Linux Foundation Comments On Microsoft's Increasing Love of Linux 162
LibbyMC writes Executive Director Jim Zemlin writes, "We do not agree with everything Microsoft does and certainly many open source projects compete directly with Microsoft products. However, the new Microsoft we are seeing today is certainly a different organization when it comes to open source. The company's participation in these efforts underscores the fact that nothing has changed more in the last couple of decades than how software is fundamentally built."
Step one. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Step one. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Step one. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not going forget all of history in one instant,
I'm not worried about history. It's their present actions I want to see corrected.
1. Stop blocking open file/document formats and start actively working towards interoperability. I want to be able to use any tool of my choice on my data.
2. Stop astroturfing EVERY tech forum in existence. I want to be able to discuss Linux and other OSs/software etc without harassment from MS damage control drones.
3. Lose the control-freak attitude towards competitors. Don't try to patent-bomb/bleed/cross-license them out of existence.
4. Don't buy/bribe government customers to keep them locked in. We have a right to use free and open tools on documents written on taxpayer dollars.
5. Stop manipulating hardware manufacturers. Locked/broken bootloaders, closed drivers etc are dirty ways to compete.
There's a lot more, but the point is made. Until I see some fundamental changes to the way MS does business, I'll have to keep assuming this current cosying up to the community is cynically motivated and dangerous.
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The ironic thing is that if there was a Microsoft Word for Linux and it could actually read its own file format correctly, then I would probably buy it just so I could exchange files with publishers without having to worry about missing special characters and malformed tables.
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Microsoft is not able to ensure interoperability with its own product. Despite all that claims about backward compatibility, OpenOffice opens older microsoft files better than microsoft itself can. Microsoft had better backward compatibility when it still had the old 16 bit subsystem, and it was able to feed the incoming file stream into the old binaries through some hacked up emulator. Microsoft offi
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I am not going forget all of history in one instant,
I'm not worried about history. It's their present actions I want to see corrected.
1. Stop blocking open file/document formats and start actively working towards interoperability. I want to be able to use any tool of my choice on my data.
2. Stop astroturfing EVERY tech forum in existence. I want to be able to discuss Linux and other OSs/software etc without harassment from MS damage control drones.
3. Lose the control-freak attitude towards competitors. Don't try to patent-bomb/bleed/cross-license them out of existence.
4. Don't buy/bribe government customers to keep them locked in. We have a right to use free and open tools on documents written on taxpayer dollars.
5. Stop manipulating hardware manufacturers. Locked/broken bootloaders, closed drivers etc are dirty ways to compete.
There's a lot more, but the point is made. Until I see some fundamental changes to the way MS does business, I'll have to keep assuming this current cosying up to the community is cynically motivated and dangerous.
I concur. I have watched Big Bad B from Microsoft Rant and Rage about competition. Wow,
I suspect that Windows 10.x is the last windows version we will ever see from Microsoft. The reason are obvious. If you can't beat them, join them.
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i doubt it is bribing and you are probably just using the wrong word
The correct euphemism today is "making political donations".
bribing is illegal
Not if it's done in the form of a political donation.
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the real issue is the corrupt standards bodies, sure it would be great if MS stopped but it would be better if those corrupt people were ousted so that you dont just get somebody else coming in to manipulate them.
You are showing incredible ignorance. It is Microsoft who corrupt them. It is not as simple as corruption by handing out bribes. With Microsoft occupying the posiition it does, the corruption is more based on fear - of potential loss of business.
In the OOXML affair, it was noticed by Microsoft that companies in the relevant field could join the national standards committees fairly easily. They therefore got their partners around the world ( a "Microsoft Partner" has a formal association with Microso
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Standard bodies live in reality. They have to. If a huge company like Microsoft says they won't adopt the standard if it doesn't do X, the standard body has no choice but to either comply or take its complaint to the court. Even if it goes with the latter option and 'wins', Microsoft still wins because it doesn't have to adopt the standard. They can just pull dirty tricks like renaming stuff to get past it.
Re:Step one. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the standard body should do its job and produce good standards. Whether Microsoft implements it or not is not their problem. A good standard which Microsoft does not use is much better than a mess which nobody can implement correctly.
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Well that's been pretty much the story of Microsoft and standards so far: good standards that it doesn't use and bad standards (heavily influenced by Microsoft) that it does. The only exception are really old standards, but they manage to fuck up even those.
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Right. Microsoft, as a company, can claim a seat at any ISO standards committee, and they can't do much harm just by being there. For the OOXML debacle, Microsoft mustered all sorts of companies that depend on Microsoft and had them stuff the standards committees for two meetings, so they could vote the Microsoft way on the second. Then, of course, having voted in OOXML, they vanished from the standards committees, leaving them unable to act for one or two meetings as they were way below the previously e
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I don't think Microsoft as a company can claim a seat at any ISO standards committee. As far as I know - but I may be wrong - the members of the ISO, i.e. the national standard bodies, send people to the technical comittees. The rules the national standard organizations have probably vary a lot from country to country, but they mostly seem to be self-governed institutions. So it is hard to imaging that they there were no means to prevent this blatant misuse, either by enforcing existing rules or changing th
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Those "standards bodies" allow that to happen
In other words, you have no idea what you're talking about. They didn't "allow" it to happen. They were taken over by Microsoft - a hostile organisation which exploited their membership rules.
Even if microsoft doesnt do it you dont think somebody else will?
Nobody else did.
Read this:
Summary: "The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting 'standardization by corporation', something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees," wrote Martin Bryan.
Martin Bryan, ISO Governor, JTC 1/SC 34 WG1, Microsoft's strong-arming of the ISO process regarding Open XML, the proprietary format of Microsoft Office, may be destroying its legitimacy.
In a memo sent following his last meeting as head of the working group on WG1, which is handling Microsoft's application to make the Word format an ISO standard as ECMA 376, outgoing Governor Martin Bryan (above), an expert on SGML and XML, accused the company of stacking his group.
At issue is a sudden influx of so-called P members to the body, "whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376," Bryan wrote. The P members are not voting on anything else, preventing it from moving on any other work.
Bryan suggested that unless the ISO tightens its membership rules to eliminate the abuse its work should be passed on to OASIS, and he closed with this:
The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting “standardization by corporation”, something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible.
Is making Microsoft's Open XML format a standard so important that Microsoft is willing to destroy the ISO process to win it?
http://www.groklaw.net/staticp... [groklaw.net]
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Bryan suggested that unless the ISO tightens its membership rules to eliminate the abuse its work should be passed on to OASIS
Nobody is saying what microsoft did is ok, but the incompetence of the ISO has allowed this to happen and the rabid microsoft hate seems to turn your brain to mush, fix the problem, not the symptom!
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Nobody is saying what microsoft did is ok, but the incompetence of the ISO has allowed this to happen
Perhaps incompetence; it was the fact that no-one had ever forseen that anyone would play the dirty trick that Microsoft did. I hope they have fixed it.
I am interested in yacht racing under rating rules. The yachts can be of different design, but there are rules to make the yachts competative with each other. Like you can have a certain sail area but of any aspect ratio. But every now and then someone turns up with a yacht of a design that exploits a loophole in the rule, and everyone (often even th
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Re:Step one. (Score:5, Funny)
What I'd like from MS is an apology...
What I would like from MS is an apology and a big slurpy wet kiss on my asshole with plenty of suction. And then I still won't trust them, but at least my ass will be clean.
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M$ is just like every other corporation, it reflects the attitudes and morals of it's executives and board of directors and this can really change at any time, for good or ill. Interestingly enough the real fear with M$ and Linux is that M$ would do what it had a history of doing, which was embrace, extend and extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]. As such there was strong motivation to keep M$ from taking up Linux and causing problems and hence it was led/fell into the trap of being opposed to it,
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What I'd like from Microsoft is suicide. They are unreformable. This latest push into open source is merely another attempt at sinking opposition to their malware.
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What I'd like from MS is an apology and a statement that they will take their company in a new dirrection.
Not enough by miles. How about they let a team of independent financial assessors evaluate how much they were able to over-charge customers by virtue of their monopoly position, and cost other companies. Then pay refunds to all those people and entities.
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"Oh look, MS is embracing open source. Isn't that wonderful?"
Maybe open source is embracing MS? That would put the cat amongst the pigeons to say the least. Just who gets extinguished in that scenario?
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"Oh look, MS is embracing open source. Isn't that wonderful?"
Maybe open source is embracing MS? That would put the cat amongst the pigeons to say the least. Just who gets extinguished in that scenario?
Given enough birds the cat would be pecked to death
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"Don't let yesterday use up too much of today." - Will Rogers
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Because every successful tech company keeps the same business model for over 30 years!
Lets face it.
The Desktop Business isn't where the money is anymore. The Desktop is a dying idea. It is shifting towards Servers,Workstations, and Mobile.
New applications take more advantage of the Web Standards, and less of OS dependent technologies. (With the key exceptions of heavy processing systems (Such as CAD, Games, Simulations, Programming)
The nice thing about following web standards for Web Applications your pro
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Does this mean Bill Gates is putting his money into solving/curing cancer?
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The core database team is actually the only worthwhile thing there. It's all of the other stuff at the fringes that Oracle historically and perpetually screws up.
It's everything else they do wrong.
It's hard to say how well Java will fare under Oracle stewardship. They are kind of the anti-Sun. I guess that makes them a black hole. '-)
Microsoft's 1990's business plan. (Score:3, Insightful)
Step 1: Embrace.
Step 2: Extend.
Step 3: Extinguish.
They see this as step 1.
Re:Microsoft's 1990's business plan. (Score:5, Interesting)
Step 1: Embrace.
Step 2: Extend.
Step 3: Extinguish.
They see this as step 1.
You know, I really don't think so. I think Microsoft has gotten knocked down hard and learned a little humility. They now have to compete on merit, rather than just leverage their IBM-gifted monopoly to squash any competition. It's even possible that the lesson will sink deeply enough into the corporate culture to effect a permanent change (plus, it's unlikely they'll achieve another world-dominating position to leverage).
But even if you're right, I don't think it matters because their monopoly is eroding fast and without that leverage they can't execute step 3.
(Just to head off some inevitable replies to that last comment, when I say their monopoly is eroding it's not so much that Windows is being replaced on the desktop -- though it is, some, and I think the trend will accelerate -- but that the desktop is becoming much less important.)
Re:Microsoft's 1990's business plan. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to believe you. I really really want to but what's the guarantee?
The adoption of Win 8.x is still quite low. After Steam announced SteamOS, we have seen few companies port their gaming engine to Linux and some hardware manufacturers have started giving some standing to Linux (not saying equal to Windows). Microsoft is at a low right now and 'embracing' seems like a business need more than just a change of heart. How do you know that it won't 'extinguish' cross platform support when it defeats the competitive options.
This is like we had a bad tyrant and we suffered tremendously under this tyrant and it took a DoJ anti-trust lawsuit and a very long amount of time to see meaningful competition in this space again. Now the tyrant is back saying pretty please.
My reply is simple: Fool me once...
Re:Microsoft's 1990's business plan. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to believe you. I really really want to but what's the guarantee?
There are no guarantees.
How do you know that it won't 'extinguish' cross platform support when it defeats the competitive options.
Because Microsoft has failed in the mobile space, and mobile computing is becoming the dominant form of individual computing. Desktops and laptops aren't going away, but they're being relegated to smaller niches, and even in those niches people increasingly expect to be able to work cross-device. I don't expect my tablet or phone to be as convenient for, say, editing a spreadsheet or writing code, as my laptop or desktop, but I increasingly demand that I be able to work on the same stuff on all sorts of devices and to be able to move seamlessly between them.
This inherently means that big chunks of any solution must be cross-platform, because there is no single platform that runs on all devices. Microsoft would like to change this by unifying desktop and mobile Windows, but to be successful at that they'd have to get a dominant position in mobile computing, and they've failed at that. The webification of everything is also making it increasingly impossible to bind users to one operating system.
So, Microsoft is simply not going to have the ability to extinguish cross-platformness, because to do that they'd have to own all the platforms, and they don't, and won't.
This is like we had a bad tyrant and we suffered tremendously under this tyrant and it took a DoJ anti-trust lawsuit and a very long amount of time to see meaningful competition in this space again.
The DoJ suit had nothing to do with it. Microsoft was never meaningfully limited by that suit.
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and this comment kids is exactly what's happening here.
Microsoft is being pushed out of the consumer market as the desktop is replaced with mobile platforms, Microsoft knows that they cannot take over this platform with WPhone and Surface, so are going to do the next best thing - leverage their development tools to attract the full attention of developers for these platforms - Ballmer understood the importance of 'owning' the people who create the applications. And so I think we will see more developers wri
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Yes, Microsoft wants to play, and that's great. We should all want them to play. They have a lot of smart people, and huge financial resources, and more competition is better for consumers. My point is that they've lost the ability to own the platforms and therefore control the market. Which is a good thing. We don't want any one player owning all the platforms and controlling the market.
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If there was anything I learned from the Connect conference today, at the very least, Microsoft wants to be a player on all platforms. They are removing restrictions that used to limit their reach to just the Windows platform. In order to be relevant, they had to open up their systems. This allows .NET to compete in the OSX, iOS, and Android markets. Those markets are huge, and they want to play. These tools make it very easy to build once and deploy anywhere. Isn't that the ultimate goal? Don't we all want to build one solution and have it be an application, a website, a mobile application, on all platforms all at once? They are just striving for that.
Microsoft has a long history of embracing other platforms in ways that only benefit their DOS/Windows platforms.
For instance, in the 1980's when they released MS-DOS they were not the dominant player. Instead, they embraced the APIs that other DOS vendors used so that those vendors would work well on their version of DOS. Then over time they started introducing new APIs with restrictions - things that checked to verify that it was in fact MS-DOS, instead of Dr. DOS or one of the many others - as well as
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I don't know why you would say this. There is a single platform that runs on almost all devices. It's called Android. Everything else is a bit player that you can safely ignore.
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I don't know why you would say this. There is a single platform that runs on almost all devices. It's called Android. Everything else is a bit player that you can safely ignore.
The discussion was about Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't own Android.
However, let's move the discussion to Google. Barring some significant culture and management changes, I cannot see Google becoming another Microsoft. Google's leadership and culture are too idealistic. Seriously, and that's not just wishful thinking. I work for Google and see it from the inside, and the company doesn't have the laser focus on squashing the competition and racking up profits that Microsoft did.
This difference is visible i
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It's all open source code. Google couldn't pull a MS with Android. So, your point is moot.
Re:Microsoft's 1990's business plan. (Score:5, Informative)
All, except the nice bits...
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets... [arstechnica.com]
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The key point of open source software is the right to fork. If microsoft does anything of step 3, some people will step up and create a fork. You can see that with openoffice. If step 2 is executed, there should be enough power in the community.
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If step 2 is executed, there should be enough power in the community.
The reality is there almost never is, that is often paraded as a benefit of open source and free software but it seems it is a disingenuous position to take. Just take a look at this whole systemd thing, I said pretty much the same as you "if enough people don't like it the community will fork it" but I've been convinced that even the open source community doesn't believe that. Unless you have the will, resources and backing to set up some foundation to do it that "advantage" is just theoretical, sure Open/
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I see plenty of forks of open source software even small fish. Look at Linux, X, KDE, Gnome, Ubuntu. Heck, look at a random Github project and someone has forked it.
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Hitting "fork" in github and creating your own copy of the source isn't exactly what I was thinking of. For all the systemd rage where is the fork of those projects?
I took the same position as you, that the open source/free software philosophy tells you if a project owner/maintainer does something fundamental that you don't like you fork and maintain your own version. So why hasn't that happened with all the systemd projects? Does that philosophy not work or was all the systemd rage just a storm in a teacup
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http://linux.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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I see plenty of forks of open source software even small fish. Look at Linux, X, KDE, Gnome, Ubuntu. Heck, look at a random Github project and someone has forked it.
I see plenty of forks of open source software even small fish. Look at Linux, X, KDE, Gnome, Ubuntu. Heck, look at a random Github project and someone has forked it haven't they?
I just forked your comment
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Just take a look at this whole systemd thing, I said pretty much the same
Why would you want to fork a pile of shit? Use something that doesn't smell and leave brown stains everywhere.
Also, systemd is the new thing. Make your own damn fork to implement it on, then we'll switch over if it actually works well.
It's like force-feeding somebody a shit sandwich. Only you're not holding them down--they're free to leave whenever they want! Except you've got 400-pound Bubba leaning on the other side of the door.
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Yes clearly you have misunderstood, what I'm referring to is the systemd outrage. Debian and RedHat implemented it in their distros, the GNOME project implemented it too and everybody got all angry. So the open source/free software philosophy tells you these projects simply should have been forked at the time just before the systemd integration (in fact you can still pull the source from just before that anyway) and then they would have been fine, no systemd no problem, that's how open source is supposed to
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Ah. In which case, you'd just need people to backport security patches or what-have-you to continue tracking the systemd-influenced updates. I would hazard a guess that most people would find such a task thankless work and not want to do it since another team is "going forward" anyway.
$.02
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Ah. In which case, you'd just need people to backport security patches or what-have-you to continue tracking the systemd-influenced updates.
Yeah you would think it would be easy enough but the anti-systemd crowd (I don't know enough about it to care either way) doesn't seem interested in it despite how much they claim to oppose systemd.
I would hazard a guess that most people would find such a task thankless work and not want to do it since another team is "going forward" anyway.
. Sure but if they're really as opposed to it as they claim to be then the solution is obvious, likely just a storm in a teacup after all.
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Wrongo, Microsoft still makes 100% of its vast windfall profits from leveraging its monopoly
This is probably one of the dumbest things written on the entire set of connected tubes that is the Internet of 2014. Your ignorance is only topped by your arrogance, but then again, arrogance and ignorance typically go hand in hand.
Example: The Apple iCloud foundation is built to a high degree on Azure. Do you think MS makes zero $$$ on Azure? How is Azure in any way tied to the Microsoft monopoly on the desktop? According to the latest earnings call, the Cloud (Microsoft doesn't break out Azure alone) con
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Wrongo, Microsoft still makes 100% of its vast windfall profits from leveraging its monopoly
According to the latest earnings call, the Cloud (Microsoft doesn't break out Azure alone) contributed about $4.4B to Microsoft revenue. Please explain how that relates to a desktop monopoly. Azure revenue grew by close to 150% from 2013 to 2014, and at its current speed, Microsoft revenue on Azure will surpass Amazon some time late this year or early next.
So while for 4 quarters Azure contribute $4.4B to revenue, Office alone contributed $1B/month - or $12B over the ame period; Windows revenue is declining but is still around the same figure as Office. Their monthly profit is over $1B (net), most of which comes from Office and Windows.
So how then are the profits not strongly tied to their monopolies in Windows (Desktop) and Office (Desktop Productivity)?
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In the latest report, Microsoft revenue in the non-office, non-windows categories, was about 8% commercial other, 8% consumer other and 14% consumer hardware. None of these are tied to the Microsoft stranglehold on the desktop. They include Azure, XBox, services, enterprise software (for example the Dynamics product line) etc. 30% of revenue is unrelated.
For your statement to be correct, together these sectors together must either break even or operate at a loss. I'd love to see your argument for that. 70%
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In the latest report, Microsoft revenue in the non-office, non-windows categories, was about 8% commercial other, 8% consumer other and 14% consumer hardware. None of these are tied to the Microsoft stranglehold on the desktop. They include Azure, XBox, services, enterprise software (for example the Dynamics product line) etc. 30% of revenue is unrelated.
For your statement to be correct, together these sectors together must either break even or operate at a loss. I'd love to see your argument for that. 70% is not 100%.
No, the statement was that profits are strongly tied to Office and Windows. You only proved it by showing that 70% of profits is from Office and Windows - that, as accountant would say, a "material value", and a strong tie.
In other words, if Office and Windows suddenly stopped producing any income for the company at all it would materially impact the ability of the company to continue going because that is where 70% of its revenue comes from.
Now this can be further shown to have a material relation t
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No, the statement was that profits are strongly tied to Office and Windows
Here is the quote I responded to (my emphasis):
Microsoft still makes 100% of its vast windfall profits from leveraging its monopoly
When I said that this statement was erroneous, you corrected me, with:
So how then are the profits not strongly tied to their monopolies in Windows (Desktop) and Office (Desktop Productivity)?
Now, if you were not intending to answer in the appropriate context, why did you answer in this context? You are absolutely correct that Microsoft profits are tied to Office and Windows, but again, context matters.
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No, the statement was that profits are strongly tied to Office and Windows
Here is the quote I responded to (my emphasis):
Microsoft still makes 100% of its vast windfall profits from leveraging its monopoly
Key word in there "windfall". Not all profits are "windfall" profits; some references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.investopedia.com/te... [investopedia.com]
Now per Microsoft, "windfall" profits can be described as those with which little it done to achieve, which certainly describes the Office and Windows profits, as opposed to those that they have to fight tooth and nail for, such as those from Azure.
When I said that this statement was erroneous, you corrected me, with:
So how then are the profits not strongly tied to their monopolies in Windows (Desktop) and Office (Desktop Productivity)?
Now, if you were not intending to answer in the appropriate context, why did you answer in this context? You are absolutely correct that Microsoft profits are tied to Office and Windows, but again, context matters.
Yes, context does matter - and so does an understanding of the terms used.
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Yeah. Right. That's what was meant. Sure. Office profits are astonishingly unforeseen. Every single year. Comes as a shock to both Microsoft and everybody else.
On the other hand, I am seriously amazed that you have mind-reading capabilities like that. You can know what someone else meant without even meeting them. I'm impressed. Good for you.
If you notice in the Wikipedia link it mentions that there is a not a fully defined defintion for "windfall gains"; thus why I provided a defintion closer to how it applies to Microsoft, which while the poster may not have meant the true investment term, I'm sure in looking at their terminology that they were certainly referring to the great majority (vast) profits on high margin products. All the product you listed are not high-margin products; they're rather low margin especially compared to Windows and
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Yes, the company, the world, the people, the market... everything is just the same as it was in the 90s. Get out of the basement for once. Cynicism is a disease around here that causes people like that to become completely irrelevant. Any change or anything different is completely dismissed by the unadaptable graybeard basement-dwellers. We see it in dismissal of every new concept and any element of change the ipod, touchscreens, tablet computing, interfaces like gnome 3... with anything different, any chan
Re:Microsoft's 1990's business plan. (Score:5, Interesting)
None of the things you are ranting about are relevant. The issue is whether or not Microsoft is the same company. Is it the same corporate culture?
Chances are that it is.
The fact that the rest of the world has changed really isn't relevant. It's not the rest of the world we're talking about. The world may have changed and it seems at first glance that it's the same old Microsoft being a leech off of Android with it's patent trolling.
Forget about childish insults directed at Unix users. Microsoft has continually botched it's attempts to adapt to the new reality. That's why it makes more money in the mobile space off of patent trolling than it does it's own product.
Even this "gift" is a manifestation of how they couldn't cope with Java.
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Chances are that it is
Well, the reality shows it is not. Microsoft wants to compete, but it doesn't, and at its current path - can't, use the old ideas of the Microsoft of the '90s.
Anyone who thinks that MS of 2010 and on is the same as the MS of th 1990s, have been sitting in their mothers basement masturbating to Penguin images for the past decade or so.
Microsoft just released a preview of the very best tools for developing native (as in C++) or Cordova based apps for Android. Seriously. None of the bloatware from Google comes
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The issue is whether or not Microsoft is the same company.
Which it isnt.
Says someone without enough courage (of their convictions, perhaps?) to associate this statement with an identity. How long have you worked for Microsoft?
They didnt do open source
Microsoft has long used open source code, they do open source just fine.
they didnt do hardware
Right. How quickly we forget that Microsoft has been doing input devices since the old, old days of PCs. Microsoft has done hardware since forever. Virtually none of the hardware they made then or now is actually made by Microsoft. They contract out virtually all of it. What they do ma
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We are used to Microsoft fucking things up, and we are afraid of things being the same
As he said, you need to peek out of the basement of your moms once a decade or so to see what is going on. Seriously. Sitting in the dark masturbating to Penguin images destroys your brain.
Please explain the theoretical way Microsoft could EEE in any of what they are doing now. When 2015 is released (you can try it your self right now) and given away for free (not a crippled version, the same that is the Pro version now) it will be, by a rather significant margin, the best tool for developing native (in C++
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As he said, you need to peek out of the basement of your moms once a decade
When the best you can do is personal attacks, we know you are a liar.
Please explain the theoretical way Microsoft could EEE in any of what they are doing now.
The same as always? They get people hooked on their platform and then extort them. They will hook them with fake-ass open source, then people will become dependent on their tools, again. It won't be impossible to transition away, but it will still cost money, so many won't do it.
Oh, and if you don't believe me, download VS 2015 preview and try.
VS has always been one of MS' better products. However, that has no bearing whatsoever on what we are talking about here. Stay on topic, or stay quiet.
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The same as always? They get people hooked on their platform and then extort them
That doesn't really answer anything. It's only a "because they can". Could you explain a theoretical way they could do it? Please be specific.
They will hook them with fake-ass open source
If that's all you have then my original description of your intelligence was not a personal attack but an accurate description of reality. Again, please explain to those of us who actually think every now and then, what is fake about the Apache or MIT software licenses. Please be specific. No ranting or moronic statements like the one above. Facts please.
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Again, please explain to those of us who actually think every now and then,
Impossible. You're asking.
what is fake about the Apache or MIT software licenses.
No anti-Tivoization clause
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Someone didn't rant angrily about Microsoft! They MUST be a shill!
Anonymous cowards are not permitted to use the word "I" because they don't exist. They're nobody. And I quote: "This is exactly what i am talking about, basement-dwellers in their own little bubble of cynicism." But nobody who is not willing to put their name to a comment should be listened to when they make personal attacks. They really are cowards. If they had the courage of their convictions, they would log in before making attacks. terjeber at least has that courage, even if he is completely wrong and a
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Re:Microsoft's 1990's business plan. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except they're not embracing anything. They're opening some of their most popular stuff. Do you think they're going to try and kill Github by...putting stuff on github?
Re:Microsoft's 1990's business plan. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Crap. They may fund github!
Commercialism... (Score:5, Insightful)
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and it's still the same (Score:2)
Poison pill (Score:1)
get in there till the patents poison comes out.
That sort of love ... (Score:2)
Progress (Score:5, Interesting)
The days when it seemed that Microsoft could have the whole pie all to itself is long gone. I'll call the steps they are taking progress. Office 365 availability on Linux and .Net opening up to Linux as open source sets a pretty good stage for real openness of choice. I hear from regular people all the time how much they like the Surface for work or how they wish they bough a Surface rather than iPad for work. They have stopped trying to hold back change, because that outright failed. They now at least seem to be embracing change. Now the real test is if they can affect change and actually lead at least with the piece of the pie where they can still fit. Windows Mobile may wander the desert without followers for many years, but if Windows 10 is well received they may actually survive the death of the desktop.
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...They have stopped trying to hold back change, because that outright failed....
No it didn't, you only have to look at Microsoft's balance sheet to know that. Microsoft will continue to do everything it possibility can to hold back change, for the simple reason that the status quo is that huge piles of profit continue to arrive every month for doing very little work. Microsoft will fight tooth and nail to maintain that status quo.
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Citation needed.
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Except when the game changes.
In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone It wasn't particularly remarkable, I mean, it was just a phone, a web browser and an iPod.
Y
Re:Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet prior to 2007, Microsoft was a dominant player in the mobile market - Windows Mobile was everyone - on phones, PDAs, and even PDA-phones. So was Palm. And Nokia. HTC was making Windows Mobile devices (as an ODM).
Microsoft was never a dominant player in the mobile market. They were so pathetic that a little company which got its start repackaging GEOS for a market failure of a PC-based handheld designed by Casio, built by GRiD and marketed by Tandy was able to completely embarrass them and dominate the space with a handheld powered by a motorola CPU whose core was nearly twenty years old. I refer, of course, to Palm Computing. HTC's Windows Mobile phones were horrible pieces of shit. I had one of the later ones, a Raphael. The software was shit, the hardware was shit (HTC was too lame to add a piece of tape to retain the keyboard connector even after the community figured out the fix) and the overall experience was shit. The phones were expensive even on contract so nobody but nerds bought them.
The only mobile market that Microsoft ever dominated was the corporate handheld market, for applications like point of sale and inventory. And that was only for a minuscule slice of time, because let's face it, WINCE is SHIT. It has had no reason to exist approximately since the release of the AMD GEODE made it feasible to run full-blown Windows on a handheld device. (Sure, there were mobile x86 processors before that, but none of them offered adequate performance and acceptable battery life. Some of the 486SLCs came close, but still couldn't really deliver the low power consumption necessary.)
Microsoft has only ever dominated the PC and the low-end server markets, which it still controls. They do have dramatic market share in console gaming now, however, due to Sony's repeated massive failures. But few people want their phones today, they want Android or Apple because that's where the apps are. Microsoft got their shit together far too slowly in mobile, in spite of being one of the longest-term players in the game, and now the only chance they have to even be important again is for Apple or Google to fail hard. I don't think it's possible for either of them to fail that badly.
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The days when it seemed that Microsoft could have the whole pie all to itself is long gone.
I'm sure IBM thought something similar when Microsoft was "collaborating" on OS/2.
Now is not the time to let your guard down. We have finally, painfully clawed our way out of the Microsoft den. Now is not the time to squander all that hard work with feel-good naivety. Microsoft is Microsoft, and that will never change. The moment its management smells a weakness, you will become dinner if you're not paying attention.
I'm shaking my head at how quickly people forget the lessons of the past.
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Yea, office 365. Where I work they moved us to it over a lot of objections. All I can say is the 1990s called, they want their e-mail system back. What a POS. I'd love to give a year worth of office 365 service to my worst competitor. That should take care of 'em.
Those that dont learn from history... (Score:3)
...are doomed to repeat it.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Seems to be what is happening nowadays to Linux...Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
It was a fun ride while it lasted.
Microsoft is kinda like the Chinese Government... (Score:1)
Business model of the 90's != today. (Score:3)
To put it bluntly, Microsoft's past is full of a lot of sleazy shit with their boot attempting to stamp all over the Linux ecosystem many times. To this day I still can't believe they threw over one hundred million dollars (at least, we only have leaked but confirmed information to go on) to SCO (a competitor!) just to hurt Linux. Balmer and Gates built a massive business on the back of their shenanigans, and kudos to them, the game is capitalism at the end of the day.
Is it the same company today? I'm not so sure. I'm sure some of the internal company culture is still there but they have a different vision and direction. Today they announced open sourcing the whole entire .net stack with OS X and Linux support. Any suggestion of that a few years ago and the internet would ridicule you in to crying in a corner.
We should still be wary, that's for sure. They are not the same evil beast they once were though.
Pointless (Score:3)
Satty first needs to don the hairshirt and make quite a few public apologies for past AND CURRENT actions against FOSS.
What about GNU? (Score:1)
embrace and smother (Score:1)
a time honoured marketing tradition
Shades of (Score:1)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Bill gates and co just want to slip in some propri (Score:1)
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"Never trust quote attributions on the Internet." - Howard Hughes
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You fail to overlook the crucial point.
- Samuel Goldwyn