LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: James Leone <LINUXCPA@netscape.net>
  To  : <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 02:30:32 -0700

Steve Ballmer Not Loosing Sleep Over Linux

These sound like fighting words. Is there any truth to what Ballmer says?

http://news.com.com/2008-1082-998297.html?tag=fd_lede1_hed

> Sitting down for an in-depth interview with CNET News.com, Ballmer 
> discussed the Linux phenomenon as well as a range of other issues 
> facing Microsoft.
>
>
> Q: Microsoft has beaten companies touting free software before. But as 
> one of your former executives pointed out, Linux is a completely 
> different kind of free. There is no single company promoting it. There 
> are people voluntarily coding for it. Do these aspects change how you 
> compete against them.
>  A: We have competed with things that had no price attached with them 
> before. There is a clear set of guideposts for adding value to 
> customers to differentiate you from the guy who has no price or a 
> lower price. It is a different model in the sense that there is no 
> commercial company behind it, but I think that winds up being an 
> advantage for us, rather than a disadvantage.
>
>
> In what respect?
>  Innovation is not something that is easy to do in the kind of 
> distributed environment that the open-source/Linux world works in. I 
> would argue that our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us 
> than they have seen from that community.
>
>
> Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years 
> old. That's what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 
> 20-year-old system. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for 
> some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition.
>
>
>
> Some people say it is an advantage that Linux gets built in all of 
> these little pieces. The fact is that if you want to do some kind of 
> integrated innovation that touches the kernel, that touches the user 
> interface--there is no way. Maybe Linus (Torvalds) can control the 
> innovation in the piece called the kernel, but there are many pieces.
>
>
> The Linux world in some sense is a lot like the Unix world. There is 
> not much communality. There is this distribution; there is that 
> distribution. There is this user interface, there is that. Some people 
> might see some advantages to that. On the other hand, in terms of 
> putting a clear, simple proposition in front of the customer, I think 
> we have a leading edge proposition.
>
>
> Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is twenty-plus 
> years old. That's what it is.
>
>
> So when it comes to development models, you're claiming the edge?
>  If you want a fix now, we may need to perform better, but you know 
> where to go. There is nobody to turn to if you as a (Linux) customer 
> says, 'I need this.' You can't turn to IBM. They don't write the 
> thing. It's not like IBM can support Linux the way they support the 
> mainframe operating system. They don't write the code for it. All they 
> can say is, 'You can call us and ask us a question, but if you 
> actually want something done we can't do it.'
>
>
> But why do you think people are adopting Linux? Is it because they can 
> look at the code? Is it because they don't have to go through an 
> 80-page licensing agreement?
>  No. There are some scenarios where people consider it. People don't 
> really consider Linux much on the client--that's my market 
> observation. On the server side, you have people who have skill sets 
> and applications on Sun that they want to move now to Intel hardware 
> to save costs. I think we have a pretty good story, but I tell you, 
> game's on. We've got to prove ourselves, and some people are choosing 
> Linux. I don't think that is going to continue to be the case.
>
>
> In the past you've used strong words like "cancer" to describe Linux. 
> There is the un-American comment from a colleague about GPL (General 
> Public License) and open source. Are you backing off from that 
> position and taking more of a technological or business view?
>  I think there are many parts of the discussion. I do think there are 
> things that people don't understand very well about the new 
> alternative, where it is important for us to help customers understand 
> the issues.
>
>
>  The way things are structured today, from a licensing perspective, in 
> the Linux world nobody will ever commercialize Linux the way the Sun 
> commercialized FreeBSD. For some customers, that can be viewed as 
> advantageous. But customers will never really know who stands behind 
> this product. If the lead developer for this component chooses to do 
> something else with his life, who will carry on the mantle for that? 
> The fact that it will never be commercialized is assured by the GPL. 
> The GPL licensing form does that, as opposed to the open-source 
> license for FreeBSD, where you could say Sun took it and 
> commercialized it and can say that they own it. Nobody can ever do 
> that (with GPL).
>
>
> There are advantages (to Windows) that are more subtle. We may not 
> have always been sharp in the way we have communicated about those 
> (laughs), but there are some things that are important for customers 
> to understand. We think that in some sense our commercial form is a 
> major asset for us.
>
>
> Gauge the piracy problem. Are you finally getting a handle on it?
>  Some countries yes, some countries no. It has improved certainly in 
> Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. Piracy was 
> high at one time. There are still challenges in parts of Asia. We have 
> seen improvements in Latin America.
>
>
>  What is driving it, legal enforcement or a growing PC industry that 
> wants to make money?
>  Both. It really takes both. Neither one nor the other by itself is 
> generally enough.
>
>
> On the desktop, in developing countries, computer dealers will tell 
> you that they sell Linux-based PCs, but in a lot of these places, 
> Windows only costs $1 in the street.
>  A Linux PC in most countries is a PC in which somebody is being 
> encouraged to pirate Windows. We conducted some surveys about this in 
> one large Asian country, where we found that, of all PCs that didn't 
> have Windows installed on them when they were sold, 99 percent wound 
> up with Windows on them within 30 days.
>
>
>  Who is the target audience for Windows 2003 server? Is it Windows 4.0 
> users? The Unix crowd?
>  The initial market will probably evolve into three categories. 
> Category No. 1 will be NT 4.0 users. There are a lot out there, and I 
> think we offer an important step forward. It's not like a client, 
> where everybody might want to upgrade at the same time, but I think 
> we've set up a real wave there.
>
>
> No. 2, there are people moving applications from expensive gear onto 
> cheap gear. I think Windows Server 2003 is going to look good to a lot 
> of that community. Those are high-performance computing applications, 
> or applications running on Solaris or AIX.
>
>
> And No. 3, people who want to put in new applications or people who 
> want to support new working information-type scenarios--and people are 
> always putting in new applications. They really are.
>
>
> There are millions of new servers sold a year, and that is a market 
> that continues to grow. It grows faster than the PC market does. By 
> hook or by crook, so to speak, there will be 5-plus million servers, 
> roughly, sold in the next 12 months.
>
>
>  Over time, will servers become 50 percent of your business?
>  It's not a line of dialogue I choose to engage in because then all 
> you are doing is comparing the growth prospects of various businesses. 
> I think we have great growth opportunities in our server business. I 
> think we have great growth opportunities in small business and medium 
> business, as well as the enterprise. I think the percentage growth 
> rate in that (the server) business will exceed that which we see in 
> the Windows client business or the Office business. But those are huge 
> businesses. This is a very large business, but those are huge businesses



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