Re: Microsoft edging toward the brink? -- Novell will break MS

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Sat, 2005-02-12 at 13:46 -0600, Robert Citek wrote:
> Here, here!  MS isn't a software company.  It's a software distribution 
> company.

Actually, I consider them an investment company that outsources
everything.

I have _always_ been impressed with the "core" developers of Microsoft.
The original NT team and the newer .NET teams (even if they were not
original concepts/code, they did good).

The problem is all the outsourced development.  The things that brought
us "Chicago," ActiveX and RAD tools that are completely ignorant of the
Win32 and, now, .NET security models.

Those libraries and tools are at the heart of the OS and other tools, of
which everything is based on.  The second Microsoft started pushing core
OS subsystems through MS IE updates, I knew NT was screwed.

And now we have the result.

> Things that are chipping away at the control of the distribution chain:
> FLOSS, BitTorrent, cheap CDs and CD-burners, and inexpensive
> broadband.

Er, not really IMHO.  These contribute, yes, but they have _always_ been
available in one form or another to the masses.  Cheap bandwidth has
largely been used for other, and in many cases "not so ethical,"
purposes by the masses.  But those who wanted Freedomware before its
availability always had an avenue in one form or another.

The _real_ challenge to Microsoft is the business consumers who want
Linux from the traditional distribution channels.  I've always said that
it will not be organized home users that overthrown the Microsoft
monopoly, but the adoption of Linux in the business.  Because once
businesses have Freedomware on the desktop, it is only a matter of time
before people bring it home.

It's the non-enthusiasts, non-technical users that we are starting to
see adopt.  Windows NT 6.0 "Longhorn" and Office 2006 do _nothing_ to
address the core security issues of "Chicago" in the Win32 OS.  Sadly
enough, even .NET itself is better atop of UNIX than Win32.  Win32 is
nothing as it was original designed to be, and we have Gates' "vision"
to thank for screwing NT over with "Chicago."

Windows is self-destructing, as even some of Microsoft's own NT
developers predicted.  .NET is no where.  The Avalon desktop hack for
the GDI and the Indigo .NET sandbox atop of Win32 are hacks for NT 6.0
"Longhorn" which is little more than a buffer overflow and other code
auditing clean-up of NT 5 before it.  It offers no solution to the over-
hacked Win32 API and no replacements for endless "Chicago" code still in
it.

> Some random thoughts I had last Summer and put on the wiki in December:
>    http://www.cwelug.org/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?DistributingFLOSS

I think grass-root efforts are great.  Linux and other Freedomware is
powerful today because of the dedication of both end-consumer
developers, commercial developers as well as key purchases and
Freedomwaring of product code by companies like Novell, Red Hat and Sun.

But it's still the traditional business and distribution channel that is
going to break Microsoft.  It's going to take time, but Linux is already
taking over the server.  And unlike NetWare before it, Linux _does_
offer a desktop.  This is the crux of what Bill Gates always said, that
sooner or later Novell would have to ship a desktop OS to have any
chance of challenging them.

Novell was just 10 years behind Ray Noorda's vision, the many who
basically made Novell.  They chooe UnixWare which caused Ray to co-found
Caldera.  10 years later, the roles have completely reversed.  And
unlike Red Hat, Novell knows how to handle the distribution channel far
better.  Red Hat is still learning here in this regard.

Which makes me wonder why Sun is so critical of Red Hat?  Kinda reminds
me of Apple and IBM, when Apple's real threat was Microsoft.  Sun is so
critical of Red Hat, yet Novell is going to be one of their biggest
competitors very soon.  Sun's focus is much like Novell's --
distribution and control -- not Red Hat's**.  So it's funny to see this.

-- Bryan

**NOTE:  Red Hat is basically the world's largest concentration of 100%
GPL projects.  Their business plan has been 2-phase, 1 planned, 1
forced.  The first was the purchase of Cygnus, which bloated their size
3x and instantly put them in the black, because Cygnus, the first ever
commercial GPL success story, was the _only_ major profitable company.
Red Hat provides services to a wealth of companies, from Nintento to
Sony to NASA and government.

The second phase was unintentional, as SuSE's separate SuSE Linux
Enterprise Server (SLES) 7 outsold Red Hat's single product line with
Red Hat Linux 6.2 "E[nterprise]" SLAs.  So Red Hat had to change its
strategy to match SuSE's, and has apparently bested SuSE now.  And
although it took them 2 years of debate and other considerations, they
now realized that further opening up model was their best move.  The
trademark change was just something they had no control over (and Sun is
more to blame for this than anyone -- long story).


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                  b.j.smith@ieee.org 
------------------------------------------------------------------ 
Community software is all about choice, choice of technology.
Unfortunately, too many Linux advocates port over the so-called
"choice" from the commercial software world, brand name marketing.
The result is false assumptions, failure to focus on the real
technical similarities of implementations and blind alignments.



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