Submitted by Microsoft will launch several projects around Linux and other open source technologies for allowing Indian customers the option to run its products on different operating systems and technologies. The initiative, to be rolled out in around a month’s time, is aimed at grabbing “more market share for the Windows platform by allowing interoperability with open source technologies such as Linux,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, director, platform strategy, Microsoft India.
It was a good run. I guess the computer industry is officially dead now.
Business models come and go, and sometimes they take down the businesses themselves. Microsoft is the master of yesterday’s warfare. Nobody questions their dominant arsenal or their ability to level their enemies at will. They’re the established superpower of the software industry.
But now they face a new kind of enemy based on a distributed network of semi-autonomous projects rather than a centralized authority. They know that this war is different. This isn’t about conquering territory or repelling threats. What’s at stake is the balance of power between vendors and users.
Microsoft has worked very hard to dominate not only its competitors, but its users as well. What started with basic copyright led to increasingly restrictive EULAs, product keys, activation, copy protection, and anti-circumvention technologies. Microsoft doesn’t just own your licensed software. They also control how you use it.
Free software is a threat to the hegemony of proprietary software vendors like Microsoft. They don’t want to compete in a world where a disgruntled user can pick up the ball and become a competitor. They thought that if they sold everybody guns, they’d be too busy shooting each other to realize how we got into this mess. But the jig is up, and Microsoft simply doesn’t have any good options.
The worst thing that can happen to any leader is a popular movement that rejects the premise, that doesn’t buy into the interpretive framework or selective reality that’s being sold. Microsoft kept saying “we make the software, we make the rules, and if you don’t like it, make your own damn software”. Many developers took them up on that offer over the years, with little success.
Eventually people realized that you can’t beat Microsoft simply by making your own damn software. Microsoft’s software is generally quite good. It’s the rules that suck. The way to beat Microsoft is by making software with really great rules. Microsoft can squash any vendor and its software, but not if they’re playing by a completely different set of rules.
This time, Microsoft isn’t just competing against a rival vendor. They’re completing against an idea, a philosophy, a method for developing and distributing software. Its practitioners play by their own rules, and the worst part is that most people really like these new rules. It’s a form of asymmetric insurgency to which Microsoft has no effective response.
First they tried a misinformation campaign called Get the Facts to portray the enemy as dangerous and expensive. It worked just well enough to soften the ground for the Shock and Awe portion of the strategy, a billion-dollar intellectual property lawsuit aimed at the enemy’s corporate leader and designed to suppress the will to fight back.
The media pundits thought that this was surely the end for the enemy. Microsoft would clearly triumph through its clever proxy lawsuit. But then something unprecedented happened. A grassroots organization called Groklaw began to fight back against the charges and gradually began the shift public opinion against the war.
The legal campaign got bogged down in counterclaims and countersuits. The allegations evolved as they were refuted, becoming more and more abstract until it wasn’t clear what the whole thing was about anymore. The only thing that was clear was that it wasn’t working.
What was also clear was that the only way Microsoft could salvage this war and its legacy was with a surge strategy. They deployed 235 unspecified patents into battle to prod the enemy into agreeing on a Microsoft-sponsored framework for sharing intellectual property.
Unfortunately, the surge only deepened sectarianism within the enemy movement. Microsoft had hoped that Novell, the unity vendor they installed, would lead the way to political reconciliation. But instead, the public grew distrustful. Novell had widespread support from everybody except for the community it was supposed to unite.
Popular leaders began to encourage people to boycott Microsoft’s proxy vendor. Despite Novell’s attempt to distance itself from Microsoft, the enemy realized that Microsoft was ultimately pulling the strings. Powerful blocs such as Red Hat and Ubuntu refused to participate in this charade. It appeared that Microsoft’s unity vendor was a lame duck.
Although Microsoft was able to secure the support of some rival tribes such as Xandros and Linspire, their influence was limited and localized. The idea of a unified intellectual property agreement seemed to be dead in the water. The legal battle was essentially lost. Microsoft’s own supporters began to demand a change of course.
Microsoft now realizes that withdrawal is unavoidable. They’re nearly out of political capital. It seems like everybody is against them. Their dream of proprietizing the enemy has failed, and all that remains is to find a graceful exit strategy.
Where we stand today is at the beginning of the end of Microsoft’s confrontational stance against Linux. Nothing is simple in the Linux community. It’s a wild frontier of individual empowerment and vigorous internal competition. It’s a platform of strategic importance to just about everybody on the planet, but it cannot be controlled by outsiders.
The free software community will resist occupation fiercely. They will fork in the face of tyranny. They will not be held hostage by unsubstantiated threats. It’s a community founded on the principle of self-sacrifice to save humanity from oppression. They will fight any enemy, no matter how powerful, and they will win.
These people will give their lives for their cause in the hopes that their good deeds will be rewarded. Not in the next life, but in this life. And to Microsoft’s great consternation, it is working. The value of Linux and free software is so great that it pays for a significant portion of its own development.
Microsoft is up against what amounts to the most successful secular charity of the modern era. A humanitarian masterpiece to which people donate time and money not only because it makes them feel good, but because it brings real value to their business or lifestyle.
They’re up against a competitor that will not die. If you cut it in half, it replicates. It you cut off a limb, it regrows even stronger. Fighting free software is like fighting an exploding cloud of gas. It can’t be contained, it can’t be split, it can’t be frozen, and it consumes everything in its path.
I’ve used a terrorism analogy, but as I alluded, it’s really humanitarianism. They use similar methods to accomplish opposite goals. The only way to defeat terrorism is by turning everybody against them. This is difficult, but not impossible, since, of course, they are indiscriminate killers.
But humanitarians are indiscriminate givers. How do you turn people against that? How do you stop a social movement that operates like terrorists but preaches freedom, equality, opportunity, and cooperation?
Business models come and go, and Microsoft is the master of yesterday’s warfare. Microsoft knows that the business model of selling proprietary software licenses is on the way out. If they’re to survive, they need to find ways to monetize free software. Free software is the future. The sooner Microsoft gets onboard, the sooner they can start building the Microsoft of tomorrow.
I look forward to a day where Microsoft competes vigorously on the merit and value of their free software-based products and services. I don’t want to see one of the great all-time software businesses wither and die. I want to see them evolve with the times. They have a lot of expertise, and they could become a valuable citizen of the free software community.
Edited 2007-08-25 04:25
Nice story… when is this supposed to take place?
I think you mischaracterize the whole SCO affair. MSFT wouldn’t be involved in a lawsuit that incompetent. It was simply too dumb for both the Microsoft executives and lawyers to join. The only reason they bought a unix license from SCO must have been to allow SCO to continue on its fools errand a little longer.
In the corporate world, Windows Server is doing quite well. That was Linux’s fertile ground. Perhaps ‘get the facts’ is being retired because the compaign has largely succeeded, so there’s no reason to be provocative anymore. Now Microsoft can just leave it up to positive advertising and word of mouth to get further sales.
The key thing to realize here is that Microsoft is NOT in the business of competing with linux. They’ve learned that a better strategy is to compete with individual vendors, like Red Hat and Novell. In this arena they can be quite price and feature competitive.
“The key thing to realize here is that Microsoft is NOT in the business of competing with linux. They’ve learned that a better strategy is to compete with individual vendors, like Red Hat and Novell. In this arena they can be quite price and feature competitive.”
I think this is the most insightful comment in this thread.
“The Novell alliance was just the beginning, “as Microsoft is now working on areas such as making Apache web server on Linux (a widely used application to run internet sites) run on Windows,” added Balakrishnan.”
hello ! apache ALREADY runs on Windows,
here’s the source for Windows > http://apache.dataphone.se/httpd/httpd-2.2.4-win32-src.zip
and here it is in msi format >
http://apache.dataphone.se/httpd/binaries/win32/apache_2.2.4-win32-…
ok, i’ll go and read the rest of the article now…
cheers
anyweb
Edited 2007-08-24 13:39
If you don’t mind, there is actually more to supporting a platform besides just getting it to compile and run – alot more to it. Integration for instance between Apache and Active Directory, improved performance using Windows only APIs which will accelerate performance, integration with the administration tools that come with Windows – Windows Management Console, for instance. To some how claim because some person happened to get it compiling on Windows doesn’t equate to Windows compatibility to the extent of integration.
With that being said, it will be interesting to see what happens once the Solaris Enterprise Stack is eventually opensourced – whether it takes some wind out of Apaches sails given that SES runs on AIX/Solaris/HPUX/Linux and Windows.
Regarding Windows and Linux/UNIX – as much as I would love to see Microsoft help out, I don’t think you’re ever going to see the required partnership required to bridge the gaps between Windows and Linux – to do that would require Microsoft to devulge secrets about proprietary protocols and formats which would zap any possibility of being able to licence them in future.
My dream? I’d love to see Microsoft work on a BSD licenced Active Directory/SMB server combination using SQLite as the back end – complete integration and compatibility with the Windows counterpart and updated to actually stay compatible with the Windows version.
All evidence however brings schepticism – take Rotor for example, it hasn’t been updated since its initial release; its licence is so prohibitive that it makes it completely useless for anything outside academic facination.
If their past is anything to go by, I certainly wouldn’t put any trust into Microsoft for their future direction; they quite frankly lie about a committment to multiplatform support just as much as Adobe claim they’ll support multiple platforms for their future products.
Sorry to say this but each time I hear ‘committment’s’ I simply become more jaded and bitter to the point that I end up actually making Stallman look remotely moderate.
First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you… then they make panicky attempts to join you and keep the cash flowing.. Then they die.
At least, I hope so.
Then you win. — And make no mistake that the panicky attempts are part of the fight.
Edited 2007-08-24 13:48
Thanks for at least doing a variation on that statement.
First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you… then they make panicky attempts to join you and keep the cash flowing.. Then they die.
Get real! It’s statements like these that convince me that some ‘nix devotees are slightly disconnected from reality. MS brings in over $10B in revenue per quarter. Even if they sealed the doors and shuttered the windows in Redmond for a year, the interest on their cash hoard would more than sustain them as a company for a considerable period of time. And, even if MS were to get pushed out of the OS marketplace (not likely, given that its server growth is actually looking better than Linux at present), it could use its cash to buy its way into other markets. Tens of billions of dollars can buy a lot of profitable companies. So, get used to MSFT, they’re going to be with us for a very long time.
Unless, of course, people KNEW they were going to shut the place down completely for a year. Or, even worse, people noticed at the six-week mark that nothing was happening at Redmondco Inc. No support, no patches, no nothing, I’m not sure it would bode well. Plus,they’d have to stop paying all the employees for that time to keep ALL the money, the shareholders would have to be asked nicely not to divest to severely, and if they turned around and invested whatever money was left over they’d suddenly be an investment company, and that’s hardly “shutting down”. Microsoft, like anyone else, needs momentum to stay dominant. In the computer industry, a year’s lassitude would cost ANYBODY dearly, even Microsoft, if only in perception of future health.
Microsoft, like anyone else, needs momentum to stay dominant.
No, they simply need to have sufficient cash to buy dominant companies.
You are not Gahndi and this is not the Indian independence movement.
have a woken up in some alternate world?!
there got to be some hidden agenda here…
“there got to be some hidden agenda here…”
Yeah, it’s hidden right there in the message:
“The initiative, to be rolled out in around a month’s time, is aimed at grabbing “more market share for the Windows platform by allowing interoperability with open source technologies such as Linux,””
Hiding in plain sight, eh? But we are wise to your tricks Microsoft.
there got to be some hidden agenda here…
I don’t think there is a hidden agenda here Microsoft’s actions are pretty transparent. If they can’t sell you the OS then they can make money off you selling proprietary applications for Linux. Also to backup what npang is saying, their insistence on proprietary standards helps keep their hold on the industry. The more proprietary stuff they can push on Linux the happier they are.
Edited 2007-08-24 14:09
hmm, ms office on linux. i wonder if it snows in hell right now…
or, has anyone seen any pigs flying by?
To be frank, it’s only their own stubborness that’s prevented them from porting Office to other platforms. They cut off the Mac version and never intended to make a Linux version. But that was in the good old days when Office (and Windows) was everywhere. If ODF emerges as the one standard all of a sudden the power position of MS Office begins to crumble. Then they’ll need all the platforms and market they can get. Even Linux.
It’s high time they understood that diversity ensures survival. Ultra-specialization and a closed, unique platform are risky in the long term. Something comes along and destroys that one platform or particular set of circumstances and you lose everything. You need to diversify.
Edited 2007-08-24 18:50
If Microsft truly wants to screw Linux over, the best thing they could do is this; port their Office suite to Solaris x86. No, this isn’t a joke. Mainsoft/Microsoft ported IE to Solaris a whole back, a proof of concept of how with Mainsoft’s products you could port from win32 to UNIX easily.
Why port it to Solaris – easy, it would create a massive rift within the Linux community; between the ideologues and those who just want software. It wouldn’t kill the Linux community but it would severly castrate the developer base and the growing user base.
It would also damage GPL as well, CDDL would grow in profile – there isn’t the same sort of network of free distributions as there is with Linux, so most customers would end up purchasing a desktop licence of ‘Indiana’ once it is released – thus they would have a product of dollars to compete against rather than competing with a purely free product – it would make life easier.
It would be a nice game of wedge politics – and ultimately killing the momentum, rather than the ideology, that is pushing the alternative forward. Without the contributors who base their contributions on technological facination, all you end up with are ideologues left who quite frankly number small and contribute little when it comes to code in the file.
“If Microsft truly wants to screw Linux over, the best thing they could do is this; port their Office suite to Solaris x86. No, this isn’t a joke. Mainsoft/Microsoft ported IE to Solaris a whole back, a proof of concept of how with Mainsoft’s products you could port from win32 to UNIX easily.”
Solaris verion of IE sucked and lacked lots of functionality that the Windows version had.
Anyway, a more likely scenario is that Microsoft ports Office to Linux under a EULA that says it may only run on distros that have made patent deals with Microsoft. Home Linux users wouldn’t care, they’d “agree” to the EULA and violate it anyway, since they don’t respect EULAs, but corporate users wouldn’t do that. Corporations that wanted to use Linux AND MS Office would dump Red Hat for Suse unless Red Hat decided to make a deal after all.
Oh, and they could do as you suggest and port it to Solaris too.
In either case, a business case has to be made that the revenue would be greater than the cost. Linux has a much smaller userbase than Windows and even Mac, its users despise paying for software, despise running closed source software (hell, the “purer” ones despise running even OSS that’s not GPL), and they despise Microsoft. So how many would actually buy Office? Would it be enough to outweigh the cost of creating Linux Office?
Solaris users are as doctrinaire, but the user base is what, 1/10th that of Linux? So the Solaris userbase might not be large enough either.
Edited 2007-08-25 19:42
Solaris may have less users but more users are willing to pay for software – its like people who go on about Mac marketshare – in the windows world there is no use having over 100million end users out there when less than 1/2 (I’d estimate) actaully pay for the software running on their computer. If everyone paid for their software, I can assure you Adobe would be making a hell of alot more than they are now with Photoshop.
Also, Sun has binary compatibility garantee’s – whilst Linus is pracing around talking about the perils of a stable API; Solaris is providing it. Like I said, look at the politics; most end users who run Linux would run anything. They only run it because it is the ‘next best alternative to Windows’ – Solaris could easily fill that gap simply with one big name vendor coming to the party. People make out there Linux has some sort of edge – no, it can be replaced at any time, it has no technological edge.
Edited 2007-08-25 21:42
“Solaris users are as doctrinaire, but the user base is what, 1/10th that of Linux? So the Solaris userbase might not be large enough either.”
—
“Solaris may have less users but more users are willing to pay for software”
==
Yeah, I meant Solaris users *aren’t* as doctrinaire; I agree that they are willing to pay for software. But I still don’t know that the paying userbase is large enough to justify the cost of porting Office. Are there other major commercial apps that are thriving on Solaris? (That’s an honest, not rhetorical, question.)
Good question – depends on how you define the target. Those who do target Solaris tend to also write software for HPUX, AIX and a few other UNIX’s.
A purely Solaris venture has never actually occured, but then again, given that Microsoft would then have a three pronged approach – Solaris, MacOS X and Windows. As long as Microsoft can see a long term shift of customers off Linux onto Solaris so that they can run Microsoft Office, they’ll hang in there.
When Microsoft Office was first released for Mac it barely broke even but after a few years it eventually paid for itself. Same would occur on Solaris. How many people do you know who would drop Linux if Indiana and improved hardware resulted in a low cost desktop with the edge of being able to run Microsoft Office on it – and official support.
The ultimate nail in the coffin would be for Adobe to jump onboard with their complete product line up – that would be the ultimate nail in the coffin for Linux on the desktop. Once you’ve got the big two sitting on the desktop, the rest will follow.
Edited 2007-08-26 03:34
its users despise paying for software, despise running closed source software (hell, the “purer” ones despise running even OSS that’s not GPL), and they despise Microsoft.
You know that’s BS, but then again what else could we expect from you.
Windows users surely love paying for software, that’s why they pirate anything from Windows to MSOffice and Photoshop. I’d bet I own more original CS commercial software than the average Windows user.
And regarding the despise for MS, well I understand you would never accept (in public, that is) that we use Linux because we like it better that the alternatives. Hence why you and your kind come with the holier than thou attitude and BS like “hating MS” and “not willing to pay for software”.
I for one wouldn’t pay for Microsoft Office … Microsoft Office has no (default, complete, integrated) support for ODF.
Fix that, so that I can set ODF as the default file format and hence not be reliant on that one particular program … then I might actually consider using that program.
Apart from the incessant attempts at lock-in, some Microsoft Software is not that bad. It is unfortunate that there is this massive obsession in Microsoft software in trying to lock end users to Microsoft products … because that obsession makes Microsoft products utter non-starters from the perspective of any objective purchase decision.
If Microsoft started packing in GPL software with Windows, they would be accused of having a hidden agenda. FUD and embrace-extend-extinguish would be cited as the reasons by Internet posters.
If Microsoft gave Windows out for free, they would be accused of having a hidden agenda. FUD and embrace-extend-extinguish would be cited as the reasons by Internet posters.
If Microsoft sold out to a Linux parasite like IBM, they would be accused of having a hidden agenda. FUD and embrace-extend-extinguish would be cited as the reasons by Internet posters.
If Microsoft released Windows and Office under the GPL, they would be accused of having a hidden agenda. FUD and embrace-extend-extinguish would be cited as the reasons by Internet posters.
If Microsoft closed its doors for good, they would be accused of having a hidden agenda. FUD and embrace-extend-extinguish would be cited as the reasons by Internet posters.
The paranoia around Microsoft is hilariously inappropriate. They are accused of having so many hidden agendas, that were they all true, Microsoft would have more secret plans than every other plan (hidden or not) of every other group in the world.
well my post was aimed at being “tongue in cheek”…
hehe, remember, unless you use <tags> or something, sarcasm and the like is lost on the internet goers.
If it’s tongue in cheek, you could use the first of what would soon become “smilies”…
-) <– tongue in cheek
I’m with you pal! Amazing that anyone would question Microsoft’s motives.
Conspiracy wackos would have you believe MS’s business practices sometimes cross ethical and legal lines. Pish posh!
Call me crazy, but I’d like to think there’s maybe a *little* middle ground between rabid fanboism and rabid anti-fanboism.
You’re crazy.
they’re a company. they make money. their motive is, to make money. no one has (or should have) a problem with that, it’s just that when they make peoples lives harder by overstepping ethical (and maybe even legal, depending who you listen boundaries), it, logically, pisses us off.
Edited 2007-08-24 17:20
If Microsoft …, they would be accused of having a hidden agenda. …
They are accused of having so many hidden agendas, that were they all true, Microsoft would have more secret plans than every other plan (hidden or not) of every other group in the world.
You make it sound like the accusations are baseless.
I mean, I totally agree with you. I think the paranoia is a little overboard. However, MS has engaged in some pretty nasty business practices over the years, as was revealed by the evidence in the Comes vs. Microsoft case, as well as in the well known Halloween Documents. We can only speculate as to what else they were doing that we didn’t find out about. I guess what I’m saying is that though people are being a little overboard in this case, everything MS does should be looked at sceptically until such time that they prove themselves to be a more positive corporate citizen.
Now, that said, I think the most telling part of the article is right in the headline:
“more market share for the Windows platform by allowing interoperability with open source technologies such as Linux,” (emphasis mine)
That’s a pretty interesting admission of their general strategy to lock out competition by not allowing them to inter-operate. Don’t you think?
The paranoia around Microsoft is hilariously inappropriate.
No paranoia. Simply a well reasoned position based on a long and well documented history. It is apparent that Microsoft, as an organization, hasn’t come fully to accept reality by showing a greater sense of paranoia concerning *Nix and FOSS. When Microsoft really begins listening to their customers, which is us and our customers/employers, and making better products, then we will all be better off. Who knows, we might be compelled to buy some more Microsoft products, although their operating systems are too far gone for many of us.
Edited 2007-08-25 02:28
>>The paranoia around Microsoft is hilariously inappropriate. <<
Maybe you’re not aware of msft’s sordid history?
This is the company that bald faced lied to the US-DoJ with video taped testimony. Msft told similar lies to the EU.
Are you aware of the letters-from-dead-people astroturf campaign? How about the msft financed scox-scam? Or msft bogus TCO studies? Or bogus msft sponsored benchmark studies? How about msft sponsoring phony think tanks like AdTI? How about msft rigging windows to not work with drdos? How about msft using shill “journalists” like Enderle? How about msft customers being sued because of msft’s patent violations?
Msft’s ebrace-extend-extingish strategy is not anti-msft paranoria. It is a well established fact. Msft has been successfully sued over this.
Msft astroturfing:
http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/24514/
Fake TCO:
http://os.newsforge.com/print.pl?sid=05/06/23/2027229
Microsoft Tax Scam
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm1297.08.html
Bestbuy rackteering
http://consumerist.com/consumer/lawsuits/best-buy-attorney-admits-t…
when they publish their file formats and network protocols under a resonable set of terms. This means that people should have the liberty to implement these things into GPL software with the expectation that the software authors won’t be litigated for sharing their software. Anything less is just part of extend, embrace and extinguish nature of MS’s tactics.
Edited 2007-08-24 14:06
Has anyone noticed a new ‘get the facts’ site on microsoft dot com?
It’s now called windowsserver/compare. ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/compare )
Just click on to ‘Compate Windows to Linux’, scroll down to Interoperability.
Let me quote:
Microsoft really needs to get back to earth. I have never seen “greater ‘out of the box’ connectivity” and “interoperability by design” in microsoft’s products.
Often microsoft products can’t even interoperate between themselves.
moving on…
Choice
Linux:
etc…
Windows:
Some marketing talk about ‘Windows “Platform”‘
Some time ago, we were migrating from exchange 2k3 to 2k7. That was not a pleasant experience, nightmarish actually. Talk about “Interoperability”, “Choice” and “Cost”.
Good point. The real interoperability hero is the Samba team. If Microsoft wants to be serious about interoperability, they should start by saluting their hard-fought victories that allow GNU/Linux and Windows users to network together and exchange data.
If they release some decent stuff for linux that they support, i am all for it. After all why not? More on linux the better.
It’s clear now why Microsoft didn’t mind, even help mono. They freely provided them tools to strengthen their future position.
I use mostly open source software for their functionality and quality. Except for IDE, where I found proprietary solution more polish (not necessarily Microsoft), But I’m eager to see if Microsoft will come with this kind of solution for Linux.
to Active Directory, just by installing the LDAP client on Linux and joining the domain.
As it stands now, you have to either use samba (which rarely works, and when it does, does so inconsistently) or modify your AD schema so that Linux will work with it. No casual task.
Had MS used a more standard schema, it wouldn’t be an issue.
Ergo, MS is frustrating when you’re trying to make Linux and AD play nice.
Off topic, but Samba 4 is suppose to solve a lot of the compatibility problems between AD and Samba. Lets hope the Samba guys finally figured that quagmire out.
http://reverendted.wordpress.com/2006/09/12/linux-goes-mad/
Angryrobot, we’re running OpenSuSe 10.1 and 10.2, neither of which work reliably with this setup, unfortunately. If it were reliable, it would be a lifesaver, for sure. I wonder if it’s more stable in the paid version (SLED)?
TechGeek; let’s hope so. I’d rather have my Linux desktops just join AD instead of having a separate LDAP server that sucks off credentials from AD. Everything centralized would be nice.
I am writing this post because I feel no one is addressing this issue:
Note that it is Microsoft India’s branch that is making this move, not the entire corporation. In third world countries, free software has been able to spread more for these reasons:
1) Piracy is rampant. Since people typically pay a tiny fraction of the original cost of a commercial product, and they don’t feel as tied down to that product. Switching to open source is not as big of a deal there, in economic terms, as it is in the States or Europe.
2) Some countries don’t even have the legal infrastructure for software licenses. This is the case for Iran. This is not the case for India, however.
3) People can’t afford the exorbitant prices of commercial software if they don’t wish to resort of piracy, and are forced to switch to free software.
4) Free software has a unique history of being inclusive of other languages. Only in the free software world do you have so much language support. I admit international language support hasn’t been easy for free software. In my personal experience, easy access to languages that use Arabic writing system is not that great. It IS definitely something we work on. I don’t think Microsoft and Apple place so much emphasis on internationalization as much as free software does. Here’s an example: the distribution Parsix (parsix.org) is geared specifically towards Persian speakers. How many commercial products are geared to a niche language like Persian? Lots of free software projects have decent support for Hindi, benefiting primarily northern India as Hindi is not a common language in southern India.
Microsoft India is trying to address their unique situation where free software is a bigger competitor. If you take this simple fact into consideration, Microsoft India’s decision makes more sense than some vague arguments of Microsoft losing the titanic battle between Good and Evil.
Or, it’s a response to India voting “no, unless issues are addressed” for OOXML. Give them a little something to perhaps make them reconsider? Of course, actually fixing OOXML would be the thing to do, but hey…
Embrace and Be Extended!
microsoft doesnt have a windows OS on the 1 laptop per child devices and linux is being used more and more developing nations. the issue i think they havent thought through so well is this.
in outer countries that can’t afford windows it is easy to get it pirated and buy it for like 2$. linux is moving into these countries due to price and avalibility. So microsoft wants in to. HERE IS THE ISSUE! Microsoft will still charge for teh software. and guess what those people who wouldnt pay for the OS are just going ot pirate this software too.
great idea MS but not well thought out.
Microsoft is not often accused of failing to think through a marketing strategy. But you might be on to a part of their thinking.
If they are successful and everyone rips off Word for Linux, then the infamous “.DOC” format will be even more ubiquitous and even harder to get rid off.
Yeah, and when the .doc format has taken over the market they are aiming for they will drop the cross platform support of their products, delay its release, or provide a sub par alternative to the premier parts of Office. Entourage is a joke and is nothing at all like Outlook nor as functional. They did this on the mac and with Linux they will do the same, forcing users to switch to windows in-order to inter-operate with other users who are locked-in to office. They have done before (wmp for mac, IE for mac) and its a huge part of their strategy.
apoclypse, your analysis fits Microsoft’s observed behavior very well.
But there is a twist this time. If they actually release open source software, all the file formats will be revealed for all the world to see. I wonder if they would purposely do that and try to keep them proprietary.
http://pooteeweet.org/public/Diplomarbeit.pdf
I didn’t believe that the one line they quote from Ben Laurie was the complete statement he had made. Here’s the complete statement:
Ben Laurie also notes that “although it’s still often used as an argument, it seems quite clear to me that the ’many eyes’ argument, when applied to security, is not true [..] Once you have found a bug, many eyes will, and indeed, do, make fixing it quick and easy” (Laurie 2006, 60).
Microsoft just quotes the first sentence and never the rest of the intent of that statement. Of course, this is Microsoft we’re discussing here, not Ben Laurie.
Is credibility thrown out the window at this point?
I think so.
why does microsoft want to do this? there is no possible financial gain. the companies that are running unix based software will most likely not add windows machines (for political/technical/financial reasons). and the companies running windows which will add/try linux machines which will result in a loss for microsoft.
india might be financially weaker that the west and more tempted to install linux than windows for financial reasons, but it still does not make sense. and it does not fit in the history of microsoft too.
i guess it’s to confuse me, and it’s really working
Of course there’s the potential financial gain. Increase the number of places your software can run, increase the number of potential customers. Just basic economics.
Of course, there are ethical issues at play (programming for OSS systems is supporting exploitative software), but that doesn’t seem to be bothering Redmond too much.
What? Is 95% marketshare not enough? Such greedy bastards.
That’s exactly what I thought. They’ve got so much market share, they should not just be happy the way they are–they should be drinking booze and bouncing off the walls with joy. Yet… it’s obvious that they won’t be truly happy unless 100%–no less–of the computers in the world are running their operating system. This company really takes the word “greed” to the next level. Oh well, Microsoft, you’ve lost one user here, and I’m not coming back. Sorry.
I’m glad I looked seriously into alternatives, because there’s just so much good stuff out there… it really kicked up my interest in software, which I got bored of in the Windows world. Dozens of excellent Linux distros, a few worthy BSDs (which I have not yet really got into… yet), Mac OS X. I’ve been missing a lot in my years stuck with Windows, and I couldn’t be happier now that I’ve broke free. Now… if only some of my favorite Windows programs were multi-platform… it *would* be perfect.
Are you kidding me? There’s no reason why they wouldn’t want to expand their market share – as I said before, there’s nothing wrong with their ends, it’s the means. And it’s not only stockholders that lose out if Microsoft sits on its ass and relaxes like some ’90s tech startup – remember IE6?
I hope this works out as well as their .NET and Java interoperability agreement with Sun a few years back.
I think if the installed Linux base is large enough, why shouldn’t MS port Office and their other flagship applications to it? Seems that most large linux desktop apps have a Windows port.
I understand that some of the features, like OLE compound documents, may be difficult for them to implement at first. I do hope they won’t intentionally cripple it, though.
But if I want to run my company on a Linux-based OS, and someone (like the Boss) HAS to have Excel or Access, then I need to provide it. Crossover Office has it’s own little glitches, I’ve found out. At great cost and time, I’ll end up using 2003 server in a virtual machine (thanks KVM!) and use the SeamlessIntegration concept.
I, for one, would welcome the competition. It will only get people off their duffs to fix the little quirks that still exist in big Linux distros.
Probably would have to run SuSE though. Too bad. I guess the Boss will have to run Gnumeric until I get it all together.
Edited 2007-08-25 03:11
i think MS will only put the priority on Novell Suse , other distro no. This to attract users from community distro to commercial distro
Until when there is community distro gainning more market (like Ubuntu though it has a company backed it) , MS only will consider to support them.
From what I’ve read, Shuttleworth probably wouldn’t be adverse to including MS products in Ubuntu’s commercial repository (which is not enabled by default). The community would most likely see such a move in a bad light, though.
Doing so would cure one of the biggest beefs I have about MS applications — “sudo apt-get update” to get all the security fixes for products I’ve installed, instead of the findthefix-click-download-install-maybereboot cycle. No, I haven’t figured out their way of doing things automatically; I blame it on their hard-to-follow documentation, what I can find of it.
Biggest pain about such a scenario would be that I’d be too paranoid to give root access to MS’s installation and update scripts. So I’d want to chroot these apps, and if that’s difficult, makes their software even more expensive at installation time.
Gotta love the ads that are running on osnews at the same time…
So their PR departement came back from summer holidays.