing is not passing away and the DoJ is costing a lot. We need to do something.
Co: yes, but what?
Bill: i don't know, but...WAIT...something comes to my mind
Co: What?!?!?
Bill: let's just talk to the DoJ and ask them to force us to bundle an alternative.
Co: WHAAAAT?
Bill: Yes, we can then "ask" our lovely oems to bundle the crapiest Linux version ever released. You know, all versions of everything that ever had a mayor bug together. Nothing will work right. Get basic the idea?
Co: Oh my god!
Bill: Yes, our god!
Co: Oh Bill. You know we love you!
Bill: Oh yeah!
People don't want choice (Score:2)
Re:Choice (Score:2)
So show Microsoft the market research that people care. YOU care, maybe I care, but where's the data that shows that the end user really want's to make these kind of choices.
You misunderstand the reasons... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike the pro-open source evangelists like RMS, ESR etc. the whole pro and cons OSS thing is not an ideological question for MS.
The problem is that some open source program are a threat to MS market dominance. And MS gained that dominance by ruthlessly destroying all competitors. They act shark like - see, attack, kill. This made them the no. 1 in the software business. And not the quality of their products. (Some of their products are good despite what OSS zealots say.) If they give up their attitude towards OSS, they would have to give up their attitude towards competitors. And this would destroy their market dominance, making them an ordinary software company like any other.
So, "convincing MS of the benefits of OSS" is nonsense. There is no real benefit for them and they will never be convinced. And they have at least one very good argument for their behavoir - their outstanding economic success. You cannot convert a predator to a vegetarian.
Why people like Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
On top of that, most opensource OSes are very modular. If you don't want this piece, you don't have to install it (Win2K server is a pain for changing some setups, like the dhcp server, the dns server, the active directory server, WINS master/backup -- at least, for me it was a pain to try to change, but, I'm not a MSCE). People like modular. I know that there is some fix for WinXP that does this to an extent (or it is supposed to).
Perhaps also the idea that, for the most part, you don't have to pay $100 for your bug fixes/upgrades. Granted, the upgrade money is how MS stays in buisness (ok, I know people will argue with this, but, it have probably been said before and will be again, they license software, that is how they make money), some people can't afford all of the upgrades -- and if they can, they don't know how the bugs were fixed or how to work with some of the new things -- sometimes old programs don't work anymore.
Those are a few ideas, I know that others will have lots more.
-CPM
Re:Why people like Open Source (Score:2)
No no, being paid to program is fine, you just shouldn't pay for programs. Programs you have to pay for are evil. I think that's how it works anyway.
Eh? (Score:2, Informative)
The sad truth is Microsoft has nothing to gain monetarily from moving to Open Source, and since they are a corporation, money is all that really matters. I don't mean this in a bad way, its just the way it is. There's so many hurdles that Microsoft would have to overcome to make things OSS.
Consider how much their legal dept would get the sweats over a shareholder law suit if they OSS everything and the stock drops because nobody buys software anymore -- they just download the OSS Microsoft code and compile it!
And that's only ONE of thousands of problems. They also have the standard problem of using a lot of code licensed from other people, how do they deal with that? Even if they wanted to OSS their software because there was a good reason, it would cost the millions if not billions in legal fees and programmer time just to get rid of all the licensed code depedencies in their software!
In short, forget about it. Use your energy on something else.
Most software is never sold (Score:2)
Re:Most software is never sold (Score:2, Insightful)
Drivers and embedded systems are indeed sold. Take video cards, for example - the difference between two high-end models often boils down to which company executed their drivers better. When review sites measure the difference between models in terms of a single frame per second, every competitive edge counts. Even though you don't see those drivers offered separately in the software section of CompUSA, that doesn't mean the drivers aren't sold.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say... (Score:2)
Re:I'd say... (Score:2)
>
> This is a stupid response.
Two points:
(a) My comment was a joke and, if I say so myself, rather a funny one.
(b) If you're going to call someone's post "stupid", put your handle at the top and stand up for your opinion like an adult. Otherwise people will think you are a fucking idiot.
unlikely (Score:4, Insightful)
personally I'd be happy if MS would just adopt and adhere to open standards, even if there code wasn't open, at least then MS systems would be able to operate with other things without a lot of effort wasted on reverse engineering (is it a fault with 3rd party apps/sytems or is it an undocumented feature of MS? - most CEO's and the likes toe the MS party line so the 3rd party apps/systems are at fault, which in alot of cases is just plain wrong)
Re:unlikely (Score:2)
It's also not clear to me what "open source" really meant in the original post. If it means GPL-style licensing, then I'm sorry, but that's just not going to happen. On the other hand, Apple has shown that a proprietary OS can exist very happily with lots of code in it that uses BSD-style licenses.
Green envy and spam (Score:5, Funny)
Linux can. Linux can .Use Linux
That Linux can! That Linux can! I do not like that Linux can!
Do you like open sourcing plan?
I do not like that Linux can. I do not like the open sourcing plan.
Would you like to free source share?
I would not like to free source share. I would not like it anywhere. I do not like open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.
Would you like it very stable? Would you like it to enable?
I do not like it very stable. I do not like it to enable. I do not like to free source share. I do not like it anywhere. I do not like the open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.
Would you use it in a X-Box? Would you use it if it ROCKS?
Not on X-box. Not if it rocks. Not if very stable. Not to enable. I would not let them free source share. I would not let them anywhere. I would not allow open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.
Would you? Could you? In your biz? Use it! Use it! Here it is.
I would not, could not, in our biz.
You may like it. You will see. You may like it if it's free!
I would not, could not if it's free. Not in our biz! It should never be!
I do not like it on the X-box. I do not like it that it rocks. I do not like it amongst our biz. I do not like it that it is. I do not like they free source share. I do not like that anywhere. I do not like that Linux can. I do not like you Linux man!
service! service! service! service! Could you, would you, as a service?
Not as a service! Not if it's free! Not in my biz! Man! Let not it be! I would not, could not, on a X-box. I could not, would not, if it rocks. I will not use it if its stable. I will not use it even to enable. I will not let them free source share. I will not let them anywhere. I do not like open sourcing plan. I do not like that Linux can.
Say! if in copyleft? always free copyleft! Would you, could you, copyleft?
I would not, could not, in copyleft.
Would you, could you, why so nervous?
I would not, could not, I'm NOT nervous. Not as copyleft. Not as a service. Not in my biz. Not if it's free. I do not like that it can, you see. Not if it's stable. Not on X-box. Not to enable. Not if it rocks. I will not let them free source share. I do not like it anywhere!
You do not like open sourcing plan?
I do not like that Linux can.
Could you, would you use what we wrote?
I would not, could not, use what you wrote!
Would you, could you, to avoid your bloat?
I could not, would not, avoid bloat. I will not, will not, use what you wrote. I will not compete with them as a service. I will not because it makes us nervous. Not in our biz! Not if it's free! Not if it is! You let me be! I do not like it on the X-Box. I do not like it that it Rocks. I will not use it if it's stable. I do not like that it does enable. I do not like they free source share. I do not like it ANYWHERE I do not like open sourcing plan!I do not like that, Linux can.
You do not like it. So you say. Try it! Try it! And you may. Try it and you may, I say.
Man! If you will let me be, I will try it. You will see.
Say! I like open sourcing plan! I do! I like that, Linux can! And I would use it because it's stable. And I could use it to enable...
And I could charge for providing a service. And I could copyleft without being nervous. And in my biz. And still source free. For you can still charge for a service fee!
So I will use it on the networked X-box. And I will promote it because it ROCKS. And I will use it because it's stable. And I will use it to enable.
And I will use it here and there. Say! I can use it ANYWHERE!
I do so like open sourcing plan! Thank you! Thank you, Linux man!
By The Cat with the RedHat
Redistibute at will. (Score:2)
Who cares? Either they're right or wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
The GPL has provided a framework whereby a self-sustaining body of software has come into being. The body of developers don't rely on traditional business models to sustain themselves.
If Linux and open source become at all successful Microsoft is going to lose billions of dollars in revenue. Heck, they probably already are. I'm suprised they haven't sent the boys around to break RMS' and Linus Torvalds' kneecaps or roll over them with a bus.
This is a 'company' or community MS can't fight using traditional business models. They can't lower their prices enough to beat free. Many of open source products are at least of equivalent quality to MS products.
They've tried running attack PR campaigns, but to some extent attacking open source is as hard as attacking any other community spirited organisation, such as (for example) the Scouts or Guides, and all the bad press has so far rebounded on MS, it's a bit transparent after all. And how do you effectively attack people who are giving things away for free? It's like trying to claim that "Meals on Wheels" volunteers are evil because the food they deliver sometimes isn't absolutely perfect.
As an aside, I was in the Science Museum in London a few years ago and I saw a gas-fire powered room fan. The idea was that when it got too hot in summer, you lit this gas-fired engine and it turned a fan to blow (now warmer) air around the room to cool you down. It was a last trump of the old monopoly gas companies trying to show their product was as versatile as the new-fangled electricity. It shows the lengths an old monopoly would go to, to try and preserve their old business model in the face of a disruptive technology.
So, in a possibly vain attempt to get back on topic... I'll be interested to hear what you have to say. Because I feel only one of a few possibilities can actually happen. One is that open source limps along as a permanent embarrassing cousin to shrink wrap proprietary software. The other is that it more or less displaces shrink wrap commercial software.
My money is on the latter, and for a simple reason. MS has sent many companies down the tube by the simple expedient of knowing that the other company will eventually make a mistake, and then they are dead. MS has made many mistakes too - but the synergy of owning the OS and some popular apps meant they've had the revenue to recover from them, whereas companies reliant on a single app only had to trip once and they were gone.
Now the tables are turned. Open source isn't going away. If it can survive and get to where it has now, on an insignificant market share and difficult to use products, it isn't going away now it has growing market share and great things like KDE3 and Moz and GNOME and open office and so on that stand up against MS' core products.
Now it's MS that has to avoid making mistakes.... In my view that classic mistake they are making is concentrating on their market share and revenue rather than the customers. Look at the PR and mindshare disaster that Licencing 6 has proven to be. Just goes to prove the old saying that once a monopoly finishes dealing with it's competitors, it starts beating up on its customers.
MS contains some of the greatest developers in the world under one roof, probably THE greatest number of developers working for a single company. The problem is that so much of their work seems to be directed towards a 'scam' - keeping MS on top and killing other companies, rather than just turning out great products. It's proven a very effective strategy so far, the issue is can it survive against a community who isn't playing the same game?
So what can you say to MS about open source in general? It'll either eat them or live alongside them. Either way, they lose. And it's as inevitable as what happened to the horse and cart when the automobile was invented, and nothing they do can really change how this game is going to play out economically. So they may as well ignore it and hope it'll go away.
Re:Who cares? Either they're right or wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
But over time the rough edges were smoothed out. And remember, looking after a horse is an expensive and time consuming affair too.
Imagine the early advertising campaings. "Ignore Cars, they have a higher TCO than your Horse!". "Horses are tried and tested, don't get one of those unreliable Cars!". "Cars might be OK for those geeks, but for your average person, get a Horse".
The thing is of course - they'd be right. Horses were better than early cars. But cars had the advantage. In the end, eventually, they cost less. Nowadays, everyone has a car, but only the well off have a horse.
Horse "industry" also pushed "Stupid" Laws (Score:3, Interesting)
So mayby this time we can learn from history, the CBDTPA,DMCA and ilk legisilation should be raising a few "red flags" [eff.org] before they can do as much damage.
Microsoft Business Model (Score:2, Interesting)
So long as MS can make high margins on the components, control the "works under Windows xyz" trademark, and can buy out any disruptive upstart, I really don't see why they'd be motivated to open-source anything.
LL
Hard sell. (Score:4, Interesting)
IBM is an OSS advocate because:
If I were to approach it, I might challenge MS to think outside the box and compete against themselves.
Take Apple's strategy of supporting an OSS-based OS (Darwin) and adding in strategic closed source bits to productize it. Perhaps they could move some small fraction of their $40 Billion war chest into support Darwin itself. Could you imagine the boost that Darwin would get from $4-$5 Billion? (Only 10-12% of the MS Cash holdings.) This could energize their developers on their current products to take OSS seriously and spur them to produce better products.
Perhaps more importantly, this could sap mindshare and community away from Linux. How many Enterprises would field an MS-supported Open Source OS before Linux? A lot, I think.
Re:Hard sell. (Score:2)
1. IBM wanted to get out ahead of the curve they saw as becoming an important force in the industry. Too late for MS to do that.
Funny, that's what they said about MS and the Internet.
Re:Hard sell. (Score:2)
Microsoft Strategy: Commoditize the middleware (COM,
IBM Counter-Strategy: Commoditize the operating system (Linux) and sell fat middleware (WebSphere, MQ) licenses.
Classic Free Software Strategy: Commoditize everything you can by reverse-engineering and rewriting it.
In essence, IBM's strategy reduces Linux to nothing more than a cheap runtime for their usual proprietary stuff. That strategy works well for some of their customers but absolutely does not jibe with the Open Sourcers dream of open protocols and open code.
start with development tools (Score:5, Interesting)
Suspicion (Score:2, Interesting)
microsoft could work better with other systems (Score:3, Insightful)
use Linux. Microsoft could help me and my
colleagues by trying to make their products work
better with my products. They seem to do the
opposite now. Just to take a minor example of
hundreds. I write text files with 80 character
lines. Word does not have a way of importing
these without taking line breaks as paragraph
breaks, and it cannot make them. (Apparently.
At least none of my very smart colleagues can
figure out how to get Word to do this.)
Some scientists use Microsoft Word, and others
use TeX/LaTeX. Microsoft could HELP the former
group by making Word, for example, easily import
eps. (Another thing my colleagues can't
manage to do.)
And then there is Xwindow. Why doesn't Windows
include something like VNC?
The answer is that Microsoft does not want to
make life easy for its customers who interact
with people like me. This is an attitude they
might change without serious harm to their
business model. They are using their customers
as pawns in their struggle to crush competition.
That is a strategy thay may not even be in their
long-term self-interest.
Re:microsoft could work better with other systems (Score:2)
Simple: they shouldn't (Score:2)
Consequently there is absolutely no reason for MS to open their products unless they are forced to by the courts.
Microsoft Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
This means they'll do practically anything to protect that.
Linux is moving quickly to 'embrace and extend' Windows with projects like wine, wineX and CrossOffice getting very good.
The Linux-Windows war used to be a kernel war initially, but soon it will be a win32 api war. If Microsoft doesn't launch it's version of Windows with a linux kernel underneath (MacOS X system architecture), they'll loose massive market share in the bigger enterprise market and OEM's. If that happens, all will be lost for Microsoft.
They currently are in a position to create a 'Microsoft Linux'; a linux kernel with their dll-base inserted with a proprietary kernel module (kernel fork needed because of Linus' policy). In that case they would be able to create the best 'Lindows' around, possibly loose some market space with applications like IIS being replaced with Apache and such, but with again a dominant position in the Intel OS marketplace.
Microsoft is afraid of such a move, because it'll be expensive and because of the antitrust suit (although, such a move could settle it: "We will make the following version of our kernel OpenSource").
BTW, Microsoft currently already sponsors certain GNU development, like with Perl on NT.
Conclusion:
- A Linux system running windows apps is a huge opportunity for the enterprise market and OEM's.
- If that happens MS will have lost their foundation. Either they try to make the ultimate mix of their Intellectual Property and the OpenSource world, or they'll face utter destruction. They have a window of oppertunity here, but wine is getting better fast!
- Getting them to understand this is quiet simple: they initially had the same fear of the Internet and the old MS guys understand the comparisation: the Internet was a chaotic and anarchistic network, Bill Gates said "they would never invest in it". Time has proven the contrary.
To beat a Microsoft Linux, we just need to work a little harder on wine and its integration in the desktop environments.
www.microsoftlinux.com [microsoftlinux.com]
Answer the question, folks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Bear in mind, that Microsoft already does reveal its source code to people who pay enough. However, if it supplied its source code to anyone who bought the built product (even with side-conditions that the source could not be used to commercial advantage etc etc), that would still constitute open source software. And the advantage to Microsoft would be many, many more knowledgeable people finding bugs. And the disadvantages would be that someone might pinch some ideas from it to help a competing product and also that a million custom patches for their products would appear, and be sure to interfere with each other.
Re:Answer the question, folks! (Score:2)
There is much bad blood between the main open source community and Microsoft. We have long histories. This means that many bugs will be found--and won't be submitted.
Sure, there are plenty in the pro-MS camp that will hunt for bugs, but even they will have no sense of "ownership" of the code as those working on say, Mozilla do--hence less incentive to report bugs. People will know that MS will make a lot of money off bug fixes that may or may not benefit submitters. Perhaps if they had a "bug bounty" but it might get a tad expensive.... ; )
I think that they would have the worst of both worlds--risk of many bugs exposed to the wrong people (from previously hidden code) and few bugs reported. So the virii writers would have a great time. Conversely, their corporate clients would become true open source advocates very soon, but not the way Microsoft likes.
I remember a windows application crashing with the little bug reporting form popping up. Then thinking -- "Screw you! Fix it yourself!" and hit the cancel button. I'm petty sometimes, I guess.
I think Microsoft is stuck where they are. But they are stuck in their "happy place" because they make very good coin, bug free or not.
Cheers!
-b
Microsoft and Open Source (Score:2)
What Microsoft has a problem with, is with the GNU license.
MS should use closed source (Score:2)
Their lock in with proprietary applications and file formats is very profitable. They get to charge outrageous prices for their software, and have lost little market share.
Their actual customers are only starting to get upset with them, if they dropped prices down a bit, perhaps more inline with video games (computer, PS2) and announced that as the market price people would feel a lot less like they are gouging.
Going to open source would change lots, they would have real competition, profits would likely drop. They wouldn't have lock in. These are good for the consumer, but bad for MS, so they shouldn't do it.
Utilities (Score:2)
Basically, for things shipped with Windows that are included merely to make Windows more attractive, there's no reason not to use existing alternatives. Or rather, the only reason is so they can continue the FUD about IP contamination or whatever.
Huh??? (Score:2)
They can stay closed source for all I care. What I don't like is their dirty tricks. You can win without playing dirty. And if nobody can win without playing dirty then the regulators have screwed up.
Nevermind about open source. I figure the best change to the software industry would be the reduction of software copyright protection to 7 years. That way people will actually have to come up with something innovative rather than releasing a new minimally improved version and stop supporting the older version (forcing upgrades).
If 7 years is too hard then fine longer, but 50+ years is way too long.
Don't do it (Score:2)
Jesus, didn't you notice they already declared war on Open Source? Don't help them pretend to be nice guys. They're not.
Microsoft is the disease. Open Source is the cure.
Windows - the Pinto of the 21st Century (Score:2, Informative)
Mostly Emotional. (Score:2)
Microsoft cannot go open source (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft is the only successful proprietary software product company. That is, they're the only company that can sell shrink-wrap software (or user licenses), walk away from them, and still make billions of dollars.
Every other proprietary software company must back up their products with service and support or they're kaput. These are the companies you can possibly convince to open source since their true business is supporting their products or supplying services based on them.
Microsoft going open source would be throwing away an extremely lucrative and unique monopoly.
* Games are an exception, and you may find some niche companies with a similar business model.
Selective Open Source might make sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. IIS==>bit bucket
IIS does not dominate its market and has a wretched reputation. IIS extensions are available under apache, and the apache license would allow Microsoft to make its own proprietary extensions to a Microsoft-supported license.
It would make a world of sense for MS to bite the bullet, declare apache their web server, and add MS-only content in the form of proprietary mods.
2. SQL Server.
Big asterisk here. If SQL Server contributes serious net dollars, I might continue to ride it for a while.
However, SQL Server faces fierce competition at the high end from Oracle and DB2. The continued visibility of Open Source is exposing it to danger in the middle from solutions like PostgreSQL and MySQL, products that conspire to take the profit out of the segment.
I can't help but think that Microsoft could learn something here from the tremendous success of Access. Nobody buys Access because it's a great database. They buy Access because it's a database they can use. Microsoft can open up SQL-Server or they could even get more radical:
base a new database on PostgreSQL, perhaps with extensions to ensure that current SQL-Server databases are cleanly supported.
Then, without having to R&D the database (and, not coincidentally, gaining a marketing point in terms of customer flexibility), focus on proprietary tools that make developing and admining the thing easier. Maybe special additions (as separate proprietary products) to help exploit the Windows platform.
3. The Access back-end.
As I said, nobody buys Access because it's a great database.
4. Outlook Express.
A little danger here, because it might make it easier to clone Exchange. However, this could be a sort of "reverse-samba": Outlooks showing up in all kinds of strange places and on all kinds of strange platforms where it never lived before. Why? PHBs. Nuff said.
5. NetMeeting.
C'mon, guys. The whole purpose of NetMeeting is to let people in remote locations participate in a meeting. MS doesn't charge for the basic client, anyway. Opening this means that Windows can communicate with anyone else using the NetMeeting softwareThis one seems like a no-brainer, especially as a revenue stream might be found in enhanced software for originating sites as opposed to mere participants.
6. Whatever MS calls it's instant messenger.
That would be a great stab at Yahoo and AOL, and, for MS, wonderful irony.
Anyway, those a re a few of my ideas.
Re:Selective Open Source might make sense... (Score:2)
It would make more sense if they used IIS6 which has been practically rewritten from the ground up. XML configuration files, "more secure", etc.
Nobody buys Access because it's a great database (Score:5, Insightful)
As I said, nobody buys Access because it's a great database.
Yeah, and they'll never improve that back end because it drives sales of SQL server. Let me make this perfectly clear: making Access a better product would cannibalize sales of SQL Server, so MS will never make it good
Making good products is at odds with market segmentation. This is one of the fundamental benefits of free software- there is no market segmentation for code so the perfect never becomes the enemy of the good, as we see in the Access situation.
They Can't (Score:2, Interesting)
The only thing they can do is fight their customers and the government to maintain their stranglehold, grabbing as much cash as they can get away with before they are pushed aside.
It has been said here before... (Score:2)
We need to dust off and nuke em from orbit, that's the only way to be sure....
Simple.. (Score:2, Funny)
Here's what they will surelly call a troll... (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft needs to change its attitude towards Open Source for the same reason that the dinosaurs needed a near-earth asteroid search [mit.edu].
Unfortunately for them, they are as likely to understand Open Source as the dinosaurs were to understand the technology necessary for a near-earth asteroid search.
Unfortunately for us, the analogy is also likely to work in that it took the dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years to go extienct, and similarly Microsoft is likely to be around and dominating the planet for some time to come....
-Rob
Original Thought (Score:2, Insightful)
Very similar to an Ask Slasdot I submitted... (Score:2)
If people think that M$ still has a chance to see the light, then even Satan is redeemable.
Open source and IBM; hardware vs. software (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft depends entirely on software for its existence. Contributing to open source probably seems counterproductive from their point of view. Why should they loan out their expertise to support open source and possibly help competing products to emerge? Open source means revenue loss in the eyes of upper management. MS would have to change their business model to more consulting and service rather than software development in order to benefit from open source -- a big change considering how MS has grown by becoming the biggest software developer around.
Not as antagonistic as you might think (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if you're talking to the marketing or legal departments, good luck. I don't know if they can even turn on their computers.
Why Ms can't be like IBM (Score:2, Interesting)
The best hope is to get Ms to consider co-operating with key OpenSource projects like Ximan Mono so that the future MS world of
Uniformity (Score:2, Interesting)
What's the business case? I'm not telling! (Score:2, Funny)
So, if MS is interested, they can contact me and I will do so for an initial fee of $457 and an annual subscription of $137.95. Support is on a per incident basis at $125.
I keep seeing these "What should MS do?" questions, and it's starting to grate...
Software as a service (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is already seeing the value of selling services rather than products (spurred by the success of subscription-based AOL) and is slowly moving to software-as-a-service. However, their legacy of selling expensive products is making software-as-a-service very unpopular with their customers, who see it only as a way of charging many times for a product they used to buy only once. By changing their model to being entirely service-based, they would be free to use open source wherever it happened to be better than their in-house solutions (e.g. Apache) without it costing them any revenue. They could then contribute to the open-source products they use just like everybody else does.
Business Case vs Freedom (Score:3, Interesting)
If you have a superior business model for a Software company than Microsoft's, your time is better spent developing it into a real business rather than telling it to Microsoft. Please do so.
The other problem is you are talking to "Folks at Microsoft". From everything I've heard it's fairly easy to convince programmers and other developers at Microsoft that Open Source software is a good thing. The problem is that their Exeuctive Management is convinced that Freedom is a bad thing. What little use they make of Free Software with such a mindest is likely to be exploitive. Bill Gates has esentially said he really likes the idea of Open Source licenses like BSD, because Microsoft can take those programs, adapt them to thier needs, and not worry about contributing the changes back to the community. In my opinion, there has been more than enough exploitation along these lines, we don't need someone encouraging more.
In my opinion, the only really tactic is to toss the "Business Case" idea aside, and convince Microsoft that a healthy Free Software community is important to Microsoft. This is a tough call, but here are some arguments:
Key technologies they Microsoft makes a great deal of money off of were developed by a healthy Free Software community:
* Email
* World Wide Web
Having further development, in the Free Commons, will expand the computer industry as a whole. Microsoft currently has 90% of the industry, if it has only 70% of an industry three times as large, it's making more money. A healthy Free Software community can help make this happen without Microsoft having to shell out significant amounts of money.
On the flip side of the equation, many industries have a healthy commons and still make money hand over fist:
* Law
* Medicine
* Engineering
The bottom line is that Microsoft's executive management needs to be convinced that Freedom is not bad for their health before it's worth getting them involved in "Open Source".
Bah *waves paw* (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is positioned (if they dodge antitrust bullets for a little longer, and get government help) for being the only software vendor for all intents and purposes. They're quite capable of leveraging that until it snaps off in their hands, too. You have no idea how ruthless they can become in ideal circumstances. It's like taking advantage of loopholes in the rules: you cannot beat them in fair competition, because it isn't.
That makes it Them on one side, and The World on the other. Hence, Free Software, which is what you do when you can't ever get rich (or in some cases even survive) selling software in competition with Microsoft, but you want to get your software out there, and you don't want them to use it against you. It's not about competing with Microsoft at all, it's a doomsday scenario based on the idea that people will carry proprietary software to the most obscene and ugly extreme.
The only thing Microsoft can do in relation to Free Software is try and make it illegal, or cripple as many Free Software authors as possible- it makes no sense for them to embrace the ecological reaction to their damaging presence. So, they are putting out viral licensing that makes anyone who has agreed to the terms, liable for Microsoft prosecution at any time, and vulnerable to several admissions of guilt contained in the 'shared source' license itself. I don't know if they're pushing for legislation to make Free Software illegal, but it would be an effective way of using their lobbying situation (they've dumped millions into lobbying and have in fact bought off ALL the available lobbyists so competing interests cannot get their view across to the politicians).
Your advice on the topic of Free Software should be "milk the current situation as hard as you possibly can, because unlike any previous proprietary software vendor you have destroyed the market so completely that people code for nothing now, if they're not working for you. Short of killing or disabling those people, you can't compete or make use of that, because they're doing this in direct reaction to what you've done, and there's more of them, and they're better than you, and self-perpetuating."
"So cash in now, and run like hell, because you've managed to scorch your own earth, and you have all the future of typewriter-ribbon monopolies or a ruthless guild of shoeshine boys. People will pick worse and cheaper over better and more expensive, even if you do manage to do better work- and cleaning up the mess you've caused doing 'worse and cheaper' will cost you, hugely."
"Pretend to be listening, cash in bigtime, and bail out before your company does an Enron. You've destroyed your own 'biological niche' and all that remains is a clever exit strategy."
Re:M$ is doomed (Score:5, Interesting)
- score -1, naive
- score -1, simplistic
This is a serious proposition and about as objectively applicable as "-1, Troll"Positive reinforcement generally works better (Score:2)
If you consider someone's comment naive or simplistic, you can certainly post and say so (and risk getting modded down for being a troll). Or you might consider posting something more useful like explaining why you disagree (and risk getting modded down for being a troll).
I think yours was a rather simplistic suggestion. We're both off-topic.
bzzztt... bad idea (Score:2)
JMHO
Re:Wait a minute, what are you asking for? (Score:2)
And I for one would be cheering. So F&*(ing what if Linux loses some support, it's not like Linux is the be-all and end-all of operating systems. If the source code for Windows was opened tomorrow, Linux could use some of the good bits of Windows, and more to the point, anyone with enough programming knowledge could start adding the good bits of Linux to Windows.
I'm all for a blend of the good bits of Linux and windows. I'm a Sysadmin/Coder, and happy to hack on things, but when I build a box that has to reliably deal with things like bad power conditions, indifferent hardware, etc - I don't like Windows for various reasons, but I also don't like Linux, because there's too much complexity and _required_ system administration to keep it working. Building the Linux 'appliance' is tricky because it's not designed to be 'set and forget'.
Did I have a point? Oh yes - bring on the open Windows source code - and pity the poor suckers who have to try and grok that many million lines of code to start fixing things..
Re:its really simple (Score:2)