Open vs. Transparent: Did FOSS, Linux, and Open Source Get it Wrong?
First, there is still little interest in Vista in business; second, there is a credible effort to use Linux on all mainstream corporate desktops but not instead of Windows, in addition to it; third, Windows Server 2008 is being deployed widely in beta; and fourth, Linux interest on the server is declining.
Now, suddenly I think I've stepped into another dimension where up is down and down is up. I can't yet talk about the Linux desktop effort in depth as it is still relatively secret, but I can say that it has more to do with securing and managing the desktop then it does with displacing Windows, and that the reason behind the choice had more to do with cost than almost anything else.
For the Vista stuff the lack of demand is being attributed to two things: Windows XP is seen as good enough, and Microsoft isn’t Apple and can’t do demand generation marketing to save its life. Windows 2008 server, on the other hand, evidently addresses a number of shortcomings in Server 2003 and, apparently, the benefits are actually exceeding the risk of deploying a beta for a large number of folks (that doesn’t happen often).
Digg
del.icio.us
NewvineBut, this time, I’d like to focus on the last, the comment that interest in Linux was declining, and explore for a moment why I think that may be the case.
Birthing Open
| Related Articles | |
|
Novell and Microsoft: The Vista Impact
Vista Expert: Why I Don't Like Vista
Related Articles
|
Ever since I first heard the term “Open” I’ve wondered whether a lot of otherwise intelligent people missed the message that had been consistently sent by IT buyers. That message was that they really didn’t want to be in the software business.
Now the problem that Open was supposed to address when it started to surge in the ‘90s was one, that to me anyway, seemed to be largely based on the lack of trust with a number of vendors, and while Microsoft was clearly one of the problem vendors they were far from the only vendor painted by this broad brush. At the time, Sun, IBM, Oracle and a broad cross section of very powerful software vendors were consistently showcasing expertise they didn’t have, promising features that didn’t exist (and often never would), and generally setting expectations for very expensive products that they had no real intention of ever actually meeting.
We were reporting that CIOs had the highest turnover of any top-level executive (thanks to the dotcom years they were, for a time passed by CFOs but that hardly made them feel more secure). And much of this turnover likely could have been tied to what was a cavalier attitude on the vendor side, with respect to both protecting their customers and ensuring their success.
There wasn’t that much concern surrounding software patents and intellectual property, except between vendors. And even between vendors this typically only happened when a patent troll started wandering around the industry, or a large vendor decided to mine their patent portfolio and go after competitors.
Most of the companies had trouble collaborating within their various divisions and the idea of collaborating broadly, while it clearly existed in parts of IT – and we spoke about it as a goal a great deal – practically speaking it wasn’t a driver. And, with the exception of the insane CIO who from time to time became convinced he could market his services to other companies, particularly from operations there was no desire to actually go into the software business.
Finally, hardware costs were dropping like a rock and software costs were either holding steady or increasing. As we moved in to this decade and a heavy focus on cost reduction hit IT, having a cost category that either didn’t move in the right direction or moved in the wrong direction was a big problem. Microsoft made this worse by picking this inopportune time to “fix” their licensing model, which resulted in a massive number of companies getting audited and finding out they weren’t actually paying Microsoft what they had agreed to pay.
