Posted on 01/25/2009 1:53:54 PM PST by ShadowAce
Back in 2002, as Roy Schestowitz calls out, Microsoft was desperately trying to figure out a response to Linux. The problem wasn't Linux as a product-level competitor. The problem, as its Windows chief, Jim Allchin, told a small gathering of Microsoft partners (PDF), is that Linux changes the nature of software competition with odd things like "community" and "GPL licensing," the latter of which Microsoft didn't like one bit :
We feel a huge threat from Linux. Maybe we shouldn't, which is a question you could answer from your perspective...There's Linux the community. We're going to learn from Linux the community. Incredible what they did...We're going to practice and practice and practice (to learn how to respond to Linux)...
GPL is the licensing model. We thlnk it's very bad...We don't think it's the same as public domain. Somebody wants to put in a free DSB(?), we don't have a problem with that, at least on licensing. But GPL, we think it's very bad basically for the world, but especially for the United States.
This is not surprising, given that Allchin had earlier deprecated Linux as "an intellectual-property destroyer" in 2001.
But name-calling was proving not to be enough, and for a reason that Allchin and Microsoft struggled to grasp, but one that its partners, which distribute the bulk of Microsoft's software, felt first-hand on the front lines. When Allchin later asked the participants what the biggest driver of Linux is, they didn't mention its modularity, high performance, or other characteristics. Back in 2002 (and, indeed, today, in many instances), one thing mattered:
Linux was free.
Sure, there was the cost of deployment, training, etc., and Allchin called out the work Microsoft was going to do to "educate" the market through IDC and other analysts about the "true" costs of Linux, but price was why these Microsoft partners were starting to defect, in some instances, to Linux.
Allchin's response?
We'll never meet free."
And that is why Microsoft has struggled against open source, and why it will continue to do so. Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth called it out well over a year ago, arguing that the difference between $0.00 and $0.01 is huge and game changing. Microsoft can halve its price, and Allchin talks in the transcript about doing just that. But free? That's not its business model.
Given Microsoft's difficulty in competing with open source's price, it's perhaps not surprising that Allchin hinted at another way of competing with Linux and open source: patents. Imposing a patent tax on open source is a viable way of raising its price tag beyond $0.00.
There's going to be a patent lawsuit on Linux. It's bound to happen...and the patent lawsuit won't really be about the license. It will be simply, "Hey, these guys took intellectual property." And whether the lawsuit comes from Wind River or in X, Y, Z, there's going to be one. Guaranteed. As I sit here today, I will guarantee you at some point there's going to be a challenge about the patents...
(H)ere's indemnification that is being passed on when you buy products from Microsoft. You don't get that (with Linux). And eventually, you know, in the litigious society that we live in, something is going to happen.
Was Allchin just speaking of probabilities, or was he hinting that Microsoft was going to help ensure a certainty? Well, as we later found out through Groklaw, Microsoft was hard at work all this time supporting SCO's lawsuit against the integrity of Linux and its patent rights, and later as it went public in Forbes with wild accusations of Linux's infringement of 235 of its patents, completely without (public) substantiation.
To its credit, Microsoft has not directly launched a lawsuit against any open-source vendors, and it has become far less strident lately against open source in terms of patent FUD. Indeed, Microsoft's history is not litigious and I doubt it ever will file any such lawsuit.
But until it learns how to effectively compete with "free," there's always the risk that it will feel compelled to defend its "right" to a proprietary business model by launching a lawsuit. As I noted in 2007, "Microsoft makes good software; it doesn't need to be a lumbering Lenny of a patent troll."
I still believe that. Let's hope Microsoft does, too. It can compete on product quality. It doesn't need to compete on patent quality.
Interesting concept, bringing a lawsuit against Linux. Who exactly would you bring to court? And would it even matter?
Yep, Windows 7 while better than Vista, cannot compete with good enough Ubuntu.
A lawsuit against what? After all, didn’t that work out splendidly for SCO?
They don't have to meet "free" - they just have to provide a product that's good enough, and reasonably-priced so that people will choose it over 'free'.
Bill Gates and Microsoft never infringed anybody’s IP, never “borrowed” source code, and always played above the board and transparently when it came to the ideas and rights of others...
(ouch! A monkey just flew out of my butt! OW! And another one! And another one!! Crikey! Somebody get me a crying towel!)
Microsoft can still compete with “free” as long as they are worth what they are charging. If they keep putting out crappy sofware that costs way too much, then they are doomed.
Get the price down to 50 bucks, and make it work. And this crap about not getting an “install” disk with your new computer needs to end real fast.
Yup. People will pay a premium for Apple products. No real reason why Microsoft can't do the same.
Except Microsoft.
It can't compete with expensive OS/X, either. Lots of squeezing being felt in Redmond. ;)
Of course, Microsoft could wise up one day, buy Sun, make Windows 8 a free O/S based on OpenSolaris, and require Windows 8 to support the next very expensive versions of Office and their server tools, but they'll probably continue to believe they can do things their own way.
There's the rub. With the constant, steady improvements in Linux, they're shooting at a moving target. Linux now supports more hardware than Windows does (including obsolete hardware), and the number of software packages that can perform whatever job you want to perform keeps growing as well.
The standard 2-5 year development cycle for Windows is now just way too long. The average Linux distro is undergoing major revisions every six months now. That is because the technology and the code is improving at a much faster rate than it was 10-15 years ago.
I currently work in a MS shop and it’s okay, the job is interesting and I’m continually learning some little nuance of MS stuff I wasn’t aware of.
And, our stuff does tend to stay up (unless someone higher up the food chain does something stupid, like load untested software on a root server in the domain, blowing up the domain schema, but, I digress....)
Anyway, I’m all for Unix, Linux and Windows. The more kinds of OS’s out there, the less chance of having “single point of failure” when it comes to various systems across the US.
I agree that OS/X is somewhat better ... Prettier.
But these days people want good enough and cheap. With the netbooks taking over, that's forever going to be more important.
Or MS could make Windows 7 just another Linux desktop ... Like apple did.
The high end stuff isn't even likely to succumb. The difference between Sun and standard PC is quite considerable when you talk about availability and error recovery. I doubt that will change much.
PCs are PCs and if they crap out, only their user cares. It's getting increasingly expensive if your server craps out, almost daily.
Useing Ubunta here.Paid $30 for ISO Buster,burned
a copy.After a week of Linux-its not difficult at all.
Ran Shields Up,invisible it said even before using
the Linux firewall (free) Firestarter
Plugged in my HP printer,done.Thought it was supposed
to be hard
The standard 2-5 year development cycle for Windows is now just way too long. The average Linux distro is undergoing major revisions every six months now. That is because the technology and the code is improving at a much faster rate than it was 10-15 years ago.The Linux codebase is crap. It's a badly reimplemented version of 1960's technology. Windows is far worse(windows NT wasn't but that's because they stole code from VMS) but that's like saying a Gremlin is better than a Yugo.
What makes Linux a game changer is its license, not its technological sophistication.
They should know they got MSDOS for almost free. Boohoo.
Or MS could make Windows 7 just another Linux desktop ... Like apple did.Mach is completely different from Linux. It's not even a Unix. Quartz and quartz-wm are completely different from the X model as well.
Just because OSX supports BSD and POSIX doesn't mean it *is* a Unix.
> Anyway, I’m all for Unix, Linux and Windows. The more kinds of OS’s out there, the less chance of having “single point of failure” when it comes to various systems across the US.
I’m the same. I learned my craft on VM/CMS just after Noah’s Flood, and have been thru UNIX in its various incarnations, CP/M, MS Dos, Windows, Mac OS... I’m not really bigoted about any of them.
If I had a favorite it would be VM/CMS followed by UNIX, and if I had a least favorite it would be Windows (because it isn’t an Operating System, it’s a file loader), but those preferences aren’t absolute. I’m using a Windows system now...
why would you want free? When your computer crashes who is gonna be there to fix it?
Microsoft also has to worry about all the software patents held by IBM that Windows infringes on.
The Windows source code would have to all be presented in court....not a very pretty thought I must say ;-)
Software patents are stoopid and evil...and IBM has lots of them just as MS does. Mutually Assured Destruction
The biggest threat to Microsoft’s business model is not Linux or OSS in general, it’s the immense base of already bought and paid for Microsoft products that are still perfectly adequate to meet their user’s needs.
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