“I thought I had a pretty good handle on the differences between the open-source community and the traditional proprietary approach to software development. But watching a Microsoft spokesperson defend his company and its whole approach to business in front of a room full of Linux zealots last week helped crystallize the gulf between the two camps–not just in business strategy but in fundamental philosophy and political bent.” Read the editorial at ZDNet.
Microsoft Needs Geek Appeal
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
it’s the truth, nobody who knows a bit about OS’ is gonna choose win as primary platform – most PC users just use it because it’s preinstalled (and they switch PC every two years because win runs slow on it (tough another OS would handle it quite well)) – so what windows _really_ needs is an euthanasia and not some geeks (or they could open the source, that would get some)
Actually MS needs to become a member of society, no trying to boss everybody and assiting others with out demanding cash.
The reason Open source is better, and walks the moral high ground is because we don’t demand money for our work just that if you make our product better, you push it back out so that everyone benefits. We help each other, not fight each other. We know that you can build a better product if everyone helps.
His arguments were cogent but not forceful enough to displace the likes of Samba and Red Hat from the moral high-ground they have dug themselves into.
“Dig up stupid!”
I find it interesting that Microsoft (and this articles author) wants to put themselves on the side of capitalism, free markets, etc. The true nature of Microsofts monopolistic business and their normal business practices would seem to suggest otherwise.
I have moderate tendencies politically, and like to think of myself as a reasonable person. I don’t think reasonable people enjoy promises of stability and capability that are not delivered – or supporting behavior that ultimately reduces their choices of product in the marketplace.
If this articles author wishes to describe my actions as tending towards socialism then I’m afraid he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Consumers of OSS are simply looking for the best product at the best price.
The moment you slap a logo or a patent on it, it is not capitalism. It’s some post-capitalist mutant. For better or worse. True, some captilistic behaviours remain but the core has shifted. In true capitilism everything is a commodity and barrier to entry is low. The idea is to bring down the cost of an product to its production cost. If want to take at capitalism take a look at indian out-sourcing (not saying its good or bad but thats the way it si). Product differentiation and barriers to entry negate capitalism and creat post-capitalism. Now one of the factors of the shift is that at the cost of production this doesn’t leave room for the cost of R&D. The only way would be to support R&D would be to have an independent source of resources and thus the infrastructure for that and hence you get some sort of commune.
Either you have (((no R&D) and capitalism) or ((you have R&D) and ((post-capitalism) or (a commune of some sort)))
Nb: I wrote the previous sentence so that it resembles propositional calculus to make my point clearer
Therefore Microsoft cannot have any arguments based on captilism.
Also it should be noted that people who jsut want free stuff are real capitalists. Anyone who talks about “free as in speech vs beer” is entering Marxist flavoured territory (which I will defend if anyone doubts)
I would love to hear your defence.. [email protected].
I do believe it is simply hard to let go of the branch you are hanging on to, to reach the next one. All todays stuff is commodity, but it is hard to take the chance to let go and reach for the next branch. Instead we circle our branch with patient, etc.
Go back to the 1700s and you can easily compare what is happening now with OSS and Microsoft to what happened with the American colonies and “mother England.”
The English Monarchy was out of touch, abusive, and uncaring about its subjects. The same can easily be said about Bill Gates and Microsoft.
The United States is not socialist or communist and neither is the OSS society. We are just fed up and tired of being abused by an egomaniac who’s only purpose in life is to make as much money as possibly and buy his way into the history books.
it’s the truth, nobody who knows a bit about OS’ is gonna choose win as primary platform – most PC users just use it because it’s preinstalled
Or because it has better apps
The reason Open source is better, and walks the moral high ground is because we don’t demand money for our work just that if you make our product better, you push it back out so that everyone benefits.
Yes, God forbid that anyone demand money for the work they do. I mean, how immoral is that ???
As for MS themselves, if we were to generalize boycotting any company that has shady business practices, I wouldn’t have phone service right now, and neither would most of you.
I won’t patronize the RIAA, but I do shop at Wal-Mart. My stepmom is the exact opposite – will buy CDs, but refusees to shop at Wal-Mart.
We all must pick our battles and decide in what areas it is better to forsake our ideals for convenience … or in my case with Windows, the need to eat
The OSS model assumes that you can make a living not from selling your code, but rather your services. This is what RMS talked about from the very beginning of the (his) free software movement (and the fact that he thinks $35k is enough for a living). I wonder how the open-source community addresses the service aspect, when finally software reaches a state, where it is free, with nearly zero-cost, self-explaining, with good documentation, and without the need for maintenance. No service required.
You can assume that this state is unreachable, but you already can see, that Red Hat cannot live from selling its services, but from selling Linux as a pre-bundled, branded and copy-righted software suite. You are not allowed to distribute Red Hat Linux AS A WHOLE, you can leave out all the copyrighted stuff (logos etc) and the structure of the bundle and then redistribute it (as some do), but you aren’t allowed to install it on more systems than you have licenses for. This is pretty much the same thing as Microsoft does (and with comparable prices).
If Linux gets better and better (and I’m sure it will), the need for services will decrease – not vanish, but only needed for the absolute high-end as some kind of “insurance”. Have you ever considered paying a service fee for your desktop’s OS maintenance? I don’t think many people do. What if Fedora is good enough for everything a desktop needs? From office to multimedia (this isn’t true yet). Xandros, Linspire and all the other desktop-aimed distros would go out of business. If a freely available distro incorporates all the niceties, that you can find now in some part on SuSE, on Xandros, on Linspire, the need for other software AND services is going to be against zero.
“Yes, God forbid that anyone demand money for the work they do. I mean, how immoral is that ???”
Only problem is we’re being gouged on prices for proprietary software so some overpaid software engineer can buy himself a Lexus.
Wow. I can’t believe you didn’t get modded down.
The only part of your comment that is not obvious FUD is that people use Windows because it’s pre-installed. That may be true for many, but that has nothing to do with geeks or geek appeal.
Apple has geek appeal, and at least half of it’s desktop offering is not OSS. I guess objective non-FUD comments are too much to expect of this site these days.
Is that from the beginning Bill has always played both sides of the “free software”…there’s that open letter from 1984 where he says free software is OK, but MS should be able to take whatever it needs from the “community” for free or nominal fee, and they should have gratitude about it because they’re furthering his cause.
Economically, there’s nothing wrong with OSS, MS has reduced the end user cost of many windows components to “free” in order to gain market share or power over users. Essentially, we’ve landed back at Marx’ two extremes, the many independent “sharecroppers” tied to the “Windowsland” trying to put food on the table and the richest man in the world on the other side[by a good margin too!] able to buy anything, anyone and anyprice. and economically crush anyone in the way.
In reality, OSS is not communist, it’s uniquely American! The Europeans have less trouble with “royalty” and “noble title” much like MS and Co would like to have over windows. Bill’s more likely to be appointed “Duke of Windows” by the EU parilament but then have his business held to certain “community standards” and expectations while collecting his “dues” than he is to be put out of business. Here in the states, we value the “rebel” cause against the larger competitor. Many people align with OSS mearely because it’s the underdog. It’s our nature to promote competition no matter what. If that means that there’s no “money” involved than so be it. Having an alternative, ANY alternative, even a poor one, is better to the american ethos than simply “rolling over” to one top dog…it’s uniquely american. One thing you’ll notice is that the OSS movement isn’t communist in one key way…very few people think Bill should give up his money! They just want him to stop bludgeoning the rest of us with it.
Aside from that, OSS was inevitable. MS gained the ground it did by trampling on the IP rights of another monopolist and by actively promoting and supporting fledgling companies against the monopoly of IBM. MS then proceded to play the many sides against each other in cutthroat competition for hardware while gaining it’s own position…problem is that now all the hardware looks more or less exactly the same because everybody make it to work exclusively with Windows! MS has eaten it’s own “partners” more often than a Black Widow Spider. Everybody ELSE in computers [manufactures, retailers, software programmers, workers] is living on razor thin margins a hairs-breath from going under. Risk of something new MUST BE TAKEN! MS has become fat and lazy much like IBM of the 70’s or GM of the 80’s. When MS started it was $80 on a $2500 computer, now it’s $120 of a $500 computer. The market is ripe for somebody, anybody to step up and impress people. Also, Capitalism is hard at work…after all, MS rakes in a great big pile of money every quarter!!! it would be wrong if somebody DIDN’T try to go after it! There’s a lot of hungry engineers out there…or people who never got to BE engineers… even a small bite of MS’ pie would feed many businesses for a very long time. To point out the poster about the RMS comment, MS has ALREADY pushed the value of a MCSE to $35k or less…if you’re lucky to have a job. Most companies pay $100k+ to MS yearly for fees…If I can get $40k installing OSS and take a piece out of that pie all the better!
a 2.8ghz celeron
dvd
cdrw
256mb ram
17″ crt
40gb hard drive
lexmark printer
2 speakers
ms windows home
for $389 dollars this week at Circuit City.
Damn I am being gouged!
reasonable people spend their money on computers with a great deal of choice. they can buy many brands, different oses, etc etc.
ms windows has taken over market share slowly but surely because the users of the world (including CIOs and admins) want things to be the same. when i hire a receptionist i ask do you know how to use ms office suite? can you do excel spreadsheets? can you do any documents i need in word? people come trained. i dont want to train them after they are hired.
grow up. no one wants linux but to run apache and few other select uses. windows and office are not expensive. you get well made products that people are familiar and comfortable with. training an employee to use new software in a matter of half a week pays for all of the cost of ms products.
if you pay too much for windows and or office you dont know how to shop.
i can find xp pro for $135 online today.
i can find home for as little as $85.
office 2003 with 3 licenses is $120 for students, teachers, or houses with kids in em.
office basic to office pro ranges from $100 to $280.
quit showing your ignorance.
“it’s the truth, nobody who knows a bit about OS’ is gonna choose win as primary platform”
No, that’s not the truth. There are plenty of reasons to choose Windows over the alternatives.
I know more geeks that use Windows than all the alternatives combined. Just an observation 🙂
I’m afraid geeks are very much a minority group (of which I class myself a member).
“Actually they need to be a productive member of society”
Microsoft is a corporation, not a hobby.
“The reason Open source is better, and walks the moral high ground is because we don’t demand money ”
Open Source isn’t always better and this “moral high ground” argument is very weak.
We have inteligent design versus evolution. On the intelligent design side is Microsoft, on the evolution side is Linux. From an intelligent design point of view Linux looks terrible. No unification, no plan, 47 distros spun off from Debian alone. From an evolutionary point of view, Linux looks great. How many developers of applications are there in India alone? Who knows which desktop will be the best for the most people? It is a good thing that there are more choices than just Gnome and KDE!
I read a transcript of the discussion and I thought the man from Microsoft did rather well, considering.
I have a PHD in Computer science and physics. I use Win as my primary development platform. Does that mean my Phd is invalidated… Shut up and get along with Windows.
but it’s more that Windows can’t and won’t get along with everybody else. That’s the problem that’s got everybody up in arms.
True.. now we are talking some sense. I agree Windows does not get along with others all that well. But being a market leader they get to define the game. Like it or not thats how its been all along. Wal-Mart more often then not defines the game and makes it suit them. So did IBM when it was the market leader. If tomorrow Linux becomes the market leader do you expect Win32 as the platform of choice. Who do you think will be defining the game in then? What about sony or toyota or any other coroporation which is a market leader. We don’t have any problem accepting market leader behaviour in the industries. Yes I agree in other industries they may not dominate the market as much as MS does. But Sony did lead the market almost entierly once. So did suzuki, IBM… Their behaviour was nothing to write home about. Thats how the corporates behave…
I’m really tired of hearing these guys from US and Europe telling “Windows is cheap” and blah blah blah. The world is not so nice as you think:
“you can buy:
a 2.8ghz celeron
dvd
cdrw
256mb ram
17″ crt
40gb hard drive
lexmark printer
2 speakers
ms windows home
for $389 dollars this week at Circuit City.”
Here in Brazil you can buy the same for ~ US$ 400, but MS Office itself costs about ~ US$ 350 (near the computer price itself). And NO, this is not a “fairly cheap” price for most people here. The OEM version of Windows is cheap, but you can’t do much stuff with a small text editor and a solitaire game
“ms windows has taken over market share slowly but surely because the users of the world (including CIOs and admins) want things to be the same. when i hire a receptionist i ask do you know how to use ms office suite? can you do excel spreadsheets? can you do any documents i need in word? people come trained. i dont want to train them after they are hired.”
Thanks god you know what all people over the world wants. I want to be as wise as you
. People should know about text processors and spreadsheets, not about “Word” and “Excel”. Don’t tell me that people can’t learn by the first approach, because they do.
“grow up. no one wants linux but to run apache and few other select uses. windows and office are not expensive. you get well made products that people are familiar and comfortable with. training an employee to use new software in a matter of half a week pays for all of the cost of ms products.”
Again, the only world that you can conceive is US and other rich countries. My Master’s scolarship is about 400 dollars, how cheap those MS products are for me? Surely it will take me more than a month to pay this “small fee”.
” if you pay too much for windows and or office you dont know how to shop.
i can find xp pro for $135 online today.
i can find home for as little as $85.
office 2003 with 3 licenses is $120 for students, teachers, or houses with kids in em.
office basic to office pro ranges from $100 to $280.”
Ok, mr smart guy. So, if I’m not wrong, summing up all the stuff I will pay about US$ 340, about 85% of my total income in order to have a OS with an office suite (tough I use LaTeX with pyhton) and a beautiful inernet mine sweeper game… Ok. (BTW, I would rather pay US$ 50 for SUSE 9.1 personal edition, because it comes with a little bit more software…).
All those “generous discounts” for students and such are made with the only intent of make people dependent of the software. Some day, those people will pay a lot of money for the product. It’s like a drug dealer…
I pay for the (free) software that I use. My money is very well spend, because I have a lot of good software to do my job. For me, free (as in freedom) software really matters.
“quit showing your ignorance.”
I think he is not the only ignorant here… The world is a little bigger than you think. Or you can just choose to ignore it.
Of course, I can see a lot of angry replies from my post, saying that I’m a bloody stalinist-stallmanist-communist that can’t even write in proper english. Ok, feel free to flame me
Regards
Lucas
Actually Microsoft could kill Linux off tommorrow if they really wanted to. All they would have to do is get the people who licensed “obsolete” software in say Win98se to aggree to this, (probably very easy with their bucks) and then OPEN SOURCE Win98se under something like the WxWidgets license that will allow for continued programming of proprietary software under it in concert with Visual C++ and Visual Basic version 6 and Office 97 as a single open source package like a Linux distro. (Borland could even aid this porject if they wanted to by releasing Delphi and C++ Builder 5 standard version to a WxWidget like license for those who prefer the RAD window building approach with native code compiling to Visual C++ “hard coding” and Visual Basic and placing them in a new win98se distro.)
Don’t kid the troops. I think a lot of open source geeks would like the challenge of transforming Win98se from the
“blue screen of death” OS into a truely workable piece of software if it were offered to them. Furthermore Open Sourcing these obsolete OSs and tools would not have much effect on Microsoft’s current buisness which seems to be going away from the home/small business user anyway and more toward .NET based rental software for large businesses.
(Another reason I chose Win98se for this idea is that was the last Microsoft to allow a full screen command line and
a lot of geeks still go for a full CLI option in their OSs
where they never have to see the GUI at all.)
Actually if Win98se were released to open source my guess is that at the CLI level it would start looking like Linux (Full 32 and 64 bit with 16 bit in emulation only mainly for playing old DOS games, full multi tasking and multi user even on a CLI level) with a DOS style prompt and disk mounting system.
I suspect a lot of the problems that MS is having in the industry is related to its attitudes to competitors.
Right now if I were to write almost any program that runs on windows I would be putting myself into direct competition with MS. Over the time the number of non-MS products on the average PC have declined as they were replaced by MS versions.
Unless prompted by a specific need people rarely install third party products which were considered fairly standard at one point. MS now delivers nearly all products that an average user will ever need. But then so does KDE.
The last computer I setup for someone, I installed only one 3rd party component and that was the latest flash player. I didn’t need to install java, icq/aim/yahoo, realplayer, netscape, or a host of other utilities I would have installed 6 years ago. And those products were mostly free.
So despite MS rhetoric about vibrant, competetive and innovative software industry. I see most people earning a living in services and providing skills that the average user doesn’t have or doesn’t have time to use. Writing Software for profit is getting harder and harder. Competing with MS isn’t clever and neither is competing with the Free Open Source world. Most commericial application developers are now precariously attempting both.
Actually Microsoft could kill Linux off tommorrow if they really wanted to. All they would have to do is (…) OPEN SOURCE Win98se (…)
Don’t kid the troops. I think a lot of open source geeks would like the challenge of transforming Win98se from the
“blue screen of death” OS into a truely workable piece of software if it were offered to them.[/i]
Actually, I am willing to bet that most “open source geeks” are simply not interested in Windows. Why spend time bringing something thoroughly broken (by design) up to snuff?
Brazil :
Today, every Windows user owes much to OSS, particuliarly Linux. It creates competition. If the price of software is so high in Brazil ( I’m in Europe ), IMHO, it’s because :
– Microsoft thinks that people actually use illegaly copied software, and they don’t want to lower the price down to $10.
– The competition is less acute : People prefers an illegal Office suite to a legal Linux Distro. Actually Microsoft prefers illegal Windows users to honest Linux zealots…
Open sourcing Win98 would by no way kill OSS :
– Linux and BSDs are superior to Win98. Period.
– There are many other software involved : OpenOffice vs MsOffice, IE vs Mozilla, …
Communism is much more on the commercial software side than with the OSS.
One of the principles of Communism is to keep productivity low to prevent unemployment.
For many years, programmers used to reinvent the wheel every other day. OSS promotes sharing code, so it becomes harder to re-sell old ideas : OS, word processors, …
Settlements, especially between a government and another party, shouldn’t be a part of a capitalist society. Settlements imo are rather a sign of a plutocratic society [which leads to an oligarchy]. This is because the law doesn’t judge; an agreement between the 2 parties judges. While it isn’t true as if both actually want this. It is done because of 1) lack of time (the SCO case flows for long while SUN decided they’d better bargain instead of waiting) 2) lack of money (it costs a lot, which is a huge problem especiaslly for individuals and civilians; the People who habbit the country) 3) To be done with the threat (the defendants reason, mostly). If you cannot get a lawyer then your only option is the settle; and the government is the most powerful entity in the country. Because of that, it is actually the government which decides the punishment. How can you define that an ingredient in a democratic society?
This is a huge problem, creating even more problems every day. It is the government which decides “how nice” it’ll play in the settlement. And, in the case of MS vs. US DoJ they played pretty nice imo whereas in the AT&T settlement they didn’t. It also sickens me that some elected [with fraud] president can pull of a case, arrange a settlement, and be done with it. They pulled reason 3 to be done with the thing, but in who’s advantage is it to not let jurisdiction fare it’s own way?
Settlements happen here too, but only with commercial, Big Boys. In the USA they are _far_ more common. I really don’t understand how one can be proud of this ingredient being a part of a so-called democratic society. I find it ashaming.
The only way MS can ever get _my_ trust back [as geek] is by acting honest. Features in the software and innovations are only minor importances for me. If that would result in them having less market, so be it, but i don’t see more heterogenous environments and diversity as a Bad Thing.
While it would be a good idea for Microsoft to open source Windows 98se, Windows NT 4.0 and Office 97, and other obsolete software still hanging around, that wouldn’t alter Linux’s position.
The Linux developers wouldn’t be interested; they’re interested in making Linux the best available Operating System, and nothing Microsoft does is going to alter that. Ditto the FreeBSD developers, ditto the OpenOffice.org developers, etc.
Where Opensourcing the obsolete software would pay dividends for Microsoft would be in retaining developers and end-users – for once Microsoft would be on the moral high ground, which is not its current experience. It would put Microsoft in the unexpected position of getting a return – in development and stability – from those who are its current major competitor – its installed user-base. And it would also cut Microsoft free from the terrible hassle of tracking down the users of unlicensed obsolete software, and again, looking like a school-yard bully.
And it would also give Microsoft some badly needed credibility with various anti-trust organizations around the globe, besides allowing Microsoft to get used to simply being part of the software scene, instead of having to turn an escalating profit every year. In other words, mollify the investors who are preparing to jump ship because the rate of return on their investment is now in a flat spin.
(After all, it was a Microsoft employee, Vinod Vallopillil who said these inspiring words:
Linux represents a best-of-breed UNIX, that is trusted in mission critical applications, and – due to it’s open source code – has a long term credibility which exceeds many other competitive OS’s.
Halloween II
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween2.php )
In other words, opening the source to the software products referred to, would benefit Microsoft immensely.
Would Microsoft do it? I doubt it. Their decision.
nah – you don’t get it
microsoft could indeed release win98 as open source, and loads of people would pick it up and develop it. thing is, that it is yesterdays news, it would be a step backwards from where linux is today.
You have to remember that *nix was “yesterday’s” news until Linus’s kernel began getting support in the FOSS and commercial software communities. Same thing could happen with
a truely updated GUI, CLI and kernel based on an open source Win98. (However it could also help Linux/Windows inter-operability too bu allowing Wine to be fully completed.)
I’m not saying this because I neccessarily like windows. (I am a linux user and I am planning to upgrade my machine to Novel/SuSE 9.1 when it becomes fully available as a boxed distro. I always buy the boxed distro and therefore the microsofties cant lay tha’t “you Linux leeches don’t pay for your software” bilge on me.) I am just suggesting a possible way Microsoft might defeat Linux.