Is Microsoft Afraid to Say the L-word? | Hacker News Reader

Is Microsoft Afraid to Say the L-word?

computerworlduk.com

40 pointsmonkeygrinder35 comments

Read the Port25 article. I especially like the fact that only Microsoft Windows runs the top 10 downloads on Sourceforge: Well, GNU+Linux obviously sucks because it doesn't run popular applications such as "7-Zip" and "Gimp Installer for Windows". And that open source applications such as Firefox run under Windows as well clearly reflects Microsoft's increased engagement with Open Source Software.

Very rarely a Linux user needs to download a package from sf.net. Usually they use the package management system of their distribution.

Yep, I'm very broken up about my inability to install Gimp on Linux using the Gimp Installer for Windows.

It strikes me as pretty disingenuous to say that only Windows can run the "top 10" downloads when your top 10 list includes vectors for installation of a target application that does run on other platforms, albeit with a different installation routine.

Looked at differently: Windows runs on >85% of PCs and Linux (sorry, POSIX-Compatible systems) runs on <5% of PCs; yet over 90% of open source applications run on Linux but only 82% run on Windows.

That's because most developers accustomed to giving away code under open-source are using Linux/FreeBSD or something similar ... as you're more likely to participate in a gift economy when other people / companies are generous to you.

So when Windows is not your primary target, for an open-source project is just a nice-to-have (that's why many projects look/behave like ass on Windows, and this isn't mentioned in the report).

Personally I wouldn't mind for those developers on Microsoft-platforms to contribute more. It would mean more open-source for everybody. But culture matters a lot and I don't see this happening too soon.

I run Windows and I contribute!

But there's a basic cultural difference - there are a boatload of cheap closed applications on Windows and people just kind of expect them to cost around $30. I spend the extra little time to find the open ones, but it's difficult sometimes. You really have to know what OSS is to start with, then really care about finding it. Most people just run their Outlook email and IE browser because it's what came installed. They don't even know you have the option of running Thunderbird and Chrome.

And unfortunately that culture is directly damaging the open-source ecosystem on Windows.

For instance the author of Paint.NET (a former open-source project) started releasing only binaries because some individual ripped off his work, taking all the credits (in breach of its license), and probably bundling it with spyware / charging money for it ...

http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-... http://blog.getpaint.net/2009/11/06/a-new-license-for-paintn...

To see your work used like that, most likely without a Thank You, probably hurts a lot.

If it violated the licence, the author has legal recourse. If not: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/10/19/the-point

It violated the license ... if you read the first link, the author claims that the individual deleted copyright references of him and of plugin contributors, taking credit for the work.

The author also said he doesn't have the money or the time for legal recourse.

I also don't fully agree with Mark ... there is an unwritten rule in any society ... when people are being nice giving you stuff for free / helping you out, don't piss on their lawn ;)

In real-life when this happens, you just slam the door on his face next time. This also happened here, but unfortunately because of the easy means of redistribution, the author just slammed the door on everybody.

I saw the same thing when reading one of the first book about C# that Microsoft published; it its introduction it spent all the time talking about C# and C and it managed to avoid ever mentioning Java when it's evident than C# is much closer to Java than to C.

In other news: Coke runs advertising without mentioning Pepsi. Sports coming up next.

Honestly, is this really news? Company X writes an article and fails to mention a competitor? Where's the conspiracy?

I don't think anyone was accusing Microsoft of "conspiring". I think it's more about the amusement factor of the whole thing. It's more like Coke running an advertisement talking about Pepsi as "a major competing brand whose name rhymes with mepsi".

A conspiracy requires more than one party.

I expect "POSIX-compatible" is just a way to avoid saying "GNU/Linux- and FreeBSD-compatible" everywhere.

Don't forget "OS X-compatible" and "Solaris compatible".

Which then effectively means "Non-Windows compatible".

"Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses."

http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

Yes, but it's also a way to avoid saying "Linux".

Isn't Mac POSIX-compatible too? Mac and Linux adoption combined are growing at 20+% per year.(today: 11.7%, last year: 9.7%, The year before that: 8%). Those are not new customers being acquired by the OS market, NO, that's customers being taken from Microsoft in an already saturated OS market. They are losing customers to Linux and Mac, and this is how they put a good face on a bad situation.

This is according to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp of course

"82% of open source software runs on Windows" I suspect this should worry them more than Linux.

Without the Office monopoly and the Server+SQLServer+IIS or exchange licence fees MS doesn't look so good.

It doesn't really matter about linux's 10% of the desktop market if the EOM copy of windows that came with your machine is the last bit of MS software you (or your company) ever buys.

This is really a non-news and the reason is simple, from a marketing standpoint you never want to mention the competitor's brand because it promotes that brand also, especially if that brand belongs to a newcomer/non-market-leader and you're the market leader.

For example, if Coke ad (as someone else also reported) mentioned Pepsi, then not only is a consumer seeing "Coke" but is also seeing "Pepsi".

The only time you see the competitor brand mentioned is when the ads are very specifically negative or when they come from an underdog against a market leader. The usual examples are Verizon-AT&T, Apple-MS, etc. Here the underdog or newcomer has nothing to lose so they will mention the market leader's brand.

So, here MS is not afraid, rather it doesn't make sense for them to mention Linux or rather any *nix by name. But, if it was reverse, it totally makes sense for Red Hat to mention MS Windows by name.

Windows is Posix compliant.

For an extremely weak version of "compliant," and definitely not out of the box. You'd have to grab Services for Unix, Cygwin, etc. to even get close.

Windows was build with a full POSIX.1 subsystem. It was part of the design specifications.

What you are referring to is running some sort of Posix system on top of Win32 (Cygwin), but NT is capable of running Posix natively.

Services for Unix doesn't install a Posix subsystem, it replaces it with another called Interix.

The POSIX subsystem has been removed from the installation since Windows XP.

n.b. : Subsystems are how programs interface with the "real" NT API. Win32 is a subsystem as well.

Returning "not implemented" is compliant with POSIX specification, but does not make the implementation useful. Which is exactly the case of NT POSIX subsystem.

Could you provide me with an example? NT subsystem fully implements POSIX.1

Is it me or does the graph on Port25 not stack up?

I assume platform agnostic means "both windows and linux [and everything else]"? so therefore how does Windows having 82% and Linux 94(ish)% coverage add up?

Or have I read it wrong?

Platform agnostic on sourceforge (where the data come from) means written in an interpreted language or compiled for a virtual machine like the JVM that runs on multiple platforms.

Yeh that is what I thought. From which I interpreted that the platform Agnostic group is the intersection of the Windows & Linux groups.

Which means the numbers dont add up.

Well, contrary to my own popular belief, the word in question was not "lesbian".

That was my inclination too, after the whole thing about Xbox Live gamertags.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1605966/20090226/story.jhtm... http://www.lazygamer.co.za/xbox-360/its-ok-to-be-gay-microso...

Although this is completely tangential to TFA, there's no real discussion going on about that (who knows why...?). Anyways, it's odd that a -2 point comment brings your score down 3 points. Why not start them all off at 0 and avoid this oddness? It reminds me of intervals in music - the same note twice is known as a "1st" interval.

Heroku runs a Posix Environment. See here,

http://heroku.com/how/dynos

Microsoft does the same with Google!!

Steve Balmer when talking about search never mentions Google. He says the market leader. An advertising man must have told them that its bad to indirectly promote other products.

That doesn't have near enough abstraction layers.

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