Sidepocket Posted May 15, 2007 Share Posted May 15, 2007 "The Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn't exist in 2007. Even Linus has got a job today." Controversial statements from the head of Microsoft's Linux Labs, Bill Hilf. Speaking on the last leg of a tour of Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, Bill Hilf, more formally known as Microsoft's platform strategy director, was in the region to "be descriptive and intelligent in giving people an understanding of open source and debunk a lot of the mythology around open source." He said that most customers run a distribution - RedHat, Novell, Suse or Mandriva. Most of the work on maintaining the Linux kernel is done by developers working for these distributions, he noted "They are full-time employees, with 401K stock options. Some work for IBM or Oracle. What does that mean? It means that Linux doesn't exist any more in 2007. There is no free software movement. If someone says Linux is about Love, Peace and Harmony, I would tell them to do their research. There is no free software movement any more. There is big commercial [firms] like IBM and there is small commercial [firms] like Ubuntu," he said. The former IBM employee said that IBM's work on Linux is aimed at creating more reliable storage solutions and a more reliable mainframe. "People ask me, why are you doing this? Why did you do the Novell deal? Why aren't you doing Office on Linux? The summary is quite simple. Growth of the ecosystem equals growth of the [Windows] platform," he said. Hilf said that the Linux phenomenon had nothing to do with Linux, but rather it had a lot to do with Apache, MySQL and PHP. It was those applications which pulled Linux up with it, the "Visual Basic of open source." Hilf described Microsoft's interest in open source as a business interest, without altruistic community love or with marketing campaigns to make you feel better. Rather, because 67 percent of the world's servers and over 90 percent of the desktops run Windows, open source developers are interested in running their applications on Windows and Hilf's role is to make sure that the Windows platform provides the features needed by these developers. "That's the dirty little secret. When I talk to open source developers, at least half are talking about Windows, from SugarCRM, MySQL, PHP. Every single one," he said. Hilf said that Microsoft always faced a challenge in balancing interoperability and innovation. The current lawsuit with the EU competition commission is one case in point. "The [EU's] request was, 'you have to be as interoperable with non-windows systems as you are with your own. That way we can guarantee you're not going to leverage your market leading position to disadvantage others.' We've participated actively to explain why it's not a simple problem; there's this complex balance between innovation and standardisation. I think the EU has been learning," he said. In other words, making something standard happens after it has been built. One example of this innovator's dilemma was a next generation interface being developed in the labs at Redmond, similar to the virtual 3D interface used in the Hollywood film Minority Report. "I've seen this first hand, and it's complete science fiction. He looks at the computer screen and uses his fingers (in the air) instead of a keyboard or a mouse. Brilliant guy with a PhD in optical science, truly creating the next input device. But when I ask him how he would make this a standard and work with Linux, he replies to me, 'no idea.' We're breaking the glass ceiling, going where nobody has gone before. There won't be a standard there, there won't be one for at least a decade," he said. Hilf accused his former employers, IBM, of starting a standards war simply because they wanted a part of the Office market. People do not want ODF (Open Document Format), but they want a way to control the information they create, he claimed. "Standards is the first thing you go to in the competitive strategy playbook. Of course, IBM and Sun won't say that on the record. You create a problem that didn't exist and use standards to force a problem," he said. So what does Hilf think of Vista and future development trends now that the long gestation period is over? For the desktop, Hilf sees a new frontier in terms of rich client programming. With more and more services by Amazon, Google, Yahoo and, of course, Microsoft being run as services rather than as software installed locally, it will be up to the desktop to provide richer functionality. One of the big players today is Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash. Today, Microsoft seems to be nibbling away at the same market as Flash through Vista's Windows Presentation Format-Extended (WPF-E). Hilf said that was defnitely not anti-competitive and it was simply competition. "We have thousands of pages, thanks to the Department of Justice. There's no lack of clarity on what cheating could be. When I joined Microsoft, I spent a week in antitrust training to know exactly what the boundary conditions were," he said. "The goal for Flash is a rich web experience. That's also our target for WPF and WPF-E. I'm just hoping we give it a real name as WPF-E just doesn't roll off the tongue. It's not for us to be Flash, but it's for a million people to develop WPF-E applications," he said. A year ago, someone developing a web service had to know all sorts of technologies such as UDDI, SOAP, WSDL and other "plumbing." Recently, Microsoft simplified all that with the Windows Communication Foundation (formerly known as Indigo). This means that a web service developer can simply say, "turn knob", rather than go through a whole library of low-level commands. This led to a multitude of new web applications being written, thus advancing the Microsoft platform plan. Hilf hopes that WPF-E will repeat this success story on the desktop. http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/05/14/2038250.shtml http://www.bangkokpost.com/090507_Database...2007_data05.php Good to know Microsoft is still stuck in a fantasy land were Torrents and LimeWire do not exist. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted May 15, 2007 Share Posted May 15, 2007 Microsoft is full of shit, but I don’t think the free software movement is as strong as it use to be and I think it could disappear with the wide expectance of closed source kernel modules, which not only hurts the free software movement but can reduce the security of the operating system. If I can’t review your code I don’t trust it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted May 15, 2007 Share Posted May 15, 2007 Ubuntu is the new Windows! It really does depend on forking the whole linux kernel, because blatantly you can see that ubuntu is heading down this road and accepting anything that works while other distro's such as Debian won't touch it with a barge pole. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted May 15, 2007 Share Posted May 15, 2007 I think people should have the right to choose but with a growth in market share in the Linux world should give them more power with the hardware and software developers, by simply saying this is how we do business and if you don’t want to play then our user base will go with another company that does want too. When a popular distribution does accept closed source kernel modules they take some of the pressure of the hardware develops to open up. The Linux community and free software movement should speak with one voice. Anything closed source should not be supported out of the box, but if people choose to install something that isn’t open afterwards, well that is up to them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Rob Posted June 5, 2007 Share Posted June 5, 2007 some times making a statement is enough to make people be leave what you want them to be leave remember the guy from blue's clues and every one said he was dead but he really wasn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeoneE1se Posted June 6, 2007 Share Posted June 6, 2007 Debian is my server of choice however I can't get mt tablet working with it so... I think people should have the right to choose but with a growth in market share in the Linux world should give them more power with the hardware and software developers, by simply saying this is how we do business and if you don’t want to play then our user base will go with another company that does want too. When a popular distribution does accept closed source kernel modules they take some of the pressure of the hardware develops to open up. The Linux community and free software movement should speak with one voice. Anything closed source should not be supported out of the box, but if people choose to install something that isn’t open afterwards, well that is up to them. Is that not the way Ubuntu is? 100% free unless you other wise choses to install? Microsoft is full of shit, but I don’t think the free software movement is as strong as it use to be and I think it could disappear with the wide expectance of closed source kernel modules, which not only hurts the free software movement but can reduce the security of the operating system. If I can’t review your code I don’t trust it. You don't trust Microsoft Windows *? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted June 6, 2007 Share Posted June 6, 2007 Debian is my server of choice however I can't get mt tablet working with it so... I think people should have the right to choose but with a growth in market share in the Linux world should give them more power with the hardware and software developers, by simply saying this is how we do business and if you don’t want to play then our user base will go with another company that does want too. When a popular distribution does accept closed source kernel modules they take some of the pressure of the hardware develops to open up. The Linux community and free software movement should speak with one voice. Anything closed source should not be supported out of the box, but if people choose to install something that isn’t open afterwards, well that is up to them. Is that not the way Ubuntu is? 100% free unless you other wise choses to install? Well I believe they make it too easy, take the current release it’s one tick away from corrupting the concept of Linux and the open source movement. I don’t think you should make people jump through to many hoops but it should not be an option integrated into the distribution. Make them go to the hardware vendor’s site and download it. Microsoft is full of shit, but I don’t think the free software movement is as strong as it use to be and I think it could disappear with the wide expectance of closed source kernel modules, which not only hurts the free software movement but can reduce the security of the operating system. If I can’t review your code I don’t trust it. You don't trust Microsoft Windows *? Just because a company is not open source does not mean they write bad code but yeah I’m not going to trust it. My distrust for Microsoft stems more from their close ties with the US and UK government, so I would bet there is all kinds of shit in Microsoft products to make sure they can spy on each and every one of us. As much as I dislike Dell products, I think what their doing is a great thing for the open source movement by releasing computers with Linux (even Ubuntu) on them, they are helping because they are pushing for 100% open sources. They are putting pressure on the hardware vendors to open up, and with a company the size of Dell they have a lot of power behind them to get it done. Ubuntu seems to be getting more power but just bends over and takes it up the ass from the hardware vendors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest requiemnoise Posted June 7, 2007 Share Posted June 7, 2007 I wouldn't worry. They are trying to figure out how to make extra bucks from the fortune 500. If MS is serious about this, MS will violate tons more than the Linux world. There are so many MS technology that were stolen from the open source. They can go back to Netbeui and sneaker net to manage their servers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest requiemnoise Posted June 7, 2007 Share Posted June 7, 2007 If MS bust the GPL world, we can change it and put them out of business. Who needs NetBeui made by IBM? So they patented other people's ideas that were never patented, then we can change GPL. MS could completely disappear if they want to fight this battle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted June 7, 2007 Share Posted June 7, 2007 We need patten system reform, not angry rhetoric about big companies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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