KnowProse discusses a story revisited from 1999 which sounds as current today as it did five years ago. Here’s the full story and here’s an excerpt: “Most of the people now using GNU/Linux never heard of VisiCalc. A few probably heard of Lotus 1-2-3. They may even crack jokes about OS/2, though they may never have actually seen it. Wordperfect and Wordstar are alien words to many computer users now – including the younger generation of advocates of Free Software and Open Source. But the history Tom writes of is very important – because every single application he mentions that was squashed by Microsoft was, in fact, squashed by Microsoft. Some call it business. Others call it War. And recent world events seem to prove that neither is mutually exclusive.“
Free Software and Open Source Advocacy: Is Microsoft An Issue?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=94283&cid=8089848
Microsoft isn’t an issue in the sense that it can really hamper or hurt the development of open source. Where Microsoft becomes an issue is really in the deployment field, in which case it really isn’t much of an issue more of an implementation of open source.
Its more like a goal. Reaching the top. If it weren’t microsoft it would of been apple. And if it weren’t apple it would be sun. Its about beating the competition (all of them), and that is a form of motivation.
Or I am on crack.
No, what you are talking about is an extremist position. There is a vast gray area in between open and closed source applications, and most “normal” people WILL pick whats best.
Personally, if I have to apps that would do the task just as well but one was open source and the other was closed, then I would choose the open source one. Its doesn’t have to be black or white as some people suggest, it goes both ways.
The biggest threat from Microsoft IMO comes in the hardware DRM. They will use it to shut out linux.. well they will at least try. I don’t know that it will stop open source efforts, but it will give them head aches. Imagine if all the PCs started being sold with Xbox like DRM and you couldn’t install Linux on them without soldering a mod chip into your computer. How many average people will open up their box and try their hand at soldering just so they can try an OS they haven’t ever used before? Just my thoughts.
The subject says it all, there always will be Commercial software, I do not see a strong OSS comunity moving towards coding sofisticated complex industral software, in the medical fileld, the civil engineering, Aerodynamics, Avionics, Acountancy, etc.
The OSS doesn’t care about this, and it should not care at all… how many people out there has the skills and resources to both develop an engineering application and maintain it along the years.
The world won’t stop even for idealistic reasons.
This is something many people is starting to understand now on the Linux field, and more and more people will.
The undelying OS is what no matter the issue should be open to public scrutiny, bug and scurity fixing, and of course geek fun.
The current market is an aberration, one sole company controls the world industry! a company which can not even fix in time a parsing function on a web browser. (MS IE and the URL bug/scams)
I’m not sure I’d be considered an “advocate” of Open Source, but use Linux, XP, and FreeBSD in various capacities in my work (which is in academics, but not IT or CS related). Perhaps I’m naive, but it seems to me that if 1/10th the energy wasted on advocacy were spent on contributing to the theory, coding, and testing behind quality open source software, we would have several very polished packages better than anything Microsoft could produce, simply due to the number of programmers involved. Instead, there seems to be a lot of discussion and gnashing of teeth over philosophies behind OSS, with little effect where the tires meet the road. The “heroes” of OSS, if you view it in such a way, are the quiet programmers working away at the projects for the love of programming, and who could less give a hoot how it affects Microsoft, Big Brother, the world at large, or the future of OSS.
Microsoft functions as much as a psychological enemy as anything practical. For better or worse, many people use OSS because it “isn’t Microsoft”. A small minority even cast off all MS users as mindless robots, believing that the difficulty in using/configuring/installing an OS is proportional to the intelligence or eliteness of the operator.
“The biggest threat from Microsoft IMO comes in the hardware DRM. They will use it to shut out linux.. well they will at least try. I don’t know that it will stop open source efforts, but it will give them head aches. Imagine if all the PCs started being sold with Xbox like DRM and you couldn’t install Linux on them without soldering a mod chip into your computer. How many average people will open up their box and try their hand at soldering just so they can try an OS they haven’t ever used before? Just my thoughts.”
How many people try a differant OS as is, maybe 1 percent at best. And I’m not talking about people trying a mac or a mac user trying a windows box, i’m talking about people trying alt OS’s.
If by some chance what you say did become a issue it wouldn’t phase many people. Most people who run say linux or freebsd build their own computer. So anything MS does there will have no effect. You are still going to be able to buy motherboards and have control over them. And heck you probably can buy one with DRM stuff on them and use them, you have control over it anyways, it’s not like the stuff is there to prevent you from doing stuff, it’s there to prevent others from doing stuff to your computer. Other OS’s might even work in the trusted computing technology into their OS’s.
Open source has two inherent problems hobbling it in any competition with Microsoft:
1. Unlike Microsoft, it is driven by ideology. This leads to a great deal of unproductive pseudo-philosphizing and pseudo-moralizing. Microsoft, unhindered by such angst, just gets on with its business.
2. The open source community is dispersed and essentially uncontrollable. While this produces “freedom” and “choice”, it also produces chaos, lack of direction, inertia, and an overall inability to respond coherently to competitive pressure.
Both limitations are responsible for the fact that much of open source’s opposition to Microsoft is displayed as foot-stomping ranting about how evil the company is, rather than being directed productively into competing with better products and better marketing.
The only way to guarantee that MS is not going to do any harm is having an Open transparent OS.
The rest is wishful thinking.
And if MS does better Os the OSS people will get encouraged to improve, no one is going to give up because the commercial world has a better OS in terms of usage. OSS people is not motivated by greed or the desire to control a market, it is driven by personal initiative.
Linux will soon reach critical mass (2 more years) at that point maybe 10%-20% of people will switch because they will be able to achieve 100% the same tasks on Linux than doing the same stuff on Windows.
At that time Linux will have the advantage of being able to bend the way you like, and not the other way around like Windows does to the user today.
At last the Operating system will become a commodity like everything else in the IT industry, and that’s when the monopoly of MS will be broken.
But that doesn’t mean that MS will dissapear anytime soon, MS will stay here for much longer than this, they will adapt like IBM did.
Wow, are u a writer?
The last time i read smthng similar was on about:mozilla
“Linux will soon reach critical mass (2 more years) at that point maybe 10%-20% of people will switch because they will be able to achieve 100% the same tasks on Linux than doing the same stuff on Windows.”
You miss the point entirely… Linux is going to have to do a LOT MORE than Windows before the “average user” is going to give so much as a thought to switching.
Linux has huge appeal among computer types like you and I, 99% of “average users” aren’t in the slightest interested in changing anything without a damn good reason.
Somewhere along the line Linux is going to have to DO something incredible that Windows can’t handle. Forget the added security, forget the open source bit, it’s gotta have KILLER applications without a Windows option.
I actually used Wordstar and Visicalc in school 92-93. I was about 13 yrs back then 😉
Was rather sparse. I was hoping for a little more meat on the bone than what it offered.
I loved Wordstar, loved how easy and consistent it was in the 80’s.
Anyways… it is funny that MS is driven by monetary gain, and in that sense, they will certainly beat Linux hands down – they are not distracted by philosophies, only threats to their sources of income. They make things appeal to the masses – sure, drives people who know computers and want to control their computers more than the average user crazy, but that is what Linux is for. I admire the comments (if totally true) in the recent interview over Lindows. They get the point that it is the non-technical person, the non-programer that makes up the majority of the PC users. So they tailor their product to them and not the more skilled who have other flavors of Linux (or even Free Software).
It should be recalled that Windows gets “forced” on the average user when they buy their PC. But familiarity is why they don’t mind as much – they may use it at work or at school. I don’t know. But the software conceptual patents are more of a threat than just plain old Windows.
bleh… I need more sleep
Wrong – I tried Linux long before I ever built my own box. And, I do show Linux to people who wouldn’t even open their own boxes & encourage them to try it. With the advances made over the last 5 years in hardware detection, driver compliance, etc. there is no reason why these people should not have an option to use Linux on any other OS. Forcing them to contend with bypassing DRM denies them that choice.
Basically, any theory which can be (ab)used by the advantage of popularity and/or money is one i’d consider. Because that’s MS’s power.
The one i’m mostly afraid of is patents which create a lock on; ie. incompitibility. Luckily, this only counts in the US and won’t be valid in the rest for the world. At least, not in the EU as it seems. Still, our US developing friends have a huge disadvantage.
As for the danger of individual freedom, i’d put my stakes on mindless people buying “new (== good)” hardware with DRM/Palladium/NGSCB/TCPA/TCG/LeGrande/Prescot/WhatEverTheyNamedItToday support. I’m not afraid at all this hardware kills of FLOSS itself since almost all functionality can be put of for one and for second there’s alternatives now and there will be. I’m afraid for the status quo users who do not know about it. For those who use it and seek freedom on non-FLOSS grounds (privacy, pirated media, etc)… and in the end will cry “Houston!”.
MS has a monopoly. That is a bad thing. Linux is a solution to the monopoly.
Talk to my aunt & grandfather. My aunt doesn’t know the computer from a gameboy, and she came to me asking about linux and wanted to know if I could get it for her. I showed her Knoppix and, well… that was the end of it:) She loves frozen bubble, and it’s simple enough for her to do the things she does. She asked how much the ‘program’ (heh) costed and I told her it doesn’t cost anything – it’s free. She just about #$! her pants. My aunt could care less about any kinda war, she just likes to play her games on yahoo and, now, play frozen bubble:)
Grandpa is getting tired of Windows and wanted to see what else was out there. He saw a Lindows commercial I guess, or checked out the site, and he was taken in by the ‘Windows Compatability’ aspect of it. He was bound and determined to get Lindows – you don’t know how long it took me to explain to him that you couldn’t run windows applications on Lindows, and that there are many versions (distrobutions:)) of linux have applications that are compatable with windows files. He loved the price point – of $40-60 for a retail distrobution. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a desktop linux that’d run on his system (Knoppix ran fine though – go figure. But he whips out the raid anytime I open a command window. *laughs* He thinks it’s dos.). He said he’d try it again in a year or so though – as I told him how rapid Linux development has been.
What’s Grandpa fed up with? Viruses mainly, but also the $100 for an upgrade that just wont work right on an oem system (that was a nightmare), all the bad press around microsoft and privacy, the bad taste it left in his mouth when he found out he couldn’t use the same copy of windows on his and Grandma’s computer (Gp: Well why not? I bought the windows, I own the program don’t I? Me: No Grandpa… Microsoft owns it, you just bought permission to use it. Gp: So I’ve got to buy another one for Grandma? Me: Yeah…)
As for my aunt, money isn’t such a big deal to her, but all she wants to do is play her java games online and play frozen bubble. Every so often she’ll write an e-mail, but that’s rare. Got her her own little used 333 128mb ram system for $80 bucks and stuck Knoppix on it (runs a heck of a lot better than the win98 that was originally on it). She’s just happier than snot.
Both of these people are about as average as you can get. My aunt works as a CNA doesn’t know monitor from television and she’s totally indifferent from computers except for her games. Grandpa works as a mail carrier has been using computers for everyday tasks for three years now, listening to music, looking at funny pictures/flash files, sending e-mails, surfing the web, buying products, etc. Neither of these people learned bout linux from me – the big computer guru, and both asked me about it, and both really caught me off guard when they did (My jaw hit the floor.).
Word is spreading, and there is interest. It’s definately not 99% of the population that isn’t interested, considering that out of the 10 or so people I interact with on a daily basis (3 that have computers) 2 of them have approached me asking about Linux with sincere interest.
All Linux needs to get people to switch is an advantage over Microsoft. How many people switch depends on how big that advantage is… but some advantages it definately has at the moment: Price, security, and freedom. And those are some key advantages.
So, we’ll see what happens. I’m definately interested:)
And microsoft is driven by the stock market, which is in my opinion even worse. This leads to lack of innovation, buggy products and alienated costumers.
I don’t say that in defense of open-source community, I’m just saying that the Microsoft model is just as bad, or even worse.
The best model is the small quiet tightly controlled development teams like the ones you can see creating a lot of alternative OS’s like OpenBeOS, SkyOS etc.
They know what they are doing, it’s well laid out and structured, they have control.
But what will happend if these projects grow in popularity? If they are smart, they won’t change their structure nor recruit a lot of people. It is possible to maintain and develop a largely popular product with just a small team, as long as you keep it simple and well structured.
That said, I think that the linux community is finally starting to get together and share ideas and standards on the desktop as well. They are actually getting better. But there are things that I cannot understand why it hasn’t been solved yet. For example, no matter if I choose KDE, Gnome of XFce and no matter if I use apt-get, mandrakes rpm manager or redhats rpm manager they should all use the same application launch structure. If I install an app using apt-get it should show up instantly in any desktop environment, but how it’s shown is up to the desktop environment and user to decide, just as long as they use the same datasource (just a simple XML-file). They should also shape up the directory structure a bit, it’s not pretty having to look for an app in an overcrowded directory of mixed commands and gui-apps for example.
No one, with the possible exception of RMS, dislikes MS, its mostly pissant software, and its business bullyism any more than I do. I have used Linux for several years and like it fine for most things. I also still use win98, although that will end soon. So I’m not a Linux basher nor an MS troll. I am someone who wants the MS monopoly to end within my lifetime. I am someone who thinks that open source is the way to go for most, but not all apps.
My concern, however, is that the ideological advocates of open source, gnu, and Linux are not helping much. To topple the MS monopoly is going to require many, many people to stop using MS software. Touting the philosophy of open source speaks to maybe 1% of computer users in the real world. It’s not going to get anyone to switch.
On the server Linux and open source are making excellent progress because computer savvy admins realize it’s easier to secure and administer, and it’s a lot more stable than whatever MS touts as their greatest OS flavour since sliced bread. And they can deploy on multiple servers without incurring any proprietary taxes.
Business looks at cost and effectiveness. MS shot themselves in the foot with their new licensing, which prompted many business people to start thinking about the limitations, retrictions and cost of doing business with a monopoly. Business people don’t care squat for the philosophy of open source. They are not programmers and don’t care about source code. They don’t care about free as in speech or beer. They buy software, they pay to have it customized. They don’t like per butt licenses and expensive service agreements, but they never had an alternative until now. Medium and large businesses would love to save hundreds of dollars per year per user in license fees if they get as good or more effective software. So pitching to business should be about ease of use, application effectiveness and cost of retraining on new software. Per seat licensing is about the worst approach. They got that from MS, Sun, Novell, etc since before time began. Open source and Linux have a great opportunity to move into this market. I work for a systems integrator and we are moving business clients into Linux based systems succesfully.
As for the home user, that 90% of computer illiterate and semi-literate users already using MS, there is going to have to be a big motivator to get them to switch. Again, open source philosophy is meaningless. They don’t know, don’t care. They can’t program and don’t want to. They just want to use their computer to do whatever it is they want to do and that’s all. They don’t care what OS is running or who wrote the software as long as it works, is not difficult to use and they can attach whatever peripheral devices they want to it without hassle. They can do all that on MS WindowsXX. They get it when they buy the computer and don’t much think about it after they get it out of the box. Sure, most of them can do whatever they want on Linux, too. But what’s the motivation to switch?
Visicalc enabled the Macintosh to become the most popular personal computer in the 80’s. For a number of reasons, too numerous to digress here, Apple wasn’t able or didn’t want to maintain that position. Linux and open source are going to need their own “visicalc”, a program that runs on Linux and open source but not on MS and that is so great a lot of people want it bad enough to switch to get it.
Finally, the advocates of Linux and open source have got to make a decision about what they want to achieve. There is still too much divisiveness between wanting to topple MS simply because it’s the evil empire and wanting to make Linux and open source a system accessible to enough people to topple that monopoly. We can’t have it both ways. My vote is for making Linux/open source more easily accessible and giving those 90% of other users a programming motivation to make the switch from MS. Telling them to RTFM, edit config files, deal with dependencies, or just like it or leave it won’t work.
>>…And microsoft is driven by the stock market, which is in my opinion even worse. This leads to lack of innovation, buggy products and alienated costumers.
So, you’re contending that Micorsoft’s desire to sell more product causes them to produce buggy products that lack innovation and alienate their customers? How would you illustrate the cause-and-effect nature of that linkage?
>>The best model is the small quiet tightly controlled development teams like the ones you can see creating a lot of alternative OS’s like OpenBeOS, SkyOS etc.
I’d wager a considerable sum that none of those operating systems will ever make a peep in the market. I.e., no matter what they deliver, they won’t count.
I agree with you about the need for the creation and enforcement of standards in Linux, but I don’t see that happening among the majority of obstreperous open source developers. Perhaps among a few large commercial distributions.
I agree with the general thrust of your post, but I wonder why the fixation with toppling MS exists and seems so important to the open source community? If that’s the goal, maybe people ought to going to law school, not learning to be Linux developers. Why not just concentrate on making better, original software? As you said, people using Windows won’t switch to Linux unless Linux provides capability they want but can’t get in Windows.
Not ony is it pointless for open source advocates to rant about “stupid” Windows users, the general trend in personal computing has always been, and will continue to be, to distance the user from the actual operation of the machine. The shell and the keyboard are themselves an abstraction that hides the innards of the computer from the users. (How many diehard shell users would be happy flipping switches and looking at LEDs?) Ditto the GUI. Anyone who’s hoping that Linux will succeed because users will suddenly start reading the bash manual is wrong.
BTW, pretty sure Visicalc was an IBM-PC app. YOur point is still correct. though.
>> You miss the point entirely… Linux is going to have to
>> do a LOT MORE than Windows before the “average user” is
>> going to give so much as a thought to switching.
What is missing for example is AutoCAD, Lotus notes, Exchange (YES!), HitchHiker, Amadeus, CypeCAD, Microsoft Projects, Mathematica, CSS64, JDE Edwards, Hyperion Enterprise, Hundreds of Games, Less cryptic configuration tools (on each the console and the desktop), More uniformity and standarization between components and distros which were supposed to interoperate better right from the beginning…
Yes, I know some (if not most) of this stuff will be available either natively or via WINE in the not too distant future.
And what to know what? The end user, that user which makes a market share of much more than the 1% which develops GNU/Linux doesn’t care at all if Linux does it better has more resources, is a better development platform, it is technically superior or morally more adecuate.
People will start to migrate to Linux once they can do the same they do in Windows today, because: *They can do 100% of what they want to do with a computer in a very confortable way using Windows since a lot of years ago, today they can not do 80% of that stuff on Linux yet*
If tomorrow draconian DRM schemes imposed by MS, start to cripple, dissencourage or not allowing the people to do what they want with their computers, the users, these human beings considered too dumb by the majority of us will start to migrate to a more gentle platform.
Windows today is a paradise, all sort of quality apps and services flourish on top of it, many people enjoy using them, including a lot of technical people which are perfectly aware of the power underlying OSS. Me for example, prototype of the average user since the early days of writting assembler in the C64.
I can see Linux becoming the next paradise for the average user, I see it growing under my desk at work, in my home as my email server, on appliances like those DivX players.
You can ‘bend’ Linux, but it is increasingly difficult to bend Windows release after release.
What’s going to happen once you can run 80% of Windows apps under Linux within two years? Why do you think MS is building a new subsystem (that pesky .net scam) rewriting an API from scratch which took nearly 20 years to develop???
It is because of this, they want to prevent the people running future Windows apps and services in Linux in two year’s time.
But it is too late, if there’s something MS is very bad at it is guessing the future, hey have failed miserably to see ‘the future’. I’m pretty sure you know lots of examples, I like the one about “how important the internet is going to be”.
The whole IT industry has been put down by MS because after all Gates and his henchmen were Geek CxO’s against people which has no clue about computers, and most important people which knows nothing about software development.
This time there’s a subtle difference, the people they are competing against are developers, most of them skilled ones, they are not bound by contracts, most of them do not depend on the software they develop, they feel like a wining team, they doesn’t have to meet deadlines… They do not have to stand in front of people saying bullshit on corporate meetings. They can even leave the company they are working on and Fork the project they were working on…
At the end, the regular, the average and even the skilled user doesn’t care about all of this. But believe me within two years they will start to care about one sole thing, they will have the best of both Windows and Linux worlds under OSS.
Still do not believe me? Look at MacOS X and now imagine it just going from 8% to 20%-30% of the market.
Until they ban you from writing your own software, QUIT BITCHING AND COMPETE.
This article read like a UFO conspiracy rant. The Novell reference was interesting how many people remember how much Novell cost back then? and how much NT 3.1 and later 3.51? The difference was night and day. Novell chose to rely on its customer base(i.e. locked in to proprietary Novell technology) instead of improving their product to compete with Microsoft. This idea that microsoft is to blame for the death of all these applications is really one sided. Try looking at the Netscapes and the IBM’s of the time and you will find why so many fell to the wayside.
I use Mozilla for most of my web browsing not becasue its open source but becasue it is in my opinion a better web browser than IE.
When authors say that Win-95 crushed OS/2 or that MS acts alone to crush competitors, readers should take it with a grain of salt; perhaps thats what the spinsters are getting paid to make the next generation think. The Wintel monopoly is a collusive cartel partnership. Did IBM really try with OS/2 in the mass-market, or did they “stiff their horse” to help MS take over the app side of the industry? They [IBM] certainly lead dominant 1980’s firms into thinking that OS/2 was well meant because many of those firms put alot of their time and resources into developing for OS/2 and not Win-3. Most of those firms really wanted to believe that the intentions of IBM were honorable; that same desire to believe has now popped-up with the new IBM advocacy of linux.
http://archive.salon.com/21st/feature/1998/08/25feature.html
http://www.fitnesoft.com/AlmostPerfect/ap_chap10.shtml
http://www.fitnesoft.com/AlmostPerfect/ap_chap12.shtml
http://www.fitnesoft.com/AlmostPerfect/ap_chap13.shtml
Unsuspecting people who want to believe are eligible to get screwed by those that competently deceive.
So, you’re contending that Micorsoft’s desire to sell more product causes them to produce buggy products that lack
innovation and alienate their customers? How would you illustrate the cause-and-effect nature of that linkage?
seriously, this can’t be news to you? that’s a problem with pretty much any company that’s in the stock market.
the problem is that they have a huge responibility for their stock holders. they need to show the stockholders that they can make money, and fast. it isn’t a good model for any business since they need to put things out in the market before they are finished, they can’t make long term investments in a market that doesn’t look promising to the stockholders. their focus is and will ever be, to make money, and make more money, not to make good products. and that’s just crap.
if you need another good example of this take a look a the mobile phone industry. they have been putting out buggy phones for ages now, and they fill them with a bunch of crap just to show that they can squeeze out a few more bucks from a overcrowded market.
this madness has to end. it’s not good for anyone.
I’d wager a considerable sum that none of those operating systems will ever make a peep in the market. I.e., no
matter what they deliver, they won’t count.
I gave an example of a model that works great for making good products. As we all know, just because your’e good doesn’t mean that you will rule the world, it’s usually the opposite.
But I’m not ruling out that one of those OS’s won’t have a bite of the “marketshare” in the future. It all depends if Windows manages to maintain it’s position or if we will start seeing some competition in the world of computers again.
:By enloop (IP: —.biz.dsl.bs.britsys.net)
:BTW, pretty sure Visicalc was an IBM-PC app. YOur point is
:still correct. though.
The following is lifted from:
http://www.bricklin.com/history/intro.htm
The Visicalc website of Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, the creators of Visicalc.
Originally published for the Apple2 in 1979! Ported to IBMPC in 1981. It was ported to a surprising number of computers:
Apple III, TRS-80 model 3, Apple II, IBM PC, TRS-80 model 2, Commodore PET CBM-80, HP 125, Atari 800.
An enhanced version of VisiCalc called VisiCalc Advanced Version, with features such as variable width columns, improved formatting, and keystroke macros came out for Apple 3 and Apple 2e. The IBM PC version wasn’t until much later.
VisiCalc’s publishers, VisiCorp (originally named Personal Software), sued Software Arts in September 1983, much to the surprise (and dismay…) of us at Software Arts. Software Arts countersued. The lawsuit went to a preliminary injunction hearing in 1984, where the judge did not grant the injunction requested by VisiCorp. In the summer of 1984, a settlement was reached. VisiCorp was eventually sold off to various players. Software Arts’ assets were sold to Lotus Development Corporation, the creators and publishers of the 1-2-3 spreadsheet, in 1985. Lotus decided not to continue publishing VisiCalc.
“Did IBM really try with OS/2 in the mass-market, or did they “stiff their horse” to help MS take over the app side of the industry?”
I believe IBM did exactly that. They simply did nothing to promote OS/2, they just sat on their hands and watched. There could have been dozens reasons for this that nobody will ever really understand. Big business’s do some strange things. I can’t really believe they had much to gain by allowing MS to take it all.
I have always questioned IBM’s motives for everything they do, and their current lovefest with Linux is no different. The open source crowd should be very cautious with regards to IBM and Novell. Big companies getting cozy with open source, should set off alarms.
I don’t trust either of them one bit.
No kidding. Quit bitching. These business tactics happen in every industry, and yet the world does not end. When the corporation ‘Microsoft’ is mentioned, then all of a sudden the acts are ‘evil’. In a way then, every company is ‘evil’ as their primary concern is larger profits, and not the hapiness of the consumer. *boo hoo, and I thought they cared about ME!*
No I won’t quit bitching. The world is moving into the completely wrong direction in my opinion. I think that world centralisation is a bad thing and should be stopped because it’s not in our (the peoples) best interest. So yes, I agree that most companies especially those on the stock market are bad for the population on this little planet. Microsoft is just a part of it.
Just becuase it’s common practise doesn’t make it good. Just because the world doesn’t end tomorrow doesn’t mean that we will be happier tomorrow or that we are moving in the right direction.
If I think somethings wrong I will bitch about it. Not only will I bitch about it, I will try to do something about it.
If you are happy living in a society where no-one care about anything but their own direct self interest, then you should quit bitching, cause you obviously don’t care about anything, probably not even yourself.
You seem to be condemning the entire free enterprise system because it doesn’t always sell perfect implementations of its products. Do you have an alternative model in mind that takes into account people’s desire for personal gain and improvement and that doesn’t rely on cooperation mandated and enforced by government?
Until they ban you from writing your own software, QUIT BITCHING AND COMPETE.
I hope you don’t mean that. That is, the first clause. The second clause is perfectly legitimate, though I’d prefer italics to caps
Once they’ve banned you from writing your own software, you should write it all the harder.
Secondly, people will change their operating system without a killer feature. A lot of people, perhaps even the majority, chose their operating system based on what they or their children use at school or work. Once their work uses Gnome/KDE, they’ll go to a computer store and ask for a box with Gnome/KDE, though probably not with that level of knowledge of what they’re doing, and almost certainly not with that language.
And thirdly, I do hate Microsoft. I’m not particularly fond of any group interested in the centralisation of power (and I consider money just another form of power), but this is certainly off topic.
it’s about software, not world utopian philosophies, damn, get a grip. your little internet comments about what you think the world should be like are meaningless. and I don’t see how I don’t care about myself.
The reason Linux will become dominant over MS is precisely because of its freedom. Strangely enough the anarchists who founded the free software movement and some of the largest corporations in the world have a common interest. Freedom from from control by another corporation is a freedom that corporations value. Firstly for the big hardware manufacturers, by adopting Linux where the GPL allows them to contribute to an open standards/open software based infrastructure without the risk of their work being taken proprietary by a competitor gives them this freedom. Such an infrastructure provides a better basis for the expansion of their markets than one based on proprietary MS control.
This is extends out to corporate IT generally – the realization of the advantages of going for an open standards/open software based solution are now beginning to be understood. This first manifests itself in the server area. But already corporations are beginning to see the advantages of freeing themselves for MS control for their desktop clients. Home use will follow corporate adoption but with a lag. This is why this will be the year of the Linux desktop as far as corporate and government usage taking off. But as Linus points out it will be 5 to 10 years before Linux becomes widespread in the home desktop area.
BTW 1-2-3 killed VisiCalc and Wordperfect killed Wordstar not MS. Eventually MS will go the way of Digital Research, the reference to old software like Wordstar that used to run on the dominant CP/M operating system reinforce this conclusion. Continuous change and revolutionization are the norm in IT. Those of us that are old enough to remember the time before MS domination are capable of understanding how it is transitory, sic transit gloria mundi. My first home computer ran DR CP/M by first work computer ran DEC RT11.
Hardware manufacturers aren’t going to embrace open source as long as their customers don’t want it. Why add something to a product that turns people off?
In addition, hardware vendors are not in the business of developing software. (That’s why they’re called hardware vendors.) They aren’t worried about the “risk” of their software being “taken proprietary” because they probably aren’t going to release any software. (Besides, releasing something under the GPL to prevent someone else from lifting your code and using it in a proprietary product is a solution to a nonexistent problem, If you don’t want someone to steal your code, don’t release it.)
Open standards are great. Open standards are not synonymous with open source. You don’t need open source to have open standards. Don’t conflate the two.
So far, Linux has been trading on its reputation as Not Microsoft. (Costing little or nothing also helps a great deal. If each Linux seat cost $800, it’d be a lot less popular.) To move out of that niche, it needs to offer capabilities and applications that people want but can’t find on Windows or the Mac. So far, it isn’t doing that.
Perhaps it will come as a surprise to you, but politics are about me and you and all the other things on this planet. It’s not about “them” or “people in general”. We are not innocent bystanders without any control of our lives. Everything you do affects everything else in this world in one way or the other. My “little internet messages” may seem meaningless to you but they has obviously made you react in some way, perhaps not in the way I wanted you to react but you did react. Now multiply the message with one million and you will see that the reaction becomes pretty large. So how can you say that one persons opinions doesn’t matter in the large picture? Just because they alone doesn’t change the world doesn’t mean that they are meaningless.
I say that you don’t care about yourself since you have an attitude that will in one way or the other harm you, and it has probably allready began to harm you.
Software has become a very large part of our lives, no matter if we are geeks or not. And it’s not too crazy to think that the one who controls the software also has a large affect on our lives, the way we think and communicate.
Software isn’t everything, far from everything, but this is a site about software right, so I’m sticking to the subject. I am involved in other discussions at other sites, but people here aren’t interested in discussing the meat and fishing industries or whatever.
The world isn’t black and white. Learn to see the shades of gray and the colors will appear.
I’m not sure if my english is good enough to discuss that subject further, nor is this the place for that discussion.
I’m just saying that it’s a lot better for both the business and the costumers if it’s privately owned. I don’t like IKEA in much of their business practices, but the owner Ingvar Kamprad has got one thing right, he doesn’t believe in the stock market since it would not allow him to make smarter choices that will turn out to be much more profitable for him in the long run. In fact, he sais that the company wouldn’t have become the worlds largest furniture manufacturer if it was a public corparation. And I believe him. The stock market is just madness. It has to end sooner or later.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. Remember, though, that the reason companies sell stocks to the public is to raise money to operate and to expand. In return, the stockholders expect to be rewarded in two ways: 1) increasing stock dividends, and, 2) increased valuation of the stocks they own. Both of these are driven by increased company revenue and profit.
Anyone who owns all or part of a company — whether an individual stockholder or an individual who owns the entire firm — will desire increased revenue and profit. In the absence of corruption or incompetence — which can infect both types of companies –management decisions will attemot to maximize revenue and profit. Maximum revenue and profit do not nbecessarily come from making and selling the very best product. There are many reasons for that, but an obvious one is that the costs of development, manufacture and distribution are so high that the product cannot be priced competitively. (People will not pay extra for the “best” if the “good enough” does the job.)
actions speak louder than words, usually. If you have a problem with what the government has allowed MS and other companies to do, then your next act should be to form a consumer lobby group to inform the government that regulations are required to control these companies. Haven’t done that? Just wrote messages on the internet? Sorry, then you will never get the attention of enough people, because you’re not trying hard enough to actually care. you still have failed to describe what my ‘attitude’ is. perhaps you don’t have the words? do you think I am closeminded? ignorant? uneducated? you hardly have anywhere near enough information to form a valid opinion.
have fun with your colorful writing though!
Do you seriously think that forums on the internet are the only tool I have and use to express my opinions? You judge me by one single message. You have no clue about who I am and what I do, still you patronize me. So I thought I might do the same since it’s obviously your way of communicating.
Sorry, I don’t live in the US and English isn’t my native language so I’m afraid I can’t express myself as well in English as I do in Swedish. But that doesn’t mean that I’m stupid.
Words are powerful though, much more powerful than what you can imagine. Try calling the local police and tell them that you’ve planted a bomb in a hospital. Might give you an idea of how a few simple words can affect people.
Money is another powerful tool if you put them in the right place.
I personally don’t belive in violence, so I don’t use that.