2004 Prediction: "Linux begins to look like Windows."
"SCO is trying to make you pay to use Linux. Red Hat just toughened up its license fees, and HP is muttering that it would be a good idea if users paid more of the bills. See a pattern there? The free ride is over as the Linux market consolidates and the winners start to charge for what they used to give away. While Linux will never be as expensive as Windows, the fees are going to take on more and more of a Microsoft-ian quality."
2004 Prediction by TechTarget editor-in-chief Paul Gillin
[recorded at TechTarget.com, December 29, 2003]
Marcel Gagne: "Even Linux has its Trojan horses"
"Even in the Linux world, it is possible for someone to distribute a program that is actually a trojan horse. It is also possible to leave your system open to something as simple as somebody logging in through any of a variety of open network services. Exploiting too liberal an access policy (i.e. no firewall), is not the same thing as a virus that infects your files because you received and opened an e-mail attachment."
Marcel Gagne, President of Salmar Consulting, Inc. and author of Linux System Administration - A User's Guide and Moving to Linux
[quoted at http://www.net-security.org, December 24, 2003]
"Corporations cry Linux," Reports Charlie Demerjian
"About a year ago, things started to change. The cries that Linux would dethrone Microsoft remained the same, but there was a shift in the corporate reaction to those cries. CxOs started to say 'tell me about it'. In a down economy, free is much cheaper than hundreds of dollars, and infinitely more attractive. Linux started gaining ground with real paying customers using it for real work in the real world, really.
Up until then, Microsoft had simply ignored the tuxedoed threat. Then it started reacting with the usual FUD, the Halloween memos, various white papers and clumsily purchased studies. Somehow, people didn't buy the fact that $1,000 a head was cheaper than free, and so Microsoft had to move on to a different tactic. Since it couldn't buy the company that produced Linux, the GPL prevented the usual embrace and extend, and people had simply grown to hate Microsoft for all the pain they had been caused over the years, the firm found itself in a bind. How do you compete when all your dirty tricks are either inapplicable or fail, and buckets of cash can't buy your way out of the hole you are in? Simple, you compete on their terms.
Other than in the last six months, when was the last time Microsoft lowered prices, or gave anything other than a trivial discount on anything? Yeah, right, never. Faced with losing the home office market to OpenOffice/StarOffice, the server side to Linux, databases to MySQL, and the desktop to Linux in the not too distant future, what could it do? It targeted price cuts at those who matter most, the early adopters and other key segments.
The first of these cuts was aimed at MySQL, with the developer edition of SQLServer getting the axe to the tune of about 80 per cent. Then it started a slush fund to prevent high profile companies and organizations from giving Linux that all important mindshare beachhead. Then it came out with a 'student and teacher' version of Office. Hint to the readership, if you don't want to pay $500 for office, the new version doesn't make you prove you a student or a teacher like the last one. Well, none of these tactics is working, and one of the reasons it isn't going as well as Microsoft hoped is its own money grubbing product activation scheme. Without starting the old debate about the cost of pirated software, it is hard to argue against the fact that even with the numbers it spouts off about piracy, Microsoft still clears about a billion dollars a quarter or more. If it wasn't for piracy, the Gates sprouts (little 1.0 and 2.0) could afford to be sent to a good school. Cry for them. In its wisdom, Microsoft decided to squeeze the users a little, and to its abject horror it began to realise that people were willing to take the slightly less functionality of OpenOffice for the $500 a machine discount. Who would have guessed that result? See foot, see gun, see gun shoot foot.
The next winning strategy was to circle the wagons, and lock people in. If you prevent other programs from working with your software, and make your stuff fairly cheap, people will flock to it, right? Well, right to a point, at least until you build up hatred and people have an alternative.
Licensing 6.0, the new 'rent as you go, but do so at our sufferance' was the catalyst here. When it proposed this scheme, people laughed outright. When Microsoft said do it or pay the retail price, people blinked, and a few cried monopoly. This is when people started to take Linux seriously."
Charlie Demerjian, writing in The Inquirer, December 28, 2003
SCO's Claims..."Some of the Most Outrageous Statements of the Year," Says Dan Gillmor
"The SCO Group, unable to compete in the marketplace, launched an ugly war against Linux, suing IBM and threatening users of the open-source operating system. Luckily, IBM, apparently acting on principle when it might have been cheaper and easier simply to buy SCO off, fought back and earned the thanks of the community. SCO's claims to be defending capitalism will go down as some of the most outrageous statements of the year."
Dan Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News Technology Columnist
[In an article on the year's lowlights and highlights in technology, December 28, 2003]
Finance Ministry Weaning Israel Off of Microsoft
"The Ministry of Finance announced Sunday it will begin distributing Open Office, which is a package of basic software programs similar to Microsoft Office, for free starting this coming week. The ministry plans to distribute thousands of Open Office programs on CD-ROM at public computer centers and eventually community centers across the country throughout the coming year.
Open Office suite includes all the functions supplied by Microsoft Office – a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, and a presentation manager similar to PowerPoint. The programs can be downloaded for free at www.openoffice.co.il. The programs are for use on the Linux operating system"
Report in Arutz Sheva and at IsraelNationalNews.com, 28 December 2003
[see also earlier LinuxWorld story.]
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