|
|
Subscribe / Log in / New account

Microsoft's Ballmer: "Linux Requires Our Concentrated Focus and Attention" (LinuxWorld.com)

Microsoft's Ballmer: "Linux Requires Our Concentrated Focus and Attention" (LinuxWorld.com)

Posted Apr 29, 2004 15:40 UTC (Thu) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029)
Parent article: Microsoft's Ballmer: "Linux Requires Our Concentrated Focus and Attention" (LinuxWorld.com)

It's nice to see that at least some of the FUD is being directed inward. From the first excerpt, Ballmer's lament that Linux lacks a "'center of gravity,' or central body, investing in the health and growth of noncommercial software or innovating in critical areas like engineering, manageability, compatibility and security," ignores the fact that this is a _feature_, not a bug. We don't _have_ to have a central body providing these things, because _anyone_ can provide and submit them for the review of the community.

Mr. Ballmer seems to be entering the world of stand-up comedy with this one-liner: "We will show that our approach offers better value, better security and better opportunity."

The last excerpt contains a sentence that is either a non-sequitor or gross weasel-wording: "In the event of needed enhancements or fixes, the Linux development community, no matter how well intentioned, simply cannot advance Linux the way we can - and must - innovate in Windows." Is he saying that fixing problems in Windows requires significant innovation, while the same thing in Linux does not? If so, I know which horse _I'd_ back.


to post comments

Microsoft's Ballmer: "Linux Requires Our Concentrated Focus and Attention" (LinuxWorld.com)

Posted Apr 29, 2004 19:07 UTC (Thu) by kasperd (guest, #11842) [Link]

The entire list of areas that he thinks require inovation is a joke.
  • Engineering may require a bit of inovation, but there is certainly enough in the Linux community. And most of all what it requires is a lot of hard work writing good code.
  • Manageability is certainly not a problem in Linux.
  • Compatibility and this comes from the number one company in the world to inovate in incompatibility.
  • Security is not a question about inovation. It is more a question about keeping it simple, and fixing the bugs as they are found.

Microsoft's Ballmer: "Linux Requires Our Concentrated Focus and Attention" (LinuxWorld.com)

Posted Apr 29, 2004 23:37 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

" Ballmer's lament that Linux lacks a "'center of gravity,' or central body, investing in the health and growth of noncommercial software or innovating in critical areas like engineering, manageability, compatibility and security," ignores the fact that this is a _feature_, not a bug "

Not only linux but the entire open source movement, is what M$ dont know how to handle.... , because above are the features that have made impossible to M$ to squach Linux/FOSS like they did to the rest of the competition in the pass...

They have not given up,... and projects like XAML/Longhorn and NGSCB/Paladium only show that they are hopping to capture the "WEB", and to lock-in to themselfs the PC hardware platform...

Lets make them fail !... (sorry Ballmer, but now if you are worried, Linux/FOSS probabilly will not stop even if you are panic dying... so the choices are clear...).

Microsoft's Ballmer: "Linux Requires Our Concentrated Focus and Attention" (LinuxWorld.com)

Posted Apr 30, 2004 9:44 UTC (Fri) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

I was thinking the same thing. Are they really brainwashing their own employees? Then again, maybe they should be. It wouldn't look good if their own folks started using FOSS.

On the other hand. Maybe this is a memo that was meant to leak? Free advertising so to speak. It could be, at least it contains all the usual spins that Microsoft is pulling.

Microsoft's Ballmer: "Linux Requires Our Concentrated Focus and Attention" (LinuxWorld.com)

Posted May 1, 2004 13:38 UTC (Sat) by Dark_Vader (guest, #21304) [Link]

The whole open source community lacks innovation. What the community does well is create clones of other commercial products; you would rarely find innovation taking place in the open source community. And the most innovative creations which now have an open source face because they were released under the GPL did not even start as with an intention to create an open source product, but were build by individuals and research groups within universities (who were then not part of the open source community and the motivation was not to create clones). And these innovative creations include Linux, X Windows, PGP and various file systems, databases and various other products. You find innovation in research groups within universities and commercial organisation but not in the open source community. How ever they do have an extremely good set of programmers who are very good at building clones of innovative applications. Stop acting like brats who’s only motivation is to create Microsoft clones and start digging your heads.


Copyright © 2025, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds