Linus On The Future Of Microsoft 382
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.'"
If only Linus... (Score:3, Interesting)
Disagree, it's about innovation, not size. (Score:5, Interesting)
The trouble with this analysis... (Score:5, Interesting)
Therefore, while I would like to believe that what Linus says is true, I sincerely doubt it will happen, at least not in the forseeable future.
Its all about The Bottom Line (Score:5, Interesting)
People learn... (Score:3, Interesting)
Replacing Microsoft... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again, it could always be a humble Chinese vegetable seller bent on world domination one cabbage at a time.
OS Competition Is Useless (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand completely why consumers, especially us, want there to be OS choice and
OS competition for everyone. Having three or four major OS's that end user every-day
Joes would use sounds like a Utopia. In fact, if I had it my way, there would be Windows,
Mac OS X, a revolutionary easy to use, yet powerful, Linux (shh.), and another free OS.
However, since most consumers don't know very much about computers, they're not going to
understand that their software doesn't work between OS's without hard-to-use (for them)
emulation software. With all of those choices, people are going to stick with the name
and software package they trust. Windows is going to win no matter what, unless Microsoft
goes the way of the dodo. The vast majority cannot handle the confusion and differences
between OS's, and they don't want to understand it. Even if somehow all the OS's could
use each other's software natively, then what would be the point in having more than one?
I hate to see one operating system dominate the market just as much as you guys do, but
there will always only be one primary operating system for (at least) the consumer market.
Whether it's always going to be Windows, I cannot say. I just know that people are happy
with standards, and they don't want to have to screw with migrating to something new, even
if they know it could be better for them.
new market? like ..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Steps in this direction can be seen with MS's "Software Factories ideology" though its of course biased to feed MS more than being genuine about Abstraction Physics. And there is Apples "Automator" and plenty of other "code generation" and "automation" efforts all leading to the same "different then now" market.
This is relative to the "Software Patents battle ground" [ffii.org]
Two words: AOL and Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Linux will continue to move places in the techie arena like with workstations and servers. End users who can't grok Windows? No, not until it gets polished.
So from that perspective, Linus is right that Microsoft isn't just going away. Are they going to continue to have share eaten in serverspace? Yes. Not going away though.
Overall very good replies by Linus, one billionth the level of intensity of the zealots who squak the most in the Linux world which is reassuring. I do think he's wrong that there won't be future Microsofts. There's plenty of innovations in tech to be made that one really lucky company may corner the market through sheer chance and idiocy of their competitors. Microsoft won where Apple, IBM, SCO, Oracle, Netscape, and Sun failed to take them down in various areas despite throwing massive energy into it. It could happen again.
Re:Linus is so modest and reasonable... (Score:2, Interesting)
Power leads to self-destruction. ALWAYS. (Score:3, Interesting)
It was just a matter of time before the barbarians took over. Wait a minute... shouldn't the virus writers be considered barbarians? Deja vu...
Re:"Like open source"? (Score:3, Interesting)
How much tax do think IBM wrote off by donating Apache to the Apache foundation? Hundred million dollars? At least...
I like what he says but... (Score:5, Interesting)
People still don't know "Linux" even if they have seen the IBM ads. So there's not a lot of established consumer trust. That will have to come from company trust really... and let's be honest, we're still quite a way from that at the moment. (I don't deny the progress but I can't ignore the distance to the destination either.)
When people realize that the OS and the Software as the means of operating on data instead of as "the thing" then we'll start to see an appreciation that software can be a commodity especially when they see that by divorcing Microsoft, their business data becomes free to be used by ANY software and not just Microsoft's. We've got a long way to go before that happens.
Still, I like the language Torvalds is speaking on this matter...
Re:The trouble with this analysis... (Score:3, Interesting)
MS has competitive products in any of those new markets, but they don't come anywhere close to dominating them. And it doesn't seem likely they will. Google currently dominates ad-based search, and by all accounts seems to be using that to power a generation of applications that are basically disconnected from the desktop. Whether or not Google lives or dies, it's hard to see MS resuming control of the PC market in the same way as before.
Re:"Like open source"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Like open source"? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wasn't addressing MS's "point" at all. I was comparing MS with IBM re: Open Source, in the context of the post I was replying to.
They point had the same goal of marketing.
No, they have different goals (IBM vs MS) wrt Open Source. IBM actually embraces it as a model, MS does not.
Here are three reasons MS open sourced that one program:
1. They can say, "we have open source projects" (when their customers ask), even though it doesn't mean what it implies.
2. They can continue with, "we haven't found open source all that useful a model, really".
3. The installer will be used and improved.
Microsoft's one thing probably got more press and thus was more successful.
I'm absolutely certain that if you were to take a poll, more people would associate IBM with Open Source than MS, hands down.
Re:Future of Microsoft? (Score:3, Interesting)
And now they've moved into services, and create basically nothing tangible. Well, at least for a majority of their revenue. "What's left" on the hardware side is still pretty massive, this being IBM and all, but it's not their bread and butter.
Anyway, IBM never had the penetration of the consumer market that MS has and is spending billions attempting to expand (xbox anyone?), so I don't think you can draw too many parallels. They're simply different companies with different markets. I can tell you that MS is not likely to become a logitech reseller anytime soon.
Microsoft not a company, a part of the economy (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a small biz computer/network consulting business and there are dozens of companies like is in our area, and 90% of what we do is Microsoft. Add this in to the really big players that feed off of MS as well, and you have almost an economic segment unto itself.
It's hard to say "topple MS" when you have an economic entity almost as big (bigger?) than MS itself that makes money off of it.
Celebrity Geek Match (Score:3, Interesting)
How do we stage a nerd-off?
Re:OS Competition Is Useless (Score:2, Interesting)
Right idea, wrong focus (Score:3, Interesting)
Similarly, even if Microsoft's desktop monopoly is never dislodged, the market will move on anyway. We're all starting to see it; applications are leaving the desktop and being absorbed back into the network. A network whose components are most certainly not monopolized by Microsoft. You can be sure that the Dark Lord of Redmond knows this quite well; that's why he wants to push XAML as the future of web based apps -- to keep a nice monopo-lock on things. Fortunately, the geniuses at Google have been showing us that you don't need a
Re:Future of Microsoft? (Score:1, Interesting)
Ms knocked them around in the PC-OS market because of (imo as a coder) a fantastically flexible and powerful API, that gave coders a financial incentive to build around it!
(Which @ the time, Win3.x was what I thought was "really cool", even though Os/2 & presentation manager & later workplace shell came around)
MS gave you fairly decent toolsets, which have become WORLDS better than C & the SDK days on Windows 3.x, & later VB to use too!
This turned me (coming from DOS & UNIX character mode, or VMS slave terminals coding mostly, some System 34/36/38 stuff too) to what alot of you guys here seem to think of as "the dark side" (MS stuff).
It's kept them ontop imo, via that API, its development toolsets from MS &/or Borland, & the rest?
Sheer momentum from that first "push" in the early 90's onwards imo & experience, & I was a fairly "late comer" imo to PC development too. The rest was being an end-user & loving the initial "rush" of decent software that poured out into both the commercial realm & also later freeware/shareware too on the BBS circuits, etc.
APK
P.S.=> I'm going to largely agree with Linus Torvalds in other words... I think the NEXT "big push" should be OpenSource & MS stuff starting to really work together, & all the 'anti-ms' folks giving up the crud in the F.U.D. campaigns vs. MS... time to work together imo! apk
Competition (Score:2, Interesting)
A large part of the break-neck progress of electronics we see is due to the competition in the industry.
Imagine the amazing features of the OS and desktop we would have if only MS didn't have a monopoly. With real competition MS would never get away with releasing a new OS every 5 years.
Re:Competition (Score:1, Interesting)
Personally, I think the software industry is about 8 years behind where it should be and it's MicroSoft's fault. The 386 - the first Intel CPU capable of running a 32-bit OS - came out in 1987. Windows 95 - the first MS 32-bit operating system - came out in 1995. That's ridiculous.
Instead of improving their OS, they were trying to out-market the competition. Too bad they succeeded...
Re:OS Competition Is Useless (Score:3, Interesting)
a branded/sexy server (Score:2, Interesting)
As long as people's computers are predomentantly their desktops - MS will dominate for a long time coming. Yes linux in the desktop widespread will come, but by that time - noone will won't care and maybe there won't even be a "linux community" like there is today.
RIght now the consumer behaviour more/less is to interact with a single computer at home period. But as we do more interesting things with computers, it makes more and more sense for people to actually have their own *server* for sharing files with friends and families, automated data backups**, media streaming, storage. These functions require a very different level of interaction that linux is very well positioned to provide.
As an example - the idea of having two cars in the family is not uncommon. One sedan and one truck/minivan/heap/whatever. Obviously it's not entirely analogous, but you the idea (hopefully?).
**its freightening to see how people don't really backup their data, but as we get more reliant on computers - it will be as natural as the air we breathe
Windows is staying, MS Office is more questionable (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ain't gonna happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly my MSWord using colleagues can't open my *.sxw or *.abi documents in MSWord, I guess Microsoft will have to work on this; the wide number of people using OO here is encouraging the department to consider default OO installs on all office systems.
In some goverments here in the EU, there is a move to make FOSS alternatives like OO mandatory.
Powerpoint, I don't know. I make my presentations in HTML.