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Re: Linux Bloggers Wax Skeptical on the Post-Gates World
Posted by: Katherine Noyes 2008-07-07 08:36:30
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Well, July 4th may have come and gone, but another independence recently came to pass that could be almost as historic. That's Microsoft's independence from Bill Gates, of course, and it was a hot topic last week as bloggers at ZDNet and elsewhere wondered if the change might bring about a Redmond that's kinder and gentler to the open source world. "I feel like Microsoft has taken some important steps towards playing nice with open source and encouraging interoperability," wrote et764 on Slashdot, where more than 400 comments had appeared by Thursday.
Not with Balmer at the Helm
Posted by: stratman4300 2008-07-07 20:47:57 In reply to: Katherine Noyes
As much as i'd like to believe it, i just don't see it happening with Balmer still at the helm.
He was right up there with Gates as far as proprietary Software vs. Open source goes.
That's the way business at M$ has been for the last decade and that's how it will probably stay until Balmer has stepped down.
Where it goes from there is an unknown at this point.
He was right up there with Gates as far as proprietary Software vs. Open source goes.
That's the way business at M$ has been for the last decade and that's how it will probably stay until Balmer has stepped down.
Where it goes from there is an unknown at this point.
While M$ is a big player in the world of IT, it is important to realize that FLOSS is bigger than M$. The world of FLOSS has more developers and produces more code than M$. Certainly M$ has a balance sheet that shows huge income but if every FLOSS product cost $100 or so, the balance sheet of M$ would not be much larger than FLOSS. The difference is marketing and the leverage of monopoly/lock-in. If every distro put on an advertising campaign this year, the monopoly would be gone by next year. That does not happen because developers are not wealthy capitalists except in a few cases and they do not get sweetheart deals with IBM in its monopoly days.
That said, what M$ does with FLOSS is mostly irrelevant. The FLOSS world will go its own way. FLOSS is doing really well in emerging markets because there choices can be made with less lock-in. If M$ does the unthinkable and does more than interoperability with FLOSS, anything is possible. That is extremely unlikely as long as the cash cow continues to give milk. In a couple of years of decline, M$ will find a way to milk FLOSS. The deals with Novell, etc. are likely preparations for that. M$ could annoint a distro, promote it, or generate one of their own in short order but it would seriously undermine the cash cow they have so they will not do that until stock holders complain. As long as dividends keep coming that could be years away.
If M$ ever does embrace FLOSS for any purpose other than extinguishment, I would be very surprised. I expect they will want to take up any slack of their customers migrating to GNU/Linux by steering them to a M$-supported distro guaranteed to be compatible. They can still exclude other distros by adding incompatibilities that only they can navigate.
That said, what M$ does with FLOSS is mostly irrelevant. The FLOSS world will go its own way. FLOSS is doing really well in emerging markets because there choices can be made with less lock-in. If M$ does the unthinkable and does more than interoperability with FLOSS, anything is possible. That is extremely unlikely as long as the cash cow continues to give milk. In a couple of years of decline, M$ will find a way to milk FLOSS. The deals with Novell, etc. are likely preparations for that. M$ could annoint a distro, promote it, or generate one of their own in short order but it would seriously undermine the cash cow they have so they will not do that until stock holders complain. As long as dividends keep coming that could be years away.
If M$ ever does embrace FLOSS for any purpose other than extinguishment, I would be very surprised. I expect they will want to take up any slack of their customers migrating to GNU/Linux by steering them to a M$-supported distro guaranteed to be compatible. They can still exclude other distros by adding incompatibilities that only they can navigate.
