Unjustified Optimism?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| magice Jul 13, 2009 10:38 AM EDT |
I think that most of the writings, blogs, etc. on how Microsoft is going to die (sometimes it is claimed to happen REALLY soon) and how Free Software or Open Source will take over world are mostly unjustified. The most critical example I know of is the server market. We have been hearing on how GNU/Linux gains ground and stuffs, but let's take a closer look to it: GNU/Linux has essentially wiped out Unix competitors, and Microsoft (surprised!) holds bigger market share last time I check. Now, given that GNU/Linux and Apache has, by now, dominate the Webserver segment (no number to back this, but mostly anecdote experience), Windows must have dominated everything else, such as internal servers for businesses, email servers, etc. We should acknowledge this: although Windows is inferior to GNU/Linux in any perceivable way, Microsoft has a whole solution to offer. Lowest level they have Windows, then .NET, then Office and Share Point, then Exchange coupled with Outlook. Next, they also have advertisement, FUD, and inertia. In comparisons, last time I check, there is no viable replacement for anything above .NET level (Windows GNU/Linux base; .NET Java; anything else?). At the highest level (social and marketing stuffs), GNU/Linux is no competitor of Microsoft. Even the "community" is divided into tribes (Free Software vs. Open Source; Mono; GPL vs. BSD; proprietary-tolerant vs. non-tolerant; etc.), the new influx of adopters are making some ridiculous demands ("Why is there not setup.exe?", "Why are there choices?", "Why can I not remain stupid and ignorant?"), and then more division over how to solve these problems. Meanwhile, Apple is making some headway, and it has promised to be much more effective tyrants than Microsoft can ever be. The approaching Chrome OS of Google (actually, this starts with Android, but since that thing has not been caught up yet, it has not created as much mess as it could have) threatens to outgrow Linux from GNU, and materialize the division between the two major camps of Free Software and Open Source (NO, I AM NOT AGAINST CHROME OS. I would love to see it grow, but the prospect of its effects is terrifying). Thus, a world dominant with Free and/or Open Source Software is still a distant dream. |
| tuxchick Jul 13, 2009 10:58 AM EDT |
I think that's a pretty good assessment, magice. Though I suspect that actual Linux/FOSS market share is under-estimated in all segments. So the real barriers are psychological rather than technical. Humans are such wacky little things. |
| jdixon Jul 13, 2009 11:06 AM EDT |
> ...Microsoft is going to die... Microsoft isn't going to die. There are people still running VMS. People still use mainframes. People still use Cobol. Old technology doesn't die. It slowly withers away until there's no hardware left to run it, and even then people develop emulators for it. And there will always be a market for Microsoft's brand of tightly integrated solutions. In some cases, it's even the best solution to business needs. Microsoft's monopoly is what's going to die, and it's already well on it's way. They've lost their hoped for monopoly in the server market before it even started. Apple and Linux now have somewhere between 10 to 25 % of the desktop market, and growing. Microsoft is going to become a niche market OS, aimed at specific uses and applications. The exact size of that niche is debatable, but it does and will exist. What they shouldn't be, and hopefully won't be, is a general purpose OS for home/business use. That's a role far better filled by Linux. |
| tuxchick Jul 13, 2009 11:44 AM EDT |
jdixon, I don't care if it's Linux or something else entirely, as long as it is open, good-quality, and not the product of a company run by psyche cases who would have been equally at home looting and plundering the old-fashioned ways, like on horseback with spears. |
| jdixon Jul 13, 2009 12:19 PM EDT |
TC, I don't think I could agree more. :) |
| helios Jul 13, 2009 1:05 PM EDT |
Humans are such wacky little things. I alternate between wry irony and near fits of rage when I am reminded by comments such as Magice.... We are the largest inhibitor to our adaptation on the desktop. It seems that not only is freedom built into our system but the same inertia we find in the Enterprise, bogs our forward motion to a crawl. We advance none-the-less but cheese whiz on a freakin' cracker... We could have been so much farther ahead by now if it wasn't for us. h |
| caitlyn Jul 13, 2009 4:56 PM EDT |
@magice: What is the source for your figures on the server market? Commercial UNIX is still about 19% last I checked. Microsoft, according to Steve Ballmer, is at 40%, down from 42% in 2000. Linux plus UNIX account for nearly 60%. An argument based on incorrect data is usually wrong. What solution does Microsoft offer that Linux cannot offer? You didn't list any. You just threw around some MS product names but didn't come up with a reason why they make an integrated solution for which there is no FOSS competitor. Methinks the emperor has no clothes. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 13, 2009 6:24 PM EDT |
Quoting:What solution does Microsoft offer that Linux cannot offer? Until Samba 4 arrives, Active Directory. And don't forget SharePoint. Yes, it's a bad product designed solely to promote lock-in, but for the people who want it there is no integrated alternative. It's possible to achieve the same functionality on Linux using various products but it's still a lot of work putting that together. Of course, the real solution to the latter part is to educate sysadmins to the value of decoupled systems :-) |
| tuxchick Jul 13, 2009 6:32 PM EDT |
Sander, wouldn't a slick management interface sit nicely on top of all those decoupled bits? Something like Webmin, only better. |
| Sander_Marechal Jul 13, 2009 6:55 PM EDT |
That would work yes. Someone would need to build it though. Or better, provide a distro or package that installs it and it's dependencies out-of-the-box. Bonus points for supplying VM images that corporate sysadmins can download and run with 10 or less clicks :-) |
| softwarejanitor Jul 13, 2009 8:34 PM EDT |
@Sander A lot of people think that Alfresco is a pretty good alternative to Sharepoint, a.k.a. "Selfishpoint". You can replicate most of Active Directory functionality with a mix of open source stuff, including mostly compatibility but right now it takes a little work to put it all together. tuxchick's suggestion and your additions of making a distro and/or VM images that make it easy are both excellent. |
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