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Borg and the Penguin
Posted by webmink on August 30, 2003 at 03:05 AM | Comments (12)
It was interesting at LinuxWorld (back near the start of August) to see how many people from Microsoft were attending. Indeed, at both my session and the one with Sterling Ball, a show of hands revealed a row or more of Microsoft employees (sticking together for mutual protection?).
Josh Ledgard was there, and while I must have been speaking a bit fast (I've never worked for MSFT, I was just an ordinary developer in the Word beta program, back in the days before MSDN made it into a business) I think he's on target with his report (even the StarOffice crash). As he notes, the 3D graphics innovations Sun is bringing to Linux were a big hit: It seemed the most innovative demo was Sun showing off " Project Looking Glass". This was a three dimensional desktop environment for Linux that looked like some mix of OS X(Complete with that funky pop-up start bar) and Longhorn. The audience went crazy for this. I'm particularly pleased by the way Sun's approach to Linux showed through as more grass-roots and genuine than that of others - notably IBM, who as Ashlee Vance also points out have a very schizophrenic attitude towards Linux and a partisan view of open source, avoiding projects that Sun participates in for apparently no reason other than that Sun participates:IBM claims to have put more than $1 billion behind open source software, but the company is failing to pay even a modest amount of lip service to one of free software's most needed products. Indeed, companies like IBM don't like Linux as a place to actually work, as Josh notes:I saw plenty of people with windows laptops and plenty of OS X notebooks, but outside of the booths and Sun sessions I was surprised at the lack of people running Linux. Sure, their slide decks talked a big game, but it looked a lot like Powerpoint and Windows XP underneath for Dan Powers(IBM VP of Grid Computing and Emerging Technologies) and several others. For presenters and general show goers I saw it felt like the order was MS > OS X > Linux. It surprised me enough to mention it I guess. But as Vance points out, unless you use the stuff you promote, you're lost:Linux on the mainframe might be interesting to a few customers, but it's not the OS's future. If IBM wants its Linux investment to keeping paying off, the vendor should push solid open source achievements instead of plugging Microsoft where it's convenient. Meanwhile, the benefits of liberty and openness extend to more than just the price tag the people you're paying to get your software have to pay. There's also the promise of no visits from the BSA (software's answer to the Thought Police) looking for even spurious license violations to persecute - as Josh notes:I'm also not even sure what the details of our licensing policies are, but if you were at LinuxWorld you were educated on how evil they are. No one at the show claimed that Linux was free, but one company that made the Linux switch did claim that no evil lawyers have come after him since they switched for being 8% under licensed. It just depresses me to lose customers because of this. There were also more Microsoft staff than other companies at the Harvard/MIT Free/Open Source Software conference earlier in the year and I'd like to congratulate the technical side of the company on its open-mindedness, which in time will lead to the sort of behaviour massively-connected customers are demanding - as long as the prejudices of Microsoft's kings-of-the-hill can be fixed.
[Also posted to Webmink]
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Comments
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IBM & Microsoft
IBM is a great company. It is an important contributor to the Open Source Software community. It is not and ,it does not represent. this community.
When IBM as a company does not use some Open Source Software, it is either because they have another vision or because they do not like some specific OSS. With StarOffice / OpenOffice they are on record that they want some server based office software. That is fine, clear. When they have it wrong, it does not detract from the importance of StarOffice / OpenOffice. The only hope is that they will support the OpenOffice data formats.
Microsoft is a great company. By not supporting their Operating Systems like Windows 95/NT they contribute massively to the Open Source Software community. When compared to Linux that does support old versions of the Kernel, they prove that even though they are the richest company in the world a user gets stellar service for software that is essentially free. Microsoft essentially only represents itself and does contribute little except for providing black box software. When their technicians attent OpenSource conventions, nobody will know how the knowledge they get will find its place in the black box software. When you follow Microsoft's history on IP it is clear that they have been found in breach of the IP that belongs to other companies.
In the end Microsoft and IBM are important. Their importance is as big as you let it be. When the US self defence department is implored NOT to use Microsoft products, it is up to them to decide. However as they have a choise, they are responsible for the consequences of that choise. As they have been warned beforehand, the relative importance of Microsoft has deminished. When governmental organisations introduce OpenOffice, the relative importance of IBM is deminished.
Thanks,
Gerard
Posted by: gerardm on August 31, 2003 at 11:46 AM
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Embrace, extend, ...
I’m not at all surprised to see that Microsoft is taking a very keen interest in Linux. And I don’t believe that this interest is limited to a grassroots movement among MS technical folks. Microsoft deals in business, making money. Yes, Microsoft rails against Linux and OSS as something that is anti-business, anti-money. However, that doesn’t mean that Microsoft has no intentions of using Linux in its own business. If Linux continues its strong growth curve, I strongly suspect that Microsoft will co-opt it.
Posted by: pbrittan on August 31, 2003 at 04:50 PM
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Open source focus
I'm not surprised either, but I think the focus is on learning to get the benefits that an open approach brings rather than specifically on Linux. I suspect Microsoft will be as reluctant to support Linux as they were to support IBM's OS/2, and for the same non-technical reasons.
Posted by: webmink on September 01, 2003 at 04:42 AM
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Open source focus
Yes, agreed, Microsoft's first mission is to learn as much as possible about the open source movement so that they are better prepared to fight it or find a way to make money from it.
Also agreed that Microsoft will push Windows, first and foremost, before showing any kind of support for Linux whatsoever. But I suspect there may come a time when that will change.
I think that Linux is fundamentally different from OS/2 in that no one company controls Linux. As a free, un-owned, commodized OS, Linux might be an acceptable platform on which Microsoft can sell its own products. OS/2, owned and controlled by IBM, could never be that.
Posted by: pbrittan on September 01, 2003 at 05:48 AM
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Control
My hunch is that Microsoft (in common with most established corporations) values platform control more highly than pretty much anything else - it's not that IBM controlled OS/2, rather it was that Microsoft /didn't/ control OS/2... It was interesting to see in the City of Munich decision to adopt Linux that they placed a high financial valuation on that control (around $10 million as I recall) and I think that's indicative of the value involved.
Posted by: webmink on September 01, 2003 at 08:35 AM
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Control
Yes, it's definitely about platform control. The question is, what constitutes the platform? Is it the kernel or the developers APIs or something else? In the case of Linux, the only major thing really out of their control is the kernel, and I suspect that they don't care too strongly about the kernel.
Posted by: pbrittan on September 01, 2003 at 09:15 AM
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IBM & Microsoft
Gerard -
I'm curious what you mean when you say, "the relative importance of Microsoft has deminished." I don't see that at all.
A few years ago, Solaris workstations were very popular on Wall Street traders' desks. Now there are nothing but Windows machines.
Windows has been gaining market share in the server room .
Microsoft SQL Server has been gaining market share.
A few years ago, Netscape was the dominant browser. Now IE is the overwhelming champion.
A few years ago, there were a number of popular alternative toolsets for building desktop apps on Windows (Borland OWL, Delphi, PowerBuilder, ...). Now, the popular Windows tools all come from Microsoft or support Microsoft technologies.
Posted by: pbrittan on September 01, 2003 at 09:35 AM
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Control
I think what I was getting at is that it's no so much what's /out/ of their control, more that the whole of Linux is not /in/ their control. My personal opinion is that's what lays behind their ongoing withdrawal from Mac OS X.
Posted by: webmink on September 01, 2003 at 10:09 AM
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Control
Understood. But Microsoft may not need the /whole/ of Linux to be in their control. Let's say they manage to control the developer APIs on Linux -- that might be enough for them to control the flow of money associated with the Linux platform.
Interestingly, Microsoft is offering the .NET framework on FreeBSD and Mac OS X.
Posted by: pbrittan on September 01, 2003 at 12:07 PM
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IBM & Microsoft
And I completely forgot to mention that a few years ago there were several viable, popular alternative office products: Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, QuattroPro, etc. Now there is really just MS Office.
The interesting thing is that not that long ago Microsoft faced a fair amount of competition in a variety of segments from entrenched players. Now all it faces are new products trying to stage a "comeback": Linux as a comeback OS, Java as a comeback development framework, Opera and Mozilla as comeback browsers, StarOffice/OpenOffice as a comeback office suite.
Posted by: pbrittan on September 02, 2003 at 07:07 AM
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Control
By the way, I posted entry on this topic in my blog: http://weblogs.java.net/pub/wlg/414
Posted by: pbrittan on September 03, 2003 at 06:22 AM
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Co-opt?
Spotted it!
Posted by: webmink on September 04, 2003 at 06:56 AM
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