Rivals still fear Redmond and its deep pockets, but its clout is diminishing. The decision to unveil Office’s source code is the proof.
These Days, Microsoft Isn’t So Scary
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
19 Comments
2004-10-20 12:22 pm
2004-10-20 2:44 pm
2004-10-20 3:15 pm
2004-10-20 4:00 pm
2004-10-20 4:14 pm
2004-10-20 4:36 pm
2004-10-21 11:16 am
<blockquote>Stallman and his cult members? These morons do more harm to open source than good.</blockquote>
Stallman was the one who started it all. Without him, Linux would probably never existed. Don’t forget that Linus used the tools that him and “his cult members” created. You may not like him, but he sure deserves credit for what he’s done so far.
I got your point but it’s not fair of you that day after day coming up with stuff like:
“Stallman and his hippie friends”
“Clueless *****smoking braindead gnu zealots”
I could make a collection of Lumbergh “Greatest” hits.
And there needs to be loudmouthing “watchdogs” also even if the clueless ones is annoying.
“Stallman was the one who started it all.”
And Bill Joy and BSD guys are only “stupid things” of the computer history?
Their influence is diminishing but only relative to their scale. They are still a force to reckoned with and will be for quite some time to come.
After a decade or so of shoddy products, of course their influence is lower.
I used to love MS products. Bought every upgrade on the day it was released. I certainly am not a MS Hater.
But they had this coming, and lost people like me. Shoddy products and anemic upgrades. Questionable–at best–business practices and ethics. A comical EULA if you care to read it. Privacy protection = zero.
Yup, they blew the trust. And in a competitive industry, that’ll kill you. MS’s fall will be slow and unspectacular, but it is happening before our eyes.
Microsoft is like a door.When entering your house you go in
either via the front door or back door.We only have to change peoples behaviour in the way they enter buildings.From now on we have to convince them it’s better to go in via the roof.Go everywhere in the world and ask ten people the first name of an OS that rises in their memory, i bet MS will come up as easily as Coca Cola.There will be no threat or whatsoever for MS on the desktop coming 10 years as long as the scale on which new PC’s are sold with preinstalled Windows on it doesn’t change.
On the server market it’s a different story.Allmost every IT
professional knows at least about the existence of linux and UNIX.Hence it’s baked in allmost every certification program.In the sectors where function overules fashion Linux
is a very strong competitor.Allmost every Linux distribution
could if you needed it make a tailormade version of Linux
that suits your infrastructure best.Microsoft has to start
worrying when the moment arises where the OSS community comes with there own Active Directory like version that’s
worth it’s saullt.
Note:It’s remarkable to see the increasingly amount of new Linux distributions coming from poor economy countries.In the Western world MS is very predominant.Childeren grow up with windows at school.Let’s say an institute in Thailand
starts giving real education to childeren in the local neighbouthood.Linux could be downloaded once and installed numerous times.Linux (UNIX) is a great OS , very good on the desktop to, only you have to have a little more time to get
used to it , unlike windows.But once you get the hang of it, there isn’t an end to the learning curve,it’s the OS
of the future.As we endulge ourselves in front of our mediacenters. the “kids” there will learn how to program our servers and grow smarter by the day.
Debian
Whatever you believe Stallman did or didn’t he is the big reason OSS doesn’t get adopted. It’s no secret that he has his own agenda which is really horrible.
I think the more quiet this Stallman guy get’s the more potential Open source has… lock him in the basement.
The big question really comes down to, RMS started his licensing program to support his communistic views of today. I ask myself whether I wanna be a part of it…. NOPE! I stay BSD/MIT
This is an interesting thread. Forget about the politics of who did, said or made what.
Deo is right. We need to persuade people to enter the house through other entry points, that’s all. Linux and Mac are both good enough alternatives. I hear all these whiners going banging on about Linux being for geeks and Mac being way over cost-wise. Both arguments are rubbish. Linux can be used as a Desktop and is a great system. Mac – if you really want one go look on Ebay – I can find locally a Powermac and even ibooks – at what I regard as a great price. So one is not tied to MS, the only things that tie us to them are the O/S and Office. So we need to get people to drop the O/S and use CSV, RTF and anything and everything that is platform agnostic.
When I say we above – I mean Westerners.
Asia/China and other places will be streets ahead of us Westerners if we do not move away from windows. That is clear to see for anyone who cares to look behind the scenes with all the cobwebs blown out of the way.
I have taken the plunge and use Linux and OS X, and will never go back.
OSS can’t be stopped anymore.OSS doesn’t get adopted at the rate we would like to see it to happen isn’t due to one individual.In my opinion OSS doesn’t have to be
adopted at all.Everybody is free to choose the OS to his/her liking.Nevertheless OSS still has great potential and above all it’s free.Where i say Linux i actually meant xBSD and all non propietary non hardware conformant forms derived from UNIX.As you mentioned R.Stallman.To be honest
it’s the first time i went to his website.Just to get some idea where you are referring to.He doesn’t have communistic view of the (software) world , he actually
despises both.I think he emphasizes the freedom of sharing
information.Well to some extend i can agree.It’s only the
question what can be shared and what can’t .When he clearly says no “matter why” he opens a big backdoor, and i leave the debating train at that point.
[quote]
* Massive propaganda saying it is wrong to disobey the owners to help your friend.
* Solicitation for stool pigeons to inform on their coworkers and colleagues.
* Raids (with police help) on offices and schools, in which people are told they must prove they are innocent of illegal copying.
* Prosecution (by the US government, at the SPA’s request) of people such as MIT’s David LaMacchia, not for copying software (he is not accused of copying any), but merely for leaving copying facilities unguarded and failing to censor their use.All four practices resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as “samizdat”. There is of course a difference: the motive for information control in the Soviet Union was political; in the US the motive is profit. But it is the actions that affect us, not the motive. Any attempt to block the sharing of information, no matter why, leads to the same methods and the same harshness.[/quote]
well i think fortunately the real life scenario isn’t that black and white.Being the argument of a hidden agenda is that it’s hidden.How do you know if one has one?
Sometimes it seems that the real power is with the ones
who have the big bucks,not the politicians.If some union
decides to let some 10 other countries join its legions who
knows for sure it’s not manipulated by the clan of industrials to gain some cheap production grounds.
All that’s really free is in your mind.OSS can be fun, i think it is.In my humble opinion we shouldn’t mix politics
with software.OSS must not become an obcession in it self.
Microsoft obviously does care about IBM, RedHat, and Novell, considering the amount of energy they expend spreading FUD about them
Hehe, and IBM, RedHat, or Novell has never spread FUD. I mean Microsoft is the only business that spreads FUD. RedHat’s Gnome developers FUD even holds back progress on the Desktop….Mono, Java.
MS cares about “slashdweebs” too, if that was a reference to technical people in general. It’s kind of hard to run a business when the people you are trying to sell software too don’t want anything to do with it.
Saying that slashdweebs are “technical people” is a stretch and to say that slashdweebs make purchasing decisions is a joke.
People like ESR, RMS, Linus, and Bruce Perens have been a thorn in Microsoft’s side ever since their names have become recognizable in techincal crowds. Their promotion of open source and opposition to MS has certainly had an affect on their business. If it didn’t then you would have never heard the word “Linux” uttered by any MS spokesperson, Bill Gates, or Stever Ballmer.
Anybody that produces software that doesn’t run on Microsoft’s platforms (and even a lot that do) is a thorn in Microsoft’s side.
Linux is more of a thorn in the side of proprietary Unix vendors than Microsoft’s. Sun, HP, IBM, SGI would’ve been more than happy if Linux had never existed, but will go ahead and “embrace” it and put out some big marketing “we care about open source” spin if it helps their bottom line.
Listen, there’s nothing wrong with Linux and open source in general. There’s a problem with people that consider software a religion.
[…] he actually despises both.I think he emphasizes the freedom of sharing information.
Stallman’s emphasis isn’t on the *sharing* of information, it’s on the *distribution* of information. A subtle – but important – difference. The former implies a completely voluntary action, whereas the latter (and Stallman’s philosophy) is that to acquire any information you should have to give up some of your own. A kind of “enforced” tit-for-tat, if you will. Basically, he wants software development to run on a “currency” of source code.
Well i see no difference besides some ripping text out off theinitial context.Mr.Stallman wasn’t the point of interest
in the piece i wrote.Oh well.
Stallman’s emphasis isn’t on the *sharing* of information, it’s on the *distribution* of information. A subtle – but important – difference. The former implies a completely voluntary action, whereas the latter (and Stallman’s philosophy) is that to acquire any information you should have to give up some of your own.
I don’t see it that black and white.You can share your distribution and you can distribute your shared thoughts.
So if you distribute your let’s say homemade Linux From Scratch to your friends you de facto only distribute you
r view on how your Linux version would look like and with that distribution you share your thought on that.
If i move my copied cd to my girlfriend i’m actually distributing ,as in throwing it in the transport canal,it.
For the record:[url]