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Eternal Coexistence?
Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:23 PM EDT

This is fascinating, although I'm not at all sure modelling is a reliable predictor of the future. It's an interview with two Harvard Business School professors who used economic modelling to try to figure out if Linux can defeat or severely cripple Microsoft. The answer was no. Neither Microsoft nor Linux can get rid of the other, barring, I assume, martial law or some such, as I always say, or out-and-out illegal behavior:

"Using formal economic modelling, professors Pankaj Ghemawat and Ramon Casadesus-Masanell consider the competitive dynamics of the software wars between Microsoft and open source.…

"Ultimately, the authors believe, neither side is likely to be forced from the battlefield—Microsoft has too much market share and OSS offers too many benefits for users. But there are strategies each can use successfully against the other, as they detail in this e-mail interview."

They list a number of things Microsoft can do to stay in the running competitively, most of which they are already doing. What I got from the study is that FUD matters, and so, then, does antiFUD. Getting governments to switch to Linux also matters tremendously, if you are thinking competitively.

But that's just the thing. No one on this side does much of that. It's a very odd war, then, with only one side warring. Linux doesn't war with Microsoft. Nobody that I know cares about that. There probably are some in the community that do, but I don't personally know them. Maybe Red Hat has pins on a map of the world in a "war room" somewhere.

But us users -- and we are the drivers of Linux, even according to the study -- just love software that works, that we can control and understand, and that doesn't spy on us or enable malware behind our backs. I don't care what Microsoft does or doesn't do, as long as it's not trying to hobble or destroy software that I want to use instead of their product. I've never seen how the consumer benefits from a kill-off-the-competition war mentality. It just limits our choices. I understand, that's Microsoft's idea of a good thing. So it's Microsoft that views it as a war, and they only do that because it's their mindset. But if this paper is correct, they are wasting bullets and they might just as well calm down and just do their best to improve their software. Because no matter what they do, Linux is here to stay.

The paper, "Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows", will be published in a special issue of Management Science. One point it makes that might interest SCO and ADTI:

One main advantage of open source software is that because users can modify the code directly (as they encounter problems or have new ideas on how to improve it), the development cycle is significantly shorter.

Significantly shorter means development moves more rapidly than in the proprietary software world. Just a little hint.

The professors explain something about their methodology:

First of all, let us make a caveat regarding our approach. Our methodology is formal economic modelling. What this means is that we construct a stylized mathematical model of the relationship. The model captures what we believe are the most important features of the Linux-Windows competitive battle (faster demand-side learning on the part of Linux and an initial installed base advantage for Windows), but makes important assumptions regarding other aspects. Without these simplifications, the model would not be tractable and it would not be possible to obtain results. After having analyzed the base model, we relax some of these assumptions.

In other words, they thought of all the important things that might tip the scales and tested for that. It's like when you go to the doctor with a bad sore throat. There are a number of things the doctor can test you for, to see what made you get a sore throat. But if what is making you sick isn't on his list of things to test for, he can't tell you what you have.

It's the same here. And they seem to have left out the single most important, to me, factor: freedom. Knowing your computer is yours, with no outside force influencing what it does, or hindering you as to what you can do with it -- that is what GNU/Linux means to me. And there isn't a thing Microsoft can do to win that "battle", because their products spy on you and control you every waking second. It's the X factor the Harvard professors didn't think to factor in. In the end, though, thinking globally, it's the factor that, I believe, has the means to tip the scales most powerfully, one way or the other.


  


Eternal Coexistence? | 173 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections
Authored by: IRJustman on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:28 PM EDT
Post 'em if ya got 'em!

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT linkage
Authored by: IRJustman on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:29 PM EDT
Be sure to make them clickable, and be sure to post as HTML.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:31 PM EDT
What's the time frame for this study?? How old is Microsoft? 30 Years?? How old
is Linux? 20 Years?? Sorry, I don't think too much can be predicted. Granted
it's entertaining stuff.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:46 PM EDT
PJ,

The paper, "Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows", will be published in a special issue of Management Science.

Is this the same MANAGEMENT SCIENCE?

If you are still not feeling well, I hope you get better
a florida resident

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:48 PM EDT
Way off your rocker on this one:
But that's just the thing. No one on this side does much of that. It's a very odd war, then, with only one side warring. Linux doesn't war with Microsoft. Nobody that I know cares about that. There probably are some in the community that do, but I don't personally know them. Maybe Red Hat has pins on a map of the world in a "war room" somewhere.
RMS wars against closed source software. There are plenty of MSFT-haters in the Linux community; maybe you don't know them personally. You probably also don't know Bill Gates personally, either. But it doesn't take much effort to find MSFT-haters in the Linux community. PJ, I appreciate Groklaw and I love tracking SCO's legal issues on the site. I love hearing about the legal hoops SCO attempts to lead the court through, and your way of piercing it. However, comments like this are just plain wrong.

[ Reply to This | # ]

"Consider SCO, a small Swiss-based "vulture" firm"
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:52 PM EDT
Hmm, these distinguished professors seem to have
a problem with geography...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Feature for you, usability for others
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:53 PM EDT
While freedom may be the most important feature for users of Linux, it is not
the end all/be all feature. If that were true, Windows would have died years
ago. What a majority of people want is soemthing easy to install, a program
where they install it and forget aout it. They want automatically installed
patches with no prompting by them. Tell them to get the latest ISO from a
torrent and their eyes gloss over. Linux is moving ever sowly towards this.
The problem is ease-of-use is contradictory to freedom to do what you want.

Twench

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 12:55 PM EDT
There is another reason Linux won't be pushed off the field. Because it is
driven by users and shared freely, Linux simply CANNOT BE STOPPED! How can you
tell two people that they are not allowed to share the fruits of their own labor
with each other? How can you (morally or practically) make that illegal?

Look, for example, at the fabulous Debian Sarge that was just released, and the
Debian Sid from which it derived. Sid is an amazing resource, a high quality
collection of packages from software authors all over the world pulled together
under a robust package management infrastructure and installation system. There
are over 1000 individuals in dozens of countries who all contribute to the
Debian process of fixing bugs, adding features, writing and translating
documentation, educating and evangelizing new users, and generally continually
improving everything. There are mirrors of Debian at every major university on
the planet, and the user base is dedicated and growing. To stop them would
require a global police action the coordination of which would make the
formation of the coalition to invade Iraq look like child's play.

Debian will always be free, it will always be there, and nobody, not Microsoft,
not Hollywood, can ever stop it or probably even slow it down.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 01:00 PM EDT
The big problem with this is that Linux' existence and growth can't be explained
by economic models without taking account a large positive value for some parts
of the market purely in the philosophical underpinnings of free software/open
source.

That alone means that Linux "never loses" unless the dynamics of the
software profession changes - economic changes alone will never be sufficient to
remove Linux from the market. The only thing that will displace Linux would be a
better open source alternative - but it's much more likely that such a
transition would mean a vast migration of Linux code (drivers etc.) rather than
a wholesale switch.

More importantly: _Windows_ can never totally displace Linux because there are
people that would never touch Windows even if Bill Gates were to donate Windows
(including source) to the public domain and go to live out his life in a
monastary.

That is not true for Windows - I've never met _anyone_ that believe so deeply in
the value of Windows that they'd never consider alternatives. They might not
believe there are valid alternatives now, but that's another matter.

This in itself makes their models flawed.

Vidar

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 01:07 PM EDT
I was a ghost writer on an economic study on just such a topic. There was always
this mysterious third party funding the whole thing. The two factors that matter
most were marginal cost of goods and switching cost. The mysterious third party
wanted to know just how high the switching costs needed to be to lock people in.
Turns out if the cost of goods is the same, it doesn't have to be very high at
all. Then they wanted all the models rerun (took supercomputer power to begin
with), using a market place with different costs of goods, with one of the costs
set as free. This breaks the symmetry and there just wasn't enough computational
power available-- i.e. an intractable problem.

Other analysis showed that with extremely low marginal cost of goods, a
competitor is always viable and a monopoly is near impossible. You just can't
squelch free very easily. The third party was not happy with the result, but the
paper won some economic awards.

On the other hand it did show with equal costs of goods and future investment
knowledge, most market places tended towards two players, with an occasional
monopoly forming. Then the monopoly would exist for a period of time till it
quit investing in quality. A whole bunch of competitors spring up to fill the
quality void, and the whole thing narrows down over time to 2 competitors again.
This is in a symmetric model. Free and open source model breaks the symmetry in
the software market to the point that the dynamics are very different and
traditional business investors are at a loss on competition strategies.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oh come on.
Authored by: Zak3056 on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 01:25 PM EDT
But that's just the thing. No one on this side does much of that. It's a very odd war, then, with only one side warring. Linux doesn't war with Microsoft. Nobody that I know cares about that. There probably are some in the community that do, but I don't personally know them.

Come on, PJ, this is just an out-and-out lie. The tone of quite a few stories posted on GL makes it quite clear that Groklaw (or at least you personally) have definitely taken a side and started shooting. I also find it extremely hard to believe that "nobody you know" cares about that--I know quite a few people who do, and I've read the writings of dozens or hundreds more... quite a few of which have posted comments to that effect here on GL over the years.

BTW, I say this as someone who is sympathetic to the anti-MS cause.

[ Reply to This | # ]

There are exceptions...
Authored by: nanook on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 01:31 PM EDT
...to every generalisation P.J... A link...
"Enough is Enough...You're on Your own!"

Some rather well known (inside the GNU/Linux Community at least); and some not so well known (probably) personalities have opinions and express them. The collaborative effect would be far greater if more of the uninformed were given the facts, and an answer to the old question; "Who cares?".

By the way, isn't that one of the things your blog is dedicated to doing? (-;

C.

---
PJ has permission to use any of my ramblings in any way she chooses without any restrictions whatsoever. But she's too intelligent for that. (-:

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: hdw on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 01:54 PM EDT
I do think that you can't model 'users' that simply.

I'd say that there's three kinds of users:
Type 1. private users who cares what they run
Type 2. private users who don't care what they run
Type 3. corporate users

The sad part is that type 2 and 3 are many more than type 1.

Being the local Dr Broadband I'm the one the neighbourhood calls when their
computers fails to work since they're overloaded with worms, viruses and
trojans.
But I still have to go thru the complete sales pitch to get 'em to accept
Thunderbird and Firefox.

I normally win with Tbird and Firefox, but I normally lose with OpenOffice.
Why should I use this free but not exactly office package when I can use this
free (pirated that is) Ms Office?

The reason I fail is that people simply don't give a pidgeon about free,
non-free, legal or illegal software.
They want something they think they can handle, like the stuff they use at the
office.

So the reason that Tbird and Firefox have their success is not due to their
function, it down to two things:
1. they do (in a somewhat nice manner) quite exactly the same as IE and OE
2. IE and OE suck such magnificient elephant balls thru 40 meters of dry and
narrow garden hose that even j.random home user knows it.

The breakthrough of the Linux desktop is far away I'm afraid, and it's main
opponent is Microsoft but software pirates.
Home users either use the bundled XP that the box came with , or a pirate copy.
So why switch to a 'free' desktop, they didn't pay for the one they've got.
Please note that type 2 users are the majority, 'free' means free as in beer for
them, not free as in speech.

So, wierd enough, the best thing that can happen to a 'free' desktop is
Microsoft using as draconian antipirate measures as they can.

If OpenOffice is pitched against a fully paid MS Office it stands a chance, if
it's pitched against a pirate copy it'll lose.

Then we have type 3, and they're important, since people (sometimes) gets
training to use the software they're forced to use at the office.
And since they're used to MS Office at work, they want MS Office at home.

So why aren't companies using more Linux desktops and Open Office?
We did a quick survey at my company and sure, we could replace 100.000 desktops
running MS (95/98/w2k/XP) (yes 95) and ms office with a free desktop and we
would save a lot of money on support.
Sure, we would have to invest a little bit in the IT people, but we would save
it over and over again.

But we wont.
Why?
The GPL.
If I go to my managers and say "we can replace this expensive software with
this free one, but we'll have to invest some (like 1/10 of the support for the
one we're using)".
They'll ask, "ok, can we sell this solution to our customers?"
When I answer "yes, but we'll have to supply them with the source",
the project is dead.

It's not about economics,it's not about commons sense.
It's about the word 'must'.

We do have OSS projects running, but they're all BSD licensed.
And it's still not about economics, or about about common sense, it's all about
the single word 'must'.


[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Nick_UK on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 02:05 PM EDT
I can't see how they can do a comparison.

Linux is here. Thousands, if not millions of people use
it and hack it and do whatever they want with it. It has
been invented, and will not ever go away now, with people
at home just using it, coding it, adding to it - all for
fun - like me.

It's here.

Microsoft on the other hand have to rely on people buying
the stuff... and hoping they keep buying the stuff.

The only one I can see dying is the one that relies on a
financial gain to exist - hobbies never die.

Linux, in one free form or another is here to stay now
forever more.

Nick

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hating Microsoft? Not exactly.
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 02:09 PM EDT
In regard to "hating Microsoft":

Could it be said that Microsoft has created its own opponents?

Someone from Microsoft (Gates, or Ballmer? IIRC it was one or the other, or
someone else almost equally prominent)
said back in the 1980s that the goal of the company was to write "100% of
the software which runs on 100% of the world's computers" and clearly the
strategies have all along been in accordance with this openly-stated goal.

Now the problem:
Among computer users and programmers there are the new equivalents of the hotrod
specialists, the customizers, the tinkerers, the shadetree mechanics. These
people are a small minority of the general population. Other things being equal,
these people probably would not care very much if 90% of the users would want to
use the same commercial product. But Microsoft has never left these people in
peace.

Just how Microsoft has not left these people in peace is a long list, told
elsewhere, in great detail, over the years.

To use my own self as an example: I started using Linux back when Win95 came
out. I tried their product and felt that I was in a straitjacket. I did not want
their product, did not want to use it, and wiped it from my computer. I _really_
did not want to be forced to use it. And as the years have gone by, I have
become increasingly resentful of their unceasing efforts to force me to use
their product whether I want it or not.

Thus, what started off as a personal decision has ended up with me actively
participating in Linux development. One among several motivations for this is
that I am sick and tired of having the Godfather make yet another
"offer" which I "cannot refuse."

I strongly suspect that my personal example can be multiplied by several hundred
thousand at least. And it seems that this is something which the leaders of
Microsoft do not understand, do not want to understand, will never understand,
and if they understand they will not care. Because, as they said years ago, they
want it all. They don't intend to leave me alone, and they have openly said so.

Well, I guess there are those who would call my attitudes "hatred" but
that's not the way I would put it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 02:11 PM EDT
"Knowing your computer is yours, with no outside force influencing what it does, or hindering you as to what you can do with it -- that is what GNU/Linux means to me."
I have to disagree with you here Pamela.

Most Joe Sixpaks do not know that M$ is hindering/reporting/controlling what they do, and hence are unable to compare the difference.

Until M$ start to enforce DRM and Joe Sixpac then realises that something is happening (or not, as the case may be), change will not happen.

Howard - and I still haven't set up an account :)

[ Reply to This | # ]

One sided war and The Legions of Choice
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 02:16 PM EDT
Ahem, PJ, you do know most people on your forum are very well behaved? I
know you delete overly offensive stuff (and questionable humor, me silly
European should have known better than to involve The President in one of
my weird jokes), but still, I think this forum essentially is a bunch of adults
on
their best behavior.

But just visit some other fora and you wouldn't say this is a one-sided war,
even if your assessment, although a bit too sugary to my taste, is true.

Go to /. if you want to see "some" individuals who do want to wage war
on MS
and think they are winning it big time every day. Be it one of my venerable
colleagues from the Other Side of the Jobs Distortion Field - what a show this
monday, eh? Doesn't get any better than this, the suspense, the betrayal, the
doubt, the slow acceptation, and of course admiration for the man with the
biggest balls that side of the ocean, ahem, carrying on - or someone from the
Linux squadron. They're trolling and flaming and joyously clicking their way
over the battlefield taking
no prisoners at all !

Well, since most people don't bother to go read that stuff, it's more like a
super sneaky surprise attack that first has to pass multitudes of committees
and oversight boards, but they'll get there one day, maybe tomorrow (like
Linux desktop ahaha-oops, sorry, still nervous since monday).

I do think however that everybody who's put their money (literally here) onto
Linux is not just idly standing by, either, although you don't often see the
dreaded FUD cannons the other side seems to favor. I wouldn't call it a state
of peace, and I don't hear them saying "can't we just talk about it?"
either.

BTW love what you're doing here, don't really care who you are, never thought
I'd be so interested in the LAW...

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • ? - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 08 2005 @ 04:24 AM EDT
So many assumptions...
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 02:22 PM EDT
Assumptions made but not stated in the article:
1) Lower hardware profits don't affect Microsoft's ability to bundle Windows
with OEM computers
2) Microsoft is able to bring their security issues under control
3) Other countries (especially China and India) don't abandon Windows in favor
of Linux (IMO this analysis seems to be US centric)
4) Existing corporate windows users don't switch to Linux based systems
(relatively free and less demanding software) instead of Microsoft upgrades
because of the need to cut expenses (IT budgets continue to climb even with
outsourcing in full swing)
5) Longhorn upgrade is seriously delayed or reduced to a non-event and provides
a significant opportunity for business adoption of Linux

All in all this model seems to be "assume no fundamental changes for the
next five years" approach. Considering that the computer world is long
overdue for a fundamental change, it's not likely that we will cruise along
"steady as she goes" for five years.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: aanderson on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 02:49 PM EDT
Anyone who claims to be able to forecast anything 'scientifically' in economics
is smoking something.

It's not for nothing economics is known as 'the dismal science'.

My guess is, once Linux reaches a certain mindshare, a 'tipping point', there
will be absolutely no advantage for anyone staying with Microsoft, and it will
suffer the same fate as DEC, Compaq, and numerous others, and dwindle to
obscurity.

So what am I smoking?





---
Anything NOT worth doing is NOT worth doing well.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Customer Dissatisfaction Modeling Error.
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 02:50 PM EDT
It would be my guess that models are based on ratonal actions.

But customers who are dissatisfied with their present situation are often
motivated to change and to do so based on less rational factors. If MS abuses
their customers (as monopolists always do) then there could be greater bias in
favor of other options.

In short, some may PAY MORE to be free of the abuse. Combining this with the
availabilty of open source which may cost LESS, you can toss these studies out
the window.


[ Reply to This | # ]

Everything permanent short term - Everything temporary long term
Authored by: eamacnaghten on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 02:55 PM EDT
To say Microsoft or Linux are here to stay for ever is somewhat short sighted.

Microsoft's position is not 100% certain. I believe Bill Gates often mentions this himself and reminds his troops of the dangers of complacency. Microsoft came from almost nothing very quickly, and they know they could return there just as quickly.

If you consider Linux to be "The kernel derived from Linux Torvald's work at Helsinki" then that, as an entity, can also disappear. It can be replaced by something better and more popular. However, ro most people, Linux is not that. It is the concept of genuinely abnd enforced shared computer code for the benefit of all. That has been around since the beginnings of computers and predates the Linux kernel, and is almost impossible to destroy.

The article should have been the co-existance between proprietary and free (or open) software.

These have co-existed a lot, there is nothing new there. What is happening though is the business model surrounding these.

A decade or so ago it was common for a software company to make approximateky 80% of it's revenue through software license sales. Now they would be lucky to make as much as 50% - odten it is much less. It is now near impossible for a company to exist on software licensing alone, and they need to do it through added on services, such as support, web services (on line ordering etc) and so on. FLOSS simply takes this to it's logical conclusion, by reducing price of the initial software to zero, it also nearly eliminates the cost of it by using freely available FLOSS modules. Most costs are incurred by bespoking and implementing, and revenue earned through services.

Microsoft, of course, is still a company whose revenue relies almost entirely on software licenses. It is desparate to minimize the impact of the zero implementation cost solutions coming to the fore. However, I do not see them doing anything else than eventually lose that battle, all they can do is to delay the inevitable by abusing their monopolistic position in producing un-interople solutions and licenses and by the good old tried and tested method of FUD. Than and also reducing the cost of their software to as low as they can, especially where FLOSS is strong (IE is free, MSDE free to combat MySQL, IIS now included with Widnows server and so on).

Also - something better than Linux will eventually come along, though it also will probably be FLOSS and may well make use of Linux code in it. To say Linux will be here foreever is also just as wrong.

The question is not "Linux and Microsoft" coexisting, but "Free and Proprietary". But what consists as free and what as proprietary will change. The Linux OS, Mozilla browsers and OpenOffice.org's suite will almost guarantee that all user OS's, browsers (email etc) and office programs will be near free as in beer, and get cheaper as time goes on. Linux, Apache, MySQL/Postgres, PHP/Perl/Python, Samba and so on will ensure the price of servers is reigned in. Any company, even one as big as Microsoft, that relies on license sales has their revenue at risk. I am not saying that proprietary software will dissappear, what I am saying is that what software remains non-free (as in beer) will become less and less amd tha no prorietary company, not even Microsoft, will be able to make enough monmey just by selling software.

Web Sig: Eddy Currents

[ Reply to This | # ]

Are we at war?
Authored by: Nick Bridge on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 04:00 PM EDT
Wow.

I imagine that other factors with decide whether Microsoft leaves the field or
not.

Now to my real point.

I, personally, consider myself very much at war. And not just with Microsoft.
I think that GNU and Linux are very useful tools in this war.

Here is my reasoning:
1. Microsoft, amongst others, have perpetrated acts against computer users and
innovators since conception, and me personally.
These number too many to mention, but making Windows fail to install if it
detected DR-DOS and, of course, illegally forcing Netscape out of the market are
two of my favorites.

2. Microsoft have a proven track record of illegal behavior. They have a
massive war chest, and are prepared to use any means to benefit themselves.

3. They are fully prepared to hurt their own customers. They have done so in
the past, and I have no reason to suspect they will stop.
They will modify their user interface, to ensure a learning curve, from moving
widgets around, to changing the location and names of configurations.
They'll modify protocols to ensure that interoperability with Microsoft is
permanently expensive - making running a heterogenous environment (is there any
other?) costly.
They plan to build DRM into the OS, preferably from the CPU, through the
motherboard, and on up - this removes the users' control completely - they (we)
will be totally beholden to Microsoft and peers.
They already send information "home", is there any reason to suspect
that in a DRM world, we will be allowed to even read the information sent?

4. They have repeatedly made agreements with others which end up hurting us the
other parties and the industry as a whole. They will continue to do so.

5. They are bribing congress. Sorry LOBBYING congress to benefit Microsoft,
and take away many of our freedoms. Why this process is legal is beyond me.
Why we stand for it, more so.

6. They have directly moved to attack Open Source and Free Software. Don't be
taken in by their "olive branch", no agreement or understanding with
Microsoft will benefit anyone but Microsoft - the battleground is littered with
examples. As a participant in Open Source and Free Software, I am personally in
the line of fire. I am being attacked - yes I am at war. Many of their
licensing agreements specifically attack FOSS. I believe that one of their
developer runtime binary licenses even disallows releasing the developers own
creations as Free Software. Meaning that as a developer you cannot use that
particular developer tool to create FOSS. Is this legal?

7. Their licensing agreements should scare anyone into an early grave. Check
out the Windows XP Professional license if you're into chills.

8. Microsoft is singularly responsible for a network of hosts so vulnerable
that a handful for hackers have built legions of zombies that can take down all
but the largest of internet infrastructures at will.

Is that ever taken into consideration when calculating TCO?

9. Microsoft has, at least once, bought a major software company overseas,
alledgedly to threaten a foreign government.

Stay tuned...

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 04:02 PM EDT
I wonder if their model could have predicted the rise of Microsoft in the first
place...

Technology prediction models are by definition impossible, since advances in the
marketplace are often pushed by disruptive technology.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 04:39 PM EDT
It doesn't matter if Linux becomes the number one desktop system. If it gets any
significant amount of market share , like 20%, it will do terrible damage to MS.
Because it is a monopoly, MS is able to charge very high prices, control
standards, and most desktop software is writen for it only. These advantages in
turn allow it to expand into other areas.

If Linux gets significant market share, then MS is no longer a monopoly. It
would have to lower its prices, it would lose control of standards, and software
developers would write for Linux, too. MS would no longer be the 800 pound
gorilla of the software world, but instead just another big company, and it
wouldn't be able to leverage its monopolies to expand into other areas.

Also, I was puzzled that the analysts didn't mention OO or Firefox. MS's
problems with oss are much larger than they seem to understand and they
interlock in various ways, so you will go wrong if you just analyse one area in
isolation.

--Eduardo

[ Reply to This | # ]

Effect of adding a third party ...
Authored by: NZheretic on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 04:41 PM EDT
What happens to the economic model if Apple decides to directly compete with Microsoft for sales though the same OEMs?

See Apple+Intel:Mac 924 Vs Microsoft Gremlin & Linux Mini-van.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Reality will prove this wrong
Authored by: DaveJakeman on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 05:24 PM EDT
Another reason this study looks silly is it's impossible to predict wild
happenings like SCO vs IBM that might occur along the line. Step back a few
years and reconsider: would you expect a company that peddles Linux to suddenly
be a threat to Linux? Too difficult to predict. Reality teaches us that
unpredictable wildcards are the norm, not the exception.

What we experienced this time around was unfavourable towards Linux; the next
Significant Unpredictable Event might go the other way. Who knows.

Modelling models our expectations after we have expressed what our expectations
are in terms of a model, so why not just say what our expectations are in the
first place? Reality will prove us wrong, because the thing we didn't expect to
happen is to be expected to happen.

---
Should one hear an accusation, first look to see how it might be levelled at the
accuser.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Linux has a Quality ratchet
Authored by: SilverWave on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 05:43 PM EDT



Linux has a Quality ratchet

As good ideas do not get lost forever, because of the company going out of business etc, there is over time, an incremental increase in quality that is guaranteed for Linux/FOSS.

Taxpayers should not have to pay twice.

Governments are always looking to cut costs and are huge contributors to computer research and buyers of os & app code.

Now the temptation to go FOSS for these projects and gain from the lack of vendor lock-in, will be very hard to resist.

On first principles it will be harder, over time, to argue that when spending public money on a project, that you should spend it with a proprietary company, where you only get the benefit of the money invested in a one off way.

Contrast this with gaining your application through FOSS and the next time a similar solution is needed everyone can pull from the pool of knowledge already paid for.

So my argument would be that FOSS will end up being seen as a way of multiplying the affect of your tax dollars. As well as being the "right" way to use public funds e.g. the taxpayer has already paid for this code, so putting it out as FOSS for them to use for free in other projects, seems to be the fair way of doing things.

Microsoft will not last forever

Don’t believe the people with short memories, Microsoft is just another software company and they come and they go.

Bill is very smart & he got very lucky & knows it, but look at the internet... Microsoft did not read this correctly and almost missed the boat.

Something similar will come around or Longhorn will cost too much, be too late etc.

Things move on.

In the mean time the FOSS code base gets bigger & better and cannot be bought out or co-opted.

One day MS will make one too many wrong decisions and *Boom* LINUX will pickup the slack.

Microsoft needs to keep on being lucky year after year...

Linux only needs to be lucky once.

---
"They [each] put in one hour of work,
but because they share the end results
they get nine hours... for free"

Firstmonday 98 interview with Linus Torvalds

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 08:59 PM EDT
"because their [Microsoft's] products spy on you and control you[r] every
waking second"

Yep, no FUD zone here alright...

[ Reply to This | # ]

OK as far as it goes
Authored by: jeleinweber on Tuesday, June 07 2005 @ 10:00 PM EDT
It's nice to see academics paying attention to this issue. And from the
referenced article, they may have made a genuine contribution. It would not do,
however, to overestimate the applicability of the results. I don't think the
authors do, themselves. It would be a pity if the critics did.

A few things which the interview didn't touch are some of the economic motives
for open source.

* It's a mistake to model FLOSS software as being done only by amateur
volunteers. A lot of it, and indeed an increasing amount of it, is being done
by paid professionals. Apple's ACID2 compliance work for Safari, most of the
Linux kernel developers, most of the main Apache developers are just 3 of the
prominent examples. There are multiple reasons for this.

First, if you are a hardware vendor, software is a economic complement. It's
classic microeconomics that you can improve your position if the cost of your
complements goes down. This provides an incentive to pay people to work on
FLOSS, particularly in connection with embedded systems.

Second, perhaps 95% of software is written for use, not for sale. My own
organization has a sideline in "proficiency testing"; in the US the
last time I counted there were only about 13 organizations doing this (the
College of American Pathologists is the big one). You can't buy software for
this; the market isn't big enough for anyone to sell it to you. So you have to
write it yourself. Any help you get from FLOSS reduces your costs.

The Apache web server is an interesting example - it _is_ the market leader, and
it started as a group of people sharing patches with each other. The use value
is so high that lots of people are paid by companies like IBM to work on it.

* Another point not touched on: the desire to avoid vendor lock-in. This is a
core freedom value, and it has definite commercial importance. My own
organization made a choice last year for a J2EE platform, and two of the
competitors were Oracle and IBM. The fact that IBM had a bigger FLOSS ecosystem
around its toolchain (Eclipse-based) and that we had a better exit strategy from
Websphere than from Oracle's stuff was one of the deciding factors for us.

Or compare all the stories of how organizations with viable desktop migration
R&D projects suddenly manage to negotiate much better licensing terms from
Microsoft.

* Yet another point: royalty free and well-documented file formats, with FLOSS
implementations. Some of the data my organization holds has retention
requirements of 12, 26, or 60 years. This is longer than any given hardware or
software technology, which gives us migration problems going forward. Tape
hardware technologies, in particular, only last about a decade. Meanwhile,
commercial backup software vendors get bought out, merged, and products
abandoned at the drop of a proxy. We are growing Really Fond of having portable
source code for the retrieval programs, because it removes the OS as a factor
the next time we need to change tape technologies.

* If you aren't from one of the top 30 languages, you can't get native language
stuff from commercial vendors. FLOSS, where you can do it yourself, is your
only hope.

* There is currently a significant cost advantage for FLOSS on security tools
and uptime. We don't have to buy antivirus software for our Linux boxes, or
anti-spyware, or a bunch of other monitoring and management stuff. We're
probably paying for $1500 of extra software per Microsoft server that's just
irrelevant or included on the Linux side. And we don't have to reboot the Linux
servers weekly or monthly to keep OS bitrot at bay. A former commercial Unix
box did need to be rebooted about every 60 days, though :-)

Meanwhile, FLOSS advocates shouldn't be too complacent.

Microsoft retains the networking effect advantage of the biggest installed base
and application ecosystem. That isn't going away any time soon, if ever, as the
authors note.

Microsoft has been investing heavily in code quality analysis tools. The last
time security gadfly Mike Zaleski did Fuzz testing (random input) related to a
certain class of web browser vulnerabilities, the only one which didn't crash
was Internet Explorer. FLOSS code is often of higher quality than commercial
code, but this is neither automatic nor guaranteed.

Microsoft's management is not complacent about its competition; in fact, it's
fairly paranoid. Bill Gates deliberately started hiring executives from
companies which were failing several decades ago. He wanted them to act as an
early warning sensors if Microsoft started running in to problems. I'm sure
they are paying for really good analysis of all this stuff - see some of the
previous remarks.

Some of Microsoft's products are pretty good, too. For example, there was a
very long period where the only decent and affordable project management tool
was Microsoft Project. FLOSS had nothing at the time; while traditional tools
cost upwards of $100,000 and ran only on expensive mainframes.

Cost is often in FLOSS's favor, but there can be quirks. It costs my
organization *more* to license Redhat enterprise server than to license Windows
server. (We get an academic discount on the latter, but not the former; go
figure.)

The scenario I've been expecting for the last decade, and which is showing signs
of perhaps starting to play out goes like this:

1. FLOSS gets to parity on core features of most major applications.
2. Cost and language advantages lead to wide-spread adoption in the developing
world.
3. The resulting increased developer and user base causes FLOSS to take a great
leap forward.
4. The improved FLOSS re-colonizes the first world, finally breaking Microsoft's
monopoly.

I'm not sure their model covers this.

Do I think raging success by FLOSS would wipe out Microsoft? No. And as we've
seen, there are many reasons why Microsoft can't wipe out FLOSS. So eternal
coexistence probably really is our fate. But breaking their monopoly and
knocking their 80% margins down to something more rational like 10% would leave
plenty of room for a humbler but still successful company, while improving
things for end users.



---
-- Jim Leinweber (Madison, WI)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eternal Coexistence?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 08 2005 @ 05:51 AM EDT
If you are interested in economic modelling, may I recommend Critical Mass by
Philip Ball. The book has just won the Aventis Science Prize, and I am just in
the middle of reading it. It explains why certain countries fought with each
other in the 2nd world war and why unix became as it is. It also explains why
economists cannot predict some things. A very good book. Give it a go

[ Reply to This | # ]

Microsoft Assists the Success of Linux
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 08 2005 @ 07:54 AM EDT
Someone once mentioned/wrote (links would be nice) that for Linux to have
succeeded as well as it has it required 3 key people. These were:

- Richard Stallman + his GNU tools
- Linus Torvalds + his Linux project (obviously); and
- William Gates and his Microsoft behemoth.

The rationale was that without Microsoft being what it is (a company convicted
of using anti-competitive practices to maintain and extend its monopoly), Linux
would have been a less attractive option to some companies. Or, if the desktop
and server OS systems were competitive in price, as their hardware counterparts
are, then the cost of a good desktop OS would be significantly less.

My sixpence

The Banjo

[ Reply to This | # ]

Modelling Behavior
Authored by: the_flatlander on Wednesday, June 08 2005 @ 08:11 AM EDT
First, I apologize if someone else already posted this notion, I didn't have
time this AM to read all the responses.

I think this model that the authors tout would be far more interesting if they
used it to indicate how the Novell/Microsoft battle might have turned out. I
mean they could tell the thing what the world was like in 1989, and see what the
model thought would be the outcome of the network wars. (Anybody else here old
enough to remember Netware?)

I have to say that it seems to me that so many things are likely to influence
the outcome, including, for example, just plain "fashion", that it is
impossible to predict based on a more-or-less pure economic model. Markets are
not always rational in the short term, or even in the long term.

The Flatlander

Irrational Markets? Sure. Has anyone checked the stock price of Caldera
International lately?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Proposition of model based on capitalism theory
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, June 08 2005 @ 11:16 AM EDT
First, I apologize for my spelling mistakes.

I think that in some years from now, MS Windows will have a small market share
compared to Linux.

This assertion is based on my understanding of capitalism.

In a capitalism system, the capital (money) produces capital.
Let's say, for the sake of the discussion, 10%/year of benefits.
Each year, then, the total share of capital is augmented from 10%.
But the share of two companies (maybe 0.000001% but for readability I propose 1%
and 5%) is differently augmented :
the first one, with 1/100 the first year, has 1.1/110 the second, and the second
one with 5% the first year, has 5.5/110.
It means that in a capitalism system, if i'm not mistaken, a big company will
grow bigger compared to the others.

Capitalism tends to monopolies.

Now about the GPL.
GPL is a actor playing by capitalist rules in a system where money is replaced
by code. I mean code produces code.
Its concurrents, proprietary or BSD code, have a less bigger growing pace,
because code doesn't produce code : it's not mandatory to give back some code.
So, not only GPL code produces GPL code, but it produces code at a quicker pace
than other codes.

So the GPL code will tend to a monopoly at a growing and growinger pace.

What do you think about it ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Problem with the Model
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, June 15 2005 @ 11:50 AM EDT
The problem with modeling the economic behavior in this instance is that
Microsoft is a single entity. The analysis assumes it's an industry. It's not.
Microsoft is directed by a very few individuals whose behavior may not conform
to the model or to the general economic environment.

It is possible to model industries made up of many companies because the actions
of the industry as a whole will behave in relatively predictable ways, even if
one company does not. A single company may behave unpredictably. Recent examples
of Corporate such malfunctions include Enron, Worldcom Adelphia, and AIG. These
have all had relatively little effect on the industries they were part of or the
economy as a whole. The industries have continued to behave generally in
accordance with the larger economic environment.

Linux can be considered to be an industry (or community). There are many players
and components. If Caldera fails someone else like RedHat may succeed. If Gentoo
fails, Debian, or Slackware will still be there and will fill the void.

There are numerous individual events which either alone or together might change
this model. Most seem to me to involve a major shift or event at Microsoft.

Examples which come to mind include. Microsoft could be convicted of further
monopolistic behavior and broken up, or barred from some markets (Europe, China,
India). Microsoft could really really fail to deliver Longhorn or the launch
could be seriously botched. Bill Gates could retire or otherwise leave the
stage.

---
Rsteinmetz

"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk

[ Reply to This | # ]
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