What's behind Microsoft's fall from dominance?

[nicholas]

No, please, don't force me to read 9 pages of discussions just to understand how the topic turned from "what's behind Microsoft's fall from dominance" and "the right to play back a DVD should be included when buy the DVD and playback should not be restrictred by software patents". It would be overkill ;-)

Anyway, back to original topic, I don't think there's a fall from dominance by Microsoft. It just happens that a NEW market, different than PC ones, has born in the meanwhile, and Microsoft didn't pay enough attention to its future relevance. Result is that Microsoft is still absolutely dominant in the PC *and* server market, although in the new, different MOBILE market its competition to Google and Apple has just begun. I wouldn't underestimate Microsoft here, though: I already know some people switching from iOS to Android to Windows Phone, and all of them agree the last one is the stablest among the three. This trend may diffuse if vendors of Android phones won't stop kidding with customers and decide to upgrade their products in a better way. Microsoft also bought Nokia, which in the past was the best seller competitor in the cellphone market, so they have all the know-how they need to succeed again. In a nutshell: Microsoft's fortunes might have been built on questionable marketing behaviors in the past, but they had many success stories and made many mistakes to learn from. I wouldn't bet Google and Apple share the same valuable experiences, even if they had a glorious histery behind them.

All in all, we're still at the beginning of a new era, and it's good to see all that competition that was just driven out from the computer market long ago. It will bring customers better products after all.

I don't know what industry you are in but MS is *far* from being dominant in the server space it's not even close.

UNIX-oids are by far the most used overall except for niche markets that are by definition tied to Windows like .NET etc.

[nicholas]

I know it was the old Oracle worries but splitting the effort across two office suites was really not smart.  Apache's Open Office and Free Software Foundations LibreOffice are based on the same buggy code and now they have double the work to fix it.

The majority of Linux distros (the ones with some actual market share) all switched to LibreOffice as did most of the active OpenOffice developers.

OpenOffice is basically irrelevent these days and has gone to the graveyard of abandoned Free Software projects that is the Apache Foundation.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

IEstimated number of Windows 8 sales are over 40 million copies, and while the initial offering for W8 was a bit of a stinker, 8.1 is a lot more enterprise friendly.  I could honestly park you in front of my 8.1 machine, and you'd be hard pressed to find it gimped in the least.

But hey, don't let me interject irrefutable numerical sales numbers into your arguments

Doubtful.    But I believe this oft-quoted number has been refuted by a number of trustworthy sources.  That that's 40 million copies of the software that have been shipped to resellers and OEM's, etc., but not the number that's actually been put into consumer's hands, which is much lower.  In other words, a lot of those "40 million" are still sitting on store shelves.

[psxphill]

I don't know what industry you are in but MS is *far* from being dominant in the server space it's not even close.
 
UNIX-oids are by far the most used overall except for niche markets that are by definition tied to Windows like .NET etc.

You probably don't want to hear this from me.
 
While *nix has a monopoly in web servers, that is the niche market. There are far more email/file servers sitting in offices around the world than web servers. It's cheaper to use Windows as you can get people with limited computer experience to be the sysadmins.

[fishy_fiz]

I don't know what industry you are in but MS is *far* from being dominant in the server space it's not even close.

UNIX-oids are by far the most used overall except for niche markets that are by definition tied to Windows like .NET etc.

Nah, not true. It's something a lot of computer enthusiasts will try to sell these days, but its not accurate.

BHP, Telstra, Optus, Compaq, etc. are hardly niche markets

[Fats]

Software feels different because once you've made it once the cost to reproduce it are lower. But someone fitting algorithms together and designing structures has a right to patent their work, whether that is created in software or hardware.

Software is different and that's why you have copyright for it. Software patents are an abomination of the patent system.

[nicholas]

Nah, not true. It's something a lot of computer enthusiasts will try to sell these days, but its not accurate.

I'm not a "computer enthusiast", i'm quite literally an old pro who started his professional development career in the mid 90's so i'd like to think my opinions are based on more than wishful thinking.

BHP, Telstra, Optus, Compaq, etc. are hardly niche markets

I could name bigger companies that are strictly *nix on the server but it wouldnt convince you i fear.

[commodorejohn]

All I got to do now is stop commodorejohn from doing the same and this place will be good again.

Kindly point me to a place where I've trolled or insulted you, sir.

Closest thing I can think of is where I suggested that perhaps your perception of me as the Microsoft-hating Linux advocate you'd like me to be had to do with your living in a parallel universe...

[psxphill]

Software is different and that's why you have copyright for it. Software patents are an abomination of the patent system.

The issue there is that you can have a patented piece of hardware that you can then duplicate using software without having to pay a patent license fee.
 
There are plenty of examples of stupid software patents, but then there are lots of stupid patents.
 
The irony is that without the patents then it wouldn't have been so easy for people to write a player anyway. Without a patent to protect them they'll just protect their algorithms better, you still don't get a licenced player for Linux but you won't get an un-licenced one either.

[psxphill]

Kindly point me to a place where I've trolled or insulted you, sir.
 
Closest thing I can think of is where I suggested that perhaps your perception of me as the Microsoft-hating Linux advocate you'd like me to be had to do with your living in a parallel universe...

Your aggressive argumentative style of holding a conversation is both trolling and insulting.

[commodorejohn]

Your aggressive argumentative style of holding a conversation is both trolling and insulting.

If that's true, I could say the same of you.

[paolone]

I don't know what industry you are in...

The italian subsidiary of IBM.

...but MS is *far* from being dominant in the server space it's not even close.

UNIX-oids are by far the most used overall except for niche markets that are by definition tied to Windows like .NET etc.

Among the 10000+ servers I can have access to, here: 850 use Linux (mainly SUSE, Red Hat and a few others), about 2600 use another UNIX dialect (counting Solaris, MVS, AS/400 and others), about 650 are physical VMware hosts (ESX/ESXi, any version), and all the rest are Windows machines. Which means 70% of servers hosted here are Windows (and not unixes) machines. You may argue that all over the world the situation may be different, but I can assure you it's a good sample of the whole server universe. Little industries that can't afford hosting in the farms of a great IT company and prefer keeping their machines in-house generally choose Microsoft too, because it offer robust integrated solutions for the web (IIS), for email (Exchange), and there's a pletora of 3rd party products that can work aside or together with them, with the relative ease of use of Windows. The myth of the server world using 99% Linux has never been true and it's extremely far from the actual situation.

[nicholas]

The italian subsidiary of IBM.



Among the 10000+ servers I can have access to, here: 850 use Linux (mainly SUSE, Red Hat and a few others), about 2600 use another UNIX dialect (counting Solaris, MVS, AS/400 and others), about 650 are physical VMware hosts (ESX/ESXi, any version), and all the rest are Windows machines. Which means 70% of servers hosted here are Windows (and not unixes) machines. You may argue that all over the world the situation may be different, but I can assure you it's a good sample of the whole server universe. Little industries that can't afford hosting in the farms of a great IT company and prefer keeping their machines in-house generally choose Microsoft too, because it offer robust integrated solutions for the web (IIS), for email (Exchange), and there's a pletora of 3rd party products that can work aside or together with them, with the relative ease of use of Windows. The myth of the server world using 99% Linux has never been true and it's extremely far from the actual situation.

Who said Linux?

In the world of large RDBMS and cluster farms UNIX (And I include Linux and the BSD's in that too) is and always has been king. MS made inroads certainly but it is not even close to being dominant as you claim.

AS/400 is no UNIX either. You work for IBM?!?

[paolone]

Who said Linux?

In the world of large RDBMS and cluster farms UNIX (And I include Linux and the BSD's in that too) is and always has been king. MS made inroads certainly but it is not even close to being dominant as you claim.

AS/400 is no UNIX either. You work for IBM?!?

As I've said "including Solaris, AS/400 etc", meaning anything different from Windows. I've just excluded from the list ESX/i servers, since I don't think hypervisors should count in the picture (they just provide a virtualization environment for virtual servers which actually do a job). Is it better explained, now?

(moreover: how do you count clusters? is a cluster a single installation of UNIX/Window or every node is a different installation in your count?)

[psxphill]

In the world of large RDBMS and cluster farms UNIX (And I include Linux and the BSD's in that too) is and always has been king. MS made inroads certainly but it is not even close to being dominant as you claim.

Linux/BSD is a relative new comer to RDBMS and competes in the mid range with SQL Server.
 
But then I guess it depends on what you class as large.

[psxphill]

If that's true, I could say the same of you.

You think anyone who disagrees with you is worthy of an attack, I tend to wait until I'm attacked.