Re: Longhorn strategy a secret?
From: Sean Hederman (usemy_at_blogentry.com)
Date: 03/25/05
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Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 13:44:12 +0200
<Jeremy.Deats@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1111682987.678814.254790@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>I don't want to get into a long Windows vs Linux debate, but to be fair
> I've seen statisitics that show Linux gaining and losing market share
> over the next few years. Many people in influencital positions with
> vastly difference opinions. I think our personal experiences can create
> a bit of biase. Let's limit the Windows vs Linux debate to this: If
> Linux and MacOS continue to gain market share, Microsoft would be
> complelled to recover that market share and if they could find a way to
> eleminate one of the two through means that already work within their
> existing strategies that path may make the most sense.
For starters we're assuming that these OS's will continue to gain market
share indefinately, which as I've indicated, I have some doubts about. In a
scenario where a "perfect storm" of sudden Linux desktop acceptance and
massive Mac gains occurs, then I do agree that MS would have to start
worrying. Such a scenario, even in the most optimistic scenarios, is still
years away, so there's not much point in MS planning for it now. Especially
if there's a pretty good chance that such a thing will not come to pass.
> So we can see Microsoft embracing more open standards. We've had SOAP
> for a very long time now, we've had the .NET Framework for a long time
> now. We can see XAML and products like Indigo on the horizons, this
> technologies are only going to abstract more.
I agree that embracing open standards is often very helpful (especially to
us poor schmucks doing cross-platform integration), and I think MS is doing
good work in this. I think that their main reason for this is that they've
realised that other OS's will be around for years to come, and if they don't
play nice then people will switch. As for abstracting technologies further
and further, at some point the abstractions become so divorced from reality
that they lose all usability
(http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html).
> Of course decoupling applications from the OS is a enormous task, but
> I think we've seen Microsoft embracing this strategy for many years
> now.
Decoupling applications from the OS is virtually impossible. What .NET is
allowing us to do is the same as Java: provide a "logical" OS that can in
theory be implemented anywhere. Said applications are still coupled to that
virtual platform however, and if that virtual platform has services only
available on Microsoft Windows...
> Most consumers don't understand technology at a detail level, but the
> personal computer has been with us for almost a generation now. It's
> kind of startling that only one primary OS dominates so much market
> share.
Not really, it actually makes a lot of sense. People want systems that
easily interoperate with their friends, families and work systems. Similarly
businesses want systems that interoperate with their customers, vendors and
employees systems. Given that, we can easily see that once an OS started
becoming big in any of these spheres it would quickly "spread" to the
others. I think the surprise was that nobody really thought it would be the
home PC wagging the dog.
> I think customers are feeling comfortable enough with the
> technology to start looking at alternatives and around Windows we've
> had two extreems, MacOS and Linux, but MacOS is becoming less expensive
> and more powerful (in terms of allowing users to do what they want to
> do with a desktop PC) and Linux is becoming more user friendly.
And both have made great strides in interoperating with Windows, which is
perhaps more important. Such interoperability allows for lower barriers to
switching operating systems. It remains to be seen if Apple can trade on
their good name enough to make significant inroads into the desktop market.
Similarly, I've been hearing about how Linux is going to take off in that
space for years now with no appreciable follow-through. Maybe this year,
maybe next, maybe in five years, maybe never.
> There's no good analogy, but this one comes somewhat close: So the way
> it's been consumers have a choice between a Honda Accord (Windows) a
> BMW 3-Series (MacOS) or Ford Mustang GT stock car package (Linux). The
> line between the three has been blured.and continues to become more
> blured. As that continues to happen the choice of the consumer becomes
> more difficult and that will translate into a loss of Microsoft's
> market share and a gain for the other two (and I agree MacOS probably
> stands the most to gain).
The blurring you're talking about will only really take effect once there is
one single platform to develop against. Whether this will be Java or .NET or
something else remains to be seen.
> The other side of this coin is the rise of open source products and
> consumer acceptance of open source products. I think FireFox has proven
> Windows customers are become more accepting of open source
> applications. If it's a solid application that brings new features to
> the table, the average customer probably doesn't care where it comes
> from. So there are projects such as Mono that could gain ground and
> also help push Microsoft in the direction of Linux.
None of these open source projects has yet gained serious market share on
the desktop space. Firefox looks the most promising, but a lot of users
switched to it as they believed it would be inherently more secure. If more
major Firefox vulnerabilities appear acceptance might slow down drastically.
Keep in mind that another reason Firefox was gaining was due to the lack of
interest MS showed in updating IE. If they put a serious effort into this,
they might be able to take back some of the Firefox market share. As for
Mono, I doubt it will "push" Microsoft anywhere. MS will continue to extend
and update .NET, and gradually port products to .NET. If some of those
products happen to work on Mono, great. If not, they won't care. In fact I
think the biggest advantage of Mono to MS will be to allow them to more
easily and cheaply provide Office for Mac.
In any case, I personally don't think that moving to Linux is the panacea
OSS advocates claim it will be.
I've blogged a bit on my feelings about OSS versus CSS here:
http://codingsanity.blogspot.com/2005/03/is-oss-better.html
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