As you know I tend to set a spin on how things are in regards to Microsoft versus the Open Source movement. But this week I really don't have to exagerate in regards to Microsoft's turmoils.
So what's going on with Microsoft? Thank you for the timing of your announcement of Vista delays the day before Novell's Keynote at Brainshare on SLED10, the new Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop. So.. more delays in Microsoft Vista and now some Microsoft Executive Shake ups.
Here are some quotes from Microsoft Employees and testers:
"We're missing the holiday sales market. Not only did we miss last year's opportunity, we're missing this year's opportunity, too. People need to be fired and moved out of Microsoft today. Where's the freakin' accountability?"
"Being a 10+ year vet I feel ashamed and sad. This company is a mess on so many levels."
What is the true reason for the delay?
"If you had spent the last 5 years of your life grinding away to get this thing out the door, you would have realised the only thing worse than slipping the date, would have been to lay a turd in August. Those of us in the trenches see exactly what bugs are between us and shipping."
Article Source
What's going on with the Microsoft Windows Code?
"Windows runs on 330 million personal computers worldwide. Three hundred PC manufacturers around the world install Windows on their machines... A crucial reason Microsoft holds more than 90 percent of the PC operating system market is that the company strains to make sure software and hardware that ran on previous versions of Windows will also work on the new one — compatibility, in computing terms.
As a result, each new version of Windows carries the baggage of its past. As Windows has grown, the technical challenge has become increasingly daunting. Several thousand engineers have labored to build and test Windows Vista, a sprawling, complex software construction project with 50 million lines of code, or more than 40 percent larger than Windows XP."
Ray Ozzie, chief technical officer, who joined Microsoft last year, wrote, "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges and it causes end-user and administrator frustration."
So Microsoft is taking a new approach hence the delays. Vista was built more in small modules that then fit together like Lego blocks, making development and testing easier to manage.
"They did the right thing in deciding that the Longhorn code was a tangled, hopeless mess, and starting over," said Mr. Cusumano of M.I.T. "But Vista is still an enormous, complex structure."
Source Article from NYTimes
Article from MacDailyNews
This makes the OS Market interesting. This year in preparing IT budgets, people have choices to make. Not only in the corporate world, but what about the home market. Microsoft has thousands of engineers on its Windows Team. Apple in contrast has roughly 350 programmers and fewer than 100 testers. What does that mean? Does it mean the Microsoft Code will be better because more programmers, or does it mean that it takes more time and money to get the code out. Microsoft has the added complexity of keeping backwards compatibility. Apple on the other hand didn't retain backwards compatibility with OS X and MAC OS 9. And look what Apple is doing switching to the Intel platform. Who is really being the most innovative? And what about Open Source? Companies like Novell and Red Hat lead the Open Source movement by putting money and resource behind it and then work jointly with other programmers around the world. I think it's the best of both worlds. Again... where is the innovation? Think about this when you are making your buying decisions. Do you want to be "closed" or "open"? I think there is room for both.
- Bucky
Article: Open Source Gaining Traction
PS.
Let's talk Open Source:
30 percent of Internet servers run Linux; 40 percent of e-mail servers run Sendmail; 65 percent of Web servers run Apache; 90 percent of DNS servers run BIND; and Mozilla's open-source Web browser Firefox has been downloaded more than 100 million times.
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