angry tapir sends along coverage from Good Gear Guide of a recent Microsoft !0-K SEC filing: "Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The move is an acknowledgment of the first viable competition from Linux to Microsoft's Windows client business, due mainly to the use of Linux on netbooks, which are rising in prominence as alternatives to full-sized notebooks. ... 'Client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market,' Microsoft said in the filing. 'Competing commercial software products, including variants of Unix, are supplied by competitors such as Apple, Canonical, and Red Hat.'"
Are you guys really this desperate to drum up the anti-Microsoft pagehits?
Is open discussion really anti-Microsoft?
This recurrent claim of anti-Microsoft bias early in Slashdot discussions involving MS is so frequent that it's hard to believe it's anything other than a deliberate tactic by their reputation management team.
I guess you have never heard of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing [wikipedia.org] right?
[secretM$handshake] Wink wink nudge nudge know what I mean? [secretM$handshake]
This isn't an acknowledgement of Linux, its something to use as ammo to prove that they don't have a monopoly. Don't get the warm fuzzies over Microsoft acknowledging Linux because its just marketing and politics.
It's more of an indication that they want to discharge their obligations in reporting threats to their business from competitors. The stock exchange and rules for publicly traded securities require this sort of disclosure to holders of a company's stock. I think it's purely a matter of adhering to their obligations for honest reporting to the people who own them. NTSHMA.
I think this is the equivalent of an Ox shaking off flies with its ears.
"Yeah yeah, competition... Sure, disclosure, whatever... Stop bothering me, I'm eating"
(and if you're thinking of Ballmer while reading the word "Ox", that's your mind, not mine...)
I don't think your average Linux zealot will get warm fuzzes, but rather a raging hard-on. They've warped computers and software into something of a battle between forces of good verses evil on a level that could inspire it's own Star Wars sequel. They will use this as proof their crusade has the "Dark side" worried. They are so like children.
The problem with pretending that any Linux distro is a competitor to anything is that none of the Linux distro's have a viable economic model. Living on charity doesn't cut it for real programmers.
Though not in the same league as Microsoft, there are Linux distro companies and venders that make a nice profit. One which is in MS's league is IBM, and it had gross profits of $45.66 Billion [yahoo.com] on revenue of $97.27 Billion. That's less than $1 Billion less than Microsoft's [yahoo.com] profits. Redhat [yahoo.com] had profits of $546.45
In the real world and for anti-trust legislation, you aren't required to have 100% market share to have a monopoly. The fact is, Microsoft were found to have one, and they aren't in a much different position now, as far as Windows installed based goes.
The real kicker is what can the company try and coax/cajole/force other companies / people to do based on their desire/want/need to get their product.
In the case of M$ Winbloze, they had the gall (and it worked) to demand that computer manufacturers buy 1 license of their product for every computer they sold, regardless of the O.S. it was distributed with.
They did this with a plethora of other currently existing and now extinct computer manufacturers.
They then continued to grab anything that they thought could entice users, and bundle it into the operating system. gui text editors, word processors, games, disk degragmentation, disk compression, networking, to name just a few...
They buddied up to software houses, talking about improving their products, only to release their own competition of said products within a fairly short development cycle.
They stole websites and product names from other companies, by threatening lawsuits, just so they could use the name. (A quick search can find at least one - look for a product with M$ main OS name, and defender in it)
They embedded their own borked web browser, then made the automatic update/patch processes only work with theirs, disallowing any 3rd party browser from being used to simplify fixing/patching their OS.
They took international standards and bastardized them, and released them as their own, under their own lock and key product names / tools - usually breaking them utterly.
They ran roughshod over the international standards boards across the world to force (in any way they could) their standard down everyone's throats, without it even really working, or having a truly definitive definition of said standard.
Those and literally thousands of other examples are the reason that a company like M$ can be considered to be monopolistic regardless of the number of competitors they have.
They embedded their own borked web browser, then made the automatic update/patch processes only work with theirs, disallowing any 3rd party browser from being used to simplify fixing/patching their OS.
Having the user install updates to their operating system via the web browser is such terrible idea that I think it's actually a good thing you can only do it with Internet Explorer. Installing operating system updates via web browser means you have to give the web browser the ability to modify parts of the operating system. I'm sure I don't have to explain why that's not good. Also it trains users to expect things in their web browser to ask them for permission to install things on the machine and since a lot of users will simply click on pop up messages without reading them properly just to get rid of them, well, you can see where I'm going with that I'm sure.
What is the standard companies are measured against to determine if they are monopoly or not? 90% market share? What ever 'feels' about right? How can one avoid crossing anti-trust laws if one cannot know when they will apply or not?
It is not illegal to be a monopoly, what is illegal is to abuse monopoly position.
How can you know if you're abusing a monopoly position if you don't know whether or not you're a monopoly?
That's easy, if you're requiring OEMs to pay for a license for every PC sold whether your software is installed on it or not, that's abuse. Or if you require railroads to ship only your oil, or charge competitors more to ship their oil. Which is what Rockefeller [everything2.com] did with his Standard Oil.
Those are obvious cases though, other cases would be harder to judge. To me it it's anti-competitive then it's abu
The dutch railroads (NS) never had a monopoly in holland. Not even when they completly controlled ALL rail travel because well, there was always the steam train in De Efteling (attraction park) and even some tourist trains.
I think most sensible people would have exclude these and say that a company that has 90%+ of a market has a very effect control, even a monopoly. It would depend partly on the market, but MS software is sadly one market where a monopoly quickly arrises. MS software a market? Indeed.
You seem to be fixed on #6. The problem is that you don't understand #1.
#1 doesn't require that there be no competition, only that you have enough influence to control the market. MS has shown in many ways that they had or have that level of control, though I will admit it is eroding.
At the time that MS had a near 100% lock on the browser market, it was obtained because of their near lock on the OS market. That is monopoly power. At the time that MS bullied the PC makers into purchasing a license for every
Watch this sort of announcement very, very carefully. Microsoft loves to describe Linux as a 'UNIX variant'. In both its basic kernel and its accumulated software bundles, it's as valid as calling Windows XP "DOS". (For those new to Microsoft history, XP is actually a Windows NT descendant, which is in many ways descended from VMS and many of its fundamentals stolen by David Cutler from DEC, where David wrote much of VMS and was hired to work on NT.)
"Microsoft loves to describe Linux as a 'UNIX variant'."
Microsoft is right. Linux is Unix. It's why I started using it. Can it legally be called Unix? No. But if it walks like a duck, etc, it's a duck. Linux is after all a clone of Unix. It's Unix in all but name. A clone of a dog isn't a cat after all... it's a copy of a dog. Comparing Unix and Linux to DOS and XP isn't a good comparison. The former is an OS and a copy of that OS. The later is an earlier OS and it's evolutionary descendant, and XP is more of a nephew to DOS than a son, considering that NT was conceived as a different OS than DOS... it was just built to be largely compatible with DOS.
Linux is not Unix. It's a close approximation. For one, the base APIs are not fully POSIX compliant. Right there is a big hurdle to being Unix. If someone were to pony up the cash for certification (RedHat, Novell, Cannonical), there are issues yet to be fixed before it can be called UNIX, so it's not just a question of certifying it.
Linux ~ UNIX is a trademark issue, POSIX "Portable Operating System Interface for Unix" compliance is an IEEE standard implementation issue. These are two distinct problems.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Torvalds and Tanenbaum get in a famous fight over the fact that being a "monolithic kernel operating system" is precisely unlike Minix's microkernel solution?
Yes, they did. Here's Linus' announcement of his "minix-like" kernel: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/msg/2194d253268b0a1b And here is the famous Tannenbaum/Torvalds "Linux-is-Obsolete" debate: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_frm/thread/c25870d7a41696d2
" Most older operating systems are monolithic, that is, the whole operating
system is a single a.out file that runs in 'kernel mode.' This binary
contains the process management, mem
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday August 04, @09:15PM (#28950837)
In 2003 Microsoft wanted everyone to have a 'trusted computer' to make sure the owner couldnt fuck with the proprietary software. of course many software companies and Google realised that wasn't going to happen so they decided to push SaaS and have everything run remotely through a horrible, JavaScript laden web interface.
but i tell ya its better than the alternative MS was pushing. still because the good old enemy that is MS is being cut down to size does not mean it's a good idea to give up on free desktop-based client software. Web apps and other remote apps are not the best way and certainly not the most efficient method but it is the new way of making money from software.
As the owner of a webb app you have total control over when it is accessed, you can see everything clients are doing, you can put as many ads on it as you like and nobody will slate you for distributing 'adware' or 'spyware'. As long as you do everything server-side you have almost 0 chance of your stuff being pirated. This is better than DRM, its better than trusted computing and all without the invasive 'get out of my PC' sentiment associated with Microsoft's client-side type of security
It's not just posturing for the SEC this time. Talked to one of our vendors back east this afternoon and his mom liked his netbook so much he bought her one, then his dad wanted one, then another one for his step-mom. That's bad news for Microsoft for two reasons: One, Linux really is competitive on low-end hardware. The combination of Linux, Gmail, GoogleDocs and online services gives netbooks functionality that makes the OS less significant.
And, two, Microsoft can't demand their normal margin on a netbook OS. The cost of the unit is so low MS is forced to price their product lower. That's hurting revenues and that trend will only continue to accelerate. Windows 7 will run on netbooks, but not particularly well. Windows Mobile isn't going to gain them any market share and they can't sell XP on netbooks indefinitely.
The netbook trend caught MS flat-footed and they threw XP at it to fill the gap while they scramble around to try and find a solution. But there isn't one this time. Microsoft built their market at the top end of the scale, not in the appliance market. Their software isn't made to run on low-end hardware, they have no appliance market strategy.
This time, I think they're entirely justified of being afraid of Linux.
I hate to say it, because I'm a linux fanboy, but Linux on netbooks has more or less failed. Manufacturers like Asus dropped the ball by shipping too many Linux machines with screwed up configurations (and also with the crappiest Linux distros available). MS also recognized the threat and entered the ring fighting. The result is that most retailers are pushing netbooks with Windows, and most people buying netbooks are buying them with Windows. Maybe this will change if ARM-based netbooks really take off, but I suspect it will be the same story all over again.
Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Yeah, there are lots of pointless legal disclaimers in 10-K filings to cover respective companies' own asses.
It's not the first [catb.org] time [catb.org] that [catb.org] Microsoft [catb.org] has acknowledged [archive.org] Linux as a threat to their business model. It might be the first time they have put it in their 10-K report, but I don't consider legal disclaimers in an annual SEC filing to be newsworthy.
Has anyone read the Red Hat, Inc. 10-K report. Anyone take the time to count the number of competitors, listed by name, in there? Now ask yourself, is that newsworthy?
.... I'm supposed to load Ubuntu, fire up chromium, load microsoft.com and flip off the screen before jumping on the bed for a quick victory fist pumping............ now my point... what does 'acknowledgment' do to reality? Nothing. It's about as effective as some guy on the side of the road giving you a 'nod' because he looked your way... Doesn't really change anything you're doing, where you're going, or whats actually happening... does it....
Its nice to see linux prevailing, but lets not all get so worked up about 'acknowledgements' quite yet, lol.
I am not surprised to see this kind of release. After all, they need to hold on to that monopoly position on the desktop to keep their server business afloat.
What was interesting was the complete lack of any mention of Novell's SLED product. Remember, that MS and Novell are in cahoots to put servers out there running both Windows Workstation 2008 and SLES. In fact, I distinctly remember Ballmer last year mentioning "suzie" in one of his speeches at the Visual Studio 2008 launch event.
Oddly enough, also, there's no mention of a distribution running KDE. Both Ubuntu (which I use now on my laptop) and Red Hat are GNOME-based distros by default. SLED (and openSUSE) are also becoming more GNOME-centric. (I know you can put KDE on any of these, and I run KTorrent as well as KRDC in my desktop.)
It seems Dell, ASUS HP and others have invested in shipping linux based machines partly as something to threaten MS with. Simply put, Linux doesn't sell PCs (yet), Windows does. Watch TV, you'll see Microsoft and Apple ads but you won't see a damn thing about linux. TV, Print and Radio validates the product to consumers.
Add in the the evergreen problem: Windows PC tax is more or less the same regardless if it is a $200 netbook or a $3000 overkill gaming rig. You think PC/Laptop manurfaturers like having only one choice of OS? It's a liability.
Frankly all the OEMs are probably pissed at having their bottom lines hurt by Vista too.
Linux offered something they could bludgeon MS with and demand a discount. Result, MS really did come up with cheaper OEM licences and are even producing Windows 7 starter, but only after Linux gained some traction in the netbook arena.
Google sees the oppurtunity to pimp it's cloud services by doing Chrome OS, which is going to fill the need of PC makers to have yet better tools to apply leverage against microsoft.
I'm not convinced that Linux will ever squash Windows, the test of this being possible will be seen in the smartphone arena. Can Android conquer the iPhone? If it does then I'd believe Linux becoming the no 1. OS within a decade.
Frankly, Linux is inside routers, set top boxes, embedded devices, PMPs, mobile phones (WebOS and Android are linux), and runs more than half the internet servers and the majority of the worlds top supercomputers and datacentres. Yet none of these companies are wearing the Linux badge, you don't hear Palm, Google, IBM, Linksys, Cisco evangelising Linux all over the TV and radio.
It's rather worriesome. I don't really have an answer why.
It's rather worriesome. I don't really have an answer why.
Because no one outside of the faithful really care. Why would vendors waste time advertising something that is irrelevant to 99% of consumers? At best, for business sales Linux is more of a bullet point than a feature to be trumpeted.
I know everyone's really excited that their imaginary enemy has finally validated their existence as a threat but let's be more realistic here. If there's anything remotely interesting about this filing, it's that android and the upcoming Chrome OS is not mentioned at all.
To me it seems more like a message of disrespect to google, a more realistic competitor, than anything...
Apart from the obvious "Linux is a threat to us and therefore we are not a monopoly" I think Microsoft may very well percieve Linux as a threat to them, but for slightly less obvious reasons.
The major reason that Linux is a threat to Microsoft is that it is (usually) free, and nobody can compete with free in the long run. Given enough time, Linux would eventually conquer the desktop. But it would be decades, if not centuries. If nothing else, Linux's small presence on the market means that Microsoft cannot raise it's prices too much, or people will start seriously looking at the alternatives. And if they discover the alternatives are good enough (or better then Windows) for no money (or very little money) the game will be up for Microsoft.
There is a more threatening aspect of Linux though. It is not one that matters every day, but in the long run Microsoft must deal with the fact that a lot of "Linux" is a community. A community of users and developers spread around the globe cannot be purchased and shut down as if it were a competing company. Suppose Microsoft purchased Cannonical and shut it down. They have not really gained anything, since they can't stop the individual developers from continuing their work, even if it is in their spare time.
Even if Microsoft started buying all companies that released a Linux distro, they cannot win: once it becomes obvious that to become a millionaire you just have to release a Linux distro, new distros will be popping up so fast that rabbits will reproduce slowly, by comparison.
I think the only way for Microsoft to keep "winning the game" against Linux is to constantly produce better and better software for lower and lower prices. Since Linux's market share seems to be growing, Microsoft is already under pressure to not raise their prices too high, and this pressure will increase several times over with increasing market share for Linux.
The last thing anyone needs is a netbook that is running an OS that was intended for a full-power PC. The latest Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, etc. all ship with features and software that expect lots of memory and CPU time -- not something you are likely to have on a netbook. What should really happen is for the distro maintainers to create their own netbook spins, which cut out a lot of the features that are unneeded on a netbook and slim down the OS.
It matters because as long as GNU/Linux isn't standardised, and can subtly change behaviour between releases, you don't have a stable platform to target. If you're developing against the UNIX 03 specification, you know that your application will behave as expected on any of these systems [opengroup.org]. Stability and standardisation means a lot when supportability is a major consideration.
This Is News??!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
A throwaway line in a 10-K report which nobody reads or takes seriously is given a front page news story on slashdot??
Are you guys really this desperate to drum up the anti-Microsoft pagehits?
Re:This Is News??!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you guys really this desperate to drum up the anti-Microsoft pagehits?
Posted by kdawson on Tue August 04, 20:46
In short, yes.
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Re:This Is News??!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
(Couldn't resist.)
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Re:This Is News??!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Is open discussion really anti-Microsoft?
This recurrent claim of anti-Microsoft bias early in Slashdot discussions involving MS is so frequent that it's hard to believe it's anything other than a deliberate tactic by their reputation management team.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So "paid shills" is the new "year of the Linux desktop," correct? You may not be saying it, but you are strongly thinking it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
[secretM$handshake] Wink wink nudge nudge know what I mean? [secretM$handshake]
Re:This Is News??!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which still comes back to the fact that Slashdot just isn't important enough for Microsoft to waste time or money astroturfing.
They advertise here.
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Antitrust avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't an acknowledgement of Linux, its something to use as ammo to prove that they don't have a monopoly. Don't get the warm fuzzies over Microsoft acknowledging Linux because its just marketing and politics.
Shareholder trust advice (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Shareholder trust advice (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Yeah yeah, competition... Sure, disclosure, whatever... Stop bothering me, I'm eating"
(and if you're thinking of Ballmer while reading the word "Ox", that's your mind, not mine...)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think your average Linux zealot will get warm fuzzes, but rather a raging hard-on. They've warped computers and software into something of a battle between forces of good verses evil on a level that could inspire it's own Star Wars sequel. They will use this as proof their crusade has the "Dark side" worried. They are so like children.
Re:Antitrust avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
We are not ... you big poopy-head.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Antitrust avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
Very good point. The true indicator of Microsoft considering itself to have real competition is when it starts pricing its products competitively.
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The problem with pretending that any Linux distro is a competitor to anything is that none of the Linux distro's have a viable economic model. Living on charity doesn't cut it for real programmers.
Though not in the same league as Microsoft, there are Linux distro companies and venders that make a nice profit. One which is in MS's league is IBM, and it had gross profits of $45.66 Billion [yahoo.com] on revenue of $97.27 Billion. That's less than $1 Billion less than Microsoft's [yahoo.com] profits. Redhat [yahoo.com] had profits of $546.45
Re:Antitrust avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Antitrust avoidance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Antitrust avoidance (Score:4, Insightful)
The real kicker is what can the company try and coax/cajole/force other companies / people to do based on their desire/want/need to get their product.
In the case of M$ Winbloze, they had the gall (and it worked) to demand that computer manufacturers buy 1 license of their product for every computer they sold, regardless of the O.S. it was distributed with.
They did this with a plethora of other currently existing and now extinct computer manufacturers.
They then continued to grab anything that they thought could entice users, and bundle it into the operating system. gui text editors, word processors, games, disk degragmentation, disk compression, networking, to name just a few...
They buddied up to software houses, talking about improving their products, only to release their own competition of said products within a fairly short development cycle.
They stole websites and product names from other companies, by threatening lawsuits, just so they could use the name. (A quick search can find at least one - look for a product with M$ main OS name, and defender in it)
They embedded their own borked web browser, then made the automatic update/patch processes only work with theirs, disallowing any 3rd party browser from being used to simplify fixing/patching their OS.
They took international standards and bastardized them, and released them as their own, under their own lock and key product names / tools - usually breaking them utterly.
They ran roughshod over the international standards boards across the world to force (in any way they could) their standard down everyone's throats, without it even really working, or having a truly definitive definition of said standard.
Those and literally thousands of other examples are the reason that a company like M$ can be considered to be monopolistic regardless of the number of competitors they have.
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Re:Antitrust avoidance (Score:4, Insightful)
They embedded their own borked web browser, then made the automatic update/patch processes only work with theirs, disallowing any 3rd party browser from being used to simplify fixing/patching their OS.
Having the user install updates to their operating system via the web browser is such terrible idea that I think it's actually a good thing you can only do it with Internet Explorer.
Installing operating system updates via web browser means you have to give the web browser the ability to modify parts of the operating system. I'm sure I don't have to explain why that's not good. Also it trains users to expect things in their web browser to ask them for permission to install things on the machine and since a lot of users will simply click on pop up messages without reading them properly just to get rid of them, well, you can see where I'm going with that I'm sure.
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monopolies (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the standard companies are measured against to determine if they are monopoly or not? 90% market share? What ever 'feels' about right? How can one avoid crossing anti-trust laws if one cannot know when they will apply or not?
It is not illegal to be a monopoly, what is illegal is to abuse monopoly position.
Falcon
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How can you know if you're abusing a monopoly position if you don't know whether or not you're a monopoly?
That's easy, if you're requiring OEMs to pay for a license for every PC sold whether your software is installed on it or not, that's abuse. Or if you require railroads to ship only your oil, or charge competitors more to ship their oil. Which is what Rockefeller [everything2.com] did with his Standard Oil.
Those are obvious cases though, other cases would be harder to judge. To me it it's anti-competitive then it's abu
Yeah yeah, that way the NS doesnt have a monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
The dutch railroads (NS) never had a monopoly in holland. Not even when they completly controlled ALL rail travel because well, there was always the steam train in De Efteling (attraction park) and even some tourist trains.
I think most sensible people would have exclude these and say that a company that has 90%+ of a market has a very effect control, even a monopoly. It would depend partly on the market, but MS software is sadly one market where a monopoly quickly arrises. MS software a market? Indeed.
Let
A monopoly does not necessarily mean that you have (Score:3, Insightful)
no competitors.
yes it does. wtf?
No it doesn't. Microsoft was found to be a monopoly, which is not illegal, yet it has competitors.
Falcon
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to be fixed on #6. The problem is that you don't understand #1.
#1 doesn't require that there be no competition, only that you have enough influence to control the market. MS has shown in many ways that they had or have that level of control, though I will admit it is eroding.
At the time that MS had a near 100% lock on the browser market, it was obtained because of their near lock on the OS market. That is monopoly power. At the time that MS bullied the PC makers into purchasing a license for every
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you be happier if they were using the term oligopoly [wikipedia.org]? Then you could chuck Apple in with MS and it would be blazingly accurate.
Variant of UNIX according to their sockpuppet, SCO (Score:5, Informative)
Watch this sort of announcement very, very carefully. Microsoft loves to describe Linux as a 'UNIX variant'. In both its basic kernel and its accumulated software bundles, it's as valid as calling Windows XP "DOS". (For those new to Microsoft history, XP is actually a Windows NT descendant, which is in many ways descended from VMS and many of its fundamentals stolen by David Cutler from DEC, where David wrote much of VMS and was hired to work on NT.)
Re:Variant of UNIX according to their sockpuppet, (Score:5, Insightful)
"Microsoft loves to describe Linux as a 'UNIX variant'."
Microsoft is right. Linux is Unix. It's why I started using it. Can it legally be called Unix? No. But if it walks like a duck, etc, it's a duck. Linux is after all a clone of Unix. It's Unix in all but name. A clone of a dog isn't a cat after all... it's a copy of a dog. Comparing Unix and Linux to DOS and XP isn't a good comparison. The former is an OS and a copy of that OS. The later is an earlier OS and it's evolutionary descendant, and XP is more of a nephew to DOS than a son, considering that NT was conceived as a different OS than DOS... it was just built to be largely compatible with DOS.
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Re:Variant of UNIX according to their sockpuppet, (Score:5, Informative)
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Torvalds and Tanenbaum get in a famous fight over the fact that being a "monolithic kernel operating system" is precisely unlike Minix's microkernel solution?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And here is the famous Tannenbaum/Torvalds "Linux-is-Obsolete" debate: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_frm/thread/c25870d7a41696d2
" Most older operating systems are monolithic, that is, the whole operating
system is a single a.out file that runs in 'kernel mode.' This binary
contains the process management, mem
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps in the 90s you would be right, but now UNIX is a Linux wanna be.
Q: "What is Unix?"
A: "It's an old Linux like Operating System."
Forget Linux, cloud computing is their next enemy (Score:3, Insightful)
In 2003 Microsoft wanted everyone to have a 'trusted computer' to make sure the owner couldnt fuck with the proprietary software. of course many software companies and Google realised that wasn't going to happen so they decided to push SaaS and have everything run remotely through a horrible, JavaScript laden web interface.
but i tell ya its better than the alternative MS was pushing. still because the good old enemy that is MS is being cut down to size does not mean it's a good idea to give up on free desktop-based client software. Web apps and other remote apps are not the best way and certainly not the most efficient method but it is the new way of making money from software.
As the owner of a webb app you have total control over when it is accessed, you can see everything clients are doing, you can put as many ads on it as you like and nobody will slate you for distributing 'adware' or 'spyware'. As long as you do everything server-side you have almost 0 chance of your stuff being pirated. This is better than DRM, its better than trusted computing and all without the invasive 'get out of my PC' sentiment associated with Microsoft's client-side type of security
It's not just political posturing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just posturing for the SEC this time. Talked to one of our vendors back east this afternoon and his mom liked his netbook so much he bought her one, then his dad wanted one, then another one for his step-mom. That's bad news for Microsoft for two reasons: One, Linux really is competitive on low-end hardware. The combination of Linux, Gmail, GoogleDocs and online services gives netbooks functionality that makes the OS less significant.
And, two, Microsoft can't demand their normal margin on a netbook OS. The cost of the unit is so low MS is forced to price their product lower. That's hurting revenues and that trend will only continue to accelerate. Windows 7 will run on netbooks, but not particularly well. Windows Mobile isn't going to gain them any market share and they can't sell XP on netbooks indefinitely.
The netbook trend caught MS flat-footed and they threw XP at it to fill the gap while they scramble around to try and find a solution. But there isn't one this time. Microsoft built their market at the top end of the scale, not in the appliance market. Their software isn't made to run on low-end hardware, they have no appliance market strategy.
This time, I think they're entirely justified of being afraid of Linux.
And yet, the latest EEEpcs are all Windows-only (Score:4, Insightful)
lately. Since February.
I wish to buy (not have to install) a linux one. But I can't. Just the old models had linux.
(Which is why Asus lost a sale from me.)
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Linux failed on netbooks. (Score:3, Interesting)
So? They acknowledged the threat in 1998! (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
Yeah, there are lots of pointless legal disclaimers in 10-K filings to cover respective companies' own asses.
It's not the first [catb.org] time [catb.org] that [catb.org] Microsoft [catb.org] has acknowledged [archive.org] Linux as a threat to their business model. It might be the first time they have put it in their 10-K report, but I don't consider legal disclaimers in an annual SEC filing to be newsworthy.
Has anyone read the Red Hat, Inc. 10-K report. Anyone take the time to count the number of competitors, listed by name, in there? Now ask yourself, is that newsworthy?
Ok Ok.. I get it (Score:3, Insightful)
.... I'm supposed to load Ubuntu, fire up chromium, load microsoft.com and flip off the screen before jumping on the bed for a quick victory fist pumping.... ........ now my point... what does 'acknowledgment' do to reality? Nothing. It's about as effective as some guy on the side of the road giving you a 'nod' because he looked your way... Doesn't really change anything you're doing, where you're going, or whats actually happening... does it....
Its nice to see linux prevailing, but lets not all get so worked up about 'acknowledgements' quite yet, lol.
Note the absence of Novell/SUSE in the release (Score:5, Interesting)
What was interesting was the complete lack of any mention of Novell's SLED product. Remember, that MS and Novell are in cahoots to put servers out there running both Windows Workstation 2008 and SLES. In fact, I distinctly remember Ballmer last year mentioning "suzie" in one of his speeches at the Visual Studio 2008 launch event.
Oddly enough, also, there's no mention of a distribution running KDE. Both Ubuntu (which I use now on my laptop) and Red Hat are GNOME-based distros by default. SLED (and openSUSE) are also becoming more GNOME-centric. (I know you can put KDE on any of these, and I run KTorrent as well as KRDC in my desktop.)
Linux as leverage against Microsoft. (Score:5, Informative)
Add in the the evergreen problem: Windows PC tax is more or less the same regardless if it is a $200 netbook or a $3000 overkill gaming rig. You think PC/Laptop manurfaturers like having only one choice of OS? It's a liability.
Frankly all the OEMs are probably pissed at having their bottom lines hurt by Vista too.
Linux offered something they could bludgeon MS with and demand a discount. Result, MS really did come up with cheaper OEM licences and are even producing Windows 7 starter, but only after Linux gained some traction in the netbook arena.
Google sees the oppurtunity to pimp it's cloud services by doing Chrome OS, which is going to fill the need of PC makers to have yet better tools to apply leverage against microsoft.
I'm not convinced that Linux will ever squash Windows, the test of this being possible will be seen in the smartphone arena. Can Android conquer the iPhone? If it does then I'd believe Linux becoming the no 1. OS within a decade.
Frankly, Linux is inside routers, set top boxes, embedded devices, PMPs, mobile phones (WebOS and Android are linux), and runs more than half the internet servers and the majority of the worlds top supercomputers and datacentres. Yet none of these companies are wearing the Linux badge, you don't hear Palm, Google, IBM, Linksys, Cisco evangelising Linux all over the TV and radio.
It's rather worriesome. I don't really have an answer why.
Re:Linux as leverage against Microsoft. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's rather worriesome. I don't really have an answer why.
Because no one outside of the faithful really care. Why would vendors waste time advertising something that is irrelevant to 99% of consumers? At best, for business sales Linux is more of a bullet point than a feature to be trumpeted.
Parent
Yawn... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is NOT news. You'll find this in every such filing going back for years people...
Android? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know everyone's really excited that their imaginary enemy has finally validated their existence as a threat but let's be more realistic here. If there's anything remotely interesting about this filing, it's that android and the upcoming Chrome OS is not mentioned at all.
To me it seems more like a message of disrespect to google, a more realistic competitor, than anything...
Real threat? (Score:5, Insightful)
The major reason that Linux is a threat to Microsoft is that it is (usually) free, and nobody can compete with free in the long run. Given enough time, Linux would eventually conquer the desktop. But it would be decades, if not centuries. If nothing else, Linux's small presence on the market means that Microsoft cannot raise it's prices too much, or people will start seriously looking at the alternatives. And if they discover the alternatives are good enough (or better then Windows) for no money (or very little money) the game will be up for Microsoft.
There is a more threatening aspect of Linux though. It is not one that matters every day, but in the long run Microsoft must deal with the fact that a lot of "Linux" is a community. A community of users and developers spread around the globe cannot be purchased and shut down as if it were a competing company. Suppose Microsoft purchased Cannonical and shut it down. They have not really gained anything, since they can't stop the individual developers from continuing their work, even if it is in their spare time.
Even if Microsoft started buying all companies that released a Linux distro, they cannot win: once it becomes obvious that to become a millionaire you just have to release a Linux distro, new distros will be popping up so fast that rabbits will reproduce slowly, by comparison.
I think the only way for Microsoft to keep "winning the game" against Linux is to constantly produce better and better software for lower and lower prices. Since Linux's market share seems to be growing, Microsoft is already under pressure to not raise their prices too high, and this pressure will increase several times over with increasing market share for Linux.
Netbooks are not as powerful (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:According to UNIX.org (Score:5, Insightful)
It matters because as long as GNU/Linux isn't standardised, and can subtly change behaviour between releases, you don't have a stable platform to target. If you're developing against the UNIX 03 specification, you know that your application will behave as expected on any of these systems [opengroup.org]. Stability and standardisation means a lot when supportability is a major consideration.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The other attack was the campaign against vendors selling naked PC's.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39286228,00.htm/ [zdnet.co.uk]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/11/23/ms_how_pcs_shipped_without/ [theregister.co.uk]
http://www.linfo.org/naked_pc.html/ [linfo.org]