Bill Gates Claims OSS Has Poor Interoperability 565
XeRXeS-TCN writes "In yet another example of Bill Gates seemingly 'not getting it' (or getting it just fine and spreading FUD), he has sent out an email to all MSFT's corporate customers, stating that if they are looking for interoperability, they should not look to Linux or OSS software. What he really means of course, is free alternatives trying to interoperate with Microsoft's non-documented proprietary standards."
What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess they can afford the upgrade licenses!
Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you install software in Red Hat? Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
How do you change what IP address will be used for eth0, in Red Hat or Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
In both cases the 6 years different versions of Windows are more similar than the latest versions of both.
Re:Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate to defend this guy, but there's other things you should be attacking him over. From a user point of view. Different Open Source distros are really like different Operating Systems.
Well, they are. The only thing they share in common may be a version of the kernel and the user tools.
How do you install software in Red Hat? Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
If you want to make an apples-to-apples comparison, then compare Mandrake 7.2 to Mandrake 10.1 versus Win98 to WinXP. Software installation is essentially the same accross the board except that Mandrake won't install something just because you put a CD in the drive.
I must have missed it when the law of computer usability was written. Who said everything had to work according to the Microsoft way? I guess that OO should break the document format with every new release if that's the standard.
Re:Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it was the standard. However, that standard has now been upgraded and is not backwards compatible. The new standard is to just pay Microsoft money. However this standard is unfortunately incompatible with many slashdot users and is currently being rewritten to be as inclusive as possible.
Re:Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:3, Insightful)
Might be more to do with Microsoft not innovating rather than anything to do with the maturation of Linux. Putting a new skin on the GUI does not equate to innovation.
Re:Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a lot of the misconception regard the differences between Linux and GNU software relates to what is what, and who wrote it, what they believe and if you agree with that. Whether they're written by RM Stallman et al, or Linus et al, or by distribution developers is important.
Linux is the kernel. The kernel, just like the CPU in your computer, is extremely interoperable. It works with all kind of peripheral applications, you access it using external commands, shells, etc. Linus wrote it because, to an extent he agreed with RMS ideology about software: that it should be free as in freedom, as in beer, and that you should be able to do anything with it.
Richard M. Stallman, creator of GNU (GNU's not UNIX), wrote many of the other applications terminal junkies get fired up about: bash, emacs, less, man and others. The GNU system applications and the kernel are what make up a complete Linux base system. Anything above that is written by the gnome group or kde, or someone else. These things are written for Linux but are other applications, just like null-soft winamp, AOL, Aqua, Macromedia Dreamweaver, or Flash.
On top of that, many distributions have designed "ease of use" solutions for X11-based graphical display servers. Interoperability has very little to do with configuration changes from distro to distro; that has more to do with the base OS, ifconfig, bash, sysvinit, and the flat files in
Also, only administrators should be worrying about interoperability, software installation, ip addressing, network configuration, boot up, accounts, etc. The "user's" point of view isn't really relevant there, a good administrator should know GNU/Linux, the base OS, configured with flat files, in terminal. It's easier anyway, once you've been trained to do it that way, because it doesn't change, because that's actually what GNU/Linux is.
I think you need to get past your bad experiences in the GUI environment and evaluate the OS. I agree there needs to be A GNU installer framework, perhaps even GNU selected GUI configuration utilities, among other things, but many distributions ideologies will get in the way. Red Hat wouldn't use it, now; Suse has YAST; Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, and derivatives use the gnome / KDE controls or else the terminal and would use them, but even so, there will inconsistency as long as Linux is free as in freedom. You can't expect an OS that's based on user input to be the same across multiple branches and ideologies; choose wisely. I choose Linux, because no matter which distribution I use, I can still fix it, rely on it, and be happy so many have put hard work into it.
*Few distros make fixes and actually let the original authors know, and help them catch all of Linux. This results in some other minor changes from distro to distribution. ** I hope this hasn't just been a big pointless rant, I've spent about an hour trying to write it well.
Re:Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're severely out of touch with the rest of the Linux commuinity, who generally use the term kernel to refer to kernel (kernel.org) and Linux to refer to a suite of applications you use as an Operating System. Compare kernel.org and linux.org.
Do you think Gates was referring to kernels in the article?
setup.exe=shar (Score:3, Insightful)
The Windows "setup.exe" method is analogous to the shar format [wikipedia.org], which is still supported by Red Hat/Debian et al.
Alternatively, Microsoft does now offer a package manager for Windows [wikipedia.org], but I'd be surprised if many people are using it with Windows 95; it'd be like alien on Debian.
Re:Linux is pretty bad in this regard (Score:3, Interesting)
In some cases, yes. But in many, ask yourself the following...
Is there a practical advantage to how Red Hat and Debian store the IP address of eth0?
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Interesting)
My previous company had a mixture of Office 97, Office 2K, and Office XP running all at once. There weren't any interoperability problems. (On a side note: There wasn't much difference to upgrade past 2k, either.)
Funny how that interpolation suff works (Score:4, Funny)
just a day or two ago, a secretary in the office couldn't open up a power-point file sent to her by the boss. They were both created on different versions of Microsoft Office, but it woud crash every time she opened it.
I had her send it to me, opened it up in OpenOffice and re-saved it in a generic powerpoint format. I sent it back to her and it now works fine!
So yes, with a little effort - different versions of Microsoft Office can interpolate
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates makes his money by selling, pushing & shoving his inferior product on everyone. If he truly wanted an interoperable system he'd open up those undocumented api's etc...
I personally like windows but I also like OS 9, OS X, Linux, BeOS, Solaris,
An OS should be like a screw driver. It does its job and doesn't need to be redesigned every week.
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)
One part vodka, three parts orange juice?
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Funny)
3 parts Vodka, set next to a bottle of Orange Juice.
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:4, Insightful)
You people make me sick. Leave it to dumbass Americans to dilute perfectly good vodka with fruitjuice.
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Funny)
Modded insightful? Methinks someone out there has mod points and a drinking problem.
Public Service Announcement... Don't MUI (Mod Under the Influence)... man, my sleeping pills are kicking in, and I wonder if you're not supposed Slashdot Under the influence... keep forgetting what I'm tryng to say... oh yeah... check this link [big-boys.com]... of to bed... zzzzzzzz
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:5, Funny)
If phillips had his way, it would be against the law to reverse engineer the X shaped screw, and you'd have to pay for his proprietary driver. They just didn't think to buy enough politicians to pass the MCSDA. (Mechanical Century Screw Driver Act)
This is backfiring (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they are failing at that.
IIRC the dollar lost 26% of it's value in 2004 (compared to Euro and Yen), so the 6% increase in revenue (10-12 2004/2005 in dollars) don't look so great anymore.
Sure, they have cut 1.5 billion of R&D costs, which is impressive, but only revenue can keep a company alive.
Currently Microsoft's anti-Linux strategy seems to be:
This won't work.
It will have these effects, all bad for Microsoft:
It seems Microsoft is getting pretty desperate.
Re:This is backfiring (Score:3, Insightful)
That's impressive? To me, cutting R&D means you have just that much of a harder time creating the next product that will keep your company afloat when your current one becomes outdated. Cutting R&D is what many companies have done before they got ran over by their (innovating) opponents and headed to bankrupcy court.
No it is not (Score:3, Insightful)
Sigh, this explains the strange "signals" I have gotten the last few days about migrating central systems at work to MS even though they have nothing to do with the problems they want to solve.
To some, MS is the bible. To reuse a old sentence "You can't get fired for choosing Microsoft".
There are tons of clueless managers that happily will "upgrade" working UNIX/mainframe systems to MS. And when the new system crumbles under the load, and doesn't deliver the rock solid performance of the old sy
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Insightful)
My law office runs on Openoffice. Let's see, it prints my pleading paper when I need it. Fills in templates from my database for all kinds of documents. Spell checks. Does outlining. Makes spreadsheets when I need to do some calculations. How is it inadequate compared to MSoffice?
When I worked for the state, we used MSoffice to the exact same things. But there isn't anything I did in my old job on MSoffice t
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've used the Word autosave for the first time in 1997, comming from WordPerfect 7. I had two problems with it:
- Autosaving a file larger as 720kb that's stored on a floppy corrupts the floppies entire file system.
- Autosaving a large file (20Mb) every 3 minutes as I was used to do on WP, fills up that 500Mb HD space FAST as it creates a new
Re:Autosave? (Score:3, Informative)
Hoping that helps out.
From Grendel by John Gardner: "A small bird lands feet up in my path. With a
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:2)
Or closed source proponents saying that you can't interoperate with their stuff because you don't know what's in the box. Like say autocad (open file format, yeah right, I bet you even they could not reimplement a 100% compatible reader/write from their own descriptions) or errr Microsoft for that matter. Oh Wait...
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What is this world coming to? (Score:3, Informative)
Vigor! [sourceforge.net]
Inspired by
User Friendly. [userfriendly.org]
This coming from the man... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This coming from the man... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This coming from the man... (Score:4, Insightful)
This really seems like a "grass is greener" issue. MSOffice has been everywhere for a long time and of course problems sometime crop up. But nobody really knows if OpenOffice interoperates better with itself because it has never been tried.
(And yes, I know about the XML format, but that doesn't prevent intrepetation/implementaiton issues.)
Re:This coming from the man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I've done that... (Score:4, Informative)
I know you're implicitly shilling Microsoft's shoddy products by implying other folks work is equally bad, but I hate to break the news to you: it isn't.
To take your example, I've what you're suggesting (on hundreds of machines, not millions, but the point remains) and guess what? They all read, write, and exchange one another's openoffice files perfectly...even the crappy windows boxes which do, from time to time, get hosed by the trojan, virus, spyware, or worm du jour.
Version deployed among colleagues, freinds, and relatives include:
OpenOffice 1.0 (Linux)
OpenOffice 1.1.1 (OS X)
OpenOffice 1.1.2 (Linux, Windows, OS X)
OpenOffice 1.1.3 (Linux, Windows)
OpenOffice 1.1.4 (Linux)
OpenOffice-Ximian 1.1.53 (Linux)
OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.5 (Linux)
OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.6 (Linux)
OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.8 (Linux)
NeoOffice/J 0.8.4 (OS X)
NeoOffice/J 1.1 Alpha 2 (OS X)
NeoOffice/J 1.1 Beta (OS X)
Platforms include assorted versions of Windows, numerous distributions of GNU/Linux ranging from Debian, Red Hat, and Suse to Source Mage and Gentoo. Mac OS X Versions include 10.2.x on iMacs and 10.3.x on assorted systems, including my powerbook 17".
It all works and interoperates flawlessly
Bigger Irony: Letter But not Spirit of Law (Score:4, Interesting)
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do we have a case of complying with the letter of the law but crapping on the spirit of the law?
typical (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:typical (Score:5, Funny)
Re:typical (Score:3, Informative)
Allow me to quote Ian Hickson, who was commenting on this specific topic. Hickson works for Opera, and should be nearly as bitter as they come.
Re:typical (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:typical (Score:3, Insightful)
SPAM !! (Score:3, Funny)
You want interoperability? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You want interoperability? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that was Mr. Gates point. If you dump Microsoft and use everything else, you lose interoperability with Microsoft products.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Interoperating spyware (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interoperating spyware (Score:2)
A failed mutation/combination forces extinction.
(reinstall of windows)
How can you question Bill Gates on this? (Score:5, Funny)
Studies show... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Studies show... (Score:2, Funny)
Confidence: [following Lister] You're hot. Take your helmet off.
Lister: I'll die!
Confidence: Why?
Lister: There's no oxygen out here!
Confidence: Hey! Oxygen's for losers! Come on.
Lister: I need oxygen!
Confidence: You don't need anything, King. You're the King!
[Lister has reached the end of the Catwalk.]
Lister: You're crazy! [Lister grabs the handrail and vaults around behind Confidence.]
Confidence: Who told you you needed oxygen, huh? Some loser
I got one, text of email follows (Score:4, Informative)
Every day, businesses face an ongoing challenge of making a wide variety of software from many different vendors work together. It's crucial to success in streamlining business processes, getting closer to customers and partners, or making mergers and acquisitions successful.
This email outlines some of the work Microsoft is doing to make its products interoperate well in a diverse IT environment; it is one in an occasional series of emails from Microsoft executives about technology and public-policy issues important to computer users, our industry, and anyone who cares about the future of high technology. If you would like to receive these emails in the future, please go to *link removed* to subscribe. We will not send you future executive emails unless you choose to subscribe.
Whether you are connecting with partners' systems, accessing data from a mainframe, connecting applications written in different programming languages or trying to log on across multiple systems, bringing heterogeneous technologies together while reducing costs is today a challenge that touches every part of the organization.
Over the years, our industry has tried many approaches to come to grips with the heterogeneity of software. But the solution that has proven consistently effective - and the one that yields the greatest success for developers today - is a strong commitment to interoperability. That means letting different kinds of applications and systems do what they do best, while agreeing on a common "contract" for how disparate systems can communicate to exchange data with one another.
Interoperability is more pragmatic than other approaches, such as attempting to make all systems compatible at the code level, focusing solely on adding new layers of middleware that try to make all systems look and act the same, or seeking to make different systems interchangeable. With a common understanding of basic protocols, different software can interact smoothly with little or no specific knowledge of each other. The Internet is perhaps the most obvious example of this kind of interoperability, where any piece of software can connect and exchange data as long as it adheres to the key protocols.
Simply put, interoperability is a proven approach for dealing with the diversity and heterogeneity of the marketplace. Today I want to focus on two major thrusts of Microsoft's product interoperability strategy: First, we continue to support customers' needs for software that works well with what they have today. Second, we are working with the industry to define a new generation of software and Web services based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which enables software to efficiently share information and opens the door to a greater degree of "interoperability by design" across many different kinds of software. Our goal is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We want to further eliminate friction among heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their distinctive underlying capabilities.
This may seem like an obvious approach, but the desire for interoperability is sometimes mixed up with other issues. For example, interoperability is sometimes viewed merely as adherence to a published specification of some kind, either from one or more vendors or a standards organization. But simply publishing a specification may not be enough, because it overlooks much of the hard work it takes to successfully develop interoperable products - namely, ensuring that the "contract" defined by a specification is successfully implemented in software and tested in a production environment.
Sometimes interoperability is also confused with open source software. Interoperability is about how different software systems work together. Open source is a methodology for licensing and/or developing software - that may or may not be interoperable. Ad
Re: One word: HILARIOUS (Score:3, Interesting)
Any CTO who is worth the paper on which his/her stock options are enumerated, should see it the same way. Unfortunately, as we've seen, there are many in upper echelons of management that are quite clueless. All anyone has to do is ask, "How much choice do I have using Microsoft products? Let's see...there's Microsoft, Microsoft.....and Microsoft!".
Re:I got one, text of email follows (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that even remotely sounds like the Slashdot blurb is this:
Re:I got one, text of email follows (Score:3, Interesting)
There's pattern developing here...curiouser and curiouser.
Re:I got one, text of email follows (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhm, yes. Interoperability takes adherences to standards and a lot of testing and work. If we all use the same software, that's not interoperability, that's software hegemony. Silly.
I'll tell you about Microsoft's interoperability. It's Apache Axis having to add an API just because th
Re:I got one, text of email follows (Score:3, Interesting)
This kind of reasoning never ceases to amaze me.
Sure, XML can make information more self-describing, but:
one to talk.. (Score:2)
There are a lot of issues with open source software, but he's really not one to talk on issues of interoperability. Nothing to see here, really. The article doesn't go into much depth.
Partially true, of course, but I haven't actually seen it cause many interoperability problems...
Yeah, right (Score:5, Insightful)
PS: It's all marketing, that's what Microsoft's about. Can we please move to something else?
Re:Yeah, right (Score:4, Interesting)
Adobe isn't the nicest company to deal with either but they are a hell of a lot better than MS.
Note: I'm an MSDN subscriber and I develop for Linux, Windows, Mac and *nix systems.
Re:Yeah, right (Score:3, Interesting)
He's right, of course (Score:4, Funny)
He told the truth (Score:4, Insightful)
Gates is telling the truth here. If the whole world standardized on one set of standard software, it would (obviously) make interoperability a lot easier. That's common sense. And we can understand why this vision would appeal to him, especially if the world decided to standardize on his software.
However, there is far more to choosing software than just that. OK, so we work harder to make interoperability work between software. It's worth it so people can have choice.
Re:He told the truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He told the truth (Score:2)
About damn time (Score:2, Funny)
work on my Linux box, but it won't run them. About time
someone had to point out the poor interoperability of
these important programs. Until something is done
to make it easy to run these programs with only a mouse
click, Linux will only be second rate.
interoperability (Score:4, Funny)
Windows interoperability (Score:4, Interesting)
A while ago I set up a home network. Linux gateway/fileserver running Samba, other boxes on the network running Linux, Win98, WinME, WinXP Pro & Home. Everything could see & use the Samba shares on the Linux fileserver. All the WinXP Pros could see & use shares on the other WinXP Pros. Trying to access shares between WinXP Pro & WinME - no can do.
Re:Windows interoperability (Score:2)
Interoperability? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then how come M$ not keen on using open standards?
Take Outlook for instance.
Works great with M$Exchange, but how about the support for SyncML, iCal, vCard and so on?...
-Nybo
Yeah, funny that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bill Gates is right, of course, that switching away from all-Microsoft products makes interoperability with Microsoft products harder. After all, he specifically engineered things that way. It's too bad the antitrust "settlement" a couple years ago was an absolute sham; if something like that settlement's "document your protocols and formats" clause had actually been enforced, Gates wouldn't be able to engineer them that way anymore, and interoperability would no longer be a problem anywhere.
Anyway, this is a common tactic in advertising. Attack your competitor for flaws you have but they don't; that way you tie up your competitor's ability to attack you on that grounds because they're too busy defending themselves, and you lessen the impact when people point out your own flaws since there's a perception your competitor has those flaws as well. Like, say you're a political candidate with a disreputable and possibly illegal military history? Get your supporters to pay people to claim your opponent has a disreputable and possibly illegal military history. Works like a charm.
Re:POSIX environment for Win IS available (and fre (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, SFU doesn't provide any more Posix support than the already bad support included with Windows. SFU is mostly for horrid implementations of NFS and NIS. (Seriously, I spent a long time once trying to get Windows to work as a client on a NIS network. It has got a lot of
That's slander (Score:2, Interesting)
So, according to MS, who is the epitome of good interoperability? Uhm, let's see... isn't that the main culprit itself?
Come one, this is a criminal act. False adver
It's true... (Score:3, Insightful)
So in that respect, what he says is true. Much like a robber slowly pulling the knife out of his victim, while muttering "this street has become too dangerous".
That man is right... (Score:5, Insightful)
- open a OpenOffice document in AbiWord
- copy&paste between different applications
- embbed an Gnumeric chart into some OpenOffice document
- try to edit a LaTeX document with Abiword or OpenOffice
- try to open a Gimp xcf in anything beside Gimp
- try to copy&paste some webpage in a Office application and get something more then plain-text
-
None of this works or only in a much less smooth way then it does under Windows or MacOSX with similar software. Free Software has improved a lot in these regions in the last years, but there is still lots and lots of software floating around that doesn't operate much with other software at all. Sure, you can always export to
Re:That man is right... (Score:4, Insightful)
well, that is really a shame. i would have thought that the abiword guys had an import plugin for this...
- copy&paste between different applications
yes, this IS a serious drawback which stems from the different GUI toolkits. drag&drop also is very problematic between GTK/KDE/X11... but if you use KDE with KDE-applications this problem is much less worse
- embbed an Gnumeric chart into some OpenOffice document
hmm, should this actually work? you mean like the COM stuff in windows (if that is the right buzzword
- try to edit a LaTeX document with Abiword or OpenOffice
i haven't tried this because abiword nor openoffice are text editors, but it is perfectly possible to do so! or do you mean that abiword/OO should present the document in a LyX-like fashion? this is such a wrong approach!!! abiword/OO are word processors while latex is a typesetting system! two TOTALLY different domains!
that would be like using the Internet Explorer as your default image viewer... *hey, wait a second*
- try to open a Gimp xcf in anything beside Gimp
XCF is an internal format of the Gimp just like PSD is for photoshop! these formats are not really intended to be opened by other programs!
- try to copy&paste some webpage in a Office application and get something more then plain-text
i never understood the urge to do so! my mother always does this as a means of pasting together different bits of information, but why would i want to paste the color, font and background image together with the text?? i am not saying that it is a useless feature and maybe it would be nice if it were possible under linux, but i really don't see any application for this! even worse, i'd REALLY like to know how to disable this questionable feature under windows!
jethr0
Re:That man is right... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guarantee that if all the Linux and BSD and HURD developers picked one kernel, GNOME and KDE picked one working environment, etc..., we would blow the pants off Microsoft.
However, that doesn't coincide with OSS ideals.
Re:That man is right... (Score:5, Insightful)
open a OpenOffice document in AbiWord
Yes, its unfortunate that doesn't work. It isn't for lack of potential interoperability though - both formats are open and documented. The fact that the Abiword team hasn't gotten around to writing an import filter is a little disappointing, but if you're going to damn them for that:
Try opening an OpenOffice document in Microsoft Word.
Not much interoperability from Microsoft either. OpenOffice is fairly widely used and popular, and the file format readily documented. It wouldn't be hard at all for Microsoft ot be interoperable if they wanted to be.
- try to edit a LaTeX document with Abiword or OpenOffice
Try to open a QuarkXPress document in Microsoft Word. How about an Adobe InDesign document in Microsoft Word? What's that? A different application domain? Then please think again about your example. TeX is not a word processor, even if there are programs like LyX that do a good job of providing a word processor like interface for it.
- try to open a Gimp xcf in anything beside Gimp
Try opening a PSD document in anything besides Photoshop. There are actually some programs that read it (like GIMP, heh), but your remarkably interoperable Microsoft Office suite will choke on it. Likewise there are programs that will read xcf (its an open documented format after all), but most don't expect to need to, so don't bother. As to GIMP - I hear they're working on an even more open and easy to access format.
Jedidiah.
Interoperability between IE and Outlook Express (Score:3, Funny)
MS Interoperability is BASED ON OPENSOURCE! (Score:2)
Windows would be nothing without TCP/IP.
If it wasen't for TCP/IP - Windows would still be using BEUI or whatever the *$&@ they called it.
Re: (Score:2)
Interoperability (Score:3, Informative)
All this comes at a price, however, because extremely strong integration (Microsoft's method for implementing interoperability) means that removing certain pieces is difficult to do. Servers usually do not need a GUI, because they sit there and run headless, doing their thing for years at a time with little local interaction. A GUI uses memory and adds a great deal of running code and therefore bugginess. In Unix, to rid yourself of the GUI, you simply never start X. In Windows, it is sort of possible to never start the GUI, but it is very difficult to do and the aforementioned integration of everything means that even if you do manage to accomplish this feat, you will have limited power over the system since at its core, Windows is designed to be administered with GUI tools.
Unixy OSes, Linux and the BSDs in particular, can be stripped down so thoroughly as to run on a wrist watch [freeos.com] or low-power PDA. In order to run on PDAs at all, Microsoft had to develop an in-house custom Windows system, CE, in order to operate under the constraints of a limited system, and it is still far more resource intensive than a Linux system can be.
Granted, Linux has to be stripped down to run on such hardware as well, but since the source code is available, it can be done. You won't find any companies selling custom imbedded copies of Windows made by anyone but Microsoft.
That said, the use of open standards is a system that will eventually overtake even the best fully integrated but proprietary system because any company or group can work on improving the system, products, and ideas, to differntiate themselves. No matter how many resources Microsoft or any other closed company has, "not microsoft" has more.
Oh for Charlie Mingus' sake (Score:4, Insightful)
Any mention of Linux? Nah, some noserubbing on the Great Forking Problem.
Karma whoring. (Score:2)
interoperability of microsoft office (Score:4, Insightful)
unless i totally misunderstand that word, aren't open standards BETTER in terms of interoperability than closed, proprietary ones??
i say we publish official and open standards, protocols and file formats for all major interactions and make it everybodies choice whether they like to have an open client for the standardized communications or if they'd rather take proprietary tools!
obviously, not every program can be delivered with full source, but if a vendor wants to reach various platforms, there is either a common standard in place (like POSIX for example) or some porting is in order *tough luck*.
why did mr. gates fight java as language and instead went with
why would a quasi-monopolistic company preach interoperability when this can only weaken its own position???
jethr0
Interoperability (Score:4, Insightful)
The ability to read, and only read, old data formats into new versions of software from the same vender. The aim of interoperability is to simplify upgrade from one version of software to the next.
Translation: Use OSS and ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it does (Score:3, Insightful)
And Mr. Gates is doing everything in his power to see that Linux/OSS remains as uninteroperable with Windows as possible- let alone other competing interests.
If MSFT is preaching interoperability (Score:3, Insightful)
How about I give you the finger...and you don't tell me how to run my operating system?
Well, he is right you know... (Score:3, Funny)
LAMP will never catch on. Nope. Never.
Good thing my website doesn't use any of tho... oh, wait.
It's been said a bazillion time before... (Score:4, Insightful)
First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you -- OSS is here right now
Then you win.
Whatever prompted Bill to say such a thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can the same be said for Microsoft software? Can developers 'freely' interoperate with all Microsoft software? Does Microsoft give assurance that developers can continue to freely interoperate with its products in the future?
Additionally, the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application
In layman's terms, this means that Open Source encourages that evil thing called 'competition'.
Has Bill Gates ever said anything positive about Open Source Software?
I wonder why not?
Not FUD and he DOES get it (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't remember where I saw this... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't remember where I saw this quote, but I've had it here in my logs for awhile, and I think its relevant here:
Fine... (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft supports open standards RIGHT?
Re:But to some, free software is worth what you pa (Score:3, Informative)
Take SuSE for example. They built on work from RedHat, who built on work from Slackware and "roll your own" distributions, who built on the straight GNU toolset
Re:OSS has been a mixed bag for me... (Score:2)
Re:I think he has a little bit of a point... (Score:2)
One is simple, Bill Gates competes with Linux/OSS/Free and other commercial software. It's not in his interests, yet, to support open source software because it doesn't benefit him.
The other issue is a matter of application. Some software and operating systems are better for certain things. I like Solaris for some things, Linux for others, Windows can be a nice development environment. Sometimes there's no software on the OS I am using for the application that I want. O
Re:I think he has a little bit of a point... (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe on your machine. I have run into a couple of missing .so files but it's usually because of some poor compilation options, which is easily remedied. I would compare DLL hell more closely with RPM hell, although I haven't used RPM's in a while so I'm not sure if that problem still exists.
Re:I think he has a little bit of a point... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:he might have a point... (Score:5, Informative)
ALSA is the current driver infrastructure in the Linux kernel. OSS was the previous driver structure. ALSA has an OSS emulation layer.
ESD (The enlightenment sound daemon) is a software mixer that was also used in Gnome but isn't anymore. ARTS is the basically the KDE version of ESD but it also being deprecated in favor of ALSA's built in abilities like dmix.
I don't see your point.