Style, power and portability: HP dv5The future belongs to Linux
The rising generation of programmers isn't being fed .Net and Windows. It's growing strong on Linux and its associated LAMP stack, as Robert Guth of the Wall Street Journal notes. Microsoft thinks it has an answer to this trend toward Linux. It is very telling how far from reality Microsoft is by its response:
Microsoft hasn't been a player in the Net start-up world, in part because of the cost of its server product. Mr. Hilf tells [the WSJ] that Microsoft is trying to fix that with new licensing schemes that make Windows Server more affordable for start-ups....
The technology has also been a hindrance, which Mr. Hilf says Microsoft tried to overcome by making additions to Windows Server 2008 that might appeal to Linux programmers who want better access to the technical guts of the software. Such changes "will be a big impact to that next-generation Facebook," Mr. Hilf says.
Well, no, Bill. Such changes are largely irrelevant at this point. You've already lost the mindshare war, and tepid changes to Microsoft's server licensing policies won't change things, either. Your company's limp olive branch to the open-source community ("You can use our software royalty-free and without fear of legal retribution...so long as you never make a penny from your efforts") is worse than insulting.
Microsoft's model is perfect for the client/server model that it helped to pioneer. It is irrelevant for the web-enabled future that is being built even as I type. This new world looks more like Firefox: platform agnostic. It doesn't care if people run Windows. Neither should you.
Matt Asay is general manager of the Americas and vice president of business development at Alfresco, and has nearly a decade of operational experience with commercial open source and regularly speaks and publishes on open-source business strategy. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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So the message for Microsoft:
If I had Thousands of dollars to burn on Server08 and ASP... then who knows maybe I'd join the darkside. But for now, while I'm developing on a used car budget... I'll stick with openSource.
Then When I am rich.. and can afford Windows. I won't bother. Because I never learned how to write in your language.
The internet is slowing killing off the hold MS has held for years.
What is really unifying the forces of computer programming and design, for example? Or even, the internet in general? Certainly not .NET or ASP, XML or JavaScript etc, though I have little knowledge of how to use these technologies myself.
And what about 3d Desktop support? Sure, you can buy a 3d desktop-like program for XP/vista, but it doesn't come close to have the full functionality that either:
Beryl / Compiz Fusion / Metisse / Etc.
has! And on that note, the latter of those may have the most functionality / practicality of all three, though unrelated to this article.
Tom Anderson
Move over MicroCrack, Vitamin L is on it's way and invading your OS market share slowly but surely.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/02/06/february_2008_web_server_survey.html
A lot of the "growth" you see for windows is crappy web services like GoDaddy. They stuff a gajillion people on 1 windows server and a gajillion windows server instances get reported even though it is still only 1 server.
Then there is the parked domains.....
The real numbers for Apache running on Linux is much higher.
Windows has a serious lead over Linux in enterprise IT environments. As long as that remains the case, CIOs will continue to purchase Windows over competing platforms.Many of those CIOs will be committed to running as Windows shops.
No wonder the world runs primarily on Windows. It isn`t "opensource" but it has the most drivers , apps , and game support in the world. And for all the "bluescreen hahaha dweebs" , I haven`t had a bluescreen in years and have never had a virus or malware.