[lug] MS Apps ported to Linux???

[rm at mamma.varadinet.de]

On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 11:31:17AM -0700, J. Wayde Allen wrote:
[...]

> > Doug Miller says they haven't ruled out the possibilty of porting to
> > Linux.

FUD, IMHO. This is meant to kill the small companies that allready
did develop od port bussiness application to Linux. The whole plot
works like this:
Techy speaks: "let's switch to AppX as our new blafusel
              application since it works on Linux as well as on 
	      Windows and Mac."
Marketing idiot: "Oh no, i just got word that Microsoft is about 
             to sell MsOffice for Windows. Let's wait another
	     few month and get the standard office application ..."

> That is an interesting article.  I'm curious, what do people think about
> the following comments from Doug Miller:
>    
>    ... "While we are threatened by the Linux business model, where
>    companies give away free software, we are not at all worried about that
>    operating system from a technological standpoint," Miller told eWEEK
>    before heading off to the conference. "There are no earth-shattering
>    technological innovations in Linux -- actually, there's a lot less than
>    can be found in the Windows and Unix platforms." ... 

Again, clever mixture of right information with the wrong conclusions.
(This makes arguing for the Techy pretty hard :-) Yes, part of  Linux
isn't as 'modern' as it could be (see the old Torvalds/Tannenbaum mail
exchange), but neither is Windows. OTOH, Linux _does_ have a lot of cool
(excuse this wording) new features. And since it's an open development
platform new inovations make it into the kernel pretty fast--after all
it'S easier to test a new memory managment/scheduler/egg-boiler when you
have thousands of beta-testers and the testers might actully send in
patches. BTW, _no_ one cares about the technology of an OS as long as
it does what it is supposed to do. Why _do_ people crave for new MS
versions? Because the existing ones leave soooo much to want.


>    ... I think the shine is dulling around Linux as people scramble to
>    find a business model based on free software that actually works," he
>    said. "Ultimately, there's no such thing as a free lunch -- someone has
>    to pay for continued innovation and support." ...

Again, right and wrong. Linux is getting duller for companies that jumped
in late and wanted to make a few quick bucks without contributing. There really
isn't something like a free lunch (didn't these guys read their Stallman? Free
as in free speach not as in ..). I've met some of those and i'm happy they left
the boat. The benefits for companies lies somewhere different (and _here's_ the
real danger for MS): indepence from other companies. Noone can throw you out 
of the market with the change of a simple undocumented API call (something
Mirosoft of course would _never_ do). If there's a bug in the software your
product uses - go fix it. No need to wait for the other software company to
react (i've come to love this part. I've occasionally had the chance o fix
problems in the software that my programs relies on. It usually was a question
of a few hour coding. And afterwards i understood the product much better.
Two of my programs that use MS programs are baasically stuck because of
bugs/features of MS-Programs. Probably really easy to solve--if you could
look at the code).

>    ... While there has been much talk about Linux as an operating system,
>    there hasn't been nearly enough talk about how it is solving customer
>    problems through a full suite of business applications, Miller
>    contended, adding it has a "long way to go" to solve the range of
>    business problems that companies like Microsoft solve today. ...

This really isn't the problem of an OS. What a schmck! First he talks
about 'inovative' OS design and then he wants to tightly couple OS and 
applications. Linux -- in my understanding -- doesn't want to solve some-
ones problem. It just makes our live as programmers/other-peoples-proplem-solvers
more easy by getting out of our ways.


>    ... "Linux is many, many years away from being an enterprise-ready
>    operating system that can compete with, and challenge, the Windows
>    platform," he said. "There is also no vision or driving force around
>    it. We are already in very good shape on the enterprise today and are
>    leading the charge on the Web services front and in new ways of looking
>    at delivering value. ... 

Not my experience, to be honest. I still admire some aspects of commercial
*nixes, but after listening to many developers on congresses i'm pretty shure
that it'll  take only a few more month to be up with those players. And i'm
happy to see most of them joining the boat(party). 


> I'm looking for honest, thoughtful discussion here as opposed to Microsoft
> bashing.  Can these criticisms effectively be addressed?  What hard
> examples/evidence can we provide?
> 
> It seems to me that a little serious introspection can't hurt the Linux
> community.  I also think we need to expand our list of arguments from the
> old standby of Linux generally being a more stable platform.

Thanks for bringing up this discusion. I saw a lot of FUD from the
marketing departments od the new 'Linux-Companies' recently -- often
not too well-informed. I also sense that the enormous increase in people
writing code for linux poses new problems -- especially since Eric Raymonds
article was taken very literal. I don't think that his Baszar model actually
fits the successfull free software  projects at all and the new projects that
follow his ideas seem to produce, hmm, problematic code (ok, maybe this sounds
a bit too much like flaim-bait. I had to struggle a lot with open source code
recently--but then again: i could study and critisize it because it's open).

 Ralf