An Opposing Viewpoint -- Microsoft Can't Compete

I find myself in disagreement with Mr. Tom Adelstein's article titled "Microsoft Has Stopped Competing with Linux". This is an uncomfortable position for me as I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Adelstein's work and writings. It may be that I am simply not part of his intended audience, as I have no experience dealing with large businesses or Venture Capitalists or ISVs. I'm just a semi-retired father with some Linux computers.

Nevertheless, the article appeared to me to strike the wrong tone for a general audience and my disagreements with the article are presented below. Mr. Adelstein's remarks are emphasized and indented. The original is at LXer.com, without my interrupting remarks. Anyone unfamiliar with the head-to-head discussions among Linux advocates may think we're not on the same team. That would be a mistaken impression.

Microsoft has ceased its obsession with Linux. Someone finally convinced the boss that Linux poses little threat to Redmond. Someone came out of the Linux lab and said that It's about time that they starting focusing on their real threat: IBM.

Microsoft's real threat is still the GPL and more specifically, GNU/Linux. Their current tactic may be to attempt to dissuade the public from thinking about GNU/Linux, or talking about GNU/Linux, but that does not change the threat from GNU/Linux, as stated in Microsoft's SEC Form 10-K. GNU/Linux was

a threat to Microsoft before IBM jumped aboard. This is not belittling IBM's contributions, IBM has and continues to contribute a great deal, it is simply an historical fact that GNU/Linux threatened Microsoft's marketing intentions before

IBM satisfied itself that GNU/Linux is viable for the long-term.

Several recent articles indicate that Microsoft has finally absorbed the GNU/Linux and so-called Open Source threat. Budgeting $500 million for marketing its next iterations of Windows and Office shows that they have little concern about the adoption of their new platforms.

I fail to see how such a massive advertising expenditure by an entity said to hold well over 90% of the market is an indication that they have "finally absorbed the GNU/Linux and so-called Open Source threat." As a monopoly, if they had "absorbed" the threat, surely a much lesser sum would be needed to convince existing customers to upgrade.

My guess is that Microsoft perceives a real and present threat to one of their cash cows -- MS Windows. They launched an ad campaign last year

estimated at $200 million for the aging XP. This occurred the same month Apple released a new version of OS X. Rather than showing that Microsoft has "little concern", it appears to me they have a whopping $500 million concern.

Unlike the UNIX threat in the early to late 1990's, Linux represents what Microsoft now sees as a "me too" platform with little innovation. The worries about costs in the executive suites in the industrialized countries have now given way to implementing solutions.

Microsoft has only recently overtaken UNIX sales in servers. They never met "the UNIX threat". UNIX sales reduced due to the increased viability of GNU/Linux in much of the space where UNIX reigned supreme and the growth of 64-bit processors in relatively cheap computers. GNU/Linux is not yet a suitable replacement for all of the old UNIX systems, but it is far more suitable for far more previously UNIX systems-only situations than anything Microsoft has yet produced.

The same

IDC report that notes revenue for MS Windows servers "modestly exceeded spending for Unix servers" also noted that revenue spending for servers was up 4.4% while unit shipments were up 11.6%. It doesn't take a financial genius to figure out that cheaper servers are now sufficient to do what required heavy iron in the past. It also doesn't take a financial genius to figure out that comparing MS Windows Server 2003 with just 5 client licenses at $999 will show up heavily weighted in that report versus downloadable Linux allowing as many clients as your connection and hardware can stand. I wonder if Google or Intel or IBM or others really need to buy servers with Linux pre-installed.

Measuring platform usage by sales figures for servers with pre-installed operating systems was only valid when all such systems required a payment for the operating system. As Linux has displaced both UNIX and MS Windows servers, it increasingly invalidates measuring server usage by revenue generated by sales of servers with pre-installed operating systems. With the use of thousands of instances of Linux on a mainframe instead of "farms" of servers, such revenue reports are reduced to a tidbit of financial information to gauge what is making money for vendors rather than a reflection of usage by customers.

GNU/Linux is not a "me too" system except in the fact that its developers will imitate that which they see is useful and discard that which they deem wrong. The process by which Microsoft develops software and treats the source as if it is something magic which only selected wizards may view, was discarded by free software developers as an unscientific way to generate improvements to software. The process selected by free software developers is an adaptation of that which created UNIX, which is one of collaboration. This is not to say that there are no

poor imitations in open source. It's just not the focus of GNU/Linux.

GNU/Linux allows a graphical user interface because it makes sense. This is not an imitation of Microsoft Windows, which was not the first to use a graphical user interface. GNU/Linux will also function in a great variety of systems without any graphical user interface components at all. Microsoft attempted to remove all vestiges of a command line interface from MS Windows, only to have to restore a limited such interface in response to demands from customers who saw its potential in GNU/Linux and other Unix-like systems.

GNU/Linux, in its quest to be a free as in speech replacement for UNIX, has long had the ability to act as a terminal server, servicing thin clients connected to it and thereby distributing its computing power to those clients. Microsoft Windows added such capabilities, in limited fashion, in response to the pre-existing capabilities in UNIX and Unix-like systems.

"[M]e too" has marked Microsoft's tactics from its beginnings. Microsoft began with a port of

public domain BASIC to the Altair computer. MSDOS was a reworked, purchased system called QDOS, which in turn was created from Gary Kildall's CP/M. MS Windows was a combination of the Mac interface and, later, work done in partnership with IBM on OS/2.

Sun represented the major problem for Microsoft during the build out of the Internet. Today, Sun has evolved into a shadow of its former self. With Sun no longer a threat, Microsoft has started a push toward Enterprise Resource Solutions while leveraging its monopoly on the desktop.

In a recent article by Martin Lamonica, he observers:

The company has for years marketed its products to the tech elite within big companies. Now Microsoft is making concerted effort to speak the language of top executives.

Why? Because business managers, marketing executives and other non-techies are increasingly involved in technology purchasing decisions, Microsoft argues. Another reason for the shift is IBM. Microsoft's chief rival in the business software area has been pitching to CEOs for years, relying on its business-savvy consultants to help win deals. In essence, Microsoft needs to speak Big Blue's language.

Martin didn't make this up. He got the information for the basis of his article from Steve Ballmer. At a press conference on March 16th in New York, Ballmer spoke to 500 corporate executives about an overarching plan for business computing.

I have a hard time believing that Microsoft has ever "marketed its products to the tech elite". The main route GNU/Linux and the BSDs have had into companies has been through the back (server) rooms via the "tech elite". Microsoft has used the tactic of selling to CEOs in order to get them using the latest, backwards-incompatible release of MS software in order to pressure all those downstream from the CEO to have to "upgrade" as well. Steve Ballmer saying that there is a shift does not prove that there is a shift. Microsoft doesn't mind lying.

Ballmer has changed his emphasis from developers to business and people with an emphasis on end-user productivity. Ballmer told LaMonica:

We're not anticonsulting (referring to IBM). I just came off the board of Accenture recently. I've been on the board four or five years. This is not about being against consulting. This is about being for empowering people, so they can they can empower their company.

That's a completely different tune for Microsoft. Knowing they have already won the platform wars, Microsoft has started competing for the ERP market space with its Microsoft Dynamics line of integrated business solutions aimed at financial, customer relationship, and supply chain management.

That's not a completely different tune. It's the same old tune played on a different fiddle. If you can stand it, and it doesn't get "revised" in the meantime, check out one of Bill Gates' speeches from July 8, 1998, "This vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information...". I refuse to link to that thing.

As for Microsoft competing for the ERP market space, their 10-Q shows revenue of $423 million from "Business Solutions" (ERP, CRM, MSPP, and SMS&P) for the 6 months ended Dec. 31, 2005. For the same period, "Information Worker" (Office, Project, Visio, LiveMeeting, OneNote, and SharePoint Portal Server CALs) produced $5,677 million and "Server and Tools" (CALS for Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange Server, and other server productsand also includes developer tools, training, certification, Microsoft Press, Premier and Professional product support services, and Microsoft Consulting Services) produced $5,438 in revenue. "Client" (Windows) produced revenue of $6,646.

So ERP produced 7.4%, 7.7%, and 6.3% as much revenue as Office, servers or Windows, respectively. Not exactly their cash cow, but I suppose it might be considered a threat of more drain on individuals and businesses if they start pumping money into ERP. It still appears to me that the biggest unnecessary drains on economies are Office, servers and MS Windows. We all pay for these things, then we pay again for the troubles they cause, then we pay again because goods and services have the ongoing costs of these things added into their prices.

Microsoft says that their business is about people--helping staff across an organization be more productive, make better decisions, and pursue business goals with confidence. Good reasons to cease its Open Source rhetoric

This is what they've claimed to be about for years. Unfortunately, the combination of inadequately tested code, childish security, the obsession with ever more features that people do not want, and the need to continuously change things just for the sake of marketing the latest version of software, have all been anti-productive. These things lead to real costs in downtime, hardware replacement, licensing costs and retraining costs.

Linux advocates have focused on getting the desktop on par with Windows. That's a "me too" strategy. In a perfect world free software should win the hearts and minds of computer users. Unfortunately, secular minded consumers do not understand that technologists need collaboration to evolve. That costs money and Linux doesn't have it.

Linux advocates have focused on a free system. Some developers, such as Linus Torvalds, want the best system kernel in the world. Some developers, such as the KDE group, want a versatile graphical desktop that is not jarringly different from the ubiquitous MS Windows desktop. It is not the same as MS Windows, nor is it limited to imitation. It, like GNOME, can be altered in ways and to a degree that you are simply not allowed to do for MS Windows. Some developers, such as those who work on the various window managers for the X Windows system, choose to create highly customizable desktops that do not necessarily include a "desktop environment". You are free to iconify everything or nothing. Some developers, such as those involved with ImageMagick, choose to provide command line interface tools for editing and manipulating graphical images. I know of nothing in MS Windows to match the versatility and power of such tools.

The money spent by VC's on open source companies won't help Linux. It also won't make openoffice.org a superior productivity suite or Firefox the preferred browser. Linux plays in a niche market when it comes to the desktop.

I really do not understand these assertions. If Venture Capitalists are investing in true open source companies, there is at least the possibility that some of those companies will either develop code or provide feedback to Linux kernel developers which will improve Linux. Likewise for OpenOffice.org. Firefox seems to be doing quite well on its own.

Mr. Adelstein has a great deal more experience in dealing with large businesses and VCs than I, so perhaps he is presenting some message they will surely understand. Perhaps this is a warning to VCs that there are places within open source where their investments are more likely to pay off than funding large, already successful projects, but I don't want to put words in his mouth.

Microsoft doesn't have to worry about Linux catching up like they did when NT 4.0 dominated the corporate landscape. Instead, they have created partnerships with Sugar CRM, JBoss, Apache and other open source stalwarts.

Microsoft has to worry about holding people back with Microsoft products as more and more figure out that GNU/Linux has been leading in almost every area of computing for a long time. Linux works on everything from watches to mainframes. GNU/Linux has been capable of easily providing for almost all users' needs for quite a few years, in spite of many obstacles that result from the goliath's monopoly. GNU/Linux came from nowhere, halted the infiltration of MS into server rooms, and has since been pushing MS out. As more people discover how much easier to use, maintain and adapt that GNU/Linux is versus MS, GNU/Linux attracts more users and developers. It's been simple enough for kindergartners and

Grandmas for years. It's probably even simple enough for CEOs now.

What's Next for Linux then?

Bob Dylan once sang "wasted words proves to warn that he not busy being born Is busy dying." Written in 1965, those lyrics proved prophetic. Without innovation, Linux remains and will remain a "me too" technology effort outside the server domain.

The numbers do not back up these implications of doom. The

desperate antics of Microsoft do not back up these implications. The migrations to GNU/Linux and the new uses businesses make of Linux do not support these implications.

Because most of the desktop applications that people regularly depend upon are mature, these needs are met with existing offerings for GNU/Linux. The only thing holding most people back from using GNU/Linux is inertia. There are a lot of people who want only those applications with which they are familiar, right down to the name. [OSDL Desktop Linux Survey (PDF)]

One problem is that while many millions currently use Linux every day, many more millions could but won't because of so many vocal advisors telling them that, for example, Photoshop doesn't run on Linux. Never mind that a great many people either do not use Photoshop or could better handle their image editing needs with software that does run on Linux. The great mass of people for which Linux is far better suited than MS Windows have little understanding of why it is better suited; they must accept the advice of those they believe are more knowledgeable about computers, on faith.

Nearly every GNU/Linux advocate has a collection of sad war stories about aiding some poor, frustrated MS Windows user out of the tar-pit of spam, spyware, viruses, data-eating crashes, or just plain fumbling mouse clicks. MS Windows will not protect itself from these computer user's mistakes. Linux will. It is heart-breaking to watch people suffer from the consequences of Microsoft's callous, greedy, cold-hearted drive for maintaining barriers to competition instead of concentrating on code quality.

It is equally heart-breaking to see continuous pronouncements of why these suffering persons should continue to suffer instead of making a small, relieving jump to Linux. Let the slow, chicken-hearted corporations and the MS Windows elite "power-users" continue their ceaseless battle with the naive insecurity of MS intertwined products, but let them stop telling the masses, over and over, year after year, that Linux is not quite ready. By the criteria they set, which is porting of the proven low-quality MS software to Linux, it never will be ready.

Sun Microsystems proved that a significant business existed in delivering workstations to enterprises. They differentiated themselves by making proprietary hardware platforms that could do what Microsoft and IBM could not.

Linux has shown it can dominate markets for devices. It can dominate where UNIX once ruled. It has a cost benefit and a technology benefit for people who do not want to use Microsoft's limited development tools. That's something Microsoft developers will never understand.

Apple has shown that it has a significant market for consumer devices and entertainment. Even with its new relationship with Intel, it has managed to maintain a distance from the Wintel business model.

One solution for Linux builds off the Negroponte model of the $100 laptop. Linux could leverage itself beyond the device market with open hardware architecture.

That's a place VC's could invest and see significant leverage. With an open hardware architecture Linux could scale farther than existing platforms and combine existing devices into a robust platform unlike those running Windows.

The Closer Look

Sun Microsystems' open source specifications for the Sparc chip has little appeal. Consider than one more attempt for McNeally to find a niche. Unfortunately for Sun shareholders, it's too little and way too late.

Intel or AMD could engineer an innovative platform with solid state components to give Linux users everything they want including multi-media. That would also provide a stable environment for Independent Software Vendors such as Adobe, Intuit and others to invest in Linux.

Is it time for Linux to innovate and move out of its attempt to provide a "me too" Windows machine? With the rapid innovation in wireless telephones, it might prove useful to create a docking station that turns into a PC with Linux running both devices.

Personally, I have never wanted a "me too" MS Windows machine. They are too limited, irritatingly vulnerable to attacks, too static, too expensive, and too wasteful of whatever hardware you purchase to support them. The only "me too" symptoms I've seen in GNU/Linux was the relatively short-lived window manager called FVWM95 (I note that its sourceforge page was last updated in 2001) and some recent, but misguided, in my opinion, efforts to create a sort of Linux registry.

It appears that a lot of people are scared to use anything that is not exactly what they've seen before, even if what they've seen before causes them much frustration and cost.

While that might not wind up as the principal differentiator, for free software to have a long-term future we need innovation in the Linux market. Perhaps it's time for you to "make somethng up eh".

People have been predicting the demise of free software for many, many years, in spite of all evidence that says it is not only growing, but accelerating in that growth. Its unique characteristics feed that growth. Anyone may use it for any purpose, anyone may study it and adapt it, anyone may distribute it to others, and anyone may improve it and share those improvements. That is a formula for innovation and growth. Reading daily announcements and news online is enough to see that there are lots of people making something up with free software. It looks like Microsoft will once again be trying to play "me too", in a futile attempt to catch up with Linux.

Oh, as for the title, Microsoft never competes. They do everything they can to avoid real competition. See the multitude of lawsuits.

I want to reiterate my respect for Mr. Adelstein's work. It is obvious that we are viewing the state of GNU/Linux from different perspectives. Mr. Adelstein apparently sees the measurable need for greater business uptake of Linux on the desktop and a route to accomplishing that. I see a desperate need for Linux to be used by a great many individuals, now, as it is, to relieve them from the miseries of Microsoft code and to relieve other Internet users from the costs of the fallout.

Clicking through the links above, it should be obvious that there have been and continue to be considerable contributions to free software by businesses. (While all businesses exist to make a profit, they are not all damaging and predatory as is Microsoft). This supports Mr. Adelstein's call for business involvement with Linux.

I just do not feel that those who know about Linux should ever discourage those who can use it now from using it now. When outlining either advantages or disadvantages of Linux, those should be given with respect to specific groups of people. At one time, Linux was suitable for daily use only by real hackers. It is far from that egg state now. The very specific, limited needs of specialized groups which are yet unsatisfied by Linux have no bearing on its suitability for hundreds of millions of ordinary people, now. They need relief. Save a suffering user today.

The fine print:
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Linux specifically refers to the Linux kernel, but is popularly also used to refer to entire operating systems composed of GNU operating system components used with the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux is an accepted way to make a distinction from other systems such as GNU/Hurd or GNU/NetBSD.

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. References to "Unix" or "Unix-like" refer to systems that operate in similar manner to operating systems which have been certified as UNIX systems by The Open Group. The Open Group holds the definition of what a UNIX system is.