Submitted by Microsoft . . . complained in its annual report that it was facing increasing pressure from open source companies. It claims they are stealing its ideas and benefiting from its intellectual property.
“A number of commercial firms compete with us using an open source business model by modifying and then distributing open source software to end users at nominal cost and earning revenue on complementary services and products.” Also see analysis at Microsoft Watch.
Competition! How dare they?!
There’s a difference between competition and being “forced” to open up your intellectual property.
“There’s a difference between competition and being “forced” to open up your intellectual property.”
So true.
We in Europe call the latter case “legal answer to monopoly”.
You should try that sometimes, it is cool
There’s also a difference between being vaguely accused of stealing ideas and having been found guilty in court of stealing ideas. Guess which one is MS and which one is OSS.
Edited 2008-08-06 05:52 UTC
Haha, yeah.. even for us Windows users, competition is always good
Is it my idea, or it’s starting to sound like SCO whining?
Balmer’s prejudices are well known, but it is kind of sad to see such ignorance in an official document for everyone to see.
However, this kind of document has to pass all sorts of people before it gets published and I find it hard to believe that nobody contested this point when it is so clearly untrue (or at least the pot calling the kettle black).
It almost seems like “the dog ate it” kind of excuse to the shareholders
Edited 2008-08-05 22:11 UTC
Sadly, I agree with MS on this one.
Knock offs are a reality in any industry. I mean for Cheerios, there is Cereal O’s. Yet people still buy the brand name. Sadly for MS, their business is software. There is no cost to the open source companies to sell their product.
I mean, even for Cereal O’s, they still need to build the factory, buy raw ingredients…
With open source, that’s not the case. Yes, it does rob us software engineers of good jobs. Even interop items are sketchy. I mean who developed MS .NET. It’s a great infrastructure that took some very smart people. Now, there is an open source clone of it.
I think MS really needs to start undercutting their competition if they want to stay in business.
If Windows was 50 dollars, most people wouldn’t even think twice about installing it. I mean if the option was 50 dollars for Windows or 25 dollar for Novell Linux… meh… the cost for windows is nothing. But as someone who recently built a small HTPC… when windows is 1/3 or 1/4 the price of the whole system… something is amiss.
MS doesn’t really sell hardware the way Apple does, so it can’t just offer users a box. Lord could only imagine the outcry of monopoly if they suddenly started doing that.
It’s a tough problem for MS to solve. I think for them to be successful in the future, they’re going to have to step on a lot of toes (of previous allies, 3rd party vendors… ).
I don’t agree with them. A lion’s share of MS software was based on copying or purchasing others (UI, spreadsheets, wordprocessors, Servers, DB, and the list goes on).
Note that I’m not saying it’s wrong or bad, that’s natural. But complaining about what got you here in the 1st place ?
In Hebrew we have a saying: “הפ×o×!×oe ב×z×o×z×o פ×o×!×oe”, which translates (according to wikipedia) to: “The disqualifier disqualifies based on his own fault”.
Did you forget to attach your resume to that last post? That was all “Mr. Company-man like”.
Yeah, Microsoft is _really_ hurting for software engineers and capital, aren’t they. Well, maybe they are…..but it’s Google’s fault that it’s apparently a much better company to work for.
Let me tell you what’s good with having open source…..it forces you software engineers to get off your ass, leave your comfort zone, and do something innovative. Case in point, if there was no Firefox, we’d still be stuck on that POS IE6 because MS was in no way throwing any resources towards that ‘product’ (and I use the term loosely).
I like to think of OSS as the Punk Rock to proprietary software’s Top 40 Radio. Creamy, polished, and bloated Top 40 gets old and stale, after so many years, and it takes Punk to come back and bite it in the ass and make music interesting again. Everything is cyclical.
The trends in commercial software are moving more and more to user driven development, and not compromising on quality. Where I work we have a 1 month release cycle, where every month we ask our users (we call them product owners internally to try and keep from falling into holier then thou programmer attitudes) what the features they need the most are, and let that drive the features of the release. We have two testers to every developer, and these are trained people who give very good bug reports and methodically test the software, not just random people on the interweb. We aim for 3 lines of test code to every 1 line of production code, and most of the team practices test driven development. Every code check in needs to be reviewed by another programmer before it goes to the testers, and our build server automatically runs through integration tests on every check in to the source tree. And every iteration has time set aside for regression testing, deployment testing, and performance testing to be absolutely sure we ship quality.
Now, we are ahead of the curve on this, and Scrum is one of the more hardcore of the Agile processes, but this is direction the industry is moving in. The software industry has traditionally had an abysmal standard of quality, and has been driven by cowboy coders who dont give a crap about the people they are actually writing the code for. In anything even resembling what would be considered a modern process, we are now taking a more holistic approach, and learning how to stop wasting everybodies time and money building things that are un tested and features that are misunderstood, or just plain un needed.
By contrast, open source embraces that mentality. Unit testing is rarely, if ever used. The commercial software world is bringing the developer and the user closer together, while the open source world pushes them further apart. Users are something to be taken care of by downstream, and heaven forbid if any of them try to break that barrier and ask a developer directly for help, which they only do in desperation when a distro doesn’t have a good working relationship with upstream. What I would consider good developers (i.e. people who care about the big picture) either do not stick around long (like con kolivas) or become completely disillusioned and just stop doing anything that effects the end user anymore (havoc, miguel)
Sorry for the huge rant, but that comment is exactly the reason that I post the things that I do in places like this. There is this massive misconception that open source is inherently better for the users, and it really isn’t, except in a very abstract way that has little to no real value. You say that open source is like punk rock and commercial software is like top 40, fine. I say open source is like communism, fantastic ideas, very idealistic, inherently flawed in its inability to deliver meaningful innovation or an acceptable level of quality without doing so on the back of a more practical system.
And seriously dude, apple is punk rock. They are hip, revolutionary, and mean to the bone
And just so you know, this is coming from someone who has used linux for about 6 years now on and off (currently on, I am running hardy), has participated in a great deal of open source projects, and doesn’t any more due to a serious disillusionment with the whole system.
All of this is required if you are about to sell a product in exchange for money.
Open source code isn’t about that at all … it is about exchanging code in an effort to evolve a better product.
If I am but a lowly “random person on the inetrweb”, and I download a piece of open source software (say KDE 4.0, for example), and I read and understand that I am being offered the software at no cost to me but with no guarantees as to its performance, and I then try out the software, notice a problem with it and I submit a bug report … have I not tested the software?
Even though I am just a lowly “random person” the bug I discovered is still a bug no matter who discovered it. It does not become a bug just because software QA noticed it.
Your prejudice is showing here.
No, you have discovered a bug. Testing the software is boring as hell, because it is basically hammering at the interface in a methodical fashion to hit every combination of inputs possible. It is also very effective, because given enough users, chances are those combinations will get hit eventually.
You could argue that with enough users, software will be well tested, but that would be considered absolute lunacy in every single other industry in the world right now, except for some reason, programming. The whole point is to address these things before the lemur2’s of the world get their hands on it.
The only people who even come close to being testers in the open source world are those who run trunk builds on a daily basis, are active on the mailing lists with feedback, and submit proper bug reports. Everyone else is just users of untested software
Again you fail to understand, so again I will patiently try to explain it to you.
Open source code release is not delivery of finished product to consumers in exachnage for money.
Open source code release is collaborative field testing of product in development.
Since the code is tested far and wide by millions of participants in a wide variety of field conditions, by the time it has become mature (called a “stable release”) it is far better tested, and greater quality, than closed source code tested only in-house by the same company that produces the code in the first place and which is (as a whole) under considerable market pressure to release product.
Case in point … Vista.
QED.
Case in point… KDE 4.0?
KDE 4.0, like any .0 release, was not a “stable release”. It was actually the first time out. I am using KDE 4.1 right now, and it is a vast improvement, with significant additional functionality, and nearing stability.
It wouldn’t get to that point anywhere near as quickly if it was constrained to be tested only by the KDE team … it doesn’t achieve that rapid open-source improvement characteristic without the extensive testing by the widest audience possible.
http://community.joomla.org/magazine/article/517-involvement-why-i-…
Involvement: Why I Love Open Source
A thoughtful perspective on participation
Edited 2008-08-06 14:42 UTC
So if enough users/testers are willing to do the testing for free, eventually others will end up using a finished and polished product. Problem is, users want to be just end users and get stuff done with the software, not test it, and that’s without having into consideration that most of them wouldn’t be interested or even know how to make a proper report anyway.
This might work fine in fantasy land, but in the real word there’s a reason why paid testers exist. The fact that commercial software might be released too early or with improper or insufficient testing does not mean this open source myth where every user is willing to jump trough hoops and be a dedicated tester and bug reporter has any resemblance with reality.
There are different levels and types of users. Some like cutting edge stuff and are willing to have an unfinished product and to report bugs.
Others are not and therefore can wait until the product is stable enough for them. It’s not like they paid for the product anyway and their licence key won’t expire if they upgrade to the next revision, they can pick it up whenever no restrictions.
People are still stuck on the proprietary end user mindset where you have producers and consumers. Unfortunately that is not how open source operates and the differences between the two are much more fluid.
Edited 2008-08-06 15:48 UTC
Well exactly. That is the point of collaboration … you collaborate. Everyone puts in some effort, and everyone wins.
Pfft. If you want to just sit back, refuse to collaborate, don’t be part of it, and just partake of the fruits of that development effort then … feel free.
Download a copy of Debian stable and run it to your heart’s content.
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/
Just don’t complain that it isn’t “cutting edge”.
If you don’t like Debian … then RHEL (or Centos … if you are willing to go without the support) is the go for you. Fedora is for those “cutting edge, willing to do the testing” people.
As for your contention that “most of them wouldn’t be interested” … I think you might find that the cutting edge “test it with us as we go along” releases are at least as popular as the stable releases.
BTW: I didn’t anywhere even come close to a claim that “every user is willing to jump trough hoops and be a dedicated tester and bug reporter”. That was your strawman.
The thing is, open source gives you a choice. You can participate, or you can choose to just use the eventual, stable product if you wish. The other thing is … you aren’t expected to do anything … even pay any money … if you don’t want to.
The startling thing is … the thing that no doubt surprises you enormously … is that many people do in fact choose to participate. Literally millions of people worldwide.
Edited 2008-08-07 00:49 UTC
Hold the phone!
It looks like Debian is getting ready to retire Etch (make it “Old Stable”), and promote the current testing release, Lenny, as the new version of Debian stable.
http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2008/08/debian-lenny-update-so-far…
That is pretty quick for Debian! Things are looking up.
You might soon be able to get a relatively recent version as Debian stable.
The thing is that most open source devs eat their own dogfood, so will be among the people who test and find bugs.
let me correct you:
“Everyone else is using tested software”
The quality of that test is up for debate, but you cannot say that there are testers and then say that the software is untested.
I actually agree with this. Much OSS software is crap. Unfortunately for you, much commercial software is crap too. I dont even get me started on “Enterprise” software, the very worst software there ever was.
Punk rock isn’t hip and never was. Unless you’re taking about that sad-ass excuse for “punk” you have over in the U.S these days.
Apple is more like those stylish 80’s pop bands that everyone has forgotten about now.
And just so you know, this is coming from someone who has used Linux, Unix and Windows for about 18 years now doing tech support, software development (oss & commercial), system administration and IT management.
I disagree , much of OSS is spectacular and often miraculous in the fact that it exist and in its continued creation , that’s why the proprietary software are mostly based of OSS , the problem with OSS is that it’s not protected properly hence instead of getting people who contribute and profit from it , you got people who try to take what exist improve it , but ultimately close it inside something proprietary , hence trying to kill OSS to be the only one to make money ( different from profiting everyone ). It’s mostly dead anyway.
what most of you call OSS is actually Free Software.
Now i know you don’t like to provide anything to backup your claims but still you cant just make up bs and think people will believe it just because you say it.
Let’s take it from the top.
“that’s why the proprietary software are mostly based of OSS” Aha and you can back this up how?
And open source is mostly dead..? Who would have guessed.
“what most of you call OSS is actually Free Software.” Could that be because FSF knows they are getting more and more irrelevant and they know that they have to call as many licenses as posible gnu/free software licenses just to keep them self in relevans?
Microsoft does not write the code that open source companies distribute.
Therefore the product which open source companies distribute does not belong to Microsoft.
How many other companies has MS blatantly ripped off.
Remember when they invited Stac to their offices and then ripped off thier product and put into DOS as doublespace.
Pot. Kettle. Black. Sad.
I’m a software engineer too, and I couldn’t disagree with you more.
This is a terrible analogy or at the very least very incomplete. Open source software hasn’t stolen Microsoft’s code and re sold it, they haven’t stolen any top secret, amazingly innovative concepts that only Microsoft has implemented. And there most certainly is a cost to developing software whether it is closed or open source, just ask IBM, Redhat, Sun or Novell.
Open source software also needed to be built, tested and debugged. Developers and support people need to learn the ins and outs just as Microsoft employees have to. The difference is that open source developers have decided that sharing code and utilizing multiple sources of developers regardless of their commercial affiliation can create top shelf software at a lower total cost per man hour than competing closed source software. They’ve chosen to compete based on other criteria rather than just a piece of software.
Imagine if General Mills decided they wanted to sell each box of Cheerios for $30 a box. Likely they would go out of business. A lot of people by brand names, companies like Nike, Reebok, Gucci, Coke, Pepsi etc make millions off of their name brand. Microsoft will and can do the same.
Microsoft is bitching about an inevitable change in the software landscape. Complaining about it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.
How is it robbing Software engineers of jobs. Given, it’s taking jobs from engineers who write the same old thing over and over again. But if you’re actually good at what you do. If you can write innovative and cutting edge software there is possibilities to make money regardless of whether it’s open source. Do you really think that developers like Linus Torvalds, Andrew Morton, and Aaron Siego are working for free. They aren’t, they likely make more money than you ever will.
First off .NET (besides ADO.NET and ASP.NET) have been accepted as ECMA standards. So implementing them is not only possible but expected and completely legal. Second .NET while a nice framework is built upon the concepts and ideas of thousands of other people. It’s essentially the same concept as Java with some (arguably) nicer syntax and features. The design patterns used in it are all common knowledge and described in dozens of textbooks used in any half decent CS program. Every concept in .NET has at one point been implemented in another language. They just took the conepts their engineers thought were useful and wrapped it into their own nice package. So while .NET is one of the things I do actually like about MS it’s hardly a new and innovative product.
Have you ever heard Sun complain about GNU classpath, Kaffe, IBM’s Java implementation. No, because they realize that cross platform, compatible implementations just ensure that more platforms can run Java software. In fact they’ve even gone as far as GPL’ing Java to ensure it remains the standard and can be used and improved by everyone with as few restrictions as possible.
I apologize, I actually do agree with your above assertion. Windows needs to start competing on price and service. They need to pull their collective heads out of they’re asses and start writing quality top notch software that is well supported, extensible and documented. They have the most brand presence of any other software company except maybe IBM, all they need to do is keep feature and service parity with the competition and they will have a leg up on 90% of their competition.
Personally I have no problem paying for Excel and MS SQL Server because they are top quality products that have mountains of documentation and some very good extensibility points. See, put out a good product and people will buy it.
Other companies like Sun and IBM have faced similiar crisis in the past and have managed without stepping on everyones toes. If Microsoft thinks they need to start wielding they’re Patent portfolio like a sword I suspect that soon enough thiongs like prior art and obvious implementations will very quickly show that the majority of Microsoft’s patent portfolio is nothing to be feared.
I’d be willing to bet dollars to donuts that the reason that Microsoft never released any particulars about the 200+ patents that Linux violates in the whole Novell deal was because they know that if the community gets hold of that list it will very quickly be wittled down to very few issues and those that do remain would very quickly be re implemented.
Microsoft the RIAA and MPAA can cry all they want but inevitability a broken business model will eventually fail. Someday the money will run out, the facts will become household knowledge and unless they get their act together they’re gonna be left standing in the middle of an empty street with their pants down.
Yes, everyone at Red Hat and Canonical works for free and there’s no cost in keeping offices for them either. Also, you apparently also get ad space for free. Or maybe you just don’t know what you’re talking about.
Gee, that sounds a lot like the old “immigrants are robbing us of jobs” or “outsourcing is robbing us of jobs”. In the words of Maddox, if they “take” your job it’s because they work harder and better than you do.
I dont see how this makes interop sketchy. Unless of course .Net isn’t properly specified to begin with.
Edited 2008-08-06 05:32 UTC
Hilariously stupid. A software engineer tied to a single platform and/or a single language is not a software engineer, it’s an unusable asset whose work no company should pay a dime for. A changing software landscape does not eliminate jobs, it just reallocates them, one has to be flexible enough to find one’s new place in the new setup. Whining about a srhinking demand a particular software area won’t help, adapting to the new requirements and demans will. Everything else is just meaningless chit-chat.
edited. just ignore
Edited 2008-08-06 14:57 UTC
I thought the open source developers always advocated that complementary services and options were the means for them to gain money, and the cost-effectiveness of open source and open standards would help make it profitable to rely on services only. Microsoft was one of the companies always claiming that such a business model could never work… whining that it does work isn’t really gonna help them further. The open source communities were always open about this strategy… So what point are they trying to make???
This has been their argument for years. They didn’t want to open the SMB protocol for example, because they spent a heck of a lot in R&D in things like dealing with line noise or poor connections, which don’t really exist in competing protocols. Now that they are forced to give up innovation they spent money to develop for free, what is going to be the incentive to keep innovating?
Honestly, I think the only answer is to specifically design their protocols and formats for interop, and abstract out the business value stuff. That way the microsoft implementation could have the bits that deal with line noise, and the open implementations could implement whatever they like in its place. They will have to just bite the bullet and accept the losses on existing products, but the price you pay for getting labeled a monopoly is you have to play by different rules that aren’t always fair.
I would argue the way microsoft used its monopoly power in the past (and still is) isn’t fair on its competitors either.So does it cancel out?
Edited 2008-08-05 22:30 UTC
They’re not a monopoly. I can just as easily buy a Mac or a Linux preloaded computer as I can a Windows one.
Wrong. They ARE a monopoly. A monopoly does not mean they have no competition. It just means they control enough of the market that their competition is insignificant.
As far as i know, monopolies are not necessary illegal either. However I would suggest that given MS’s past business practices, they could probably qualify as an illegal monopoly, because of the way they have bullied competitors (embrace,extend,extinguish?) and abused their market share.
I really wouldn’t call Apple or Linux OS’s insignificant. In fact I would say the opposite. They’ve been able to pressure Microsoft to do things they normally wouldn’t do.
Yes, that’s why every model on sites like Dell, HP, etc. has an option to choose between Windows, Linux, BSD, or no OS at all. >.<
I’d really beg to differ. Microsoft is a monopoly, as has been found out legally in several countries now. It is far easier to get a Windows based computer, or a Mac, than it is a Linux based computer. Far easier.
Dave
The SMB protocol is not Microsoft’s. The SMB protocol was invented by IBM’s Barry Feigenbaum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_message_block
Microsoft merely embraced, extended and obscured it so that others could not interoperate.
Samba is an implementation of the SMB protocol that is able to decipher most of Microsoft’s obscured extensions. It has done this not by copying Microsoft’s code, but merely by stimulating a Microsoft implementation of SMB and recording the response ‘over the wire’. Then Samba writes code to replicate a similar resposne. Hence Samba does not use any of Microsoft’s R&D, and none of Microsoft’s code.
Edited 2008-08-06 00:37 UTC
Really? I thought the EU forced microsoft to license their protocols to samba.
http://www.tuxdeluxe.org/node/277
It may have started out as a reverse engineering effort, but it is now an implementation based on a specification.
Cute. The OTHER point of view is they took something pretty shoddy and made it pretty good. The current implementation is more secure, more performant, more robust, and can run off of plain old TCP/IP without NetBIOS.
Either way, the Samba implementation is DIFFERENT code to the Microsoft one. The only thing they were forced to open was the specification. Thats only fair in my opinion, considering the circumstances.
If Microsoft had used/created open standards in the first place, none of this would have been an issue.
Calling a specification/protocol “intellectual property” is just wrong in my opinion. Open Source hasn’t stolen anything but their ideas, and ideas are not copyright. Its what competition is all about.
Arguably, this is what a lot of Open Source has done, the difference being that they didn’t start with Microsoft’s code, only their ideas…and even then only vaguely in many cases.
Yes really. The protocol is not Microsoft’s. Microsoft has only added some trade-secret obscured extensions to the protocol, because the protocol allowed this.
BTW: trade secrets are not protected by IP law other than the fact that they are secret. Once a secret is out, it is out, and the product is protected no more. reverse engineering of a trade secret is a perfectly legitimate undertaking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret#Protecting_trade_secrets
“However, the “down side” of such protection is that it is comparatively easy to lose (for example, to reverse engineering, which a patent will withstand but a trade secret will not) and comes equipped with no minimum guaranteed period of years.”
Microsoft’s source code for its own implementation of networking protocols is of course still protected by copyright law … but Samba is not a copy of Microsoft’s source code. Samba is its own original implementation of the same protocol, and since it is not a copy, then it is not hindered by Microsoft’s copyright on Microsoft’s different source code implementation.
As I said, reverse engineering is a perfectly legitimate way to uncover a trade secret.
In the case of inter-operation information that is required so that more than one supplier may enter a market (such as the specifications of CDROMs that allow multiple manufactures to make both CDs and CD drives that all work with each other, or the specifications that allow USB ports and USB devices from multiple manufacturers to interoperate) … it may be a competition requirement that the specifications cannot be kept secret and exclusive.
Well, they did that as well and there is nothing wrong with improving the protocol. However there is something wrong with obscuring it. They extended a public interoperability protocol and made it private in such a way as to exclude competition in another market. This is akin to GM making cars that will only run on GM petrol and travel over GM roads … and then using that to force Ford out of business. Tch tch. Naughty naughty. I think you might find that such a practice is against many anti-competition laws in many countries … it is certainly against Americas own anti-trust laws.
Or maybe it’s the price you pay for getting where you are using questionable business practices.
I thought that problems like line noise and poor connection quality are handled by lower level protocol stacks like TCP/IP. As far as I know a high-level protocol like SMB shouldn’t have to bother with such problems at all.
Already putting the blame on small OSS companies making money of their so called ideas. I mean it must be hurting their billions profits after all, no one else in this area comes up with new ideas do they?
People get inspired by great ideas, you dont have to work at Microsoft to implement them, seems to me it’s a company that hold them back rather than actually use them.
Edited 2008-08-05 22:27 UTC
…they were blinded by computer science?
(sorry, I couldn’t resist)
God I miss the 80’s,
wait that was a thomas dolby reference wasent it?
This sounds like something “leaked” to prevent Wall Street’s expectations from getting too high.
But maybe I’m cynical. If Microsoft put out the kind of software they are capable of, with their huge cash reserves and hordes of bright people, I’d have more sympathy for them. But instead they spend more effort on marketing (the recent Vista ad campaign is the latest example). And they ask me to pay ever-increasing amounts of money for what amounts to incremental mediocrity improvements, so if open source takes them down, I have the (possibly spiteful) opinion that it’s their own fault.
And it seems that many of the “stolen” ideas Microsoft claims are in open source are actually interoperability efforts. SMB is a good example; would there be an open-source implementation of it if there were no need to talk to the hordes of Windows machines out there? The open-source world had several network file systems to choose from, some if not all at least s good as, if not better than, SMB (NFS, AFS, Coda, plan9, FUSE module for your paper file cabinet,…).
I have to commend Microsoft for having “good enough” software and brilliant marketing enough to garner 90% of the worlds PCs, but “open source is stealing all our ideas”? Come on.
Whenever I think about those Microsoft flagships I somehow also think about other products.
.Net reminds me a lot about Java
IE7 reminds me a lot about Firefox
IIS 7 reminds me a lot about Apache
Vista Gadgets reminds me a lot about OSX Widgets
Windows Live reminds me a lot about Google
MS SQL reminds me a lot about Sybase
Silverlight reminds me a lot about all those Adobe Flash solutions
The list is longer.. add more if you like. Anyways, let’s not fight. It’s pointless. IT is about freedom of ideas, and if Microsoft is gonna whine about it, then clearly they have too much money and power to accept that freedom.
MS started selling a unix clone called Xenix. They then sold IBM a license to a product they didn’t own – MSDOS. MSDOS was QDOS which was just a blatant copy of CP/M. Windows is basically a copy of earlier GUIs. The NT kernel was based strongly on VMS. Most of their other software was bought or copied from other vendors. The NT network stack contains open source BSD code.
The problem with being on top is that there is no where to go but down. At 90 % market share they are absolutely a monopoly. Anyone who doesnt think so needs to look up the definition of the word.
They are responsible for the problems they are having. Had there been an actual level playing field all these years, there would be other proprietary companies out there competing with them. As they are a monopoly, the only workable solution was one that devalued software to almost nothing. Instead, companies are moving to a services business model. Its the only way to compete with Microsoft. So all you brilliant software engineers out there who blame open source for not being able to sell software, get a clue. This is a direct result of what Microsoft did to the market. Blame them. In the end, you either adapt to survive, or perish.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4400501053.html?kc=rss
“Lenovo has announced its entry into the “netbook” market. The Linux-based IdeaPad S9 and Windows-XP-based S10 feature 8.9- and 10-inch displays, respectively, plus 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processors, 1.3 megapixel webcams, 802.11b/g wireless networking, and up to 160GB of storage, says the company.”
…
“For the U.S., Lenovo’s sole netbook is the S10, featuring Windows XP Home Edition, a 10.2 inch screen, and 80GB or 160GB of hard disk storage.”
…
“According to Lenovo, the IdeaPad S10 will be available in early October. U.S pricing is $400 for a 512MB/80GB configuration, and $500 for a 1GB/160GB configuration. Availability and pricing of the Linux-based S9, which will be targeted at overseas markets, was not available.”
That is interesting, is it not? The US is the only place on earth, apparently, where the citizens are so oppressed as to not be allowed to choose to run freedom software … according to Lenovo anyway.
Where does Lenovo say MS is preventing them from selling the Linux-based one in the U.S? This has nothing to do with MS and everything to do with Lenovo marketing and sales strategies.
Unless of course you have some proof that MS pressured Lenovo.
Well, not entirely. It’s very hard to compete with someone who has so much bigger advantages [i.e. MS made a pretty good job in creating and maintaining a large number of average-level userbase who won’t easily be converted], thus they spend less on trying to convince them, instead they concentrate on markets that they can sell more with less effort. All in all, it doesn’t really matter which market the money comes from as long as it comes.
Crying all the way to the bank.
“Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and steal the stereo.”
Bill Gates.
this is software development. because open source (or any type) of developer can take and IDEA and make it better, is the basis of how fluid and strong the competition is.
a disaster for them (vista adoption rates) does not constitute a disaster for me. remember, microsoft is a publically traded company so now, and forever in their past, they print up useless pr rants like these that try to reason their current stance. if windows was going strong, then this write up by microsoft would have been along the lines of “flying on cloud nine, we’ve beaten any competitor with similar products with our untouchable product line”, but since vista sales are down they are just bitching that, like themselves, many developers “borrow” ideas from established products to either create new products or make an alternative better.
Oh, yeah! This should be good for a few hundred comments. It’s unfortunate there’s nothing about Apple or KDE4 in this article, though – that would have knocked it out of the park.