Frankie; Heads Up!
frankieh wrote:
Lanman wrote: > FrankieH; Don't forget that Linux is gaining a lot of popularity and
momentum. That alone, will push a lot of software companies to seriously consider coming out with re-worked versions of their apps, and many are already doing exactly that.
Yes, I think the fact that Macromedia are looking into it is a big win. They won't be the last.
In many cases, well-estasblished apps written for Linux years ago have been improving by leaps and bounds, and as people start to migrate over to Linux, they'll start depending on those apps, instead of seeking commercial or proprietary ones.
no arguements there.
One last thing here. One of Microsoft's long term goals is to migrate most of their apps to web-based systems which will be sold as subscription services - ie; Microsoft Office. That's one of their prime reasons for coming up with "dotNet".
I totally disagree with this.. it "may" have once been the goal, before linux got where it is now.
but it aint the goal anymore.. .net and C# were created to stop Java becoming the defacto enterprise development platform,
something that would have taken it out of M$'s hands once they found out they couldn't make their own version of Java without having to pay their profits to Sun..
They can't afford to make Office a "by the web" subscription service that will run on any platfrom.. because that will totally remove the need for windows, and windows is still a huge M$ cash cow.
Not necessarily. Microsoft now needs to put some effort into protecting their cash cows, and Windows isn't one anymore. Notice that they either spout a lot of releases or they take a long time to release a newer version. That's because they either view a relase as a "Hit" or a "Miss"
According to their last statement, Office and windows still make up the majority of the money they are reporting to their shareholders.
Not only that, but without Windows to push though stuff like .NET or DRM etc, they would just be another voice in the crowd, they wouldn't like that at all..
I stand by what I said, the windows monopoly is worth running at a loss to MS (which it is nowhere near doing.) because of the
force they can exert with it.. thats not likely to change anytime soon.
Now it's their server versions and licenses, as well as Office that have become the cash cows, except that the server versions are taking a serious hit from Linux and so are their license sales. In order to get past the poor history that Windows has had, they'll be starting to move to a "Light" Windows install, with a large block of apps only available via the web.
Have you read their last shareholders report??? Windows still makes a big lump of M$'s revenue.
Not as much as office, but not that far behind either.
(Mostly OEM sales of windows to manufacturers.)
Much like you pointed out below with Mozilla, you'll still need their browser to access the applications, or a plugin for other browsers, much the same way that Microsoft made Office, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer versions for iMac's.
IE for mac has been discontinued.. it is not released anymore, Safari (based on Konquerors KHTML) is the defacto browser for OSX.
If that is correct, expect everyone to start paying for it one way or another, assuming that they want those features and applications. many consumers ( hell Most of them ) won;t have a choice but to continue on with whatever M$ spews out of their Willy Wonka factories! Besides, as in the past, many of the big PC producers wull "Bundle" this stuff into their systems - no matter which OS it runs. By manipulating that cross-platform type of architecture, Microsoft can go a long way towards getting rid of a bunch of anti-trust lawsuits, and by selling or licensing the technology out to it's competitors and partner companies.
We are talking about a company that has had a monopoly for 20 years, you think they
will remove windows from the equation and just try and push though on .net sales of applications???
Don't you think thats alittle to "open" and "fair" for the microsoft we all know???
If you remove the OS, then M$ doesn't have a platform to push though new proprietry technology.
They're after a 100% market share, and they also want to cash in on Linux, MacOS, and anything else that gets popular.
Yes, but not untill they know they are in the prime position.. and that won't be for a while yet.
mark my words, if Office is an online service in Longhorn, it will be a windows only affair.
The Mono project is just M$ paying lip service to the "open operability" thing, if you think it will be allowed to ever run Office on linux machines (without a court case saying it has to.) then you need your head read.
"Allowed" ?? Who needs to "allow" it? Microsoft needs permission? C'Mon!
No dude, you misunderstand,,, what I am saying is that M$ won't allow Mono to every be as good or complete as the windows version, they will need a way to limit any apps to windows that they want to, and they will do that via the backend...
(remember DR-DOS and win3.1????)
Mono, as with most everything Microsoft has give away, will not contain ALL the api's that microsoft will be using.. you can count on that. just the same way that office now uses windows API's that M$ have not given to the rest of the community.
I should point out that M$ didn't create Mono. it was an open source project...
As I understand it, M$ did help with some details..
It won't be a question of API's anymore, except for a fairly short list of companies that have good resons not to. For those, you'll still install them in the normal manner. For the rest, it'll be a question of plugins and codecs designed to control the apps, but they will be managed, tracked, administered and monitored on the backend (ie; web-servers, database servers, etc.), so they'll only have to comply with browser interfaces. That makes it easier to maintain, develop and upgrade.
And your positive they would provide all that to the linux comunity because they don't want the desktop monopoly thing????
Oh, BTW, My head is fine thanks. I don't need any! <g>
When windows is no longer a cashcow for M$, and they can't do anything about it, THEN you might see them open up to office on other platforms. before then, I wouldn't hold your breath if I were you.
Uh, Frankie? Windows is NOT a cash cow, now! That's why there's a lot of talk about giving it away, to maintain the user's dependancy on Microsoft. Hell, I can buy it legally for less than $100.00 Canadian through my wholesalers, and Dell, HP, etc., ( for example ) pay less than $50.00 US for it. It won't take a lot of pressure from consumers switching to Linux to force that price even lower! Free is only a few years away, after Microsoft rapes everyone for a few versions of LongHorn that is.
Read their last report, Windows still makes massive wads of money..
even if they are stilling it for $30 to the really big OEM's just how many systems do you think get sold by the likes of Dell ,HP, IBM etc etc???? even if only 1 mill systems are sold, thats 30 million dollars, and we can safely say that PC sales with windows are an order of magnitude higher then 1 million. (I think Dell alone sells more then that in a year) and then there is laptops, windows CE/embeeded and the flash new media center edition of XP, it really doesn't look like they are giving up on windows dude.
(for example, try running windows update using mozilla.)
They already have 90+% of the office software market, and they have a big windows monopoly as well, they are not going to sacrifice one for the other until they have no other choice.
Part of Microsoft's game plan is to be able to sell those services across all platforms, since much of the web already is platform-agnostic. It's the easiest way to capture a higher marketshare.
I agree! But that point is coming very soon - about 4 or 5 years at best!
Maybe, I think its comming soon too, but my soon equates to about 10 years...
So, don't be too surprised to see a lot of companies coming out with web-based applications in the near future. If companies can build apps which will work just as well on Linux and MacOS, as they do on Windows, compatibility will take a distinct move up the ladder.
There will be a ton of web apps available in the near future, you just won't see that many of M$'s big apps like office in the list..
(or if it is, it will require a windows machine under it.. and M$ will claim it couldn't be done any other way to stave off the lawsuits.)
Oh yes, I don't doubt that for a minute, but do you think microsoft are just going to give up the single biggest reason they have why people should run windows (the ability to run office integrated into all sorts of other software packages)?? thats not going to happen.
When windows is irrelivant, and it starts costing office sales, then they will consider it, but not till them.
Then why did they make Office for iMac's? A test? Or a prelude of things to come? Probably both!
That was a deal with Apple, remember they propped up apple with a big investment a few years back??
around the same time they released IE for mac as well, where has that gone now???
Its more lip service from M$ thats all.. they have already stated that office on apple sales are very low and have scaled back the amount of developers working on it..
I didn't say we wanted it, but I don't think Microsoft is going to ask the Linux community either. They're just going to go ahead with their game plan, whether you and I like it or not!
Microsoft also knows that this is one way that they can continue to build crappy applications, without all those nasty crash events happening, simply by moving the app from the hard drive to the web.
Do we really want MS writing office code that makes Linux crash so they can claim that windows is more stable???
it wouldn't be the first time. .NET code will still have security vunerabilities, and it will still be able to take down the underlying OS.
(Just as Java can.) so do we want Office running on Mono on linux so that M$ can mess with linux's reputation even more???
Its going to be more complicated then that, if one day they did release a version of office, it would probably require a custom MS patched kernel to run it.. this is MS we are talking about here.
I think govenments around the world will be the big pusher for linux..
Besides, if future versions of Windows are cheap or free, and Linux starts crashing because Microsoft built their plugins or whatever so that it does this a lot, they'll be able to point a finger at Linux and a lot of people will believe it. Perception is everything! Anyone complaining about a conspiracy will look like a whiner.
It also means that they'll probably try to sell it's merits by promoting the stability factor of the web. Also, this also explains why the new Windows ( currently due out sometime this decade ! ) will have a newer version of Internet Explorer (something like version 8) which will be tuned to take advantage of the new web-based apps that Microsoft will be selling. Don't be surprised if they call LongHorn something like Internet Commander or something, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was the core of the OS. Certainly would explain why the tried to merge IE 5 through 6 into the OS, and why Bill Gates was buying up cablevision companies in Europe a few years ago. Who else is gonna supply that much broadband to a user-base?
Well who knows, but as I said above, they will not open anything up till they don't need windows anymore.
Thats not going to happen anytime soon.
As for Longhorn, it will be much less of an upgrade then they initially touted it as...
They can't go "ALL OUT" for net applicatons because they have been stung before by the lack of widespread broadband..
Agreed, but I think that Longhorn is the jumping off point. At least that's what they're saying at several of their TechNet and System Builders conferences lately.
They won't make that mistake again.. Longhorn will have to work both ways, because there are still to many dialup users out there that MS is making money from.
No, they won't go all out. But for those folks using dial-up, Microsoft will continue to make conventional versions at much higher prices, pushing another chunk of the market into making the switch.
I still think that the broken applications that occur after Longhorn comes out will be a huge factor in linux takeup...
When Longhorn is released, it will probably have allot less "certified" software for it then linux does now...
(unless M$ have been holding off on the release to ensure that software vendors have time to update their code.)
I agree on this too. There's no way that M$ is going to be able to release a version of Windows without it having some serious bugs. If they could, they would have by now. The only way to make Windows any better ( with the exception of Eye Candy and a few extra apps included by default ), is to make it smaller and to take out a bunch of the stuff that still causes them repetitive problems. Move those parts over to a distributed group of web-servers, and you're on your way.
It is certainly very interesting.
P.S.; I don't like it any better than you do, but it certainly is the next logical step, and since they're already working on it, it's obvious that they're going to release it in this decade at least. S.O.P. for Microsoft is to release stuff like this gradually, and they'll do the same with this.
I hope I'm wrong and you're right. But I wouldn't take bets on it.
So, the sooner that Linux gets into the market big-time, the better.
Your Turn.
Lanman
first it starts with the purchasers using Linux as a bargining tool with M$,
Then some big departments start using it. (both of these are already happening)
then private sectors that deal with govenment departments that use linux will make the switch, and then home users that deal with those companies will consider switching as well..
I think holding your breath for MS to abandon their monopoly in favour of web apps will leave you with a very blue face..
After all, without the windows platform on 90% of desktops, what does microsoft really have???
They know it.. trust me they know it...
-- rgds
Frank Hauptle (aka Franki)
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