Posts by Trevor Pott o_O

Different laws.

I can't speak to Australia, but in Canada it is our law that you must be given time off work in order to vote on an election day.

@A J Stiles

Which is grand if you are a programmer but of zero helpfulness or value to the entire rest of the world. There is nothing "proper" about having to compile an application in order to run it.

Not to mention that having to compile an application precludes the use of closed-source applications. A non-starter for many organisations in the real world. Nice happy happy idealism, though it doesn't help real people actually use their computers at all.

An erratic apple.

Well, I will try not to make this a long one, but briefly touch of what I see as elements contributing to the idea of Jobs becoming “increasingly erratic.”

The basic tenet of this claim rests on the understanding of Jobs as something of an unholy control freak. This isn’t something I came to believe thanks to El Reg and the reporting on items such as the itunes store, but rather by reading various biographies of him, and mostly stories of working with him at Apple in the early days. A little bit of history and research shows that he has always maintained an incredibly rigid control of not only his employees and the company he runs but the flow of information both into and out of that company.

When I compare and contrast Jobs and the Apple Corporation circa 2002 to Jobs and Apple over the past three years there appears to be quite a divergence. There are more “slips.” Information coming out of that company that shouldn’t (according to traditional Jobsian patterns) be emerging. Some of these are items that have turned into legitimate PR gaffes, even more some are slips from The Man Himself. (Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.) Jobs circa 2002 just didn’t make these kinds of mistakes. Certainly not with the regularity we are seeing them now. Jobs, and Apple with him have “declared war” on partners that make little to no sense. (Tilting at Google? Breaking the “gentleman’s agreement” that existed? Going after Adobe I can almost see, but doing it before HTML 5 is done, dusted, ratified and implemented everywhere?)

Once, Jobs was the very pillar of predictability. He not only epitomized “controlling the image projected to the public,” but viciously enforced the ideal at Apple. Now he himself is responsible for some of the greatest gaffes that company has committed, and his policies as applied to items like the app store have become the subject of much debate and controversy.

Slowly, Apple has gone from a company with an image of rock solid stability and reliability that you could bet your business on. Slowly it is becoming (even to the non Reg reader) one of a company guided by the fickle whims of an unpredictable OCD megalomaniac. Regardless of wether or not you believe Apple’s tech is “the best,” you have to see that this isn’t good for the company.

Apple didn’t get where it is by selling “the best stuff.” Many companies were born, sold a few things and then disappeared into obscurity selling hardware, software and other technologies far superior to Apple, Microsoft or Google. Apple got where it is today because it sold an image. It sold an idea; fashion, style, easy of use, reliability. Computers that weren’t for “nerd,” computers that just worked, computers you could bet the farm on.

For Apple to be on the one hand still pimping this image while on the other making publicly embarrassing mistakes that betray the exact opposite true...that is erratic.

"Linux"

I’ll never convince die-hard fans of Linux of anything pragmatic or practical. Idealism often gets in the way of stepping back and thinking hard about the cons of one’s passion. That said, I will give it a swipe.

Linux is a grand set of applications and tools unified into what most people today would call “an operating system.” Taken as a single unit, a given distro can be quite stable, reliable and overall fantastic. If we were to have a conversation that (for example) RHEL was a fantastic operating system then I couldn’t disagree with the statement. For the niches it fills, it is quite possibly the best. Now, I’ve not played much with other enterprise versions of the various Linux distros, but I would hazard a guess that under pressure they show marked reliability. Being open source, if you hire enough programmers and pay enough stupendous amounts of cash you can make a given Linux distro dance around a flag pole. That is an obvious pro when we talk about “Linux.”

The con really revolves around the fact that “Linux” is not an operating system. It is a catchment term used to describe a series of operating systems that happen to share a few common roots. Now it is blasphemy to discuss this issue with The Faithful, but the fragmentation of the Linux community is its greatest weakness. The LSB project may one day be its salvation, but even LSB 4.0 doesn’t reach far enough, and there is still too much inter-distro infighting and politics to truly hope that real honest-to-god inter-distro interoperability might one day occur. This is the elephant in the room.

Regardless of the how and why it got where it is, Windows has a hugely prevalent skill base of users and administrators. It is (relatively) easy to use, the tools are (usually) laid out in a fashion that makes sense to non-programmers and (yes, dear friends) the operating system is robust, stable and reliable. In virtually all cases a windows program, driver or what-have-you that you buy in a store, download off the internet or otherwise acquire Just Works on a given windows system. It certainly has not always been the case, but (let’s ignore the abomination of Vista for a moment,) Microsoft has come a long way in the past decade with this “windows operating system thing.” Their branding and partnering exercises, certification procedures and other such programs have ensured that this massively complex spiderweb mishmash of ancient incomprehensible code and new, sleek revised hotness somehow works on an unbelievable diversity of equipment. What’s more, Aunt Tilly (or that pointy haired boss that went to a seminar) can get a program “for windows,” pop it in, and it goes. (I acknowledge there are always exceptions, but the % of these are pretty small.)

Let’s contrast this with “Linux.” What flavor of Linux are you running? Does that particular app/program/what-have-you come in the right colour packager for your OS? What dependencies does it rely on? Does your system have the right major version number dependencies? Do you have to shove that package through alien in the fading hope that it will comply? Are you reduced to compiling from source? Does the same program with the same name that you rely on in one distro even behave in the same manner (and respond to the same commands in the same way) between distros? (I’m looking at you, vi!) What about administration and management? Do the basic administration tools resemble each other between distros? Do they even use the same terminology for the same things? In too many cases, the answer to almost all of the above is something like a strangled choke followed by the sound of a sysadmin voluntarily plummeting to his doom several stories below.

So this means Windows isn’t competing against “Linux.” Windows is competing against RHEL, SLES, Ubuntu Server LTS and many other operating systems that share a Linux foundation. All of these various distros are busy competing with (and waging periodic “nerd-rage purity wars” against) each other. When a Windows house looks at Linux, they don’t know where to start. They might find a nice Ubuntu appliance they like, but huge chunks of the learning they did on RHEL is now invalid and they have to learn this new OS from scratch.

For some organization that decides to go whole hog on a given distro, say a stock exchange, bank or what-have you then they are picking an operating system based ont eh individual merits of that operating system. They are picking RHEL because RHEL kicks ass or SLES because of some other requirement. They are not choosing “Linux.”

Microsoft is perfectly aware of this. They don’t have to compete against “Linux.” They have to compete separately and individually against each of these distroes. None of these distroes have an office/productivity stack worth mentioning, nor a client operating system that is going to do them any real harm. They are competing on the server front and frankly...their offerings in that regard are pretty damned competitive. Unless and until a Linux distro emerges winner, and starts to build a truly competitive Office/productivity line of apps and servers combined with something that actually gives exchange, AD, MSSQL etc. a run for it’s money then MS can just sit back and watch the various Linux distros scratch at eachother. It doesn’t need to put much more time and effort beyond “vague FUD” into it; “Linux” harms itself far to effectively.

That said, if “Linux” ever got its act together and built a “reference LSB distro,” one to which all other Linux distros were guaranteed to be compatible...MS would sit up and take notice. Suddenly real ISVs would have a target. The industry specific software and applications that are what keep the Windows platform alive would have something to code to on the Linux side. One set of rules, one file system structure, one packager, one everything. Write to one reference distro, support against the one reference distro and that’s it. One set of dev tools, one set of mandatory base applications with one set of mandatory default configurations. Code your application for “Linux” and receive the happy knowledge that no matter the flavour colour of “purity” of the distro, you app will behave exactly the same. This is /the/ barrier.

Solve this, and you would see apps pop up on Linux from Photoshop to “Dave’s downloadable home movie maker.” Fail to solve this, and Linux will get steamrollered by companies like Google who decided “screw the local OS, we’re putting it all in a browser,” Microsoft who can say “code it this way and it will work on 90+% of all computers every where,” or potentially Intel which may have enough force to make MeeGo the “standard” and push some of these other distros unwillingly into compliance or obscurity.

So does “Linux” matter to Microsoft? Is it “arrow head stuck deep inside Microsoft 's flesh causing bleeding and pain (moderate so far but it is not going away)”? No. It’s like a colony of ants living on your lawn. You wonder periodically if they might be able to cause some damage to your house because of their numbers (are they carpenter ants you ask,) but you realise if they get uppity you can throw so white dust on them and kill enough that it will be a while before they are back.

Microsoft is far better to be worried that Apple might get uppity and decide to make a place for the servers or office/productivity markets. They may be control freaks, but in corporate IT that is a mark in their favour, not against them.

@AC

Please actually read my post. Your summary suits Microsoft as a whole entity, but doesn't actually address what I said. "One the one hand there are large chunks of the company trying to reach out to the open source community, open up their APIs and inter-operate with the rest of the world."

Chunks of the company. As in, there are elements within the company (some quite powerful) that are agitating for interoperability and a more open stance. Again, as per the rest of my post, these elements fo the company are constantly at odds with the “old guard” and, well, the too-senile-to-find-their-ass-with-a-gps-and-a-Sherpa.

On the whole Microsoft is looking more than a little schizophrenic. It hasn’t chosen it’s path yet, and it is tilting at windmills all the time. That said, there is indeed a powerful movement within the company to legitimately reach out to the open source community and interoperate with other platforms. They recognise that this is required, is not only a sound business decision, but is in fact the only hope that company has for survival. Microsoft will never open source it’s software, (it can’t, it’s too encumbered with other people’s IP, and it would be a terrible business move.) It can however make sure that open source offerings can use its languages, work with silverlight, and interoperate with its APIs, protocols and other such things. This is good business; it keeps you relevant in a world where mixed environments are the norm rather than the exception.

The real shame, and that which I fear, is that these sensible and pragmatic forces within the company will be silenced or expunged. As much evil as they’ve done in the past...we can’t afford to lose them, or have them disappear into obscurity. Apple and Google are frankly far more terrifying than MS ever was. MS are greedy, money grubbing soulless bastards...but they are PREDICATBLE greedy, money grubbing soulless bastards. This is hugely important to business customers. They are a devil; but the devil you know.

Jobs has become increasing erratic over the past decade, and the control freakery isn’t something that any sane business would risk. (Your IT supplier is there to serve you, not the other way around.) Your data, your applications and your hardware need to belong to your business. They don’t belong to Apple such that any of it can be switched off, deleted changed or denied access at a whim. While this hasn’t (quite) happened yet, the man with the power is erratic enough that I wouldn’t stake my livelihood on his mental stability.

Google has been acting like a datakraken for so long they are about to get bitchslapped by regulatory bodies hard enough to send ripples down the rest of this century. Given their asstastic record as regards personal/individual privacy, any business that trusts Google with their data deserves to be erased.

What does this leave? Sunacle? Sure, like Microsoft they are evil...but a predictable evil. The only problem is that they in no way plan in the world of companies smaller than 500 people. SMEs just can’t afford their gear. If they were the only stable and trustworthy IT supplier left, this would be disastrous.

Linux? Are you kidding me? Linux is largely worthless as a “bet your company on this platform” unless the various strands of nerdraging idealists can start to hammer out actual standards that all distros agree to live by. I shouldn’t have different .debs or .rpms for each flavour of this OS; there should be one standard. There should be slow, vetted, methodical changes to the OS over time that allow businesses the time to adapt. (RHEL does this almost good enough...but even then stability in many places leaves a lot to be desired.) I don’t say this to bash Linux or deride it: I use RHEL, Ubuntu, Openfiler, DD-WRT, and various other distros every day of my life. I could not however, bet my livelihood on it.

So, we’re left with MS. They aren’t great, but at least with their software my data all lives in the confines of my business. I am less at the mercy of the erratic whims of the CEO than I am with Apple, (though MS has admittedly made some weird decisions...)

I find it encouraging that there are forces within MS that do seem to honestly want to work with the rest of the world and reach out to the various other communities of coders. I find it disheartening that the man in charge is such a poor leader that he can’t keep the various elements of his company from spinning off at different angles and ripping the company apart. Microsoft needs to sit back, think this whole thing over, and kick Ballmer the fuck out. Then they need to refocus on what they do best: providing a stable, predictable set of software tools for business use. The consumer stuff can and will flow naturally from that. They don’t need to emulate; they need to innovate. Stability, predictability, reliability and standards. When your competition is Apple and Google, these are what you have to play up; they are what the other two don’t have.

*please note, when I talk about stability, I talk about the stability of the company as a whole. I am not talking about software stability. Though that said, post windows 2000, MS has been doing wonders on the stability front as well. I have an XP box with 7.5 years uptime...