Linus On The Future Of Microsoft

An anonymous reader writes "There's a pretty good interview with Linus over at Good Morning Silicon Valley. The discussion seems focused predominantly on the future of proprietary software and what the tech landscape might look like if Microsoft's market share declines. 'Says Linus: I do not believe that anything can "replace" Microsoft in the market that MS is right now. Instead, what I think happens is that markets mature, and as they mature and become commoditized, the kind of dominant player like MS just doesn't happen any more. You don't have another dominant player coming in and taking its place -- to find a new dominant player you actually have to start looking at a totally different market altogether.'"

Re:Another MS occurring?

[rpdillon]

He didn't say the market hadn't been good to them, he said the market wasn't mature. And it isn't. The market for toasters is mature. And maybe cars. But not desktop operating systems or search engines.

Re:OS Competition Is Useless

[DogDude]

I disagree completely. Case in point: My business is standardized on W2K. That's not because of momentum. That's not marketing. It was a conscious decision because there are simply no better alternatives.

OSX? - Expensive hardware, hardware lock-in, and "upgrades" are too frequent and expensive.
Linux? - Too expensive to implement.
OS/2? - Can't get apps for it any more
Commercial Unix - Again, too expensive to implement.
W2K - Cheap to buy. Cheap to implement. Works well.

See? I have thought it out, and my decision is pretty clear. Momentum has nothing to do with it (at least in my case).

Re:"Like open source"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What?!?!?

http://httpd.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html [apache.org]

Apache originated at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Re:The trouble with this analysis...

[HardCase]

Microsoft enjoys the Wal-Mart effect. People love to hate them and say "not here!" but they still go out and shop at Wal-Mart.

That's because most people don't hate Wal-Mart. Most people don't hate Microsoft, either. The people who hate the two companies are well out on the fringe. Almost everybody else is ambivalent.

-h-

Re:Whoever modded this funny...

[node 3]

Remember, Microsoft made its first millions selling mice.

Let's see... MS sold DOS to IBM--no mouse. MS sold apps for the Mac--already had a mouse.

It wasn't until Windows that there was a market for an MS mouse. I'm pretty sure MS will have already made more than a few million by then.

Although I'd like the symmetry--MS's dark reign bookended with it being merely a mouse company.

He did

[MegaFur]

From TFA:

That said, I don't see the MS market going away very fast, and I don't see why MS couldn't continue to function as a software company even if they don't control the commodity market any more. In many ways I think MS is in the same situation that IBM was in two decades ago, losing control of the basic market -- and thus the dominance of the market -- but not necessarily going away or even necessarily shrinking. -- Torvalds

I think Linus is a lot smarter, or at least a lot more realistic about the long term future of MS, Linux, and IT in general than most of the early responses to this article give him credit for.

Re:Disagree, it's about innovation, not size.

[BewireNomali]

GM isn't a good example. They produce cars, and arguably have a business culture that is very tied into its (outmoded) production faiclities and capacity. Newer companies, when building out their plants and factories, build inherently more efficent companies by improving on existing models. Platforming is a relatively new strategy for American car companies, whereas Japanese car companies are built on the concept of platforming (which is designing a diverse product line based on a few core foundations and powerplants). Ther was a point and time when each car in GM's line was a distinct vehicle with little common parts with other vehicles (incidentally, this is the problem Boeing is having now with Airbus).

So the ability to innovate in the car business is virtually nil when you're a behemoth the size of GM. It's tantamount to stopping everything, stripping out the factories, and starting over (which incidentally, is what they've announced that they plan to do). GM also could never compete on price or aesthetics.

MS on the other hand, just deals in code. It's insulated from the cost of raw materials and the price of gas (to a degree). They can throw money at a problem. They don't waste time being innovators, because honestly, there's no money in it for the true innovators. The money people come in and capitalize on the innovation. Microsoft's business strategy is to be the second mouse to get to the mousetrap.

Re:Commodity operating system = Windows

[debiansid]

I would like to add a bit to this. Windows is what everyone as a beginner is introduced to, either as a kid, or a non-techie in office here in India. The reason for that is that here the cost of a Windows box is just as much as a Linux box -- it's free!! Why you ask? Thats because most of the PCs sold in India are through private vendors who have one copy of a Windows CD which they had bought from Lamington Road for 100 Rs ($2 approx.) and use that to install Windows on every machine they sell. For subsequent installations the CD is just copied onto the hard drive. I guess only some corporates in India have their systems on licensed copies of Windows.

Now I mention this because now Microsoft is hoping to crack down on piracy by including measures in the OS itself (dialling home to ensure validity, etc.). Once they get this right the large user base that it boasts of will face a major hit as all the users who depended on the pirated version (a million or two in India itself) will be locked back in the older desktop and will eventually look for other alternatives as their needs increase.

Re:Future of Microsoft?

[dotwaffle]

This has already started to happen... For the first time EVER, I saw a Windows advert on the TV (I live in the UK) that's WINDOWS, not those irritating "Get Microsoft, or your kids will be 'tards" adverts that play, and in the past week or so, about 10 people have asked me why Microsoft have put an advert for Windows - and all have asked me what the alternative is, if they're so scared to be advertising over here. Every single person who has asked me that question, I have showed them Ubuntu, and every single one has been impressed, up to the point when you show them that OpenOffice.org doesn't do drawing diagrams correctly...

Microsoft may not be threatened by Linux in the home market, but by advertising their products, they are in fact telling people that they have to advertise because they are either making so much money they can burn some, or that they are losing market share to competitors...

Re:Future of Microsoft?

[fishbot]

Every single person who has asked me that question, I have showed them Ubuntu, and every single one has been impressed, up to the point when you show them that OpenOffice.org doesn't do drawing diagrams correctly...

OT, but define 'correctly'... it does vector drawing, and it does dynamic link lines. Sure, it's no Visio, but it's not intended to be. It's drawing tool (hence the name), not a diagramming tool, and what it does, it does correctly.