Microsoft at the power point [why Linux is slandered at FR]

The Economist ^ | 13 September 2003 | Economist staff

[chilepepper]

Governments like open-source software, but Microsoft does not

IN MAY, the city of Munich decided to oust Microsoft Windows from the 14,000 computers used by local-government employees in favour of Linux, an open-source operating system. Although the contract was worth a modest $35m, Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, interrupted his holiday in Switzerland to visit Munich and lobby the mayor. Microsoft even dropped its prices to match Linux—a remarkable feat since Linux is essentially free and users merely purchase support services alongside it. But the software giant still lost. City officials said the decision was a matter of principle: the municipality wanted to control its technological destiny. It did not wish to place the functioning of government in the hands of a commercial vendor with proprietary standards which is accountable to shareholders rather than to citizens.

Worryingly for Microsoft, Munich is not alone in holding that view. Across the globe, governments are turning to open-source software which, unlike proprietary software, allows users to inspect, modify and freely redistribute its underlying programming instructions. Scores of national and state governments have drafted legislation calling for open-source software to be given preferential treatment in procurement. Brazil, for instance, is preparing to recommend that all its government agencies and state enterprises buy open source.

Other countries are funding open-source software initiatives outright. China has been working on a local version of Linux for years, on the grounds of national self-sufficiency, security and to avoid being too dependent on a single foreign supplier. Politicians in India have called on its vast army of programmers to develop open-source products for the same reasons. This month, Japan said it would collaborate with China and South Korea to develop open-source alternatives to Microsoft's software. Japan has already allocated ¥1 billion ($9m) to the project.

Why all the fuss? Modern governments generate a vast number of digital files. From birth certificates and tax returns to criminal DNA records, the documents must be retrievable in perpetuity. So governments are reluctant to store official records in the proprietary formats of commercial-software vendors. This concern will only increase as e-government services, such as filing a tax return or applying for a driving licence online, gain momentum. In Microsoft's case, security flaws in its software, such as those exploited by the recent Blaster and SoBig viruses, are also a cause of increasing concern.

Government purchases of software totalled almost $17 billion globally in 2002, and the figure is expected to grow by about 9% a year for the next five years, according to IDC, a market-research firm (see chart). Microsoft controls a relatively small part of this market, with sales to governments estimated at around $2.8 billion. But it is a crucial market, because when a government opts for a particular technology, the citizens and businesses that deal with it often have to fall into line. (In one notable example, America's defence department adopted the internet protocol as its networking standard, forcing contractors to use it, which in turn created a large market for internet-compliant products.) No wonder Microsoft feels threatened—the marriage of open-source software and government could be its Achilles heel.

Policymakers like open source for many reasons. In theory, the software's transparency increases security because “backdoors” used by hackers can be exposed and programmers can root out bugs from the code. The software can also be tailored to the user's specific needs, and upgrades happen at a pace chosen by the user, not the vendor. The open-source model of openness and collaboration has produced some excellent software that is every bit the equal of commercial, closed-source products. And, of course, there is no risk of being locked in to a single vendor.

That said, open-source is no panacea, and there are many areas where proprietary products are still far superior. Oracle, the world's second-largest software company, need not worry (yet) about governments switching to open-source alternatives to its database software. But Microsoft is vulnerable, because an open-source rival to its Windows operating system exists already, in the form of Linux.

If Microsoft is indeed squeezed out of the government sector by open-source software, three groups stand to benefit: large consultancy firms and systems integrators, such as IBM, which will be called in to devise and install alternative products; firms such as Red Hat or SuSE, which sell Linux-based products and services; and numerous small, local technology firms that can tailor open-source products for governmental users.

As a result, the company has been fighting back. Microsoft and its allies have sought to discredit open-source software, likening its challenge of proprietary ownership to communism and suggesting that its openness makes it insecure and therefore vulnerable to terrorism. The firm also created a controversial slush fund to allow it to offer deep discounts to ensure that it did not lose government sales to Linux on the basis of price. And Microsoft has paid for a series of studies, the latest of which appeared this week, which invariably find that, in specific applications, Windows costs less than Linux.

More strikingly, Microsoft has been imitating the ways of the open-source “community”. Last year, the firm launched a “shared source” initiative that allows certain approved governments and large corporate clients to gain access to most of the Windows software code, though not to modify it. This is intended, in part, to assuage the fears of foreign governments that Windows might contain secret security backdoors. Microsoft has also made available some portions of the source code of Windows CE, which runs on handheld PCs and mobile phones, to enable programmers to tinker with the code. Tellingly, this is a market where the company is a straggler rather than a leader.

Jason Matusow, Microsoft's shared-source manager, says that developing software requires leadership and an understanding of customer needs—both areas where proprietary-software companies excel. As for proposed legislation that would stipulate one type of software over another, it is anti-competitive and could leave users hamstrung with products that are not the best for their specific needs, says Robert Kramer, executive director of the Initiative for Software Choice, a Microsoft-supported lobby group. Microsoft will advance these views next week in Rome, where it is hosting the latest in a series of conferences for government leaders. But the signs are that many of them have already made up their minds.

[Timesink]

Nonsense. Steve Jobs developed his NeXTSTEP OS to run on **both** Motorola 68xxx as well as on Intel CPU's.

I'll point out that the world's changed a bit since the days of NeXT, as has Steve's job. (No pun intended.) What was good for NeXT in the 80s and early '90s != what's good for Apple in 2003. (Not that I necessarily agree with keeping the Mac wedded to the PowerPC CPU. I'm ambivalent on the subject.)

[Southack]

Call me crazy, but **marketshare** was important in the 1980's, 1990's, and into this Millenium still.

Apple went to all of that trouble and money to get Jobs back, including buying NeXT outright, and yet they have (thankfully) continued to let NeXTSTEP remain locked up in a vault.

What you probably don't know about NeXTSTEP is that it not only runs on Intel hardware, but there was even a version of Windows NT that ran the NeXTSTEP framework.

With a single move Apple could sieze marketshare that it otherwise has no chance of capturing, i.e. the Intel PC world market.

Instead, Apple continues to restrain its market to its own Motorola-based hardware.

But Apple does own NeXTSTEP. So if some brainiac ever takes over that company, I'd expect that they would immediately release NeXTSTEP into the public domain (no, GNUSTEP doesn't count) timed with a big push into Intel desktops.

NeXTSTEP is already dual boot compatible with OS/2 and MS-DOS, and it is just about completely compatible with OSX (heck, NeXTSTEP pretty well is OS X) and Linux.

Yeah, it's a decade old. And just like OS/2 and Windows 95 it's source code is locked up in a vault rather than being promoted and pushed to compete head to head with Linux, Unix, and Windows (the latter of which runs on hardware that doesn't even share the same marketspace as does Apple's OSX).

Yet their corporate muckity mucks think that earning no revenue and stealing ZERO Intel desktops from Linux and MicroSoft is somehow the most profitable thing to do...

Oy vey.

[TheEngineer]

Thanks for your reply.

If what you say is true, every program must include everything that can ever be used. That creates huge, slow, oversized programs like Office, IE6, Netscape, Windows and some others.

Almost nobody needs an industrial strength Word processor, spreadsheet, browser or database program for their desktop PC which is where this stuff is running.

Depends on your application and your environment. If you are working in an isolated bubble environment where you will be exchanging documents with others who have identical office processing needs, then you can probably get away with a scaled back office suite -- even wordstar and lotus-123 if everyone agreed.

But if you're exchanging complex documents with others across company boundaries, then the least common denominator approach doesn't work. Hence, most people use MS Word (or Adobe PDF) to exchange documents -- In fact, many contracts that have come across my desk require that all documents be in Word format. Why? Probably becaue it's a program that is guaranteed to satisfy the feature requirements of power users.

Regarding Office Suites, I like a lot of the less-often-utilized features. Particularly, I like PowerPoint and it's multimedia and web features. I've tried the Open Office equivalent software -- but it was the worst of both worlds: Slower than MS Office, but fewer features. Also, it couldn't render most of my complex powerpoint slides.

Personally, I prefer to use the best program, rather than one that's "good enough".

[adam_az]

Programming for and working on Microsoft products every day puts a roof over my kids heads.

If you ONLY know Microsoft technology, then you are a damn fool for ensuring that you can only contine to support your family based on the whims of one single (finnicky) company.

[js1138]

... then you are a damn fool for ensuring that you can only contine to support your family based on the whims of one single (finnicky) company.

Generally true. (How many people got laid off by IBM in the last 10 years?) But Microsoft products, or clones of them, will be around long enough for most of us to retire. And unlike the transition from minicomputers to PCs, the transition away from Microsoft office and database products will be gradual. Heck, I can still point to hundreds of people in a company I worked for who still make a good living at COBOL.

[adam_az]

(How many people got laid off by IBM in the last 10 years?)

(raises hand) IBM Global Services vet. ;)

I made sure that I'm not a one trick pony, so I ended up on my two feet.

[egarvue]

And you, sir, are a damn ass, for assuming that because I work on Microsoft products (filling a market need, making my customers happy, and earning money in the process) that's the only thing I "know". Companies in my local area for the most part use Microsoft. When my local market changes so that they all reach open-source Linux nirvana, I will change with it. Until then, simple capitalism dictates that I supply what my customers demand. I know that's a hard pill to swallow for people on the anti-Microsoft train, but I expect a little bit better grasp of economics from people here at FR.

[js1138]

I suppose your case ins't something to be laughed at, but I worked for a company that specialized in training software development managers in quality assurance. We depended heavily on air travel to training and conferences, we made big bucks in Y2K training, and had just gotten into web publishing. My (former) boss called 911 the Perfect Storm. It killed every aspect of our company (or at least cut it by two-thirds.

[adam_az]

And you, sir, lack the reading comprehension to have understood the "If" qualifier in the post you replied to.

BTW it takes more than a few weeks to ramp up your knowlege of a different platform. I'm sure there are companies in your area that use both UNIX and Windows. How much more valuable in terms of $ would your time be if you knew both?

I can tell you from first hand experience - a LOT.

[TechJunkYard]

Hmmmm, I am new to this board...

Hey, welcome to Free Republic! Good to see you here.

[TechJunkYard]

Is Windows 95 really a threat to new MicroSoft OS releases?! I have a tough time swallowing that claim, anyway.

It's dead already. It's useless to Microsoft, so earn some revenue by following the Hollywood release model.

I ain't believin' what I'm readin' here. Microsoft would not dare open-source Win95... there's secrets in that thar code!

Let the OSS community see how bad MS code really was at that time? See all those "MS-Only" APIs? See the anti-Netscape, anti-DR-DOS, anti-&competitor subroutines? I'll bet there's evidence in that code that would support perjury charges against MS executives.

No way they're letting that stuff out.

[TechJunkYard]

No amount of evidence would be sufficient for you, weasel troll. Not playing that game.

Aww, gee Bushie, did somebody else give you a challenge that you can't meet?

Oh well, such is life. Don't go away mad.

[Southack]

"I ain't believin' what I'm readin' here. Microsoft would not dare open-source Win95... there's secrets in that thar code!"

I'm unconvinced. For one thing, MicroSoft copyrighted Windows 95.

Now in the U.S. you can claim a copyright as soon as your product is fixed in any media (i.e. saved to a CD-ROM or written down), but to gain two important rights, you have to file your source code in the U.S. Library of Congress (where anyone can examine it).

What are those two rights, you ask? The first is the right to sue. You can't sue anyone over copyright infringement until **after** you register your code in the Library of Congress.

The second right is the privilege of filing your product with the U.S. Customs Department so that they will prohibit the importation of foreign made copies that infringe on your copyright.

So do you still think that there are hidden, unknown secrets inside Windows 95 source code?

You'd have to believe that either MicroSoft never sued or cared to stop foreign copies from coming in, or that no one had bothered to go to the Library of Congress to review the Windows 95 code itself. Either the code is at the Library of Congress such that MicroSoft has the right to sue copyright infringers and stop importers, or else the code isn't there and no one has bothered to check it...for your claim above to be believed.

[Southack]

"No way they're letting that stuff out."

First of all, the Windows 95 source code may already be buried in the Library of Congress.

Secondly, MicroSoft's options are few and far between.

They can discount their newer products (e.g. Windows XP)down to near $0.00 in order to compete with Linux.

They could release Windows 95 into Open Source and let that product compete with Linux while they still charge their tier-1 customers top Dollar for their newer products like Windows XP.

Or they could ignore Linux and just live with the gradual erosion of their Windows-compatible platform base of global users.

That's pretty much it.

And while MicroSoft is deciding upon which of those above three choices that they are going to make, they risk losing at least one of those options above if IBM decides to release OS/2 into Open Source.

In the meantime, Linux developers (who are now backed by IBM, Oracle, the governments of Japan, China, and Taiwan) may very well come up with a Windows-compatible layer that is fast enough and good enough to speed up the migration of Intel boxes over to their platform.

Also, there exists a somewhat remote possibility that Apple could push an Open Source version of NeXTSTEP such that the Intel compatible OS fully runs all OS X software, giving users a cheaper way to have Mac platforms instead of being only limited to purchasing more expensive Apple/Motorola boxes.

[Petronski]

There's too much of Win95 that is either (a) spaghetti coded GOTO commands, (b) still in WinXP or (c) both. Microsoft would never expose itself to the embarrassment.

[ElectricRook]

The Linux commies bash MS at every turn

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[Southack]

c#153

[Petronski]

Somehow I find it hard to believe the source is right there for the taking. I don't know how they avoided it, but I'm betting they did.

And yes, I think there are both valuable secrets and embarrassingly-bad implementations in the source.

[Southack]

Presuming that you are right, which I highly doubt, one has to remember that MicroSoft was sharing its code with IBM. That's how OS/2 came into being.

So any conspiracy about Windows 95 having secret hooks that killed DR-DOS or slowed down WordPerfect in favor of MS Word would have to accept as a given that IBM was in on the gig then and was still remaining silent to this day even as it openly competes with MicroSoft by backing Linux.

Thus, even if Windows 95 isn't in the Library of Congress, IBM has seen most if not all of that code already during their earlier OS/2 co-development.

I mean, the whole secret conspiracy thing makes great tech-talk around the water coolers and at the local bars, but getting around the U.S. copyright situation as well as somehow keeping everyone at IBM silent about secret hooks and such is a bit past the believability point.

[TechJunkYard]

.. MicroSoft was sharing its code with IBM. That's how OS/2 came into being.

Incorrect. OS/2 was a work for hire.