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Steve Ballmer Blasts Open Source
In a speech to partners in Toronto, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke out against open source products such as Linux for its lack of accountability to its users.“Who's going to stand up and support open source? At least, with us, it's clear who you have to come and pound down on. There's a clear line of responsibility.” Calling LINUX a “good Unix clone” he further went on to say that LINUX had made no breakthroughs in technology and is merely replicating the functionality of commercially available software.“Technology innovation has happened much, much more from commercial software developers than from open source,” Read the complete news item.
Editors Note: In researching this news post I scanned many sites. I found an interesting trend in that the open source and Linux sites all seemed to have the same quote about Microsoft not being where they need to be on security but for some reason they seemed to miss the quotes above. Coincidence?
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Message #130373
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Ballmer should exercise caution while blasting Open Source
Even though I share some of the concerns Ballmer has about Open Source, we esp. in .Net community are aware of lot of goodies comming from the Open source eg. NUnit, CSUnit, NAnt (the list is pretty long).. I think Ballmer should realise that MS needs some kind of conducive relation with Open Source developers (esp. working on microsoft related technologies). So, he better should be linux specific when stumping against Linux and refrain from blasting the broader Open Source community. Annoying Open Source community would do more harm to MS and .Net community than any other thing.
my 2 cents,
Srikanth Remani
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Message #130394
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I second that...
Even though I share some of the concerns Ballmer has about Open Source, we esp. in .Net community are aware of lot of goodies comming from the Open source eg. NUnit, CSUnit, NAnt (the list is pretty long).. I think Ballmer should realise that MS needs some kind of conducive relation with Open Source developers (esp. working on microsoft related technologies). So, he better should be linux specific when stumping against Linux and refrain from blasting the broader Open Source community. Annoying Open Source community would do more harm to MS and .Net community than any other thing.my 2 cents,Srikanth Remani The open source community does a lot of good and cannot be blanketly characterized as anti-Microsoft. There are countless open source projects built on Microsoft technologies and I'm sure that MS does not want that to go away.
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Message #130397
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Steve Ballmer Blasts Open Source
Who is going to stand up and support open source?
If you are talking specifically about the OS then IBM, Redhat and SUSE are just a few examples of this. There are many companies that provide support for open source (the true and tried ones anyway) or provide another version that is built on the open source project (OS, applications, etc). So if you are looking for responsibility, then all you have to do is pay for it in services. And if you don't care about support and would like to save money (perhaps you have a large IT organization), you can get it for free with the source code which is immensely powerful for customizations, understanding, and troubleshooting.
I think technology innovation has happened from commercial software developers because let's face it, it is nice to get paid for what you do. However, times are changing and organizations are funding open source projects (this could mean actual development, consulting services, or a number of things around you being the expert on that technology) so I think there will be more great innovations happening in the open source space. There are several great technologies in the open source world like Apache that are funded and that are the best technologies in that field.
I completely agree that Microsoft should embrace Open Source because good things will come out of the community and if it becomes solid enough, they can even work on improving it and/or support it to make money on the services stack.
Microsoft's power is that you can get many technologies with enterprise level support all in ONE place. It is nice to be able to go one place for most of your needs. IBM has done the same thing and is quite successful yet still supports the open source community. Of course, this has the obvious side effect of the age old problem of being "locked in" to one vendor in either case. I believe it is always best to keep your options open as you will get more competition. There are always goods and bads to every decision and you just have to weigh them and figure out what best meets your needs.
Lloyd
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Message #130407
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Steve Ballmer Blasts Open Source
Steve and author of thread, both seems to be naive, its like a forest is there, and one tree (microsoft), blasting other tree (can you ever imagine, that trees can blast at other trees?.
One tree saying to other tree, hey where is you branch(customer support), other tree (dont even listens - Microsoft tree wispers and listens to itself)
All trees are made different, learn to leave with it !! Don`t waste time. Opensource is like a wild forest, dont even mess with it, you will be out of roots if you try to do that and will be lost in the forest.
Encourage Mono and Linux, and the open spirit !!
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Message #130420
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Innovation comes from open source
To be honest, in mainframe days, I enjoyed putting my ideas in to the system! I think that there is not much innovation left in implementing the present product line. After all, it is more like "innovative integration" (embrace and extend). We just have to nod our head whatever is offered. From the business perspective, yes, the product should be accountable. I am not sure whether "Open Source" is a product.
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Message #130424
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Steve Ballmer should look responsibility up in a dictionary
I don’t think the OSS support card is as valid now as it was a couple of years ago. Several major distros of Linux are now available with support. IBM, SUN and Oracle are beginning to leverage Linux in a major way and support it at the enterprise level. For smaller applications support might be a bit thinner on the ground but is still available and improving.
It’s interesting though he used the term "clear line of responsibility". Am I to read this as meaning Microsoft is taking direct responsibility for the damage and expense caused to businesses by Microsoft security vulnerabilities? If not then what exactly is this responsibility of which Mr. Ballmer speaks? Are Microsoft planning to refund license fees for forcing us into a constant cycle of patching their poor quality insecure products? Are they going to reimburse us all for the cost of virus scanners and proper firewalls without which their systems are almost unusable? Are they actually going to commit to producing secure and properly configured software without trying to force upgrades on us?
We can complain, or 'pound down' on Microsoft but what happens? The vulnerabilities which Microsoft seem unable or unwilling to stem continue and they will not commit to a release date for Longhorn (solution to so many issues allegedly) so they are taking responsibility how exactly?
As I see it just requires more and more time, effort and money for us to support Microsoft rather than Microsoft supporting us. I'm sure we all can’t wait to see what breaks with XP SP2 as we yet again get to suffer for Microsoft’s mistakes. I appreciate that these problems are not entirely of Microsoft’s making and that they do many good things but I find Mr. Ballmer’s choice of words ironic to the point of intelligence insulting when used in the context of Microsoft v Linux support.
Regarding innovation though I tend to agree with him, I feel OSS does tend to imitate rather than innovate. Microsoft may not be the most innovative organization in the world but I don’t see OSS knocking me over daily with shiny bright new ideas either. Smaller commercial entities seem to be where the fresh ideas come from.
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Message #130460
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Accountability and Support are NOT the same thing
While companies such as RedHat, SUSE, and IBM have begun to support their proprietary combinations of Linux and add-ons in an effort to squeeze money from what was meant to be a free operating system, they are still in no way accountable for the operating system itself. If a bug is discovered in the network layer of Linux that allows a mischevious packet to post your home phone number to "SpankMe.com", who are you going to complain to? IBM isn't responsible for that piece of code and no amount of support is going to get the Linux operating system updated faster than the open source community chooses to do it.
In a capatilist society the dollars we spend have power. We make decisions on the direction of markets every day by choosing to drink Coke instead of Pepsi or buying gas at Shell instead of Chevron. The companies who are fighting for those dollars are incented to provide us the products and services that we want and we reward them (or not) by continuing to buy their products.
Software is no different. So how can consumers affect a software market where their ability to cast that financial vote doesn't exist? They can't. Oh they can ask for this feature or that feature but in the end they are the mercy of some party or parties who have no accountability to them whatsoever and who can choose to ignore their request.
Or of course a consumer could choose to develop the functionality on their own. This doesn't really cost anything, unless of course your TIME has actual value in which case you might not want to spend months and months of your time developing something that YOU then have to support.
In the end, the consumer is served best by software companies who compete like rabid dogs for every dollar the he/she spends. And Microsoft is the biggest, baddest dog in the pack.
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Message #130579
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Steve Ballmer Blasts Open Source
Not too sure about his whole accountability thing. Knowing who's door to pound on and actually getting a satisfactory response are two different things, I mean this of most software companies, not just Microsoft.
As far as not innovating I would consider tools such as ANT (NANT for the .NET community) to be innovative and very much an inspiration for MSBUILD. There's Mozilla's XUL once again I would say this very much inspired XAML. Then there's NUNIT, I'd say the Unit testing stuff seen in the next version of Visual Studio was very much inspired by that open source work. Exactly who's replicating who's technology here?
I'm not saying Microsoft don't make good software, or that they don't come up with some neat/clever ideas (I'm of the opinion that the word 'innovative' is tossed around all too easily these days, I don't consider a paper clip popping up and annoying me to be innovative, but that's getting off topic). However to start smacking around a whole community of developers that have greatly contributed to .NET not to mention software in general is somewhat disingenuous. And anyway, if Microsoft quash the open source movement, where are they going to draw their inspiration from for the future?
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Message #130596
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Steve Ballmer Blasts Open Source
I have to agree with Neil, on NAnt and NUnit. These are two finest example of MS steal. Why, because they are cool open source contribution. MsBuild is coming in VS 2005, and still has time, i would always stick to NAnt.
As far as Ballmer goes, we have to see where he stands, open source is not just .Net related. For example take Image processing. There libraries on Open source which implement Codec for MPEG-4 and MPEG-2(DVD) standards, now if someone uses those in their software they (third party) can make a Movie Player on windows using DirectX or they can make DvD rippers - and there comes whole piracy thing, there is no one in control. Who will be held accountable, for example US has laws and regualtion what about Europe and asia?
Microsoft has Windows Media Player, at stake, and other entertainment businesses like XBox and stuff to take care of it. So they are proposing their own Encoding standards (MPEG-7) is on the way. Open source community has brains, some times its needs product around core, to make sense out of it.
MS works hard, no doubt about that ! So if they take a stance on Open source it has to be unified right?. I personally belived MS should have two fronts on open source, as they did with sharing CLR stuff to a limit. I dont want sharing their code, i would encourage a policy that put MS as a part of controlling entity if they support their part. FOr example IBM has their developers supporting apache. Now apache is very well respected entity. Similary do something MS !!. We need your support.
Mehul
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Message #130628
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Microsoft and accountability
"If a bug is discovered in the network layer of Linux that allows a mischevious packet to post your home phone number to "SpankMe.com", who are you going to complain to? IBM isn't responsible for that piece of code and no amount of support is going to get the Linux operating system updated faster than the open source community chooses to do it"
There are bugs in .Net 1.1 that still haven't been addressed by public service packs, over a year after release. Is that what you mean by accountability?
"[customers of open source products] can ask for this feature or that feature but in the end they are the mercy of some party or parties who have no accountability to them whatsoever and who can choose to ignore their request"
Can you smell the irony? :-)
Jim
ThoughtWorks
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Message #130734
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Accountability and Support are NOT the same thing
While companies such as RedHat, SUSE, and IBM have begun to support their proprietary combinations of Linux and add-ons in an effort to squeeze money from what was meant to be a free operating system Sorry to burst your bubble, but...the operating system is still free. When you're a service company attempting to make money from what is a free product, you sell value-adds on top of that product. That's what Red Hat, et al. do.If a bug is discovered in the network layer of Linux that allows a mischevious packet to post your home phone number to "SpankMe.com", who are you going to complain to? IBM isn't responsible for that piece of code and no amount of support is going to get the Linux operating system updated faster than the open source community chooses to do it. This is an interesting argument that we see paraded out time and time again. Theoretically, there is merit in this line of reasoning. Howevert, in practise, we have seen time and time again that Linux has been proven to be more secure, bugs get fixed faster (frequently patches will be posted within hours of bugs or vulnerabilities being announced, and the momentum behind a motivated (and largely unpaid) community seems to outmatch or equal commercial responsiveness. The "community effect" is so successful that large software companies (including Microsoft) are now trying to learn from and emulate this approach.In a capatilist society the dollars we spend have power. We make decisions on the direction of markets every day by choosing to drink Coke instead of Pepsi or buying gas at Shell instead of Chevron. The companies who are fighting for those dollars are incented to provide us the products and services that we want and we reward them (or not) by continuing to buy their products.Software is no different. So how can consumers affect a software market where their ability to cast that financial vote doesn't exist? They can't. Oh they can ask for this feature or that feature but in the end they are the mercy of some party or parties who have no accountability to them whatsoever and who can choose to ignore their request. Or of course a consumer could choose to develop the functionality on their own. This doesn't really cost anything, unless of course your TIME has actual value in which case you might not want to spend months and months of your time developing something that YOU then have to support.In the end, the consumer is served best by software companies who compete like rabid dogs for every dollar the he/she spends. And Microsoft is the biggest, baddest dog in the pack. Indeed. I'm not going to dispute Microsoft's tenacity - I admire it. And I use a lot of Microsoft products, and I'm learning about .Net whenever I get the chance. But the dilemma that Microsoft face now is - how do you adequately fight against something you can't buy? Unless they plan a move into the Linux market (and I've heard that rumour a few times already ;-))
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Message #130894
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Accountability through community
Agree totally with rory and jim. Commercial support is often very bad and OS support is often surprisingly excellent.
I have many experiences of commercial software support *and* accountability mounting up to nothing. Microsoft is (as given by some example already, and many more) definitely not an exception. Even the most expensive per seat software (say niche CAD, PDM, etc) often gets you a polite void of accountability and clueless consultants.
All the while, support from OS bread and butter projects (mail servers, samba, etc) equals surprisingly swift contact with actual *developers* of the software no less, that reply with a fresh air of direct knowledge. I can't think of one single company that gets you that.
Certainly not anywhere I worked. Knowledge is precious, an investment, etc and guarded well, that is the way it is.
/mawi
Rambling thought:
Maybe there is a feeling of personal accountability and joy in the directness and feeling of the OS community? Maybe what we are seeing in the failure of MS and other software companies - what Ballmer laughably tries to express as an advantage - is a failure due to the rigidity of our organizational structures. In an open community there is a more fluid rhythm - newcomer questions automatically either get answers with references (just like MS and Co) and intriguing questions actually very often get a response from whoever feels "accountable", I mean responsible...
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