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Re: More Anti-Linux FUD from Ballmer

Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Ballmer: Windows HPC Edition To Steal Share From Linux
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Ballmer said Linux is not gaining as much share against Windows as
> | naysayers once predicted. The Linux desktop has gone nowhere and
> | Linux server sales have peaked, he claimed.

This is why he considers it so important to challenge Linux, because
Linux is the most successful single competitor to consistantly expand
and capture share against Microsoft.  Appearantly Steve hasn't read the
financial reports of Red Hat and Novell.  They seem to be doing OK.
Microsoft seems to be reluctant to explain which measure they base this
conclusion on.

By unit volumes, Linux continues to grow at 40% per year, down from the
400% per year of a few years ago, but still respectable gains.  A 40%
gain could still be somewhere between 40 and 80 million new Linux
users.

Perhaps Ballmer is presuming that every machine sold with Windows
remains a Windows machine forever.  Even if this were true, this does
not mean that those machines couldn't ALSO be Linux machines.

LiveCDs, VMs, Dual-Boots, and multiple machine ownership resulting from
ultracheap PCs, has made it much easier to convert Windows machines to
Linux.  OEMs are more aware than anybody how many people are using
their machines for Linux, and they seem to be far more willing to make
sure that their machines are "Linux Ready".

> | "Four years ago, people wrote that we'd be wiped out by Linux.

I'm surprised by Microsoft's ability to adapt to the market.  On the
other hand, 4 years ago there was a court order that was supposed to
have enough teeth in it to prevent Microsoft from continuing to
illegally protect and expand it's monopoly power.  Perhaps the Bush
administration was willing to look the other way in exchange for
information gathered using Spyware and Automatic Update (remember, that
software can read ANY file on the PC).

> | Four years later, how are they doing?

Pretty good.  Linux is now an industry with revenues in excess of $3
billion per QUARTER, and it's growing at over 20% per quarter.

There are over 300 Linux distributions, there are numerous LiveCDs,
there are about 100 VMWare Player appliances, and there are millions of
machines being sold that run Linux as the primary operating system
BETTER than Windows.

> | They're not gaining share.

I would assume that would be based on the percentage of machines sold
by OEMs with Linux preinstalled, compared to the percentage of machines
sold by OEMs with Windows preinstalled.  This would probably be
correct.  Furthermore, I would assume that Steve assumes that every
"White Box" machine sold with no operating system installed is really
just a machine running a pirated copy of Windows.

White box sales are up.  Microsoft has become even more agressive about
it's retailiation and restrictions against OEMs who actually sell Linux
preinstalled to the general public.

The biggest factor is that both OEMs and corporate customers have come
to realize that they can have the best of both worlds, at minimal cost.
 The OEMs weren't saving any money by not installing Linux (since they
were paying for the licenses anyway).  Since the OEMs weren't offering
substantial discounts, there was little advantage to NOT purchasing
Linux.

On the other hand, hundreds of millions of copies of FireFox,
OpenOffice, and Linux have been downloaded and deployed on various
machines originally sold with Windows.

Four years ago, the assumption was that corporate customers would
probably not renew their support contracts, at best they might hold off
for months or even years after the release of Windows XP.  Microsoft
prevented defections by force-feeding their corporate customers.  They
told them that if they didn't sign new contracts, even before the
previous contracts were going to expire, that they would retaliate.
Furthermore, these companies had to pre-accept licenses for XP for
every single user.  These XP licenses had new provisions which
prevented the sharing of Windows workstations using VNC.

Microsoft probably spent more time and resources developing a preemtive
strike strategy against Linux and reluctant corporate customers, than
it spent on actual development.  Fortunately, or Microsoft, the Bush
administration had no desire to limit Microsoft's activities.  MSNBC
was giving the administration favorable coverage,  The Democrats lost
control of the Senate, and the Gates Foundation had become a major
contributor some very popular causes.

The fact that Microsoft is willing to dedicate this much time, energy,
and resources, to dealing with Linux, should be a huge red flag.

> | Four years ago, we were supposed to be wiped out.

Microsoft played a good game.  Bill Gates loves the game of Risk, where
you form allainces to destroy the capabilities of weaker competitors,
then eventually destroy even those competitors who were supposed to be
your ally.  The "Winner" effectively takes over the world.  Microsoft
has used similar tactics to expand it's markets and control those
markets.

> | We've not lost share to
> | them--maybe we're down a point--and that can almost be all accounted
> | for by the number of Linux servers Google's put in," Ballmer quipped.

That is amusing.  Did google recently buy 10 million new servers?

The good news for Microsoft, is that many NT 4.0 servers that were
upgraded to Windows 2000 or Windows 2003, were replaced with newer
servers, and are upgraded frequently.  As a result, the machines are
sold with the original OEM Windows license, as Windows machines.  But
the machines being replaced become Windows machines.  If you assume
these machines are upgraded every year or two, that could be 3-4
machines converted to Linux for every Windows machine currentnly
deployed.

> | [...]
> | One open source consultant dismissed Ballmer's contention, and said
> | Linux' momentum is not over.

I would agree with this.  It's pretty obvious that Linux isn't going to
just "Go Away" and Microsoft would rather destroy every byte of data on
every computer running Windows than allow Linux to dominate the Linux
desktop market.

Fortunately, most of the computers made in the last 2-3 years are fully
capable of running both Linux and Windows.  When Windows machines get
corrupted, they are simply replaced, but the machines being replaced
are reformatted and converted to Linux.  They might be used "in house",
they might be donated to charities, or they might be shipped to
emerging markets in Asia, Africa, South America, India, and Eastern
Europe.

Market penitration in some countries is as high as 40% Linux, based ot
surveys of client machines connecting to servers which identify each
instance by cookie as well as by IP address.

> http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=188703264&cid=CRNBreakingNews


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