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Why does this image make my eyes widen?
Birth of Tha SYNDICATE
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
Posted on 12/11/2002 3:59:07 AM PST by canuck_conservative
In a major strategy shift, Microsoft Corp. will introduce software based on the Linux open source operating system in 2004 for Web services and server software, market researcher META Group predicted on Monday.
Microsoft, which denied that it had any plans to develop software for Linux, is facing a growing threat from the open source software standard as it gains share in the corporate server market used to manage networks and data.
META Group predicted that Linux will be used on nearly half of new servers by 2007, up from its current share of 15 to 20 percent, making it difficult for Microsoft to ignore Linux as a platform for its database, Web hosting and e-mail server applications.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Codeweavers does not release the source code for their enhanced WINE development products (Crossover Office, developed for $$) though they do release WINE itself (developed under a separate GNU) , and NetTraverse does not release the source code Win4Lin ($$), and NVidia doesn't even release the source code for their X video drivers (to protect trade secrets).
Penguin People - please correct me if I'm wrong.
Why does this image make my eyes widen?
Birth of Tha SYNDICATE
101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that Internet Explorer cannot.
Has anyone ever heard of them before?
This is either:
It's possible that MS will port IE, Office, or a few other pieces of software to Linux eventually. MS is the proverbial 'house of cards', most divisions operate at a massive loss which is paid for by the 85% profit margin their monopolization of the market produces.
If/when that profit margin slips, with all other divisions losing hundreds of millions a year, the entire thing will implode very, very quickly.
So eventually MS will start looking for additional revenue, and porting their software to Linux will eventually be forced on them.
But I doubt it will be soon . . . Just My Humble Opinion.
All these META guys are saying, and it makes some sense, is that if linux in fact achieves something like 50% market share on servers, Microsoft would be foolish to ignore that as a market for things like Exchange and SQL Server. They're right. It's probably one of those things, though, that Microsoft will deny right up until the day they announce it's ready to ship.
This business of trying to Dominate Ze Vorld by tying all your products together in unique and wonderful ways has its place as a marketing strategy, but as IBM learned the hard way many years ago, the bigger you get the harder it becomes to keep it going.
A big part of the "IBM renaissance" under Gerstner was losing that idea and moving to a strategy of having point products that were excellent at what they did, and could stand on their own in any environment. You want NT? They'll sell you NT. You want linux? They'll sell you linux. The OS/390 guys can squawk all they want; the WebSphere and DB/2 guys do not have to cripple their own products in order to make OS/390 look good. I think Microsoft will have as hard a time with this transition as IBM did... it is a tough thing to implement in a big-company culture. But sooner or later, they're going to have to learn how.
Java anyone?
This is going to be a long thread.
Nick, I'm a little slow on the uptake today (as always) and I don't understand your point. Can you elucidate?
The article is pure speculation. From the source:
"I'm unaware of any efforts at this time to move any products onto Linux," said Peter Houston, senior director at Microsoft's server group, adding that there were no plans to detach or re-price its Windows server operating system.
"We have made a bet on Windows, and we believe that customers are getting value from the bet we made," said Houston, "and we're going to continue doing what we've been doing for customers."
Sure. Let's put it in Microsoft terms. Suppose the day comes when Microsoft realizes that they are leaving money on the table by refusing to sell SQL Server on linux. All the high-end linux database business is going to Oracle or DB/2.
So the SQL Server team gets the green light to produce a linux version. Let's say that in early testing, it becomes clear that the linux version of SQL Server will beat the Windows version of SQL Server in benchmarks. This is when the moment of truth arrives. Is the SQL Server team allowed to go to market with a product that will win business for itself against Oracle and DB/2, at the expense of making a sister product look bad?
Different companies have different philosophies about this. In the old days at IBM, they wouldn't have let that product out the door until the OS/390 version ran faster, even if that meant crippling the linux version. I suspect the same thing would occur in Microsoft today.
Once you get to a certain size, a strategy of trying to maintain advantage with a "total package" offering becomes very difficult to execute. There are always going to be point-product specialists out there who have better offerings for a specific task than the "total package" guy. Oracle is such a vendor. IBM apparently has the cat's meow of web application servers in Web Sphere (which will not stop some clown from coming in here to say it sucks... but it is clearly doing well out in the market, as is Oracle).
The point is, there are natural limits to the growth one can expect as a "total package" vendor. There is a segment that wants that, and they will become "Microsoft shops" or "IBM shops," but they are only a fraction of the market. To get beyond them, you have to be able to beat the point-product guys in their specialties... and that is tough. You can't do that and tailor your point product to your other offerings. You have to be willing to go pedal-to-the-metal to make your point product shine on some other guy's platform. That's not a technical problem so much as it is a corporate-culture problem. Microsoft is nowhere near that kind of culture today.
On a level playing field such as linux, SQL Server would win its share against Oracle and DB/2. It is not without features, and there are people who like it.
It's just that if I've got 10,000 servers and I'm looking at a half-million dollars in Windows licenses just to use SQL Server, I might conclude that Oracle on linux was plenty good. The truth is, all those high-end databases have more features than anybody needs, and whoever is winning the benchmarks this week will be losing them next week. It's a fairly vigorous competition.
The GPL would only affect them if they tried to release their own Linux kernel, incorporated some GPL code into their software, or linked to a GPLd library (most libraries are LGPLd to allow linking by proprietary software).
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