The StartX Files: How Linux Could Lose to Microsoft

By: Brian Proffitt
Tuesday, May 8, 2001 08:46:32 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3328/1/

Electrocuting the Elephant

By coming out last week and declaring open season on open source, Microsoft has unleashed an onslaught of invective from the Linux community more scorching than the time my uncle caught me looking at his Playboys when I was eight (my ears are still burning from that one). But this may be the wrong approach for us to take.

A lot of people wrote me an asked me what I thought of the whole affair and frankly I am still shaking my literary head at the nonsense. And I am not alone. My colleagues in the so called "mainstream" press (read: Microsoft-friendly) are also wondering what the heck is going on. Why would Microsoft aim itself at the open source and free software concepts, rather than the Linux operating system itself, they ask rhetorically.

They know the answer, of course: Linux is unlike any challenger Microsoft has ever seen. No one really owns Linux, a fact that scares the bejeezus out of the execs in Redmond. There is no one thing to emulate, nothing really in the Linux technology they want to "embrace and extend." Nothing except the overriding philosophies themselves: the GPL and the Open Source concepts.

And so that's where we found ourselves last Thursday, laughing like hyenas at Microsoft's shared source concept. In talkback after talkback, we (myself included) poked fun at the mighty software giant trying to clothe itself in the very best free and open source software has to offer-all the while stressing that while code would be shared, everyone had to remember that the code always belongs to Microsoft.

After I sobered up from the hijinks, I realized that Linux itself could be in for an interesting fight with Microsoft, despite Microsoft's apparent blundering into this arena. I say apparent because I don't think Microsoft is making mistakes here.

The first clue came on Thursday itself, when my wife came into my little editorial nerve center and informed me that she just saw on CNN that Microsoft was attacking open source. That was a midday report, made not too long after Microsoft posted the text of Mr. Mundie's speech on their Web site. I told her that I was aware of the story, asked how much coverage CNN gave to the tale (not much), and went back to my work.

Say what you will about CNN, if they give a little focus to something like this, then you know it registers on the minds of corporate executives somewhere.

The second clue came when the Free Software Foundation issued their obligatory press release in response to Mundie's statements. Microsoft, it seems, has not learned Universal Law No. 312: If you call automatically equate GPL'd software with "open source," you will get a corrective statement from the FSF or Richard Stallman. It's like smoke and fire, can't have one without the other.

Yes, Microsoft did confuse the two concepts of GPL and open source. Care to take a guess why? Because they know the average listener is not going to know the difference. And like any good political campaigner, Microsoft is not going after the truth here. They are going for perception and sometimes that's all you need.

In the portrait Microsoft is trying to paint, open source and free software are synonymous and they are bad news for software developers who want to succeed. In their world, the free software model is just as bad a business model as the dot.coms who just tanked on the stock market. Sure, the Linux community knows these facts are in error--but far too many people may take these erroneous conclusions as fact.

This is an old, old game in big business: emphasizing only the points you think will make the other guy look bad and you look good. Today we call it spin control and perception handling, but they had it even as far back as a hundred years ago. Thomas Edison practiced a rather gruesome form of it while trying to prove that his direct current form of electricity was far superior to competitor Nicholai Tesla's alternating current. DC delivery would be much safer, Edison maintained, since DC generators would not produce the incredible amount of voltage as AC power. To prove his point, Edison would hold public demonstrations and electrocute hundreds of animals with AC current. At one point, Edison even staged (and filmed) the electrocution of Coney Island elephant Topsy, who has apparently killed three men on a rampage.

Ultimately, Tesla's theories won out, because under Edison's DC power, there would have to be neighborhood power plants built rather than simple step-down AC transformers. Still, it was a near thing. The bitter irony of this is that Edison's demonstrations did demonstrate how efficiently electricity could kill, which in turn led to (in a rare moment of bipartisanship) the New York State Legislature overwhelmingly approving a new law switching executions from hangings to electric chair.

The Kiss of Death

Microsoft is no stranger to perception handling. They are doing a strong job of it right now to get Windows XP out the door. Last week, I pointed out where XP may have serious problems getting widely adopted because of potential hardware compatibility issues. An MCSE-holding colleague of mine pointed out another obstacle Microsoft has in getting XP adopted in the corporate market.

"Imagine," my friend says, "you are a corporate IT manager."

"I would rather imagine I was on the beach in Fiji," I reply.

"No, just work with me," he says. "You're a corporate IT manager…"

"In Fiji," I interrupt.

"Fine," he sighs in exasperation, "you're a corporate IT manager in Fiji and Microsoft is coming to you to sell XP in your shop. What exactly does it have that you are going to want?"

Remembering all those method-acting classes in college, I slipped into the role. "What am I running now?" I asked.

"Mostly Windows 98, some NT 4.0 servers," he supplied.

"No Win 2000?" I clarified.

"No," he emphasized, "because like most IT shops, you haven't seen anything there to switch you over."

"Well, wait a minute," I said, tiring of this thought experiment and wanting to shift back to the Fiji sun and sand, "if I didn't switch to 2000, why would I move over to XP?"

"Exactly! What's XP got? A new interface! You don't care about that, and even if you did, why would you want to train your staff on a new interface?"

"Okay..." I replied, wondering where my friend is going with this.

"So what else does it have?" he said, really warming up to the subject. "It's going to have superior graphics and video handling. What corporate manager's going to want that? More distractions in the workplace?"

"So who is going to buy XP?"

"Dude, don't you see?" my friend cajoled, clearly happy to have figured one out before I, "It's not Linux XP is going after! Snazzy interface, better audio/visual-they're going after the iMac! They're trying to kill off the Mac OS X!"

And by giving prospective users the impression that Windows XP will do all of the things a Mac platform can do and more, they will give Apple some serious trouble in the months to come. Of course, Microsoft will never come right out and admit this. But I was interested to see a Reuters report yesterday that said Microsoft has no ill will towards Apple any longer.

"'Our relationship with Apple has never been better,' Kevin Browne, general manager of [Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft]," according to Reuters.

That's like getting a kiss on the cheek from Tony Soprano, but right now the perception is all is hunky-dory between Apple and Microsoft.

Through The Looking Glass

Perception is something, you may have noticed, I tend to put a lot of stock in. I know this earns scoffing from the more hard-core Linux user/hackers, who proudly proclaim that "Linux kicks ass, it will always kick ass, and there's nothing those [insert insulting expletive here] at Microsoft can do about it!"

Or some stupid thing to that effect.

This is a foolish attitude to take. There's a lot Microsoft can do, because right now, more people will listen to them than they will to the average Linux über-hacker. If you believe otherwise, then you may need to check your ego at the door.

Because when presented with a calm, reasonable-sounding statement from a large corporation versus sarcastic rants and flames from a bunch of apparent malcontents who do nothing all day but argue why Microsoft is an evil entity instead of stipulating exactly why their product is better, I will guarantee you that the average listener is going to give far more weight to the calm, reasonable-sounding statements every single time.

I am not proposing that everyone associated with Linux get haircuts, take manners lessons, and start wearing Tux-logoed polo shirts. But I am advocating that we don't rest on our superior technological laurels and think that's all we need to fend off Microsoft's very carefully planned attacks. Nor can we get so pleased with ourselves with how inventive we can get with hammering Microsoft with lofty insults. Because all of this is leading up to one inescapable conclusion: no one outside of our community is going to keep listening to this much longer.

And Microsoft knows this. Every time we fly off the collective handle when they do something threatening and they can just sit back and say "see how unreasonable those people are? See how derisive the keepers of this Linux technology can be?"

I want Linux to succeed, more than anything else. I want this because I believe Linux is an excellent operating system, that the GPL is a cool thing, and that open source in general is something worth building upon.

But does success for Linux have to come at the price of ripping down Microsoft? No, it doesn't. We don't need to attack them just because they're there. When we do, we are just making their case for them.

And when they try to distort reality with their perceptions, of course we need to counter their statements with the truth. Not with scathing flames and rants, however, but with our own calm and reasonable statements. We have to get the word out beyond our little community and into the mindset of the wider public view.

That is where this argument will be won, not on the PC.