Robert Pogson

KACE has repeated their survey of IT professionals’ attitudes to M$ which they did in 2007. The survey from June, 2008 has these findings:

• the number seeing no possibility of migration from M$ is less than 10%, down from 15% in 2007
• of the 40% looking at migration, the number in the process of switching is 11%
• of the 40% looking at migration, the number planning to migrate this year is 30% up from 22% in 2007
• of the 40% looking at migration, the number planning a later migration is 50% down from 57% in 2007
• 29% of those planning to migrate plan to migrate to MacOS instead of Vista
• 68% of those planning to migrate plan to migrate to GNU/Linux

Assuming most IT professionals work for business, this means a huge part of M$’s business will be gone by 2010. Combined with spectacular growth in emerging markets and established retail markets, this means GNU/Linux and MacOS could take 50% of PC seats in 2010. That would mean the end to M$’s monopoly.

Here is my calculation:

I have assumed 1000 million seats with about 700 million in business to which the KACE numbers apply. I combined that with known figures for retail sales/predictions for GNU/Linux and 100% per annum growth in those numbers. This may be optimistic, but if M$’s “Lose 7″ is anything like VIsta: vapourware/buggy/bloated, and M$ does not do a GNU/Linux release of its own, or promote Novell, seriously, this is how it will go. Retail lock-in is crumbling. Business lock-in is all but gone. Only those businesses securely locked-in will stay with M$ because they have to have working IT in order to stay in business and to compete with those using GNU/Linux or MacOS to good effect.

M$’s only effective defenses are to produce a good OS but that will not be compatible with what they have in their installed base: XP, or to distribute GNU/Linux which could retain market share but not lock-in or cash flow. The PR task is just impossible with GNU/Linux for M$ so they will have to produce XP version 2 or something to keep the money flowing. Vista has nothing to offer business so they need to make something business finds useful. That will be an improvement on XP, but with all the backward compatibility customers expect, it will be no better. That is the best M$ can do, continue to produce an OS that was obsolete in 2001 when it was released. Perhaps they can continue to sell something like Vista to consumers but it has to be toned down to run on existing hardware. No one but gamers are interested in 3-year replacement cycles for home PCs. It will be years before everyone is quad-core + 2gB. M$ will have to write off emerging markets going lighter although their embedded stuff may work there, at greater cost. No matter how they go, they will have drastically reduced market share in two years as things go. There is no marketing campaign that can prevent that, only good product and M$ never designed a good product in the desktop OS field. M$ is soon to become irrelevant to the desktop OS market or at least, just another player, not anything larger than life.

OK, it is summer. I took time off to go to a pool party…

Lo, and behold, I chatted with a lady who works in a library. She and many of her staff are ticked at commercial software for libraries. It turns out they were looking at Koha. HeHe… I mentioned that that was a web application that could be accessed from any OS and that they could benefit from lower costs on the client-side by using GNU/Linux… Fun. Only a couple of years ago, no one that I met had even heard of FLOSS. Now all kinds of people are using FLOSS. They have lined up a local firm to help install/configure the system and to provide support. Cool. She and I compared notes on the horrors of dealing with commercial/non-free software, lock-in, vapour-support, inflexibility and the inability to deal with your own data the way you want. If/when they make the change, they will no longer need M$ on the client or server. Sweet.

I have used Koha and Emilda. Emilda seems to lack development. Koha is hot. On a system with a good infrastructure for perl, it takes only a few minutes to install. On some distros, there are a few obscure perl modules that need to be installed. If you are not a perlista, this is a strange process, but it works. Being php/perl most problems are fixable one way or another. Of course, one can always use the distro that Koha uses, Debian. see http://www.kohadocs.org/Installing_Koha_on_Debian_sarge.html#d0e432 A new release of KOHA is in the wings with a better installer.

Koha is yet another example of good things coming from cooperation rather than bullying and competition. The folks who started it needed software that worked for a modest price, so they made their own.

I have refrained from writing about Gates’ departure because it is irrelevant. Here is an article about what really matters by Richard Stallman:

BBC NEWS
It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars
By Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates’ retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

That statement may surprise you, since most people interested in computers have strong feelings about Microsoft. Businessmen and their tame politicians admire its success in building an empire over so many computer users.

Many outside the computer field credit Microsoft for advances which it only took advantage of, such as making computers cheap and fast, and convenient graphical user interfaces.

Gates’ philanthropy for health care for poor countries has won some people’s good opinion. The LA Times reported that his foundation spends five to 10% of its money annually and invests the rest, sometimes in companies it suggests cause environmental degradation and illness in the same poor countries.

Many computerists specially hate Gates and Microsoft. They have plenty of reasons.

‘Solicit funds’

Microsoft persistently engages in anti-competitive behaviour, and has been convicted three times. George W Bush, who let Microsoft off the hook for the second US conviction, was invited to Microsoft headquarters to solicit funds for the 2000 election.

In the UK, Microsoft established a major office in Gordon Brown’s constituency.

Many users hate the “Microsoft tax”, the retail contracts that make you pay for Windows on your computer even if you won’t use it.

In some countries you can get a refund, but the effort required is daunting.

There’s also the Digital Restrictions Management: software features designed to “stop” you from accessing your files freely. Increased restriction of users seems to be the main advance of Vista.

‘Gratuitous incompatibilities’

Then there are the gratuitous incompatibilities and obstacles to interoperation with other software. This is why the EU required Microsoft to publish interface specifications.

Microsoft would have us believe that helping your neighbour is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship

This year Microsoft packed standards committees with its supporters to procure ISO approval of its unwieldy, unimplementable and patented “open standard” for documents. The EU is now investigating this.

These actions are intolerable, of course, but they are not isolated events. They are systematic symptoms of a deeper wrong which most people don’t recognise: proprietary software.

Microsoft’s software is distributed under licenses that keep users divided and helpless. The users are divided because they are forbidden to share copies with anyone else. The users are helpless because they don’t have the source code that programmers can read and change.

If you’re a programmer and you want to change the software, for yourself or for someone else, you can’t.

If you’re a business and you want to pay a programmer to make the software suit your needs better, you can’t. If you copy it to share with your friend, which is simple good-neighbourliness, they call you a “pirate”.

‘Unjust system’

Microsoft would have us believe that helping your neighbour is the moral equivalent of attacking a ship.

The most important thing that Microsoft has done is to promote this unjust social system.

Gates is personally identified with it, due to his infamous open letter which rebuked microcomputer users for sharing copies of his software.

Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now

It said, in effect, “If you don’t let me keep you divided and helpless, I won’t write the software and you won’t have any. Surrender to me, or you’re lost!”

‘Change system’

But Gates didn’t invent proprietary software, and thousands of other companies do the same thing. It’s wrong, no matter who does it.

Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and the rest, offer you software that gives them power over you. A change in executives or companies is not important. What we need to change is this system.

That’s what the free software movement is all about. “Free” refers to freedom: we write and publish software that users are free to share and modify.

We do this systematically, for freedom’s sake; some of us paid, many as volunteers. We already have complete free operating systems, including GNU/Linux.

Our aim is to deliver a complete range of useful free software, so that no computer user will be tempted to cede her freedom to get software.

In 1984, when I started the free software movement, I was hardly aware of Gates’ letter. But I’d heard similar demands from others, and I had a response: “If your software would keep us divided and helpless, please don’t write it. We are better off without it. We will find other ways to use our computers, and preserve our freedom.”

In 1992, when the GNU operating system was completed by the kernel, Linux, you had to be a wizard to run it. Today GNU/Linux is user-friendly: in parts of Spain and India, it’s standard in schools. Tens of millions use it, around the world. You can use it too.

Gates may be gone, but the walls and bars of proprietary software he helped create remain, for now.

Dismantling them is up to us.

Richard Stallman is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. You can copy and redistribute this article under the Creative Commons Noderivs license.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/7487060.stm

Published: 2008/07/03 09:22:35 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

NetApplications shows quite a pop for GNU/Linux in May/June 2008, advancing from 0.68% to 0.80%, 17% growth in one month, 70% in one year. Of course the numbers seem heavily weighted towards North America/Europe, showing MacOS over 7% (units shipped are about 3%, globally, for Apple), but the growth is real in that market. Imagine what it must be in the rest of the world where large sections are not locked-in to that other OS.

What makes June so special? Second quarter? High rates of IT acquisition? Fresh grads? Realization that Vista is dead for business? It could be all of these factors, but I suspect that NetApplications is weighted to business sites so the hardware/software refreshes of businesses could be a big factor. We know 50% of businesses are giving GNU/Linux a close look for the desktop. Some are adopting. A lot are adopting, apparently.

Conversely, that other OS has lost 2.4% of its loyal following in the past year and MacOS has gained only 30%.

Vista is going on about 10 million machines per month and only about half of them were running XP. That means Vista has been replacing a lot of old versions more than XP. The world is creating about 25 million new machines each month, so Vista is not making it. When XP is killed, will Vista get a pop? Let us wait for July’s numbers. Steve Ballmer’s job may depend on them. I expect GNU/Linux will get a pop. The June pop may have been early adopters.