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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joseph Pareti who wrote (72114)	8/10/2002 3:44:49 AM
From: Joseph Pareti	Respond to of 74651

Microsoft and Free Software at the Same Show? It's True By JOHN MARKOFF AN FRANCISCO, Aug. 9 — Peter Houston, a top software executive at Microsoft, is not planning to wear a flak vest as he plays host when the company has its first booth ever at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo computer industry show that opens here on Monday. But the Microsoft appearance might be construed as an olive branch, for the company is widely considered an enemy of the freely distributed Linux operating system and a pariah within the anarchic free-software movement. In addition, Microsoft executives have frequently attacked the idea of sharing rather than buying software. Yet Microsoft's arrival, along with keynote presentations from chief executives and industry leaders from I.B.M., Oracle and Sun Microsystems, is evidence that the freely shared software movement is not going away as a threat to the traditional for-profit software industry that Microsoft dominates. Today the market outlook appears mixed for Linux, a variant of the Unix operating system. Linux has failed as a desktop alternative to either Microsoft's Windows or Apple's Macintosh operating system, and last year, according to a study by the International Data Corporation, Linux sales actually slumped. The study, released last week, reported that Linux operating systems sales declined by 5 percent last year compared with 2000 and that Linux operating sales in 2001 were a modest $80 million. But significant forces at work inside the computer industry suggest that the free-software movement is rapidly gaining momentum, most strikingly in common corporate computing applications that are frequently a harbinger of deeper changes to come. I.B.M., one of the biggest backers of the Linux movement, says it has been recording double-digit and even triple-digit growth in its Linux business in the last year. "Our volume of hardware, software and services is up dramatically," said Steve Solazzo, Linux general manager at I.B.M. Despite acknowledging I.B.M.'s strength publicly in recent weeks, Microsoft says it has no plans to adopt the core tenets of the open-source software movement anytime soon, or even to try to sell its key programs, like its Office software suite, to the growing base of Linux operating system users. Yet Mr. Houston, senior director of the Windows Server Product Management Group, acknowledged that Linux had become a force in several markets that Microsoft coveted and that the company's strategy was changing from denial to engagement. "The goal is not to have a megaphone and say, `Check out the alternatives,' " he said. "Our goal is discussion." Microsoft is by no means the only company that is grappling with the pressure that open-source software is exerting on the computer industry. The company's strategy contrasts sharply with that of Sun Microsystems, which has decided to embrace, not oppose, the Linux bandwagon. At the LinuxWorld show, the Sun chief executive, Scott McNealy, will give a keynote speech on Tuesday that will be closely watched. Moreover, the company plans a number of product announcements, including its first low-cost server computer available either with Sun's Solaris operating system or with Linux. "The big boys have gotten involved," said Charlie Greco, president and chief executive of IDG World Expo, the company sponsoring the exhibition. After growing significantly, the number of participants slowed in recent years, he said, in part because the large computer makers had begun entering the Linux marketplace once dominated by hobbyists and small start-ups. "I.B.M., HP, Intel, Sun and now Microsoft have jumped in and said, `We want to lend order to this marketplace because right now it's that tail wagging the dog,' " he said. Sun in particular will probably be criticized by its competitors I.B.M. and Hewlett Packard, which made earlier commitments to the Linux operating system. "Our message to Scott is, `Welcome to the party,' " said Shane V. Robison, chief technology officer of Hewlett Packard. "Now he is very confused about who his competition is. He thinks he's competing with Microsoft, but it's not clear who he is competing with." Sun executives responded that Linux would not be a troubling and disruptive force for Sun alone. "It's definitely disruptive, and I enjoy the way our brethren in the industry say, `It's disruptive except for my stuff,' " said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president for software. Giants like I.B.M. and Oracle will find their database businesses increasingly vulnerable to open-source software programs like MySQL, a free database program that runs on Linux. Moreover, Microsoft will ultimately find that its desktop business is at risk in competition with Linux and new free software applications like OpenOffice. The pro-Linux optimism is echoed by Laura Didio, a Yankee Group analyst who said a recent survey of corporate computing managers had found great frustration with Microsoft's recent shift to selling software by subscription rather than as a shrink-wrapped product. Whether that strategy is more expensive or not is a matter of debate. But Ms. Didio said the new approach, which went into effect this month, had drawn howls of anger from customers. "I heard from a lot of state, municipal and federal government agencies as well as schools," she said. They were coming back to Microsoft and saying: `Can you spell Linux? We can't afford your software.' "

To: Joseph Pareti who wrote (72114)	8/20/2002 6:33:49 PM
From: waitwatchwander	Respond to of 74651

The Most Important Open-Source Project You've (Probably) Never Heard Of internetweek.com By Richard Karpinski Almost a year after it donated some $40 million worth of code and tools, IBM is on the warpath once again, drumming up support for the open-source Eclipse project. Eclipse may not be as well known as some other open-source projects, such as Linux, Mozilla, or Apache. It's certainly not as sexy. At its core, Eclipse provides a common platform, user interface, and plug-in framework for integrating development tools. Developers working with the Eclipse framework would be able to plug in different tools from different vendors -- say a Java IDE, a modeling tool, a test environment, an XML editor -- and benefit from a common look and feel and under-the-covers functionality. Briefing Book Want to learn more about how open-source technologies are impacting mainstream IT? Check out our Open Source Briefing Book. That may seem ho-hum, but for enterprise developers -- struggling to boost productivity even as they wrestle with a growing number of Java and Web services development tools -- the open framework and open-source approach of Eclipse could pay big dividends. While admitting that its impact on developers thus far has been "relatively limited," Giga Information Group analyst Mike Gilpin said Eclipse is a strong technology and is gathering vendor momentum. "In terms of getting vendors into the program, if you look at Rational and Borland and some others, they've made good progress," he said. Large enterprises -- such as German conglomerate Siemens -- have the ability today to build their own tools frameworks. Something like Eclipse could bring that capability to more IT shops, Gilpin said. Eclipse is reaching some important milestone. A beta of version 2.0 of the open-source code for Eclipse was released about a month ago. The final version, along with commercial products supporting the new release, is slated for September. New features in 2.0 include improvements to the platform's project management capabilities, plug-in architecture, and ability to integrate in third-party tools. Eclipse membership is growing as well. The group added six new members last month, including Hitachi. They join founding members IBM, Borland, Merant, QNX Software, Rational Software, Red Hat, SuSE, TogetherSoft, and WebGain, as well as other participants in the project. All told, more than 175 software vendors have participated in some way in the project -- with more than 40 shipping Eclipse products or plug-ins, including IBM, Rational, Borland, Macromedia, Merant, Systinet, and others. Downloads of the open-source code have topped 1 million. And this month the group formed the Eclipse Technology Project to support research, education, and engineering efforts around the Eclipse platform. Why Is Eclipse Important? Like all things in the software industry, Eclipse is as much about strategy as it is about products. For starters, it reflects IBM's ongoing flirtation -- some would say obsession -- with the open-source community. IBM has backed the Apache Web server and Linux operating systems with major success. For IBM, with deep legacy roots and a huge services business, open source is a good competitive tool when it comes to commoditized products like baseline servers or even operating systems. It makes its money further up the stack. As for Eclipse, IBM's strategy is twofold. A strong and vibrant community developing to the Eclipse platform is a potent weapon against Microsoft's "pre-integrated" .NET framework and Visual Studio tools. It also gives IBM a framework on which to integrate its own wide-ranging development and middleware tools. In both cases, IBM is hoping to leverage the power -- and go-to-market models -- of open source as well as the success of open platform technologies such as J2EE and Web services. "Open source and open standards have been driving a great deal of value for customers," said Scot Hebner, IBM's director of marketing for its WebSphere platform. "The one thing that is missing, though -- and its the greatest source of drag on developer productivity -- is an equivalent standard for tools. What J2EE is for apps and Linux is for operating system, that's what Eclipse is for tools." What Eclipse delivers is a core set of functionality that other tools can plug into and build on top of. Think of things, says IBM's Hebner, like a common way to represent and manage projects; source code and version control management; common debugging tools and services; a common test environment; and a common UI to represent the tool interface. Eclipse has some strong momentum, but not everyone is on board. Sun is pitching its own open source IDE framework, dubbed NetBeans. Earlier this month, Sun announced 18 new modules for the NetBeans environment -- delivered thanks to a new, more open code contribution process -- including support for Java Data Objects, the Apache Group's Struts application framework, and more. IBM rival BEA also isn't jumping into Eclipse, preferring to pursue a platform strategy -- not that unlike Microsoft -- albeit on the Java side of the fence. But the biggest alternative to Eclipse is most likely Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET, which by sheer dint of Microsoft's massive user base and monolithic Windows/.NET platform, accomplishes much of what Eclipse tries to do. "I'd argue that the most ominous threat to the Microsoft developer community is Eclipse," said IBM's Hebner. "We're an open alternative to a closed environment, Visual Studio .NET. Just as Microsoft is often quoted about its concerns about Linux and J2EE, this opens up another flank on them."