Microsoft: Open source is too complex

So Linux is too complex because there's so many different versions to choose from? Ok Microsoft, then tell me which of the five versions of Windows Vista will be best for me.

Having different versions of an OS from a number of different companies is better than having a number of different versions of an OS from the same company.

Plus, with the Linux Standard Base being adopted by many distros, you can created an application and have it run on a number of different distros.

>>"Customers who run Linux could be operating in Red Hat, [Novell's] Suse, or even customized Debian environments," he explained. "You don't get that repeatable [development] process to build your business over time."

More Microsoft FUD. It is true that there are a lot of possible configurations for Linux. Just like there are a lot of possible configurations for computers.

And what will any organization do in the face of lots of configurations? STANDARDIZE.

If you can't snow them with your excellence then baffle them with your bullshit! Microsoft FUD at it's best

Please visit:

www.108.redhat.com for all developer related help specifically targeted at
corporate developers.

This site will help address all issues and seeks to be the one point on the web for all developers. Applications hosted and developed on 108 DO NOT require to open sourced (ie, it can be proprietary & closed source). It also allows your developers to have a private space as well. The aim of 108 is to bring forth the best of all possible tools and techniques for all to benefit from.

So, contrary to the import of the story, there are concrete ways to make things happen. And with more of you on 108.redhat.com, stories like this will be passe.

I would strongly encourage BS Synergy to revisit Linux development via 108. With 108, they will not have to "spend more time hunting for Linux technical support on the Web, and had less time to focus on actual development work". They should also participate in the fortcoming Open Source Symposium and Red Hat Developer Day in Kuala Lumpur in September (www.opensourcesymposium.org).

Harish Pillay

FOSS is a developing ecosystem. Sure, there are things in flux right now, a lot of natural selection of projects and standards taking place, but every year in certain spaces, you see fewer competing projects as "losers" die off or merge with other projects (as Xen has become the hypervisor champ), or else integration bridges are built between two equally competitive projects (such as Portland for KDE/GNOME).

If you think about it, Linux in its traditional roles of web/file/print/data server is pretty stable and standard now -- it's in new application spaces, and especially the desktop, that things are still "settling down".

Open source organization seems to correlate pretty well to the rate at which the Web has been organizing itself. It seems too coincidental that the interoperating web or "Web 2.0" is happening at the same time that FOSS is finally enjoying enough integration capability to be employed easily by businesses.

FOSS moves at a slower rate than proprietary software, but once a certain stack hits a critical threshold, it's more stable and easily-maintainable than proprietary just because of the environmental factors FOSS projects subject themselves to by being openly accessible to the world.

sounds like someone continues to spread FUD, guess you have to stick to what you know.

"But for the consumer market, where there is a larger pool of Linux distributions (which include Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu and Xandros) being used, ISVs will have to grapple with complexities,"
Have any of these people tryed to extend ANY win32 program, let alone sign up for partnership with big bro and sift through 3" thick SDK which explains everything but the problem you have.One word, POSIX

"Lim said this was because the company's developers were spending more time hunting for Linux technical support on the Web"
Sounds like online gambling/porn to me, you can easily find information on linux/UNIX everywhere on the web. Used man 8 lately? Ever been to a sourceforge/freashmeat project page? www.google.com/linux ??

"We had to learn [how to build on the] different versions of Linux distributions to meet the demands of customers"
Hello, POSIX! WTF, standards are something MS could use/stick to/swear by every single day. You can't run a win95 program on xp now can you?

Whats that? Yes of course you can use that program on UNIX, BSD, Linux all you need to do is re-compile it. Oh wait, we would need the source for that. dammit!

To me it sounds like MS is paying for your children to go to college. I know, I know you are only the messenger.

What complexity are you talking about? Some years ago I installed a mail server based on Qmail toaster. The distribution was Red Hat 8.0. After a day of configuration it worked withouth a hitch serving email happily to about 20 people (POP, IMAP and HTTP access on secure ports). With two levels of firewall (HW and WS) and vpopmail the system did never suffer a single breakdown.

Two months ago the hard disk broke down. It took two hours to reinstall and reconfigure the new version, which in the mean time has grown to feature a customized version of CentOS which can be installed and gives everything you need for free (now includes virus checking and spamassassin). Complexity is going down VERY fast. Support is there on the net you only have to read a bit. Needless to say, I am a Linux convert (and former - happy - MS employee). I found Linux much easier (Ubuntu and SUSE) than any windows variant out there, even without reading TFM, which you should do anyway.

Ever try to implement a closed source system? They seem to be more complex and harder to maintain.

"One of the beauties of the open-source model is that you get a lot of flexibility and componentization. The big downside is complexity," Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's director of platform strategy, said on the sidelines of the company's worldwide partner conference in Boston last month."

And therein lies the problem... for M$. According to the World of M$ *anything* that allows the customer any degree of flexibility will always be "too complex". In M$ World view integration -- and thereby vendor lockin -- is the route to go. The problem with M$ view is that integration of everything + the kitchen sink is that if you can hack one part of the system, your in like Flinn; or if one part fails, the whole system fails. In their quest to make things "simple" M$ makes things more complex then they really need to be. M$'s quest for integration is the single biggest reason why Longhorn -- sorry Vista -- is 5 years late. And while Vista will be better than XP, which wasd better than '98, which was better than... that's not saying much. You can bet your bottom dollar that within a month of it's official release, if not sooner, somone will have hacked Vista. Integration is a security nightmare, because it does not allow processess to be isolated. It will also be interesting to see the increased rate of "WIndow Rot" as well as problems associated with the Windows Register, and system resources needed. "Open Source is too complex"?? This is M$ Kinder and Gentler form of FUD. First it was no threat, then it was "Cancer", now it is "Too Complex". FUD is FUD regardless of the face it wears. It is the flexibility of Linux in Particular and Open Source in General that is the biggest threat to M$, because it strikes at M$'s bottom line, that being vendor lock-in. Once M$ is forced to accept ODF, the next to last thing (the last thing is being M$'s control over OEM's) holding the M$ monopoly together will be gone as Windows will be reduced to nothing more than an OS -- albeit a bloated and resorce hogging OS, but an OS nonetheless. M$'s days are numbered, they can see the handwriting on the wall, while M$ will always be with us, their sphere of influence will be greatly deminished; the world is marching to the beat of a different drummer. M$ can either join the parade or get trampled.

You've got to be jokin!
My company moved to Linux over 5 years ago and we haven't looked back.
Is it just another Microsoft sponsored 'independent' piece of propaganda?

How much did M$ pay you to write thid dribble? Complexity? Ever set up and operate and Exchange Server? We have 2 backend servers and 1 frontend server that took days to set up and get it running right and still EVERY DAY it needs something done to it. Maintiance is a constent pain. In the same cabinet we have a Merak Mail server running on RedHat Fedora4. It took a whole 5 hours to set up and it just runs. Besides adding new accounts to it we may look at the logs once a month. Other than that. It just works and does a better job than the three combined Exchange servers with more users on the Merak box. So tell me again how much better M$ is. By the way Merak is closed source and cost money to buy. My point is you can't beat the "It just runs" qality of Linux.

Looking for information on software? From you story you haven't spent all day searching the M$ technet site all day looking for answers and found none. Only marketing FUD. One quick search on Google/linux and usally I find my answer to Linux questions in the first 20 hits.

Ever tried to set up a Windows Provisioning server? It takes a least 4 servers to set it up. IF you get it to work at all. RedHat does the same thing with ONE! server and it only takes about a day and it works when you are done too.

Shame shame on you and your lies. BTW to your Boss. Articles like this is the reason I quit spending money buying you cheap Mag and yes I used to buy your Mags a lot in the past. Why should I waste good money on FUD like this. When I buy something like this I want truthful information.

The company I work for used to be a completely MS shop. We are now at about 85% of our server running Linux. Our maintiance times have been cut by 63%. This is no guess either. That number comes from the time on the tickets from our network.

The pricing to our customers has dropped. Why? No MS tax for setting up a system. Less time to set up the system. Less time spent on mantaining the system. The big plus we actually make more profit with this less cost to the customer.

Now this all this "Real World" information show me the truth in your article.

Really show me!!

Aaron,

I don't know if you're one of these writers that preaches rather than practises but speaking for those of us that have been at the sharp-end of M$ software for over two decades:

Do not believe a word of the double-speak that comes from M$. They are in trouble and they know it. This is *not* a two-sided debate. This is evolution from a defunct model (PC-centric, closed-source) to web-centric, open-source.

A, relatively, quickly-growing number of *professionals* no longer have the time to read/listen to the BS that comes out of M$. Most of what they say is insulting.

ZDNet should understand that and stop trying to write balanced articles in an area where balance is no longer possible. You just finish up looking silly.

We're using Linux (Debian) for all our servers here and as the sysadmin, most of the time I don't have to do anything, they're just up and running, which give me more time to do other things, like reading your unbalanced article and actually post a comment on it.

One thing he could have discussed, and didn't, was the matter of "perceived complexity" versus "actual complexity". Perceived complexity is what one imagines the job/task is going to be like; the actual complexity is how difficult it actually is.

I'll bet there are very many computer technicians and systems administrators who have almost thrown their MS Windows computer system out the window upon finding an intractable problem - intractable to them because of how Microsoft has so carefully integrated everything, so that an error can't be tracked. It's not for nothing that the standard way of fixing MS Windows is to reboot, and the standard way of fixing MS Windows is to reinstall.

If of course Ryan Gavin could be a bit more precise and give adequate bug reports, we might just be able to accomodate him. Any chances of that? Not likely!

I'm a desktop Ubuntu user, with MS on one computer and Ubuntu on another.
Microsoft are scared and so they should. After making users for years pay to get an update of an OS because the previous one was inadequate (what other company has the ability to make the user pay because of their poor quality), their revenue base is slowly being eroded.
At the risk of sounding like a fanatic (I'm not), Ubuntu (or Linux in general) is superior. My computer illiterate wife (I had to teach her how to cut and paste a file) got onto the Ubuntu system, to play some crummy card games/Gnometris and promptly said that it was easier to use than Windows.
Finally, so what if vendors aren't sure about their ability to support Linux. Realistically, the community is a great thing, and the ability to fix a system by consulting with other caring and giving users, is not only conceptually superior but a philiosphical jump in the right direction. Saves having to reinstall every six months too.

Microsoft: Open source is too complex

Quite simply, open source software, and especially open source OS's, are way too complicated for your average user and offer very few benefts and many problems.
Most people want their computers to be as simple and seemless as possible. Unix os's are all (even the supposedly simple ones) too complicated, unpredictable, and surrounded by snobbery.