Microsoft Windows 7: Can Closed Source March Forward?
Microsoft expects to share Windows 7 alpha code during its Professional Developers Conference in October. That got The VAR Guy thinking: Does the old closed-source model of bug chasing and alpha, beta and gold product development releases still work?
During the 1990s, The VAR Guy followed Microsoft’s alpha and beta builds very closely. He was running Windows 4.0 “Chicago” long before that operating system was finally branded as Windows 95. Each major Windows upgrade became a longer and longer journey: Microsoft would write some code and release a build; testers would run the build and report bugs back to Microsoft; and the circle of life would continue until the Windows upgrade was “good enough” to go Gold (i.e., sent to manufacturing).
But there’s a flaw in Microsoft’s model. Testers — ranging from customers to third-party developers — experience the bugs. But only Microsoft can go in, check the code and actually fix the bug.
Experiencing a bug is the easy part. When a system freezes or crashes, you know it’s time to document the problem. But finding and fixing the root cause of the bug is an expensive, time consuming process. And Microsoft cannot afford to hire an infinite number of developers to chase every last bug.
In stark contrast, chasing bugs and fixing them in the open source world is far easier because every set of eyeballs potentially has access to the source code.
Changing Times
For nearly a decade, Microsoft has kicked around the idea of making Windows upgrades more modular. Instead of a big, massive upgrade every few years, we’d get more regular updates — something akin to how Canonical delivers regular enhancements to Ubuntu every few months.
But can Microsoft really get more modular — and more efficient — using the closed source development model?
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Close door model is out-the door, so to speak. The development process takes way too long..
Case in point, I really like using a program called ‘streamtuner’ on my Ubuntu box, the last release was Dec 21, 1999. Shoutcast has changed some things on their website which effects the program, when you press refresh you no longer can see/load the Net radio stations, it just doesn’t work.
Well, to make a long story short and after downloading the source file and patch, I ran the following commands:
sudo su
apt- get build-dep streamtuner
apt- get source streamtuner
cd streamtuner….
#move patch to streamtuner dir
patch – p1 lt; name_of_patchfile
./configure
make
make install
…and low-n-behold “MY” program worked perfectly!
Try that with Windows…that “you” as a user, DO NOT “own”
D.
DOUGman: Thanks for doing your part in the open world. The VAR Guy doesn’t code, but he appreciates those who do.
Whilst I hold no brief for microsoft, I do think they have a different scale of problem. Windows is expected to work perfectly by people who have no technical knowledge at all.
Vista, for the most part, does – but it is being talked down because of its obvious shortcomings nevertheless.
I do not think that Microsoft is brave enough to persue the little-and-often route because of the amount of testing they would percieve as necessary at each release stage.
Their own success – and the need to support legacy situations out-of-the-box – seems to have trapped them in one methodology and one mindset.
Vista could, for example, have so easily included a virtual machine running XP for the legacy programmes. It doesn’t, because their licencing mindset is fixed.
While I agree with the idea explained in the article I still don’t see the fruits of it.
Legacy and inertia still makes windows the preferred choice for most users. I still can’t recommend using a Linux-only solution for the people I know… I still can’t do without Windows myself 100%, some sites IE-only and some windows only programs force me to keep a virtualboxed-xp around.
In many areas Linux amp; opensource in general still lags behind and you have to wait some months or years to use a new device or technology without issues in Linux. This is already being reduced but does NOT disappear because legacy and inertia keep the masses in the windows world.
Will the ordinary people learn that opensource is a superior way of development model?
I doubt it.
Look around- Open source applications are starting to dominate software development as computing turns to the web. It isn’t always obvious how/when alot of people will be using Linux on the desktop but you can surely see that XP is getting very old and Windows 7 is a long shot for Microsoft. Ubuntu has passed XP usability and the stark differences in quality are sure to draw many millions of Linux users in the future. New interface designers and a fast development model are going to make Ubuntu hard to stop
josvazg made some good points. Microsoft will always rule as long as there is MORE money selling it than the other open source products on the market. I was just at a MS licensing seminar, presented by TechData and Microsoft. Their primary concern is making sure their partners, including the small ones make money and lots of it.
There is money in it and this is the only thing that matters to me. Forget open source, let it sell itself to the geek crowd, meanwhile I will continue to sell Microsoft. Microsoft, you are the greatest because you understand the channel.
I work for an outfit that is clinging desperately to old hardware running XP. I did a test today of XP on an AMD 2600 and GNU/Linux on a much older 450 MHz box as a thin client of a newer machine:
47s to boot and to login to a usable GUI on the ancient box with snappy run-time performance. More than 2 minutes on the XP box and the run-time performance is jerky. These folks have no hope of running Vista. They can see GNU/Linux is a viable upgrade path for their systems. What are they going to do? I recommend they scrap everything and pay the price for modern thin clients to get fanless maintainability and the performance GNU/Linux can bring. By killing XP, M$ has shot themselves in the foot but the dinosaur’s brain is so far away it doesn’t realize it yet…
@Robert Pogson: You’ve spotted a key opportunity for Linux. Very low-end PCs and used PCs.
The VAR Guy just started testing a ZaReason Breeze PC with an Intel Atom processor. Price: $299 just for the PC. It runs Ubuntu and boots in about a minute. OpenOffice comes free/preinstalled.
The VAR Guy had the system up and running within 10 minutes of opening the box. It’s a nice little productivity system for small businesses or home users who don’t want (or need) lots of processing power for games, video creation, etc.
It is obvious that HurdyGurdy likes MS for the licensing end of the deal, and not the end product. As long as there is money then the quality of the product does not matter.
It is only the inertia of the Windows platform that is the apparent motivation for both hurdygurdy and josvagz and not how well the product works nor are they committed to doing their customers and friends a favor by suggesting or recommending to try some of the open source products.
I run Linux and have not looked back …
As I see it, the proprietary business model (at least for operating systems) is a limited time engagement. Will it disappear next year or ten years from now? I don’t know, but I suspect it will.
The OS needs to commodotize, and this can’t happen with a proprietary model. Same thing happened with the hardware industry 20 years ago.
On top of that, with portability suddenly taking priority over computing power, Moore’s law is under a bit of a reversal. This doesn’t take down proprietary software per se, but it certainly hurts Microsoft’s offerings.
I think the Windows’ monolithic model is its Achilles heal.
Roni wrote: It is only the inertia of the Windows platform that is the apparent motivation for both hurdygurdy and josvagz and not how well the product works nor are they committed to doing their customers and friends a favor by suggesting or recommending to try some of the open source products.
I beg to differ here. Microsoft does meet my customer’s needs and my job is to keep a smile on their face.
But to look at it from another angle. I can’t sell Linux as the sales margin is too low. This is the same as Verizon, TMobile and the other carriers (other than ATT) that are unable to sell the iPhone. It is not by any fault of theirs, but the exclusive marketing agreement Apple made with ATT. So what do the other carriers do? They sell iPhone clones. This is not a disservice. It is assisting the customer with their needs.
I know I should not be mentioning this… as it is very much a legal aspect.
But, remember, Microsoft has been able to hold it’s position, mostly due to the OEM deals it has made. (dell, hp, and more)
Those deals include banning other OS’s from OEMs preinstall allotment or face the concequences of being sued by Microsoft or them simply upping the price per Windows Preinstall or cutting the OEM off entirely, leaving the OEM with no Windows to preinstall.
This has been Microsoft’s #1 reason for dominance as an OS since the days of the first releases of MS-DOS, due to the fragmentation of the PC hardware industry, at the time.
A lot of people know about these OEM deals, but not even the US Feds can as for the contracts for review, because they are concidered ‘confidential business documents’.
Most US citizens tend to forget this, while the UK and Australia know fully well what evil deals are signed.
The unbundling of Windows from the OEM is a huge topic in non-US countries, because they don’t care as long as they get a better deal (or at least a choice) in which OS their governments can choose to run.
If, ubuntu, (or others) were front page Dell, I beat you more effort from 3rd party commercial entities out jump in and support the Linux Desktop more.
As is, if Dell were to put Ubuntu on front page of dell.com microsoft would sue.
Fatal flaw in this logic.
Regardless of what deals Dell signs with Microsoft, it’s because Dell wants Windows on their machines. Why does Dell want Windows on their machines? Because their customers demand it. (spare me the “those customers are too stupid/don’t know any better” rhetoric)
What those customers do know is that they want to be able to go to the store, buy software, put the CD in, and do stuff; and it all requires Windows, and if Dell doesn’t ship Windows, those customers will go elsewhere.
I think there has been some misinterpretation of my opinion.
I use Ubuntu both at home and at work (even thought nobody else around me does). Sometime on the early 2000s I told my LILO to boot Linux by default and from that moment on I tend to go back to Windows the less often I can (Now with VirtualBox I can even avoid to reboot to try some stuff on XP if I need it).
BUT the reality for everybody else is different. M$ sets the desktop standars, and Windows+Office is perceived as gratis in my country because nobody pays for them anyway (for home use). To have a “computers course” here means to learn to use M$ Office, period.
I really believe the OpenSource model is superior, but M$ has too much inertia to back then.
In 5 years time, the quality of OpenSource code will be even much more apparent that it is now, but still people will be using Windows by inertia, because “those geeks with those cool OSs that consume less and do more with less can’t run that new game or that legacy program”
josvazg, I think that MS might had set (or copied) some desktop standards, but this is fading away. Nowadays I see a lot of people working with PC and as long as they find a Browser, Email client, Music player, Folder management tool and some sort of Office tool they do not care whether it is MS, Apple or Linux. This is actually good for MS, because even their system is not as good as others it still does those basic tasks somehow ok. Group of users using some special applications (enterprise sphere aside) is becoming minority, just have a look at the wave of those Netbooks, all they do is surfing.
Linux needs to find salespeople and pay them a handsome comission (not quite as much as the fat cats were getting payed on Wall Street prior to the bailout, but a handsome comission). I will say it for the last time on this board:
Linux is not going to ‘sell itself’.
This is an indisputable fact.
You need a sales force to raise awareness, take orders, handle objections, prepare price quotes, and do all the other stuff sales people do, like asking for the order. Who is doing this now? Is there any money in it? Not that I find as a SMB reseller. This is why Linux is not getting anywhere in SMB, there is no money in it.
when Windows is really open source? 😀