“Windows offers more than the Linux platform, which is just an operating system, Gates said at a news conference during his four-day tour of India, during which he said Microsoft would invest $400 million in expanding operations here. “The Windows system is far ahead of its competition and its market share is increasing both on the server side and the desktops,” Gates said. He said Linux was gaining popularity in some areas and its market share was improving, but only at the expense of the operating system UNIX and others – not Windows.” Read the report at IndiaTimes.
Bill Gates: Windows Far Ahead of Linux
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….Linux *should* win. The difference between a $200 dollar PC with a Linux distro and Open Office and a $400 PC with WinXP and MS Office is quite significant in some parts of the world.
What is not mentioned in the article is Microsoft’s dirty little secret. They’ll look the other way on software piracy in developing/poor nations until people have become dependent upon their software. Then they tighten the screws….
Why do you think RedFlag Linux exists?
>> “Windows offers more than the Linux platform, which is just an operating system..”
It’s even less: Linux is just the kernel Mr. Gates.
😉
…on Halloween.
Didn’t it point out that this FUD wasn’t working?
Bill, read your e-mail!!!!
Vic
Agreed. Why do you think we just now (in the last year and a half) got a concerted effort from Microsoft to put an end to software piracy on the home PC? They wanted everyone to get ‘addicted’ to their products! Look at the number of people that say the Linux way of doing things is so hard that they will never, ever use anything but Windows! How quickly they forget their learning curve to use Windows…
>>He said Linux was gaining popularity in some areas and
>>its market share was improving, but only at the expense
>>of the operating system UNIX and others – not Windows.
This is a flat out lie!
With sooo many web servers running Linux, Soooo many small businesses running Linux, So many larger corporations using IBM and RedHat to deploy Linux and gates want’s us to believe that Winblows is not being affected at all?
That is a blatant lie and an outright insult to people’s intelligence.
He could have said that the Windows monopoly Share is so huge that it does not matter much but to say that it’s not affecting Windows at all is just ridiculous.
Why is Microsoft so keen in derailing Linux and the OpenSource movement? Is it because it has no effect what so ever on Winblows?
ciao
yc
You never SAY you’re worried, but unless you’re stupider than BillG looks, you worry a lot, when you have a competitor that you can’t buy and can’t undercut.
It looks as if BillG didn’t get that latest Halloween memo, about FUD not working. Still, he’s obviously talking to the clueless (Linux is just an Os, not a platform … Ha!).
……MUHAHAHAH…AH AH AH AH
what did he say??
He’s everywhere, he’s everywhere! Its Checkbook Man! Stamping out freedom and choice with a wave of his super Checkbook Pen. Yes anywhere Linux appears he also will appear (or his numb minded companion Monkey Boy) waving greenback in front of all who dare to question his authority.
Checkbook Man, coming to a country near you!
People in poorer countries aren’t running away from Windows just to avoid paying licenses. The hardware cost is also a major issue. Most small-to-medium business around here (Brazil) just can’t afford paying the massive upgrades needed to run the latest version of Windows and Office; the popular ones still are Windows 95, NT and Office 97.
GNU/Linux is growing here, among other reasons, because it runs well in cheap computers.
If that is the case … why all the fuzz !??. But like all politicians he is not telling why he came to India !! He is worried. Just imagine 2 billion people NOT using windoze. (Indian & Chinese)
GNU is “just” an operating system that works fine.
Openoffice is just an office automation suite that has everything you need.
GNOME (that is parto of GNU…) is just a nice desktop environment in which is nice to code C apps
GNUstep is just a framework that is compatible with MacosX cocoa…
KDE is just the Desktop environment that eveyone can use w/out problems.
>>The Windows system is far ahead of its competition and its >>market share is increasing both on the server side and the >>desktops,” Gates said.
This is an old marketing trick: become successful by *acting* as you’re already successful. Purpose: if can make people believe that they choose “a winning horse” if they choose your product, people will feel confident in choosing it.
So, let him taste his own medicine: let’s talk about free software / Linux in the same way (everybody’s using it, many companies are switching to it, etc) – and it will become *even more* used.
Even if Bill is right that linux and open source in general is lower quality and losing popularity (which I disagree with), open source software will always live. It’s like freedom: you can try to stomp it out or oppress it, but the idea will always live.
Oh Bill, will you ever learn.
Windows growing in market share on servers? Well ti depends on what kind of servers, doesn’t it? According to Netcraft the internet shrunk 2% in the past year while Apache gained share at IIS’s expense.
There is only ONE reason why Bill is over in India helping the fight against AIDS and starting a massive program to expand operations there, and that is because the Indian government claims to have a full fledged plan to replace Windows with Linux in schools, and MS fears that more than anything else.
Doesn’t ole Bill realize that my Linux computer can do everything my Windows computer used to do? Is he unaware of the alternitives to exchange that are catching on? Is he unaware of Lindows and Xandros that are pathetically easy to use ans even run MS Office and IE? Is he unaware of the fact that many nations can’t aford Windows? Of course he knows all this! But Bill is a megalomaniac, he wants more power and money, and so far has done almost anything to get it. 100 million dollars for the AIDS fight is nothing to Bill’s 60 somthing million dollars, especially if it gets MS’s market share up in India.
Why do you think RedFlag Linux exists?
To reduce dependency on outside (ie US) developers and vendors, increase compatibility and usability with the Chinese language and culture, and self-control of ever-increasing piracy levels. The first two parts alone are reason enough, as they can increase the number of available jobs for software developers inside China and reduce the total amount of imported software. They’re pretty much the same reasons so many countries (and the EU) have been looking at Linux.
Very few governments are likely to feel comfortable leaving their infrastructure in the hands of a foreign entity, and most are starting to realize that computers and networks are a valuable part of their infrastructure (and are themselves an infrastructure). Most economies are in better shape if they don’t have high volumes of imported products.
Don’t scoff, guys. Seriously, MS has enough money, and clout, and determination, and malice, to derail any competitor. Jeez, they even tried starve the (antitrust) division of the Justice Department of Funds! Can you imagine somebody going that far to have his way? Can you imagine a company having that much influence? Or being so daring?
Sometimes, I wonder if Ballmer and co will outlaw Opensource. Don’t scoff. I know, it sounds paranoid, but Ballmer says that “Linux = Communism”, or “unamerican”, so what’s next??
Don’t scoff when Gates talks his crap. Get down and do some work. If you love Linux, and other non windows Oses, do whatever you can to make people use them. If you work in a company, promote it until someone listens.
When is the next RedHat coming out? Anybody knows?
After several years of having an eye on Linux distros we finally this Autumn got encouraged by RedHat 8.0 and made the big move: Windows out ALTOGETHER and Linux in. Well, it wasn’t the smoothest transfer, but we succeeded to make it and know now that we can go on with RedHat alone, no Windows in the house anymore. 🙂
Will anti-Gates people ever learned about simple arithmetics? Bill Gates’ personal philanthropy has nothing to do with Microsoft. Bill Gates owns about 8% of Microsoft stock, and he donated more than 21 Billion dollars to philanthropic causes. In order to just get even, Microsoft’s market cap has to rise from 300 Billion to 550 Billion dollars. If he just park those 21 billion dollars in a bank, he could have gotten a billion dollars in interest every year. So, in order for these conspiracies to work, Microosft has to increase its market cap to a trillion dollars. Also, Bill Gates has repeatedly stated that he will donate something like 95% of his wealth when he dies.
Sometimes, I wonder if Ballmer and co will outlaw Opensource. Don’t scoff. I know, it sounds paranoid, but Ballmer says that “Linux = Communism”, or “unamerican”, so what’s next??
They’ve tried, or so it seems. Remeber the letter that the New Democrats were sending around to congress men and to the head of Bush’s technology dpeartment? It said Open Source was dangerous and bad for the United States.
c’mon now….considering you need to have pretty well equivalent hardware to run a new distro with KDE3 this argument is getting more and more moot as time goes on……
sure, you can use a lightwieght WM, but then you lose the ease of use factor.
Microsoft is way ahead on many accounts – market share, control of the desktop, etc. etc. Despite what we think of the company, they are strong in a few areas such as Internet Explorer and Office. Yes, I know there are free alternatives, but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that they have some strong products.
So how can this be good? The more cocky they get, the more they will try to milk cash out of people; the more people will look for alternatives. And guess what, the alternatives are getting better every day too.
From the article:
Despite recent enthusiasm for Linux in India, Gates said Windows would remain a market leader in the country.
Don’t you just love how they paraphrase Bill as if what he says is fact?
microsoft has so much money and will use that to prevent other OS software to work on large scale.
96% uses windows, thats a monopoly that won’t be broken in the next 10 years.
lots and lots of bugs for free. But to fix the bugs you need to pay for the upgrade so the old bugs can be replaced with the new ones…Sure, it costs more, but you get more bang!
Mark my words, because you WILL see this come true… Open-source will eventually rule in the computer world, regardless of the speed in which Bill Gates can move his flappy lips.
Gates: “Linux … is just an operating system”.
It true. Theres no:
– editors, text processing tools
– compilers, debuggers and development tools
– multimedia applications
– image processing applications
– web,email,ftp,chat clients
– server applications (web,mail,dns…)
– games
– etc
…Oh wait!…What did he say?
thats right billy, ignore the problem and it will go away….
No, he’s right, Linux is just an operating system (a kernel, to be specific). But I think we’re all looking towards the wrong things. Linux is no threat to Microsoft. The Open Source movement is the real threat. With OpenOffice.org getting pretty damn good, they are offering a reasonable free alternative to Office. The operating system and window managers are already there, the little apps have been there for a while (text editors, browsers, etc.), the programming tools have been there from day one (compilers, IDEs, etc.), and now the most important part of a consumer’s or business’ work: the office suite.
I predict that when OO.o gets to the point where it’s as good as Office (because face it, guys, it isn’t that good yet, for the interface is CRAP, and nobody can deny that), Linux numbers will shoot up.
Linux/Open Source doesn’t really have the clout to attract consumers (they can get Windows and Office on regular computers that they can but for less than $1000), it’s attractive to businesses, the ones who have to pay for all of those damn licenses (even if they can get one Office 11 per person at $300, that’s still a whopping $30,000 for a 100-person operation). It’s all depending on OpenOffice.org, now.
Sure can buy some pretty good publicity. Yeah, yeah, yeah… He’s not in charge anymore, and his philanthropy isn’t part of Microsoft, but he is still the most recognized face of MS.
>>”You would have to pay quite a bit more if the Linux
>>platform has to match what we have on the Windows platform.”
What… Like notepad, which hasn’t changed since Win 3.1?
>>Despite recent enthusiasm for Linux in India, Gates said
>>Windows would remain a market leader in the country.
I REALLY like this one… Now he’s actually coming out and telling people what they will do.
Poor countries certainly have less capital and are more labor intensive, giving the impression of the advantages of linux+opensource. However they’re abundant in unskilled labor, not in skilled labor. Skilled labor is expensive in relative terms –i.e., getting someone skilled to make things work is expensive. I am actually from a middle-income country, and the place I’ve been working used opensource software of different kind, and I can tell you that the relative cost of having a weekly roundup of a knowleadgeable IT guy is more expensive than owning a straightforward commercial solution.
Another thing with my own experience is that the open source software we used worked very well with old machines but lacked any flavor for new generation users who needed a better GUI and wanted to see what their counterpart commercial products were offering. Result: training costs were high, and productivity wasn’t that good. My coworkers cheered when we replaced our OS software with a commercial product.
Finally, monopoly theory would indicate that the optimum pricing policy for a monopoly is price discrimination. Given the near-zero unitary costs of a license, MS would be better off getting into cheap arrangements with governments.
Personally I’m for open source projects, but the rationale behind a big-sized, poor-country government adopting OS is not saving costs but developing important externalities:
a) to develop an opensource infrastructure that would provide solutions suitable for skill-deprived environments;
b) to regain some sense of sovereignty in the control of information (similar to have governments developing their own telegraph wiring infrastructure in the early 20th century!)
I don’t know anyone who seriously believes that. Granted its “more likely” to see Unix to linux, but if Bill G. really thinks that NT isn’t being replaced with Linux he’s either in complete denial or out of touch with reality.
Of course what this really means is that they are in dire competition with linux and are willing to do anything (obviously) legal or not to kill off linux everywhere they find it, be it the government, foreign countries, or our schools.
I’m constantly amazed how once I week I see MS donating*cough buying off* people trying to maintain their monopoly. If MS is going to continue to give out windows and office for free to anyone who is considering linux and other opensource products, I don’t see that bright a future for MS anymore.
This may be true, but here in Brazil free software is spreading its wings for the same reason of India – we _have_ “skilled labor”. While Windows administration courses cost the year’s income of a family, most public universities (including mine) are using and teaching Linux.
>>>>Sure can buy some pretty good publicity. Yeah, yeah, yeah… He’s not in charge anymore, and his philanthropy isn’t part of Microsoft, but he is still the most recognized face of MS.
Microsoft spent 150 million on windows95 launch — the whole world knows about it. Microsoft spent 250 million on windowsxp launch — the whole world knows about it. Microsoft spent 500 million on xbox — the whole world knows about it.
Bill Gates donates over 21 Billion dollars on world health issues. Not many people knows that he has created the world’s largest philanthropic foundation, bigger than the Ford foundation, Wellcome foundation, Eli Lily Foundation… Not many people knows that he intends to give away over 90% of his wealth when he dies. Not many people knows that he and Warren Buffet lobbies the US government for the continuation of the estates tax.
Not many people knows that simple grade school arithmetics can shoot down all these conspiracy theories that Bill Gates is doing it to make more money for Microsoft (He must increase the value of the company by over 250 Billion dollars in order for him to get the 21 Billion dollars back as he owns 8% interest in Microsoft).
Do you mean to tell me that Bill Gates, the brilliant businessman and marketer who launched Windows 95, suddenly turned stupid and can’t launch himself with a 21 Billion dollar PR campaign?
I don’t care if Bill is the Great Satan or not, that donation is very welcome. I’d love if every rich man did that. Gentlemen, we are talking about operation systems here – AIDS is much more serious than computers!
I really doubt he did it just for publicity, but if he did, so what?
“With Linux you are just talking about the operating system piece. With Windows, you are talking about a directory, several platforms and a dozen additional things,” he said. “You would have to pay quite a bit more if the Linux platform has to match what we have on the Windows platform.” –Gates
Gee, I thought that the Linux OS was ported to lots of platforms (sarcasim). And I’m using over 200 applications on my Linux box right now, and I didn’t pay a penny for them. Maybe he is referring to TCO, but I just read that halloween document of Microsofts where they stated that MS is behind Linux in terms of TCO.
I think that about every word you used there, including desktop, my mother would not understand.
Point being, Linux isnt ready for real world consumers. For geeks, and wanna bee geeks it is.
Windows has a place, linux also has a place. There two very distinct things.
“Not many people knows that he intends to give away over 90% of his wealth when he dies.”
Does he care, he is dead then you know, so to him it doesn’t matter
Anything he donates is for publicity, he has lots to give from and therefore he should.
Lets face it, he is only human, in other word a greedy bastard like we all are, therefore, yes, he does want to make more money, thats how humans act unfortunately.
“And I’m using over 200 applications on my Linux box right now, and I didn’t pay a penny for them. Maybe he is referring to TCO, but I just read that halloween document of Microsofts where they stated that MS is behind Linux in terms of TCO.”
And I can download a thousand and one shareware and freeware applications for free. That doesn’t mean they are good. Just because an application is open source and/or free doesn’t necessarily mean it is better than it’s commercial counterpart(s).
Serious open source applications are far better than freeware/shareware. They tend to be 80% applications, in that they have enough features for 80% of the people using a particular product. For example, I needed to do some MatLab (a high-end matrix mathematics and numerical simulation program) work recently. I could have shelled out the $130 (student license
for a copy of Matlab for Linux, but instead, I did emerge octave (Octave – Matlab’s OSS counterpart). It’s mostly Matlab compatible (certainly enough for things a student needs to do) and has enough features that I can get by without MatLab itself. I’ve also got half a dozen other very high quality scientific and mathematics applications here. That’s the other advantage to OSS, particularly in this field. If one program doesn’t work for something, chances are good that another one will. If your $700 copy of Mathematica (again, $100 for us students 
doesn’t solve a particular integral, you’re back to pen and paper. Beyond that you have the OSS apps that are the best in class, like Apache. Being OSS is just one (big) advantage, of many, to those products. So, those 200 Gabe has most likely do exactly what he needs them to do, and do it very well at that.
That aside, I found it hilarious how BG said that once you add all the features that Windows has bundled, Linux costs more. Let’s see:
Kernel (Linux) – $0
Userspace (GNU) – $0
Desktop (GNOME/KDE) – $0
Web server (Apache) – $0
Database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc) – $0
FTP server (pro-ftpd) – $0
File/print server (Samba) – $0
Network Directory (OpenLDAP) – $0
Right… the only thing it costs more of is hard drive space!
whatever it is, time will tell who is the real loser. if LINUX is real, he should be scared and start talking nonsense. BTW, LINUX is real….
As far as Windows being ahead, I’d say this is definitely true on the desktop. Not because it is technically better (it may or may not be), but just because the whole world revolves around Windows. You can talk all day about the Windows learning curve, which is basically irrelavent because the chances that someone learning Windows knows someone else who knows Windows that could help them is pretty high I think. Hell, even Linux is easier to learn when you ‘know someone.’
Anyway, back to Windows on the desktop – recently, a friend of mine had her hard drive crash and burn and when she got the replacement from Dell, I began to think to myself what would happen if we installed Linux on there instead of her previous OS, Windows XP. And so I began to flip through her CD software catalog to see what we could replace with Linux alternatives. I got about as far as “Pooh’s Print Studio” before I realized it wasn’t going to happen, not today anyway.
However, on the server side, I’m sure things are a bit different, but I’m not involved enough in it to know. I can’t think of any compelling reason to use Windows on the server right off hand, unless you’re into hardcore Exchange groupware stuff. Of course, I hear open source is working on this too, but don’t know how far along it is.
<<<“Not many people knows that he intends to give away over 90% of his wealth when he dies.”
>>>Does he care, he is dead then you know, so to him it doesn’t matter
He has a wife and 3 children. And whatever money he will leave to his family will be taxed by the estates tax (which he supports the continuation of the tax).
>>>Anything he donates is for publicity, he has lots to give from and therefore he should.
If Bill Gates is doing it just for PR purposes, then when you compare his philanthropic causes with his other PR campaigns, like the launch of Windows 95, then his “publicity” campaign must be ranked the worst PR campaign in human history. All I am saying is that would someone who has the track record of launching Windows 95 do such a poor job of launching himself with 21 Billion budget. If he wants good PR publicity, there are better ways to do it, much cheaper to do it and he has the track record to execute such PR campaign.
>>>Lets face it, he is only human, in other word a greedy bastard like we all are, therefore, yes, he does want to make more money, thats how humans act unfortunately.
As I stated repeatedly before, in order to just to BREAK EVEN — Microsoft market cap has to almost double from 300 billion dollars to 550 billion dollars. If Bill Gates puts the 21 Billion dollar in the bank, he will make 1 billion dollar just from the interests alone. That means that in order to just make as much money as putting his 21 billion dollar in the bank, he will probably has to increase MSFT’s market cap to 700-800 Billion dollars. If he wants to make money higher than the lowly bank interests he would have collected, he has to increase MSFT’s market cap to like a trillion dollars.
Simple arithatics dictate that Bill Gates will never make money off his donation.
“They tend to be 80% applications, in that they have enough features for 80% of the people using a particular product.”
Well, this is not necessarily a good thing. Even if you’re using an Office suite with 80% of the features everyone needs, if you’re covered in the 80% with the word processor, what about the spreadsheet app? It’s like every app you use has this 20% gap associated with it
“That’s the other advantage to OSS, particularly in this field. If one program doesn’t work for something, chances are good that another one will.”
On the other hand, even though I’m paying $0 for the programs, do I really want to take the time to learn 4-5 different apps to do something I could do with 1 or maybe 2 top-quality commercial apps?
Mr.Gates Donated $100 Million to Fight AIDS in India
As an Indian I genuinely feel we should use this money to fight a bigger and deadlier virus i.e M$
I think you misunderstood my point. 80% software doesn’t mean that it has 80% of the features you need. It means that 80% of users don’t need any more features than what the software has. That means 80% of people can use the free OSS software, while the 20% that really need the power can use a commercial product.
As for the math software, I think you again missed the point. Math is a hairy subject. Take symbol integration. No symbol integrator can solve every integral. With open source, if you’ve got 4 or 5 programs lying around, there is a good chance that at least one of them will be able to solve the problem you need. If you stay with commercial software, you’re usually limited to one (or in really competitive markets) two products. In reality, the cost of such software means that you have one such product. If that product can’t do that integration, then you don’t have the option to see if another engine can handle it. In scientific software, the interfaces are generally modeled on the field itself, so learning five different tools is managable, and gives you the power of all those tools at your disposal.
that’s like when MS were over here (Australia) trying to convince all the companies to use MS coders from india.
All that did was hurt our country and it’s IT professionals.
MS doesn’t give a toss about end users, developers or anyone.
So, in that light, Linux *IS* Far Ahead of Windows.
Where is this supposed 21 billion dollar figure coming from.
The gates foundation is the 4th biggest philanthropic organisation with assets of 10 billion dollars. Of which Gates has donated 5 billion dollars, the rest coming from other organisations.
Gates himself has personally donated other amounts to various charities etc. But only a few million. The largest was 21 million I think. Maybe you got your decimal place wrong. Not using that microsoft calculator are you
🙂
Cheers
David
Microsoft *is* gaining ground, in both the desktop and server. Linux is making some progress, at the expensive of other unixes. The statement that Linux is just an OS, with no real apps is a stretch, but the rest of it is fairly accurate.
amilcarodonte – Please tell us where you are from and not just say I am from a middle income country. Secondly how is replacing a whole lot of users running Windows and Office so difficult when compared with lets say RH 8 and OpenOffice or even the new Xandros. I am sorry but I cannot see anything that difficult about it. As far as sysadmins go just get them to get Linux certifications rather than MSCE.
Sam – He has a wife and 3 children. And whatever money he will leave to his family will be taxed by the estates tax (which he supports the continuation of the tax).
So he’s more narcissistic than we thought. Thanks for pointing that out. He really wants people to think of him as this wonderful generous guy. The point is that he does not sacrifice one thing with any donation he gives, and his wide and kids will have more than enough to live off of the 10% he invests on there behalf now.
<cynicism>, although mayeb true maybe he just doesn’t want his children to eventually be worth more than he is after he dies</cynicism>
I don’t think he is actually such a bad guy. Must confess I don’t have much real reason to suspect anything about him. What I can say is that because he founded the company he is blinded by wanting to keep it where it is and will do anything to maintain its status. I wonder if he would choose his kids or wife over his company.
I seriously doubt he went to India because he loves the people. If you believe that I feel sorry for you. When Gates Makes statements about how Microsoft dominates it has got nothing to do with his philanthropy, he is their strictly as a corporate tactic.
i just heard this on the news , its closer to 1billion USD
It would seem to me that India is amongst the poorest nations in the world. I was looking through some quick facts about India and only 50% of the adult population are literate and about 50% make under $3000 a year. While its great to see big companies investing in these countries (MS or not) I don’t see much benefit in investing $400 million in a poor nation where ther are more serious underlying issues.
I hardly think most in India are flattered with MS trying to vie for market position in a third world country where most quite sadly, cannot afford shelter or food let alone afford or care to own a computer. I do, however, applaud Bill Gates for his personal donation in AIDS treatment in India.
I thought they had learned their lesson in the Halloween document =p .
is simply because in poor / developing countries we are used to getting our Windows softwares for dirt-cheap price. Having spent most of my formative years in Indonesia, I can say that most developers or IT guys in small to medium sized companies don’t give a fsck on the pricing of softwares they gotta pay to get their job done, simply because pirated softwares are easily and widely available, without much efforts from the govt or whatsoever authorities to make them in any way harder to get and *use* in the production environment.
I would refer to the comment by Rayiner Hashem posted just a moment before this. He said that the cost of :
Kernel (Linux) – $0
Userspace (GNU) – $0
Desktop (GNOME/KDE) – $0
Web server (Apache) – $0
Database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc) – $0
FTP server (pro-ftpd) – $0
File/print server (Samba) – $0
Network Directory (OpenLDAP) – $0
The real life situation here for sysadmins here in Indonesia, and generally the South East Asian region too I guess, is that this sort of costing is simply nothing we would even *bother* to think about. I can just stroll down to my neighbourhood pirated CD shop, plonk down an equivalent of … say, US$10 and get a complete suit of Windows 2K, Office, Exchange, Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc. Everything I need to build a decent network for my office. Oooopsss … I make a mistake. Make that to be US$5 for software cost.
And when my boss comes to me to ask me how much $$$ I have spent, I can simply present to him 2 options :
1. Use my proposed (pirated and illegal) cheap solution
2. Blow away the whole years profit on the licensing cost of the softwares alone in order to go legit.
Guess which one he will choose ??
It’s true that Open Source softwares would allow us to deploy the same kind of functionalities without having (all of) us turning into criminals, but when you take away the pricing issues, most people are still more familiar with Windows platform which incidentally I feel is more integrated anyway compared to the diverse Linux offering. And yeah, we don’t MIND to be locked into Microsoft proprietary solution since everybody else seems to be using it too … (at dirt cheap price too, I suspect).
I have moved to Singapore since then (it’s still in South East Asia, for the uninformed) and things seems to be looking up. Minimal or at least, surpressed piracy here, and Linux *is* making an entrance into companies here, slowly but surely. I think we all (the OSS community) should stop yapping whether Windows is gonna get beaten or whatever, and just concentrate of producing *good* softwares. All talk and no action turns Tux into a non-competitive penguin …
I have found that _some_ open source apps are pretty decent, but there are still a lot that aren’t that good.
And, I think there’s also a time issue here, not just the initial cost of the software. If I spend $200 for a piece of software that takes me 3 hours to set up, or $0.00 for a piece of software that takes 20 hours to set up, lets see how the costs stack up @ a modest 20.00/hour:
Free app: $0.00 + 20 * $20.00 = $400.00
Commerical = $200.00 + 3 * $20.00 = $260.00
OK now these are numbers conjured up out of me bum, but they still prove a point: there is more to cost than just initial price.
This applies even more to “novices”, people who can’t or don’t have to background to RTFM. In my limited experience, open source software doesn’t have the level of everything being done for you that most commercial applications do.
Now, of course, you may argue that setting up everything using configuration files and text editors is more efficient in the long run than point-n-click things… I would tend to agree, however, the former method has a much much higher learning curve to novices. But it really depends on what level of user we are talking about…
If you want to have some real fun, stick an IIS admin that has never touched UNIX in front of a computer and tell him to edit apache config files using vi.
Or stick a UNIXhead in front of a XP box and tell him to turn on IIS.
My bet would be the UNIXhead would get things done faster… not because they are smarter, but having more of a immediate visual feedback then having to type arcane “man” commands, IMO, dramatically lessens learning curves.
If I spend $200 for a piece of software that takes me 3 hours to set up, or $0.00 for a piece of software that takes 20 hours to set up, lets see how the costs stack up @ a modest 20.00/hour:
Free app: $0.00 + 20 * $20.00 = $400.00
Commerical = $200.00 + 3 * $20.00 = $260.00
Nice. Way to troll. This is the crux of Microsoft’s argument, that they offer more value. But I seriously doubt that comparable apps (free software versus proprietary counterparts) take that much longer to get installed and configured properly. If you’re aiming at the desktop here, you’re way off base. You can install gentoo, complete with compiling code, on a reasonably fast machine in 20 hours. Having Mandrake/Redhat/Suse/Xandros/LindowsOS up and running on a PC to use can be quite fast; in many cases faster than Windows. Even the more exotic varieties — Debian, for example, don’t take seven times longer to install than Windows.
OK now these are numbers conjured up out of me bum, but they still prove a point: there is more to cost than just initial price.
Sure there is, but there are other factors that come into play here, in addition to your numbers being off-base. I know that I, personally, will not install windoze for somebody, just out of the goodness of my heart. Even if I do go through the install, I’m not going to hold his hand, getting him to run the damn thing. Installing free software is different, though. I’ll help people out….because it’s something that I enjoy, and it helps further free software. How much is *that* support worth?
All I have to say, is where is the fork? And nothing as nice as XFS on NT is there (oh not for free, Veritas is decent)
Gates is a Knave. And for anything that Linux cant do, there is always FreeBSD. He only wishes he could whip FreeBSD, but he borrows code form it so…
>is simply because in poor / developing countries we are used to getting our Windows softwares for dirt-cheap price. Having spent most of my formative years in Indonesia, I can say that most developers or IT guys in small to medium sized companies don’t give a fsck on the pricing of softwares they gotta pay to get their job done, simply because pirated softwares are easily and widely available, without much efforts from the govt or whatsoever authorities to make them in any way harder to get and *use* in the production environment.
Ha! I thing this will change very soon, because the 1st Steps are done – XP Activation / MediaPlay Spying etc.
I thing that Bill has entered here a area, where it could get difficult for him AND where he’s walking on thin ice!
Many people dislike this kind of beeing that “controlled” and thing a lot about finding different – cheaper / opensourced – solution!
Me too.
-A
Not because Windows is better OS – it isn’t.
1. Because Win platform has better applications. And I mean it. Better.
2. Because Win is easier to configure. (vi must die)
3. Because Win has better hardware support.
4. Because no one is making games for Linux (what happened to Loki?), and why should they? How many people will byu game, if they take their OS for free?
Just an example for N1, which frankly saying is the most important.
There is no office software good enough to replace MSOffice.
KOffice? you must be joking…
OpenOffice? maybe, but not now. Right now it’s full of bugs and undocumented features – incorrect font rendering(especially non-western chars), not-working search&replace , undocumented macros language … etc, etc.
Next week I have to report to my boss do I recomend using OOffice for usage in our firm.
What should I say him? “Still not good enough” or “It’s OK”, knowing that it is NOT OK ?
If I spend $200 for a piece of software that takes me 3 hours to set up, or $0.00 for a piece of software that takes 20 hours to set up, lets see how the costs stack up @ a modest 20.00/hour:
Free app: $0.00 + 20 * $20.00 = $400.00
Commerical = $200.00 + 3 * $20.00 = $260.00
While that is something good to point out, one thing you have missed out if the freedom you have with the Free app and the fact that anybody you meet can borrow it and install it without limitations.
Usually free software is a crap. There are few free software applications with decent support. Most of them are not usable or hardly usable. The value that Microsoft brings is that, the software that they create is much more better than the free software in quality.
It is not easy to setup Linux, and it is very hard to configure and maintain it. If something goes wrong in Linux, you need some expert’s help. On windows however, it usually needs a simple reset.
Linux is attractive in developing countries because per hour fee is not 20$. In USA it makes sense to use Windows over Linux, because of the high costs associated with paying Redhat support staff. On the other hand, in developing countries people work 1$ per hour or less, and that makes a big difference between Linux and Windows. Linux is more attractive in those countries. Now the nice thing about this is that the more people use Linux, the better it becomes and one day it may catch up with Windows.
On the other hand, software piracy in these developing countries is a threat to Linux, because people will get used to using Windows, and after that all Microsoft has to do is to enforce software piracy rules.
I found this rather funny thing on The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28063.html
Don’t look too saintly anymore, does he?
BillG only looks saintly to the masses that can’t join the dots between charity and PR.
Unfortunately there are lots of them.
Usually free software is a crap. There are few free software applications with decent support. Most of them are not usable or hardly usable. The value that Microsoft brings is that, the software that they create is much more better than the free software in quality.
Mozilla is crap, OpenOffice is crap, Linux is crap, ICQ is crap, IE6 is crap, Outlook is crap, yeah i can see your arguemnt here!
This quality you talk of, is this the same stuff that MS reports as being unsafe and should be patched after they admit a need for it to be patched? All those vunerabilites, if this is quality to you then i hope you are happy. Also when speaking of free software just don’t limit yourself to linux apps because there are MS free apps as well. IE and Outlook being 2 of them.
It is not easy to setup Linux, and it is very hard to configure and maintain it. If something goes wrong in Linux, you need some expert’s help. On windows however, it usually needs a simple reset.
Not true, i just installed SuSE 8.1 last week without an experts help, it took me 20 minutes to install, quicker than windows actually, configure, its about as hard as doing it in windows, playing with it for 20 minutes in your case seems to have put a misconception in your mind?
If something goes wrong in linux i read the manual and address the problem, i havn’t yet had to press the reset button! No i am not saying it is perfect but i think you live in another world to type what you have done. I could leave my machine running all the time if i could, only facing a huge electric bill stops me from doing so.
Linux is attractive in developing countries because per hour fee is not 20$. In USA it makes sense to use Windows over Linux, because of the high costs associated with paying Redhat support staff. On the other hand, in developing countries people work 1$ per hour or less, and that makes a big difference between Linux and Windows. Linux is more attractive in those countries. Now the nice thing about this is that the more people use Linux, the better it becomes and one day it may catch up with Windows.
What about all the tech support for windows, you telling me there isn’t any? What about paying windows support staff? What about all the anti virus software you need to purchase with windows and all the attractive hardware it needs to run on and lets not forget the licenses, if this was the picture you paint you wouldn’t find huge companies making the switch. Of course they all switch to redhat as well.
On the other hand, software piracy in these developing countries is a threat to Linux, because people will get used to using Windows, and after that all Microsoft has to do is to enforce software piracy rules.
I can agree on this, but software piracy can suit microsft, its a way of feeding people their software and once they get dependant on it they restrict it forcing people to then buy it, they actually benefit from piracy. Intelligent people then switch to software they don’t have to pirate.
I found this rather funny thing on The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28063.html
Don’t look too saintly anymore, does he?
Why ban yourself because you don’t think what he has written stands up? MS knows how india and china are developing their own version of linux, they MS leaves them as they are then that a sizeable chunk of the world not running windows. Can’t have that can we? Putting MS in education only benefits MS, you teach people what MS wants people to learn and only that. That way you raise generations up on using MS software and thats all they will know thats a bad thing, you just have to look at the UK for what it has done. Everything in schools is MS OFFICE and MS windows, their is hardly anything else. Schools shouldn’t teach and set a preference for applications, they should just say “use a word processor” not say “use MS word” or “you NEED ms word”.
Its allows MS to keep on its monopoly and bring children up not knowing the alternatives.
Somebody’s nervous about losing marketshare….
>>>Where is this supposed 21 billion dollar figure coming from.
>>>The gates foundation is the 4th biggest philanthropic organisation with assets of 10 billion dollars. Of which Gates has donated 5 billion dollars, the rest coming from other organisations.
I don’t know where you get your info.
From The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website, the foundation’s assets has grown to 24 Billion dollars.
http://www.glf.org/aboutus/default.htm
When you read that Bill Gates donated $5 Billion dollars to his own foundation, it meant that he donated another $5 billion to his own foundation at a given time (in this case 1999).
http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19990824/ibu24030.html
That’s not the running total of money he contributed. He donated another 2 billion dollars in 2001.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/52850_gates01.shtml
All the 24 Billion dollars in the Bill Gates foundation are his own contribution.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/12/04/60II/main254621.shtml
And his foundation is the largest in the world. I don’t have the website for world ranking, but this is the US ranking.
http://fdncenter.org/research/trends_analysis/top100assets.html
>>>I seriously doubt he went to India because he loves the people. If you believe that I feel sorry for you. When Gates Makes statements about how Microsoft dominates it has got nothing to do with his philanthropy, he is their strictly as a corporate tactic.
Melinda Gates personally visited India’s poorest areas in 2001. That’s why they donate this money.
http://www.savethechildren.org/press/pr01_gates.shtml
REMEMBER THIS IS THE GUY THAT LAUNCHED WINDOWS 95. MY POINT IS THAT IF HE IS DOING IT FOR PUBLICITY, THEN YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT HOW WRONG YOUR INFOMATIONS WERE.
MY POINT IS THAT SIMPLE ARITHMATICS DICTATE THAT HE AIN’T DOING IT AS A CORPORATE TACTIC BECAUSE HE HAS TO INCREASE MICROSOFT’S MARKET CAP TO A TRILLION DOLLARS IN ORDER FOR THIS BRAINLESS CORPORATE TACTIC TO WORK.
>>>BillG only looks saintly to the masses that can’t join the dots between charity and PR.
Except that he doesn’t publicize about it, and you people got all the wrong information.
Except that he is the world’s biggest launcher of products, and you people got all the wrong information.
Except that there is no way mathatmatically to make money off from his donations as written by a bunch of anti-msft conspiracy writers.
If he wants to look saintly, you would have gotten the mother of all product launches. You would have gotten the correct information about the extent of his charitable work. You would have gotten the correct information of how wrong you math is when you claimed that he is doing it for business reasons.
Mozilla is crap. No Mozilla is not crap, but most of its source come from Netscape and Netscape developers themselves contributed to it. So Mozilla is somehow funded by Netscape, AOL. It did not entirely depended on volunteer work. OpenOffice is crap, yeah open office is crap compared to Ms Office, but still I wouldn’t call it crap. OpenOffice as you know derives its source from StarOffice, which started as a commercial application. Linux is crap, as you know Linux was a crap for a long time. It lacks lots of important features. (I am talking about the kernel). Compared to FreeBSD for example, it is not that much stable.
ICQ is crap, IE6 is crap, Outlook is crap. These applications although are free, they are funded by corporate money. Those people behind these applications expect something in return. So certainly you may insist not to get the point, or you can clearly see what I am talking about and agree on it. Actually claiming that most of the free software is not crap is something quite hard to prove, and contrary to the common logic. You are arguing against all the idoms on many languages which describe the free thing as something as not high quality as something you pay for it. So I think that you have a very hard time there.
“Not true, i just installed SuSE 8.1 last week without an experts help”
We are not talking about you. Your ability to install SuSE in 20 minutes does not prove anything. I can also install Linux under 20 minutes.
What about all the tech support for windows, you telling me there isn’t any? What about paying windows support staff?
If you are claiming that you need as much support as Linux for Windows, I don’t think that it worths to argue with you. You need to go and make some research. I use both Linux and Windows. You have to be too biased to tell that Linux is easier than Windows, and you don’t need much more support for it. You have to buy Unix administration book to maintain your linux. What kind of a book do you need for Windows 95. If you can not figure out how to operate Windows, it is really really very bad. But if you can not operate Linux, that’s fine. I mean there is really nothing to say about this. I think that what you say is either a lie, or a biased view, or it is simply being unable to reason about the subject, even though it is very clear to me.
you wouldn’t find huge companies making the switch
There are very few companies which switch to Linux, and usually it is somewhere within one department, one section and so on (For desktop) For their use it may make sense, or they may have switched to Linux because of their anti-Microsoft views, but at the end these are economic decisions. If you are right about the economic insentive to switch to Linux in USA then we will see bigger corporations switching to Linux sooner or later. But as I guess, if you are making this thing up, then we won’t see any big corporation switching to Linux.
Meh, you guess and presume to much to know what you really understand, i would retort but i am thinking its a waste of time on my part.
He would take his Billions and subsidize the entire
US car owning population to convert to hydrogen fuel cell
cars.
what a difference that would make.
(If his software product is that great he needn’t worry about depleting his cash reserves, they will always be replenished.)
That would be step 1 of my 2 step plan for a better World. Unfortuneately for Bill, that plan is:
1) get off the Oil
2) get off the Microsoft.
U
That’s because if he had given them $420 to fight Linux they’d know he was smoking something.
I bet there are more Linux potheads than Windows. Trust in your Linux potheads, they know best.
I just thought, for all its worth, you are complaining about free software something that a kind person has written and created in their own time, something that they didn’t have to offer you. You complain about this? Maybe sometimes people expect to much in life. These people who code work hard and you seem to wipe it away with your callous comments for which they are not deserved.
So go buy commercial and enjoy.
Someone made this comment:
“even though I’m paying $0 for the programs, do I really want to take the time to learn 4-5 different apps to do something I could do with 1 or maybe 2 top-quality commercial apps?”
Well, you might. Or you might not. Isn’t it nice to have the option? In a perfect world, Microsoft would exist, and so would Open Source, and lots of other companies/software development methodologies would exist. Just like, um, it does right now. Hey, we’re all very lucky right now!
All the extremists (Open Source is best, Microsoft sucks vs. Microsoft is best, Open Source is crap) miss the point: Each one is good for some people, and the existence of both is good for everyone.
Here’s why Windows is good: without Microsoft (or another company like it), the computer would not be as ubiquitous as it is today for the average user. Hardware wouldn’t be commoditized on the x86 platform. Your mother might not know how to use a computer. There are lots of apps, and they run pretty darn well. Since Windows has been around for a while, most people already know how to use it. You can go into a store and buy a box, pull out the CD, install the software, and return it if it doesn’t work.
Here’s why GNU/Linux is good: without GNU/Linux (or another software collection like it), old hardware wouldn’t be as useful, since this software tends to run better on older machines (which is good for the environment). Tools that are very useful will be created and maintained without concern for profit. Upgrades and fixes are provided free of charge, and if you really need to, you have the option of upgrading or fixing it yourself (or hiring someone else to do it). A single company going out of business won’t turn your enterprise investment into a white elephant. Most applications don’t cost anything, and others cost significantly less than their closed-source counterparts (initial costs, that is).
Here’s why Windows is bad: Microsoft has unfairly blocked competition (I’m talking bootloader and DR-DOS/Win 3.1 forced incompatibility here, not Netscape) and promote file formats that lock you into their software (like .doc, which is presumably a binary dump from memory of your document rather than a parsed file format). Users must rely on a profit-driven entity to fix their software when it has bugs, and hope they don’t release an expensive upgrade instead.
Here’s why GNU/Linux is bad: the software has been in development for a far shorter time than Windows. The Open Source development process tends to be (in my experience) more stable but less cohesive in UI and standards between applications. Experienced Windows users (i.e., most of us) require or once required significant ramp-up time to become proficient.
So take your pick. Be happy about your pick. Be comfortable about others who don’t make the same pick. And most of all, remember this:
Microsoft is Anti-Linux (they don’t want competition). Open Source is Pro-Choice (they want to co-exist). For this reason, and THIS REASON ALONE, everyone should support Open Source software to prevent Microsoft from running them out of town, AND stop trying to use Linux as a battering ram for attempting to run Microsoft out of town.
Did you read this far? Wow. I hope you got something out of it.
Except that he doesn’t publicize about it, and you people got all the wrong information.
This is not publicizing? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/opinion/09GATE.html
quote: “Gates said localising software would be a key part of Microsoft’s strategy in India.”
Prolly he doesnt know India has over 18 difrent dilects.
and i can remember that linux user groups where busy transelating allreaddy atleast a year ago, read it in the Linux Format for sure…goodluck bill
>>>This is not publicizing? http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/opinion/09GATE.html
He was publicizing the AIDS epidemic problem, not his own monetary contribution. In fact the only sentence mentioning it was “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is in India this week to make a long-term commitment to Indian partners for a major new prevention initiative aimed at mobile populations.”
No mention of the actual amount of money he donated — he ain’t publicizing his philanthropic prowess. As I stated repeatedly above, if he wants to use his donations as a PR weapon — he has the best PR/product launching machinery in the word. The very fact that so many people getting mis-informed about his philanthropic activities show that precisely he is not doing it for publicity and PR value.
it’s already like 99% is he talking about XP increasing “market share” compared to Windows 95 or what?
>All the 24 Billion dollars in the Bill Gates foundation
>are his own contribution.
Your links do not support this. He has contributed a large amount of it but not all of it.
Cheers
David
Bill Gates isn’t evil, give it up. He won’t make any money of this, he probably has a conscience, and realising that he has more money than your average worker, feels led to give it to those who aren’t as fortunate.
Please people, if you don’t want to support Microsoft, do what you want, I run Linux too, but whatever you do don’t go mocking someone who is a about to help prevent / stop aids. (This disease is one of the most dangerous diseases ever) Even if he is doing it to make more money from Microsoft (Though I think this conclusion is illogical), it’s still saving peoples lives. Now any of you with any sense of morality (I know alot of you are geeks, and couldn’t care less, but give it a try) would support someone trying to save lives by the masses. In this area I support Bill 100%
Please listen, saving lives is more important than OS market share. Don’t go mocking him and making conspiracies. Mock the software, not the man trying to make the world a better (as in happier, everyone is healthy, not as in I have the latest software on my computer) place.
Think about the children (Actually do it
At least he is creating awareness, which is true because alot of people today don’t seem concerned by it, its their ignorance that is helping AIDS rise again. Even if the money is a PR stunt, the AIDS sufferers still get the money and plus any news is good news. Might make people think once they realise the worlds largest company is donating this amount of money.
I still don’t like the guy mind you and my next pc purchase is still going to be an apple.
“He and his wife, Melinda, have endowed a foundation with more than $24 billion to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that as we move into the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people.”
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/bio.asp
He and his wife — ENDOWED the foundation with 24 billion dollars. No other people gave money to the foundation.
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