Microsoft fights Bundestag (GE) Linux switch

ITworld.com ^ | 2/6/02 | Rick Perera, IDG News Service, Berlin Bureau

[B Knotts]

This doesn't even get into the neverending security patching that anything running on MS will require, which also all have a $ cost to perform

I've migrated to Debian GNU/Linux on my servers, because it is the simplest distribution to keep up-to-date in my opinion:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Done!

[Jhoffa_]

I would like to know why anyone would have a MS server?

Honestly, MS & apps are great for the desktop.. but down in the basement, why bother?

Truly, why pay for the license?

[HamiltonJay]

I've got news for you: Linux ain't powering mission critical servers in any significant volume. It's Solaris and other flavors of Unix that are doing the heavy lifting right now. If you think otherwise, you're deluding yourself...

Solaris dominates the Unix Server market especially web related, but as someone who works full time in this industry, I can tell you Linux is powering more than you think. Linux is growing in the server market and is FAR superior to MS offerings in this arena. I am not deluding anything. MS's stake in this arean is paltry and not going to grow anytime soon, while Linux is also small it is growing and a much better clip than Windows based servers in this arena. In fact most sites I have worked with that insisted on Windows being their platform learn their lesson in under 12 months and shift to a Unix based solution Linux or otherwise.

Microsoft themselves learned how bad their servers were when they bought out hotmail. THey tried to port it to MS and were forced back off within weeks. I am sure its running on MS now, after several years I hope they have figured out their problems. I can also tell you that when MS bribed Lycos to be their server vendor they replaced every Unix Box that Lycos had with an entire rack of NT servers just to handle the same load.... Unix is a superior OS to anything MS has going in terms of stability and performance. Linux is a very good "port" of Unix to the PC, though honestly I think it pales to other offerings, FREEBSD being one of them, in ways, it is getting backing and acceptance, and is unquestionably here to stay.

MS is not worried about servers, it wants the market, but not going to kill them by not having it. MS's real concern regarding Linux is if it can ever get a foothold in the desktop arena. I am not holding my breath on that, but if it is able to get to that level, easy to use, easy to install... so simple even your grandma can do it.. then things will get interesting for MS. Until then though, MS is going to dominate the desktop, and more power to them.

[Liberal Classic]

Xenix was a good product. Microsofy licensed Unix System V from AT&T, and contractd SCO to port it to the 286. SCO resold it for many years before they bought it from Microsoft outright. Much of the success that SCO Unix had (for some time SCO had the most commercial applications than any unix in the industry) was directly attributable to the good foundation laid by Microsoft. MS backed it, wrote software for it, and supported it, and all their software ran equally on Xenix and MS-DOS. Back in the early 80s, Microsofts internal email system ran on Xenix. When the IBM PC was announced in 1984, it ran two OSes: MS-DOS and Xenix.

Where would we be today if Xenix had remained under the control of Microsoft, I wonder?

[Bush2000]

Based on endless personal and second hand evidence. I've written and studied many internal reports for many firms, and Linux always beats windows hands down in terms of cost.

You'll pardon me for being skeptical. I've seen no public information which shows that Linux TCO is lower than other brands of Unix or Windows. Your anecdotal evidence is merely that: anecdotal. Opinion. Hardly sufficient for anyone to make a factual determination.

[Bush2000]

MS's stake in this arean is paltry and not going to grow anytime soon, while Linux is also small it is growing and a much better clip than Windows based servers in this arena.

You've picked the wrong enemy. Your fight is with Sun. If you examine the data at netcraft.org, you will notice that Windows IIS market share has been approx 30% for the past year. Apache has sat at 56%. These numbers have not changed much. So, if you can conclude anything at all, it is that Linux is taking market share from Solaris, not Windows. That does not bode well for Sun.

Top Developers

Developer	December 2001	Percent	January 2002	Percent	Change
Apache	20497607	56.50	20866868	56.87	0.37
Microsoft	11156732	30.75	11097667	30.25	-0.50
iPlanet	1302788	3.59	1318991	3.60	0.01
Zeus	792530	2.18	792802	2.16	-0.02

Microsoft themselves learned how bad their servers were when they bought out hotmail. THey tried to port it to MS and were forced back off within weeks.... I can also tell you that when MS bribed Lycos to be their server vendor they replaced every Unix Box that Lycos had with an entire rack of NT servers just to handle the same load.... Unix is a superior OS to anything MS has going in terms of stability and performance.

This has nothing to do with Unix. The boxes that Lycos and Hotmail were using here huge multi-million dollar monolithic Sun boxes. You don't replace one of those things with a single or even a couple PCs. You need a cluster. Geez, it's no wonder you don't like MS if you tried to equate one of those servers with a single PC server. You're comparing apples and oranges.

MS's real concern regarding Linux is if it can ever get a foothold in the desktop arena. I am not holding my breath on that, but if it is able to get to that level, easy to use, easy to install... so simple even your grandma can do it.. then things will get interesting for MS. Until then though, MS is going to dominate the desktop, and more power to them.

Non-starter. Nobody wants Linux on the desktop. There simply aren't enough advantages to warrant a switch.

[Psycho_Bunny]

"Collective"....and it's NOT anything but.

[Psycho_Bunny]

I don't wish to confuse you...so I'll type slow: If no one owns it, then everyone owns it. It is collective.

[rdb3]

I don't wish to confuse you...so I'll type slow: If no one owns it, then everyone owns it. It is collective.

I don't know what's up with the condescending tone of yours. But anyway, this is not post hoc, ergo propter hoc. If you don't own a Linux distro, then you don't "own" Linux. Just because anyone can have it free of charge does not equate with it being collective.

There is a "collective" effort, if you will, in the upgrading and maintenance of the Linux kernel. But it's only "collective" in the sense that it's wide open. And this doesn't exemplify the "collectivist" as in Marxist point of view that you insist upon. Mr. Jones owns Mandrake 8.1 and uses it on his desktop. But Mr. Jones doesn't know how to compile and/or configure the kernel. Does Mr. Jones contribute to the "collectivist" maintenance of the OS. Of course not.

Again, this is not post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

See? In a respectful manner.

One.

[Justa]

"If no one owns it, then everyone owns it. It is collective. 68 posted on 2/7/02 3:34 PM Pacific by Psycho_Bunny

Software is a tool just like an alphabet, mathmatics, science and medicine. No one should 'own' it. That's not saying they can't. It just means it's stoopid, wasteful and a hinderance to efficiency and development when they do. Doctors and scientists used to have their secret, proprietary devices and proceedures but thankfully, those days are long gone. Perhaps you'd feel more at home living in a nation whose needs were provided by witchdoctors, shamans and alchemists.

[TechJunkYard]

When, in this software utopia of Open Source Land, do programmers stop being able to make a legitimate living?

Not all Linux software needs to be GPL'd Open Source. Many apps are distributed as shareware, or even "capitalist" money-for-code.. like the OSS Sound Drivers for example. If you can do your own thing, you can still make $$$ at it.

[Justa]

"I would like to know why anyone would have a MS server?"

What really bothered me getting my MCP in 2000 was how MS OS are administered via their (ever-changing) shell. You learn NT, then it's time to switch to 2000; learn that, then there's XP. Next up Black Comb. The printed version of the 2000Pro Resource Kit alone is about two feet wide. 20,000 pages of random association. And of course it's incomplete.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Whoa.  That's one of the most bizarre replies I've ever received.

Let's extend your premise to...say....music.

Western music is 99% based on a dodecaphonic scale.   99% of it all uses the same chords, notes, rests, instruments, intonations, etc, etc,etc.

So....no one should possess a copyright to anything they compose?

How about writers?  Are they entitled to copyright and hold exclusive rights to their books?

If you really believe this you ARE at the wrong web site.  I suggest you'd fit in much better at DU.

[usconservative]

I run my desktops on win2000/xp, but my li'l server is Red Hat.

My desktops are all XP, but I have a nice little Linux box that's my virus trapper. All port 80, 23, 25, 137-139 and 1039+ traffic are port filtered at the router to this box. It serves as a nice little piece of protection for my shoddy, bug-infested security leaking XP systems.

The best part is, my Linux box stays up 24x7, traps all the hacks, and auto-replies to the incoming hack attempts by doing a reverse lookup of the incoming IP and fires off an auto-message bitching about a hack attempt to abuse@ispnamehere.com/org/net/whatever.

Very cool use of a Linux box, IMO!

[Psycho_Bunny]

So...in a collective, every one must know how to do every thing? I think you're misunderstanding what a collective is.

A farmer in a collective gives away his crops.  Does a blacksmith have to know how to grow wheat?  No.  He's getting it for free.  Which is terrific for the blacksmith, provided that he wants to play.  But, what happens if he doesn't want to shoe the farmers horse for "free"?

These systems of government, and business models, always collapse at an enterprise level.  Always.  What makes everyone think that the Linux model is going to be just fine and dandy in five or ten years?

I don't.  There's a point at which it will break.  Something will happen.  It always does.

[sigSEGV]

But, what happens if he doesn't want to shoe the farmers horse for "free"?

But you're talking about a system of bartering. The farmer gives his wheat away for free without expecting anything in return. People can take his wheat and grow their own wheat without worrying about whether he produces more wheat. I just don't see the analogy.

[rdb3]

This business world is one where it's true that anything can happen.

Anything. Just keep that in mind.

[AaronAnderson]

You want want to send mail to the open source Mono folks. They're bringing .NET to a Linux box near you. Keyword: non-proprietary.

.Net is proprietary. If it weren't, I'd be able to download an implementation that runs on on another platform today. Note that M$ has not sponsored any other implementations on any other platform besides freeBSD. It is yet to be seen whether or not it will be a crippled implementation. Without any kind of certification and validation test from M$ non M$ version can only promise that .net code "should" run.

Most importantly, the API's that are the meat of .Net will not be ported. M$ can submit the semantics and language constructs as well as the CLR to a standards board but the true power of .Net and Java is the standard gauranteed libraries. I will wager that most of the .Net libraries make native calls to existing technologies which means any effort to port the entire .Net suite of products to a non-M$ OS will entail porting a great deal of the windows platform itself. Maybe people can create helloworld applications that are cross platformed, but any serious programming endevour will certainly not be crossplaform. COM on UNIX, anyone?

Relying on opensource efforts to bindly try to mimic M$ API's is like saying since there is WINE for linux you can write a program for windows and it will automatically run on linux.

Until M$ truely supports crossplatform capabilities and not only go through the motions, .Net is not a viable platform for those who are unwilling to be married to M$.

[Smile-n-Win]

Free Republic is a not-for-profit organization--but would you call it a "collectivist" organization?

[Smile-n-Win]

When Linus wrote Linux, he DID own the copyright to it. But then he relinquished it--gave it away for free.

I don't know what his motives were for doing so--perhaps he IS a collectivist. But do I become a collectivist by taking something that is offered to me at a price, given that that price happens to be $0.00?