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Microsoft And ODF: Bad For Everyone
In shocking news, Microsoft’s support of ODF in Microsoft Office is basically unusable in many respects, according to the OpenDocument Format Alliance. This is a real problem for ODF’s adoption, since Office users who try using it, either for opening a document or for sending a document to someone else, will likely blame their issues on ODF, and, thus, avoid it.
What Microsoft has done with ODF support seems likely to harm ODF’s acceptance, rather than help it. It’s hard to tell if this move was incompetent or malicious or something entirely different?
It’s hard to believe that with all of Microsoft’s resources they couldn’t put together decent ODF support, but, then again, they haven’t exactly been hitting home runs recently. Whatever the cause, Microsoft would be better off if they had done this correctly. A little good will from a bunch of geeks is so much more important than (probably unintentionally) giving a few users a bad experience with ODF.
Microsoft often makes little gestures as if they are beginning to accept that they can co-exist with open-source software and open standards, but every time they manager to somehow undermine their own actions with some other unfriendly move. Reputation is key right now for Microsoft’s success. Lazy ODF support isn’t winning them any friends.
Companies like Red Hat and Novell base a lot of their Linux business model on providing support to their big enterprise customers. This model has been very successful, but no one has applied this, or any other, business model to consumer desktop Linux with great success.
Why not just scale that model down and allow consumers to buy support? Naturally, many companies offer support for their desktop Linux, so shouldn’t this idea of scaling have been tested? Not necessarily.
Canonical sells support for the desktop version of Ubuntu for a minimum of $250 per year. In other words, some random Ubuntu user is not likely to be buying support. What if it just cost $15, though?
At $15 dollars, the margins are not exactly going to be large, but it might work anyway. For example, this year I gave a family an old computer with Ubuntu installed as part of a project. In this process, I sent an email to Canonical asking if they could donate a few months of support. The answer was, obviously, no. If the price was only $15 per person, though, it would be quite reasonable to give this family a year of support with a phone number they could call.
I’m not entirely convinced there is a big enough market, but inexpensive, consumer-aimed support is an interesting idea. Have you ever hared of anyone trying this before?
Don't Force Purity in Companies
A recent ComptuerWorld article argues that open-source-based companies are just not going to be able to make as much money as their commercial counterparts, and, thus, should open themselves up to supporting the open-source versions of their software, too. I disagree.
These companies are already providing an incredible service to the community by licensing their code as open-source. True, they may get help from the community in developing the software, but they still need a way to make money. Compared to some of the alternatives, only supporting the commercial version doesn’t seem too bad, and, if it helps the company hire more developers to improve the open-source side, everyone wins.
Though it would be nice if every company was based around pure open-source, it may not yet be realistic, at least until someone comes up with a better business model. For now, let a few concessions slide – you can’t ask too much of company that has to make money.
All Businesses Using Open-Source Software In A Year? Yeah, But What Does It Mean?
ComputerWorld is reporting that Gartner predicted all businesses will use open-source software in just 12 months. It is certainly an interesting prediction, but, as with many of these, I think the headline is a little misleading.
All this means is that in a year just about every business will be using some piece of open-source software somewhere. In other words, a giant corporation that uses a piece of open-source software in some tiny department somewhere would count, even if all their other software was proprietary. Thinking of it that way certainly makes the prediction a lot more believable, but it does not make it irrelevant.
The big deal here is really that it means that just about every IT department will have had at least a little experience with open-source software. You can’t guarantee that this experience will make it to higher levels or that it will be entirely positive, but just a little bit of experience with open-source software can certainly help to eliminate doubts.
The idea is that once a company tries a little bit of open-source software, they will be open (pun possibly intended) to the possibility of trying open-source software again. If the company’s experiences are consistently positive, this could lead to a company adopting open-source for more major roles, even if they started with something small.
While this prediction might not be as monumental as it might seem, it does matter and it is good news. A more interesting statistic might be how much each company likes the open-source software they use and if they consider it to play a major role in their jobs?
The Current State of the Economy and Linux
Recently, the Linux Foundation has apparently been pointing out that the struggling US economy may cause businesses that are looking to cut cost to switch to Linux. I completely agree, but there is potentially even more to it than just the struggling economy.
From the perspective of a business executive faced with having to cut cost somewhere, what would you cut? Almost anything that the customer sees directly is out from the start, so that leaves very little. One thing it does leave, though, is the IT budget.
Now, from an IT department’s perspective, think about what you would do with this reduced budget. Not only do you have to be careful not to spend too much on standard day-to-day costs, but there is a good chance that you were considering an upgrade soon. Why? Because the release of Vista may have had a lot of companies waiting to upgrade. Then, when Vista was not well received, many businesses probably just kept on waiting. Now, the IT department is faced with two options: forget about the upgrade and wait even longer or use Linux.
While neither the financial crisis nor the bad reception of Vista are in any way good, they do create an opportunity for Linux to take a step forward in business.
Linux's Market Share: Is There Any Way To Know?
One thing many of us would like to know, I am sure, is how many people out there use Linux? The usual numbers, those from Net Applications, would indicate that less than 1% of people use Linux. More recently, though, there have been some more optimistic numbers. Canonical is claiming that 11% of businesses use Ubuntu. (If that is the case, just imagine how many use Red Hat or Suse.) Gartner says that Linux’s market share is 4%, putting it about even with the Mac. And Context says that almost 3% of PCs sold in the UK have Linux pre-installed.
While none of those numbers are huge, they mean the difference between Linux and Mac OS X being about equal and Linux being a speck of dust in the sea. The fundamental problem is that it is really, really hard to know how what the marketshare of Linux, or any open-source software, is. After all, one download might never be used, or only be used for a short time, and another might be used to install Linux onto 100 computers.
In addition to the standard market share numbers I mentioned above, there are at least two others projects trying to determine how many Linux users there are.
The first is the Linux counter. Their idea is to get people to visit the website and register as a Linux user. Obviously, this has some flaws in that anyone can register many times and most people will not bother to register.
The second project is the Open Source Census. The idea is similar, except that you download an application. This presumably gives them better control over double submissions, but it cannot be perfect and it is still voluntary.
Short of every Linux distro calling home, which I hope will never happen, there may never be a way to know how many Linux users there are. Perhaps the downloads of some cross-platform application would give a rough idea, but that application would have to be something that a Linux user, a Mac user, and a Windows user would want equally. If anyone has a better idea, I would love to hear it.
What Do Microsoft Patent Deal Mean for Linux UMPCs? Nothing.
A recent iTWire article suggests that when Xandros’s patent deal with Microsoft runs out in 2011, Microsoft will attempt to use their patent FUD to stop Linux’s adoption on UMPCs.
Quite a while ago, a number of companies, including Novell, Xandros, and many others, signed patent deals with Microsoft. These deals supposedly protect the company in question and its customers from being sued by Microsoft, which Microsoft claims they can do because Linux supposedly violates many of their patents. Largely due to Microsoft not revealing what those patents are, other companies, such as Red Hat, refused to sign patent deals. At the time, companies that did sign patent deals were viewed very poorly by the Linux community, since they were simply submitting to Microsoft FUD. Gradually, however, this issue has become less of a focal point and there is a lot less coverage of it.
In 2011, though, as pointed out by the iTWire article, this issue is likely to resurface, since Xandros’s patent deal will expire. Since the Linux used on the Eee PC will no longer be “protected,” the article also suggests that Microsoft will use this FUD opportunity to try to harm Linux on UMPCs. They may try, but I don’t think they will succeed.
As I see it, when the patent deal issue resurfaces, there will, of course, be a huge uproar from the Linux community and lots of pressure for companies not to sign the deals. In this situation, one of two things will probably happen:
- Microsoft will give up trying to push their FUD around patents onto companies.
- Some more patent deals will be signed or renewed and everything will move on again.
Though the later may not be preferable, neither option would seriously hurt Linux’s chances on UMPCs or Linux’s chances in general.
Optional OSS Synchronization
Recently the issue of synchronizing open-source software releases has come up quite frequently. Stories are being written about it. Shuttleworth (founder of Ubuntu) has stated his opinion on the topic. Seigo (from KDE) has also given his input. Basically, the topic is becoming a point of a lot of discussion and controversy.
Before I launch into my ideas on the topic, what is the whole synchronization idea? (Feel free to skip this part if you already know.) The idea of synchronizing open-source software is that all the Linux distributions will release their new versions on the same day and upstream projects (projects whose code goes into Linux distributions) will time their releases according to the distribution schedule.
Now onto my ideas: The debate seems to come down to a single major issue. There may be side topics, but the core issue seems to be time-based releases versus feature-based releases. Time-based releases, as you may know, are releases based on a set time schedule. For example, Ubuntu does time-based releases, because they release a new version every 6 months. Feature-based releases, as you may also know, are where the software is not released until all the features have been implemented.
The advantage of time-based releases is that they offer predictability for businesses and software developers, goals to force the developers working on the software to keep moving, and easier scheduling of how long support for each version will last. On the other hand, though, time-based releases may discourage major new features and allow bugs to slip through the cracks and make it into the final release. As you can see, there is no clear best option.
So how is this related to synchronization? Synchronization would force projects into a time-based release schedule. This seems, at least to me, to be the biggest issue surrounding synchronizing releases.
Personally, although I don’t have a strong opinion, I think time-based releases are the best way to go because they make it easy to see that development is progressing steadily and encourage steady development. Also, with good management and the help of version control software, it should be possible to still introduce new features and keep bugs out.
Even though I prefer time-based releases, I recognize that it may not be the right choice for some projects. Initially, I made the argument that if the features were not ready in a piece of software or there were still bugs, that piece of software would just skip that release date and release at the next date. The problem is that a piece of software might finish with months left before the next release date. That is why I think optional OSS (open-source software) synchronization is the right way to go.
What I mean by optional OSS synchronization is that the projects that already use time-based releases would all synchronize, while feature-based release projects would continue with their way of doing things and their code would be incorporated as needed when it it possible. This would allow a major synchronization effort, without stopping the projects for whom feature-based releases work better.
Additionally, I suspect (correct me if you think I am wrong) that most of the projects that are serious about getting mainstream adoption will go with time-based releases, because of its appeal to businesses.
For all these reasons, I think optional OSS synchronization–having the projects that already use time-based releases synchronize while the others remain as they are now–is the best solution to the synchronization question.
Microsoft news related to open-source software is not uncommon. Sometimes it is frustrating. Sometimes annoying. Occasionally it is good. Rarely, though, is it comical.
The Register recently reported this:
The recently appointed head of Microsoft’s global Linux and open source team hopes the company will have a clear and comprehensible open source strategy by 2015.
So as Microsoft realizes that open-source software is becoming a real threat, they respond by saying they will have a real plan to respond in just 7 years. And, if Vista is any evidence, it might be more like 9 years 20 years 1,000 years never.
Seriously Microsoft? Come on. In 7 years when you finally come up with a plan you might be suprised to see how much of your empire has been conquerered by open-source. Then you might have to spend the next 15 years coming up with a new plan.
Is The Linux Eee PC 900 More Expensive Than The Windows Version? (Now With Real Numbers)
For a long time the question has been going back and forth: is Asus messing with us and making the Linux version of the Eee PC more expensive than the Windows version? Previously the numbers have all been speculation, but now, finally, we have real numbers to look at!
So now that the Eee PC 900 is out, it should be easy to get to the bottom of this mystery, right? Naturally, no. For some reason, only a few places seem to be selling the Eee PC 900. Worse, those prices are not all the same. Basically I was only able to find three places that sell both the Linux and Windows versions: Buy.com, Newegg, and OnSale. (I also found both at one more place, but from that store both cost more than $600.) So what are the prices?
Eee PC 900 Windows: $550, $550, $595
Eee PC 900 Linux: $590, $550, $550
Groan. It has been so long. Couldn’t you just give us numbers that make sense??? All I can assume is that Asus is really selling both versions for the same price and Buy.com and OnSale are just making one version or the other more expensive for some reason. Especially since Newegg has them both for the same price, I think that is the best assumption.
So in summary, because the Linux version has more storage space, which cancels out the price of Windows, I think Asus, at least in the US, has done the right thing and made them both cost the same so that no advantage is given to either OS. Now I just wish OnSale, Buy.com, and anyone else messing with these prices would just make them both cost the same as they should. That way, the price advantage of Linux will be clear to all shoppers.