Posted on 11/09/2002 11:54:22 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Apple, IBM, and Sun have opened up their software code to the public in their battle against Redmond. It just might work.
The term "open-source" means software code that's available for all to see, use, or modify. Any programmer can make changes, but those changes are subject to the court of public opinion -- the best ones stay, while the worst draw jeers. It's also no longer the sole domain of antiestablishment hackers. They gave open-source its start, but the Linux operating system, perhaps the best-known open-source program, now runs on about a quarter of all servers.
Additionally, open-source code underlies the software products of some of Microsoft's fiercest competitors such as Apple (AAPL) Computer, IBM (IBM), RealNetworks, and Sun Microsystems (SUNW). Their strategy is to take advantage of a sort of software commons. Apple and IBM in particular have found that they can build their own proprietary software on top of that commons and focus more of their resources on creating product enhancements, rather than worrying as much about the basic operating system.
IBM, for example, uses Linux to tie together its disparate hardware platforms so that the same software can run on any of its various servers or mainframes. The company made an early foray into Linux in 1998, but back then it was not clear whether a big corporation like IBM would be accepted by the fellowship of independent Linux programmers. "We weren't quite sure how it would work," admits Dan Frye, director of IBM's Linux Technology Center, who now oversees 250 programmers who work on Linux full-time. But, he adds, the standards are the same regardless of who does the programming. "When we write good code, it gets accepted," he says. "When we write bad code, it gets slain."
Similarly, Apple is reaping the benefits of open-source. The core of its Mac OS X is based on an open-source Linux cousin called FreeBSD (on top of which Apple adds its Aqua interface, Quartz graphics engine, and user-friendly applications such as iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie). "It helps us to differentiate ourselves against Microsoft," contends Avie Tevanian, Apple's chief software engineer.
Initially released in 2001, OS X has already gone through two revisions. The most recent one, Jaguar, is pretty major, containing an astonishing 150 new features. Apple credits that speedy development cycle to the army of independent programmers tweaking and shoring up the FreeBSD core. (Prior versions of the Mac operating system were created entirely within Apple, from scratch.) "You're seeing more innovation come out of the open-source world than the proprietary world," says Brian Croll, Apple's senior director of software product marketing. His boss, senior VP for marketing Phil Schiller, concurs that without open-source, the advances Apple has made with OS X "would not have been possible." For instance, one such project, called Samba, allows any Unix machine to talk to any Windows machine and share files. "The key thing we do," Tevanian says, "is take these technologies and package them in ways that consumers can use. We're a delivery vehicle that can kick open-source products to millions of consumers."
Even Sun is beginning to tentatively adopt Linux (despite the threat to Sun's own Solaris operating system). In addition, it has opened the source code to its StarOffice productivity suite, which competes with Microsoft Office, as well as that of the Liberty Alliance Project, which Sun is spearheading to come up with an alternative to Microsoft's Passport digital ID. Efforts are also under way by Sun and others to popularize a Linux desktop for Intel-based PCs. "What needs to happen is a partnership of some kind between corporations and the open-source community," says Sun open-source director Danese Cooper, who acknowledges that the proprietary software development model is "fundamentally broken."
While it's clear that Microsoft is being attacked by open-source on the server and on the desktop, it remains to be seen how effective these strategies will be in taking market share away from Redmond. But at least the outlines of an alternative computing platform are finally emerging. And it didn't take a devilish antitrust lawyer to conjure them up, either.
For the most part in the last century MS, Apple, Sun and others fed off the subsidized research at the big name universities. Somewhere along the way the big developments at IBM stopped. They were always mostly hardware. Yes IBM did invent SQL but not a lot after that. The game for most softare creativity was at the university level.
Microsoft just adapted and picked the easier parts to implement. The only other areas of operating system know how were in companies like Digital and Wang.
Once Gates got the bucks, he went after the talent. The best talent all works for Gates today. Anders Hejlsberg is set to do it one more time. And the version after next of NT is a totally rewritten operating system. It is not that far off. It is not a UNIX enspired clone. It breaks new ground.
For the first time in its history Microsoft will not be following the university research. MS will be doing software not done before. That is a big change.
The days of an operating system writen in C and modified in C++ as soon to be over. LINUX is an alternative to Windows and is a better one. But Windows is not the Microsoft future. Windows is no more the future than LINUX is the future. Microsoft has not named the future yet, but its design is almost stable and they are writing some of its code.
It will be very difficult. It is like the free Basketball League taking on the NBA. The NBA response is to just hire the best Free League players. That is what Gates is doing now.
I always suspected as much. Can you share any more info?
Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!
Got root?
And it's also no coincidence that you have taken one individual from the Free Software movement and then pretend that the rest of the movement believes in everything he believes in.
If that's true, perhaps you can explain the other high priest of the Free Software movement, Eric S. Raymond.
Mr. Raymond's political philosophies are distinctly liberitarian. He's also a gun owner with strong views on keeping the government's hands off of citizen's guns.
The truth, much as you attempt to spin it in another direction, is that Linux (and other Free Software) users, developers, advocates and administrators have political views that run from one end of the political spectrum to the other.
On the other hand, all of the high Microsoft people have repeatedly supported socialist causes with large donations.
It is said that a socialist country is a great place to live, as long as you are in the ruling class. Bill Gates already deems himself in the ruling class and seems to like socialism.
You might want to be careful with dragging political affiliations into technical discusions. The result won't make the Microsoft empire look very good.
So did George Washington. But not in London.
I don't consider that to be a plus. Libertarians are pro-drug, isolationist, nutcase freaks...
Then you're an idiot and certainly no conservative, as well as supremely uninformed about what libertarians are really about. But since you have repeatedly buried your head in the sand about Microsoft, being wrong on one more thing is hardly surprising.
With one political thread in common: the destruction of the commercial software market.
Wrong. The common thread is that no one, not goverment nor businesses, have the right to tell them what they can or cannot do with software that they have written and little right to tell them what they can or cannot do with software that they have bought.
Careful. You're beginning to suggest that people aren't free to spend their own money the way they want to spend it. Which isn't exactly a conservative ideal.
To the contrary. I think that Bill Gates should be free to spend all of the money that he wants on gun-control, abortion and other socialist programs. On the other hand, I am free to point out that he's a socialist. I also have the right to point out that those that give him money are furthering socialist causes, no matter how hard they try to distance themselves from that fact.
What he does with his personal checkbook is his business. Stallman et al are trying to get laws passed in California to prevent having to compete with commercial software. So much for winning on your merits.
Stallman, while a nut, is only responding to Microsoft's attempts to getting laws passed to prevent open source software from being used. It's about fighting the same way that Microsoft fights. So it can't be bad, can it?
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