Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?
Today I installed ubuntu and have been blown away by it. It actually is easy to use and works very well.
I'm looking at microsoft's product line and there are mature free alternatives to most stuff:
Windows - Linux
Office - open office, google docs
Exchange - gmail
I'd be worried if I was Microsoft. And I know their profit is driven by enterprise, but today's startups are tomorrow's enterprise customers.
119 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadI suppose I could just run Wine...
I've taken Word 97 files and tried to load them into Office 2007 only to have the document formatting be completely messed up. I mean, I've come to expect that when loading a Word file into OpenOffice, but to have it fail from one version of Word to another is pathetic.
We still use MS Excel quite a bit - it's a good program.
I'd be worried too:
Windows Mobile - Android
IIS - Apache
.NET - PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, etc
SQL Server - MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc
IIS is believe it or not a very good webserver, fewer exploits than Apache and just as extensible. And you can extend it with .NET-code. No need for that icky C to do that.
.NET is a very good development platform with lots of stuff happening. PHP? Really? Of all things horrible, you mentioned PHP? Microsoft at least had the balls to kill their MS PHP (aka classic ASP). Java? Seems like Oracle intends to kill it utterly. Python and Ruby? You mean those languages which also runs on .NET?
SQL Server is unimaginable better featured and stable compared to MySQL, plus it has tooling support which makes using PostgreSQL seem like the dark ages. And unlike MySQL its performance wont drop dead once your databases surpasses the system's available memory. People using SQL Server aren't doing "clever" things like "sharding", because it breaks relational integrity, and frankly, it isn't needed. SQL Server just works.
Microsoft does really have a lot of good stuff on the table. Maybe the FOSS options are sufficient for your needs, but that doesn't automatically apply to everyone.
For example, my experience with MySQL is mixed, but PostgreSQL is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So here it seems to come down to the tooling you need (I can't comment on this: I've no SQL Server experience).
I'd be worried if I was Microsoft. And I know their profit is driven by enterprise, but today's startups are tomorrow's enterprise customers.
I think that's very true, and for that reason, Microsoft should be worried. For a young startup, free and open source is a more economical way to get up and running quickly without eating into your ramen budget. For 2-3 guys in a tiny apartment, setting up a few LAMP boxes in a closet is basically free.
Even if Microsoft is actually better than the free alternatives, the fact that it costs money is a deterrent for many startups, who in a few years will become big enterprise customers.
Does it have a portable config file yet? Or do you still have to use scripts to transfer website configurations (which breaks when you have sites configured with SSL for example).
I still have nightmares about reconfiguring IIS by hand for 100+ site IIS servers because the damn transfer script failed hardcore. At least when they switched the config to an XML format I could back it up easily, but it was still machine specific...
Aside from the fact that IronPython, at least, is a second-class citizen (I don't know much about the state of IronRuby), the OP was asking why one would choose Microsoft rather than some open-source solution. Stating that Windows also runs popular scripting languages is not an argument against that. What you should be addressing is whether or not PHP/Java/Ruby/Python can replace the oft-used .NET languages, as well as whether Mono is a suitable replacement for the CLR.
Which is why its the most popular web server on the interwebs right? Oh wait .. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/08/11/august-2010-web... What about the fact that you need to pay a pretty penny for the operating system you want to run IIS on?
IIS can also not run Django or Ruby On Rails (2 major programming frameworks) reliably last I checked, While Apache can handle pretty much anything and even .NET using mono. Simply put IIS isn't at the forefront of any innovation when it comes to web development, which is pretty much the hot thing right now.
> .NET is a very good development platform with lots of stuff happening.
I guess that's why they came out with ASP.NET MVC which unabashedly copies Ruby on Rails/Django right? PHP is maturing and while people might cast aspersions on it, It go out on a limb and say its still a vastly more popular web programming language than anything we've seen from Microsoft. Throw in a couple of really good development frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Zend etc, and I'm not sure who should be laughing at who here (Visual Basic .NET anyone?).
> You mean those languages which also runs on .NET
Did you hear about the IronRuby debacle? http://blog.jimmy.schementi.com/2010/08/start-spreading-news... And how many serious Python/Ruby programmers run .NET to program in their favorite languages.
> plus it has tooling support which makes using PostgreSQL seem like the dark ages.
This has been addressed ... but just take a look at the MS SQL server price list http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/pricing.aspx, and tell me if 'tooling support' is worth that much. To most startups and developers out there, the answer is no.
> Microsoft does really have a lot of good stuff on the table.
Sure. but thats not the point. The point is that, there are several strong alternatives to Microsoft products everywhere you look, and as time goes along, Microsoft stuff will become more and more marginalized.
Like the creator of Rails says here, http://bigthink.com/ideas/21601 I can go through my day without really thinking about Microsoft now, just a few years ago that was simply not the case (IE, Hotmail, Windows, .NET).
For example, Android isn't going to beat Windows Mobile because it's free. It's going to beat Windows Mobile because it's really a better OS (i.e. it's relatively open, has more apps, improving rapidly, etc.)
Another killer point for Microsoft is the whole Visual Studio environment and the .NET language. I haven't found a single IDE that is as powerful as Visual Studio and the language (C# notably, but also any other .net language) is also by far my favorite language. Compared to Java, I know that the language isn't that much different, but because Visual Studio makes it so easy, so plug and play, it gives you the freedom to concentrate only on the code and nothing else. I've had bad experiences where IDEs made from Java for writing Java software are really slow and buggy, and that's not what I've seen so far from software written in .Net either as free or paid softwares.
Eclipse also has some neat plugins like eclimd that let you run genuine vim inside the IDE.
There's a lot of crappy Java programs. This is likely the result of there being a lot of crappy Java programmers.
Personally, programming is why I'm not on Windows; sure, you've got the .NET stack, but we've got everything else. Most languages, editors, debuggers, etc. that I find are either *nix-only, or have Windows support bolted on.
I feel like a religious war is forthcoming.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668060
I'm not saying its perfect, just that it's much, much better than I thought.
If they moved to linux, then not only would I have to spend a fair bit of time getting them into it, but I'd then be the only person for them to call with issues in the future.
They migrated from the Mac, actually, so it was just "here's the new Firefox icon, have at it." and they were good to go.
She has an HP netbook with an 8GB SSD, and WinXP gives her "running out of space" warnings all the time. She doesn't download anything, but her pagefile.sys file quickly grew to 2GB. After limiting the size of the pagefile, clearing a bunch of other temp files, and uninstalling everything I could, the problem came back within a few months. I think it's an indication of the collective ignorance of Microsoft and PC manufacturers that they would sell a "netbook" that can't reliably browse the web.
This is going to be unpopular, but the majority of open-source software is not near the polish needed for the non-tech public to use.
I see this comparison so often, but it really is apples and oranges. I love gmail and use it daily, but it isn't a replacement for Exchange. First, gmail is just a client... you have no control over the server aspect with Google. That is fine for a lot of small businesses, but for most mid to large companies that isn't an option.
Does Exchange cost a lot of money? Yes, but with that you get a first class messaging platform that you control.
Point being, maybe companies are not worried about Google's ability to protect them, but are worried about Google.
Certainly, there are horror stories about Google's customer support.
2. You can have x@yourdomain.com, no problem with gmail for business.
Experience with Gmail: pay 20$ for heaps of storage. Very large attachments no problem. Almost never down, and when it is, it's taken care of pretty soon.
For startups who are short on cash, these free up front solutions are good because thats what they lack, cash. For big enterprises they aren't going to go with something that costs them heaps in training, customization, has no support etc (not picking on anything in particular) just because there is no up front costs. Also, the Google apps version of Gmail isn't free if you have more than 50 staff.
And, for developers, there's a market to sell applications to. When's the last time you saw someone making a living selling software to Linux consumers? (Web based products are an important exception to this rule, of course, but not everything can work well from a browser.) And as a bonus developers get to use the best IDE available anywhere.
These are just the needs I've had, for which I've actively looked for software on Linux to fill. Every single time the software available has been pathetic compared to the professional offering.
It's hard work getting that final level of polish on a piece of software that brings it from "it kinda works" to "it works really well." That's what's typically missing from open source apps: The push to make something really easy to use and solid. Frankly not enough professional applications reach that stage, but the ones I mention above all do.
Firefox is one of the few apps in the open source community to really reach that level of polish. Google Chrome is another. Thunderbird is another. There are a dozen other free programs I use, but none of them really feels polished -- they're good enough to get the job done, but only just. And if more things happen "in the cloud," that may be all people need in the future.
But until "the cloud" is brought to my house on fiber at gigabit speeds, I'd like to keep doing my video editing on a local system, thank you. And until it's less expensive to get a WiMax or 4G or whatever-new-technology wireless connection, I'd like the computing to stay in my laptop as well.
But roughly: Yes. The cloud may win over the hearts and minds of a younger generation, and they may be happy using one of the many application suites online.
And then they become tied to having a constant $50-$100/month data plan so they can actually use their computer anywhere but at home.
I'm waiting for unlimited/anywhere wireless plans to come down to closer to the $10/month level before I allow my computing to be based in the cloud.
http://jordanopensource.org/freeplanet/article/ubuntu-linux-...
The remainder, however, are still unchallenged. Photoshop is considered unchallenged on the PC (though for what I do I like Corel PhotoPaint), so I think it would make quite a splash if it were challenged on Linux.
Across all departments we have probably close to a million lines of VBA, COM, and VSTO code that we use most in Word and Excel. And a little for Outlook. And I just recently, like last week, seen some incredible stuff integrating Pivot, Silverlight, and Sharepoint. Sure it's enterprise and not Web 2.0 social web, but its the type of stuff that makes CIO cough up millions of dollars.
We've looked at Open Office and Google Apps in years past and they were literally at MS Office 2000 level. If all you want to do is write a memo, Word, OpenOffice, GoogleDocs, or Notepad will work fine.
When you're in a real enterprise with real enterprise needs, the features in Office that you think no one uses, are a huge win businesses. And once you're using Office, BizTalk and Sharepoint just bring everything together.
And the other tool that only MS has is Visual Studio. Still hands down the best dev environment I've used.
We should be clear. Windows has never been the only OS choice. IMO it has always been Office that has been the key to MS dominance. And while pundits, who generally aren't in the enterprise, think that world can move away from Office. I think just the opposite. The new features, that aren't of general use to Joe Schmoe, make it more invaluable for the enterprise.
Visual Studio is not bad for people with little understanding of development. Unfortunately, CS schools turn out many people like that these days. I don't know why people want tools that get in the way and slow you down as much as Visual Studio, but it is popular.
To me, the built in unreliability of Windows is something I wonder why more people don't focus on. Building your business processes around something that needs proprietary tools that can disappear with little notice just seems crazy.
You do know that Visual Studio is not just a drag-and-drop visual designer tool right? This is the most insulting gibberish I've read all day.
I work mostly in Python, and that affects my view, I am sure. But, even when I did mostly c/c++, I knew it was useful to be able to ssh to a foreign machine, edit a file and recompile and execute a program.
The view I expresses is one I also hear from other developers. I cannot help how you perceive it, but it is still true.
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/
So in X years they'll be rocking their Palo server and a million lines in to OpenOffice Basic (also terrifying), wondering why more people don't use Google Wave v2.
I completely agree. Excel is the thing that keeps me tied to Windows (and no, the Mac version of Excel isn't the same). It is by far the best software I have used for small to medium complexity data analysis (at some point you have to pull out the really heavy lifting number crunching tools, but they have even less open source competition), and it is the only software I have used that meets most of my needs and is also approachable to relative beginners.
Could you expand on this? What kind of "workflows" are you building? I can understand programming Excel, but how do you program Word and what do you use it for?
This is a particularly wicked problem for enterprises that have built a lot of custom line-of-business systems that are inextricably tied up in Microsoft's technology.
The problem is not that XLS(X) is a better or worse format than OOXML. The problem is that it is defacto - so if I want to be able to communicate with the rest of the business world, I need compatibility.
Softmaker comes close, but not good enough. Plus now that OpenOffice's future is tenuous (oracle?), I would rather buy Office or Softmaker.
1) Powerpoint - Impress can't even import many powerpoint presentations correctly, and offers far less pre-made themes,. and is overall very weak competitively. (In general, the entire Office suite wins over the alternatives; the powerpoint/impress difference though really stands out).
2) Games. - You can't play 95+% of FPSs on linux.
3) Laptops seem to work better with Win7 than Linux (Kubuntu), in terms of input/out (I'm using a Dell). The linux touchpad drivers are lacking TouchCheck, so accidental tapping while typing is a huge issue. Plugging into an external monitor is not automatic.
4) Full-screen flash remains screwy on linux.
2) Actually you can play most of them, at least those without copy protection. http://winehq.com
3) That's because Dell made drivers for win and didn't for linux. They can't hire one full day linux programmer? Maybe they do not want my money?
4) Works for me.
3) Are there any laptops with such features that work very well with Linux?
4) What distro to you use? Both of my computers have issues where the full screen window appears behind the browser (and switching back to windowed mode fails) - I'm on kubuntu 10.04.
Edit: actually, I've seen similar problems with Flash on Linux in 64-bit. It should be noted that the version of Flash for 64-bit Linux is atrocious at the moment; the 32-bit is far superior. Don't know if that's your trouble.
Think Zuma and Bejewelled