by

Surly

Copyright 1999-2008

Now that a chink in the armor of leviathan Microsoft has been made by the Department of Justice and the European union suits, the vultures are circling, hoping for its eventual breakup. There's money to be made if Microsoft's dominance of the market is broken. The giant has been sitting on top of the market for too long, making us have it their way, stifling innovation and alternatives, just like the Bellco before antitrust broke it up. There are new, better operating systems and applications waiting in the wings if only Microsoft's dominance of the market is broken. Because of this dominance and lack of meaningful competition, they produce programs that are bloated, buggy and not so user-friendly. Witness the horrible problems surrounding Internet Explorer. Often similar programs written for Windows by other firms are smaller and have better features than Microsoft's. However, we need more choices. A computing revolution might follow the reduction of Microsoft's market dominance. For example, just look at how their DOS operating system had a stranglehold on the market for almost 20 years. DOS was not written by Microsoft, which was then a fledgling company. Bill Gates bought it from a private developer because he needed a system to run the new IBM PCs. Yet DOS was literally obsolete soon after its first release. There were far better operating systems available at the time, i. e., CP/M, the Macintosh, Xenix, and a bit later, the Amiga, and even better ones could have easily been written. But because of Microsoft's and IBM's dominance of the market, and the failure of the competition, DOS and eventually Windows became the de facto standard for home and business, and the enormous investment in software, especially proprietary business software, prevented any new, more powerful system from gaining acceptance for a long time. Many of us have had to live with the extreme limitations of DOS and its endless irritations.

The failures of Microsoft's two main competitors, Apple Computer's Macintosh, and Commodore's Amiga should be instructive. Apple's proprietary hardware, software and high price and Commodore's incredibly stupid misunderstanding and mismarketing of the Amiga were colossal blunders that deprived the majority of consumers of superior OSes and hardware until recently. They failed to make Microsoft a better company through reasonable competition.

Windows requires constant security fix updates. It wasn't until the advent of XP that Windows even had a firewall. Microsoft has chosen not to include anti-virus, ant-spam, anti-malware programs, leaving this void either to OEM companies that sell computers with Windows pre-installed or to the end user. That often leaves Windows open to compromise the moment it connects to the Internet. Why didn't they buy an anti-virus company? Simply, Microsoft doesn't care about quality. They know that there are problems in their code, but won't fix them until lots of customers scream. Their products and support are good enough to make them money, but not enough to hurt the bottom line.

Beside all of its other malfeasances, Microsoft's fatal flaw is that it has positioned itself as a provider for both business and home users without a distinction between the two, making for an uneasy fit in both realms. Either programs and OSes are too big or too small. One size doesn't fit all.

If there were a more competitive market in computer operating systems and application software, there would be many more niches filled; a new, user-friendly home computer could be created that would require no confusing hardware and software configuration and large applications. MSDOS, Windows of whatever flavor, the PC platform, Linux, even Macintosh are just too difficult and probably overkill for the average home user. Leave the major operating systems and applications to power users and geeks like myself.

However, market climates change. Now there are a plethora of alternate operating systems that will run on most home PCs: Free BSD, Syllable, ReactOS, most notably Linux and the Open Software movement that challenge not only Microsoft's dominance but that of the whole software industry. The advent of these OSes in the past few years is because of the availability of sufficiently powerful, affordable PCs to run them. Most of these OSes are still far beyond the needs and competencies of home consumers. It's confusing overkill. People stick to Windows because they think it's user-friendly and with its market saturation it's what they already know.

For the average, non-business home user and consumer, a net-based computing model has been proposed, literally the home user would have only a terminal, eliminating the requirement to install software, upgrade components and configure, but current Internet connections are too slow or not available everywhere; high-speed connections to every home are still years away. Where is an idiot-proof OS for the home user with a default GUI install and setup that asks only a few important, easy to understand questions of the owner? I think Linux could also fill this bill. Starting with a single-user mode and automated setup scripts, there is no reason that Linux couldn't be made much more user-friendly. After all, it's scalable. One GUI interface, such as KDE, and a bunch of default applications, well user-documented, is all that's needed. The multi-user and server apps can simply be left out. Once the user learned it and wanted to do more there's the full panoply of free Linux files on the Internet that can easily be added to the system. The programmers who create this distribution will win the hearts and minds of the computing public.

Right now, Linux can do everything that Windows Vista will do, and on a lesser computer, using less drive space, faster and far more stable, and it's free, open source. We're talking killer OS, here, now. Already, a significant portion of the Internet runs on it. Intel and IBM are supporting it. It's a hot topic in the computer industry.

Microsoft knows that Linux and the Open Source movement are a major threat to its market dominance, even its existence. It has recently tried a number of devious attacks against the Linux and Open Source communities. Some of these are just as laughable as the discredited defense Microsoft has offered in the DOJ trial. The company is trying to position itself to appear more open, as if to join the movement, but I'm sure their plan is to co-opt the movement, then destroy it. Microsoft has enormous resources to target an enemy and Gates knows how to do it well by turning the company around very quickly. Ultimately, it's up to end users and consumers to determine the market. The war for Open Source must be fought and won on the free availability of accurate information, something that Microsoft and its spinmeisters will attempt to thwart at every turn.

Whatever you think of Bill Gates, his mortal sin is to preside over a company that makes lousy software and wants to limit your access to alternatives that may better fit your needs. It is a sin of disrespecting quality and free choice. It isn't in the spirit of free competition. It has moved into the domain of authoritarian social control, therefore a political concern.

Open Source is inherently democratic; everyone can participate, and by that create what the people want. It gives back to us the hallowed freedom of choice.