Re: Windows and Linux - Why Is It Like This?

From: Robert Heller (heller_at_deepsoft.com)
Date: 10/12/04 

Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 00:46:57 +0200

  Anonymous-Remailer@See.Comment.Header (Pal Molitor),
  In a message on 11 Oct 2004 21:37:09 -0000, wrote :

PM> I am curious about how Windows is the way it is, and hope people
PM> knowledgeable
PM> about the OS business can comment.

[some stuff snipped]

PM>
PM> Why has microsoft failed to improve its OS? They have the example of
PM> linux,
PM> at least for the past few years, as an OS that the average guy can use
PM> successfully;
PM> there is the mac OS, about which I know little, except that it is
PM> considered very good;
PM> and, I believe, IBM's OS2 was considered a superior OS.

Microsoft's problems are several:

First of all they are 'stuck' in a business model where they need to
keep selling 'new versions' in order to have a revenue stream. Since
people won't pay for mere bug and security fixes, Microsoft *needs* to
add 'features', many of which are questionable (and are the cause of
many of the security problems MS-Windows suffers from), in order to
drive sales.

Secondly, because Microsoft code is 'closed source', there is a very
*limited* 'number of eyeballs' looking at the code. Since Linux is
'open source', there is an *unlimited* 'number of eyeballs' looking at
the code. To quote Eric Raymond "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are
shallow" (I think I have the quote right, if not it is close). Linux is
as good as it is *because* it is open source. Probably the only way to
bring MS-Windows up to the qualitative standard of Linux would be to go
open source. This is what Apple did with MacOSX (at least for the
'kernel' level by going to the BSD kernel).

Microsoft also seems to have a 'fixation' that it is primarily an
'operating system' company. The problem with this is that most users
don't know what an 'operating system' is (in any deep sense). Most
people could care less what operating system their computer runs, so
long as the *applications* they use will run on it. Microsoft *could*
open source MS-Windows and/or port MS-Office to Linux, if they wanted
to. This would free them up from having to deal with all of the
various problems with MS-Windows and concentrate on making MS-Office
better, which is really all their customer base really cares about.
They don't want to do that because that would move them out of the
'operating system' business. At this point Microsoft is the *only*
major player that 'sells' an operating system and expects to actually
make money doing so. There are basically no other companies that sell
an O/S and make money doing so. The other (major) 'closed' O/Ss are
all 'sold' by hardware makers (IBM, Apple, Sun, HP, and SGI), who make
their money selling hardware NOT selling the O/Ss. The 'commercial'
Linux companies don't make money 'selling the operating system' -- they
all make money on service contracts.

PM>
PM>
PM> -=-
PM> This message was posted via two or more anonymous remailing services.
PM>
PM>
PM>
PM>
PM>

                                     \/
Robert Heller ||InterNet: heller@cs.umass.edu
http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/~heller || heller@deepsoft.com
http://www.deepsoft.com /\FidoNet: 1:321/153

         

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