| The Red(mond)coats are coming! |
by Malcolm Dean (Updated July 3, 2002)
DesktopLinux.com contributing editor Malcolm Dean gets into the spirit of wIndependence Day with this warning of the increasingly harsh counter-attack which is sure to come, as Microsoft begins to feel the effects of the growing challenge to its market domination from the Linux and open source 'rebellion' . . .
The Red(mond)coats are coming!
by Malcolm Dean
Updated July 3, 2002
Revolution is a serious matter. Let's stop kidding ourselves.
At last year's O'Reilly Open Source event in San Diego, Tim O'Reilly went out of his way to bring Microsoft representatives before the Open Source community. The audience and subsequent press conference were treated to denials that Microsoft executives were serious in comparing Linux to Communism or a serious disease. Microsoft's lead on the Corel/.NET FreeBSD port openly derided the Open Source movement by insisting that the term could mean anything Microsoft wanted it to.
Now spend a moment with two revealing documents. First, Todd Weiss's report for Computerworld, "Microsoft to boost sales force, focus on closer ties to customers". Mr. Weiss reports that Microsoft will add 450 sales representatives to its U.S. sales team, already numbering 6,000. Redmond plans to market its products to seven new vertical industries with increased focus on technical expertise, as well as small and midsize businesses.
Within nine months, said a Microsoft executive, customers will "see the value in increased interaction with Microsoft, and increased specialization in the sales force."
The article quotes Rob Enderle, an analyst at Giga Information Group, saying that Microsoft has "taken the position that more 'touch' with customers is beneficial." Read: Microsoft has realized it is out of touch with its customers.
Gartner analyst Tom Bittman said Microsoft's strategy will be to sell products and services to its top 2,000 corporate accounts through teams of specialists working on "technical road maps, architecture and software deployment." This will follow increased sales calls to business decision-makers such as CxOs.
Gap Inc. is cited as an early beneficiary of the program, according to CIO Ken Harris, which "helps educate Gap Management and enables Gap to get visibility at senior levels at Microsoft." Read: If you don't have a relationship with us, you'll be invisible.
Microsoft is facing two dire inevitabilities. The growth in enterprise desktop sales is flattening, meaning fewer dollars for Redmond. And this trend will accelerate negatively if the Linux desktop proves viable, leaving Microsoft to compete in areas it cannot so easily manipulate--directory services and databases.
Is it a simple coincidence that right after Wal-Mart announced it would sell Microtel PCs without an OS, that company received a call from Microsoft inquiring what kind of interest customers had in such an offering? Is it a simple coincidence that right after Wal-Mart announced it would sell Microtel PCs with LindowsOS installed, Microtel received a "routine" sales call from its Microsoft account rep.?
History is full of simple coincidences. Now enjoy this essay by Tim O'Reilly.
(Just in case you aren't sure -- and I regularly encounter IT people who aren't -- Tim is the O'Reilly behind the excellent computer books and leading-edge conferences, not the daily hatchet job on reason and intelligence broadcast by Fox News.)
At last year's Open Source conference, O'Reilly made a valiant effort to bring Microsoft to the table. This year, his tone has clearly changed. Read how some of his speakers have already been sabotaged by Redmond's behind-the-scenes pressure, and his plans to invite the Peruvian senator who wants his country to use Open Source software instead of spending millions on Microsoft. O'Reilly clearly expresses disappointment at Microsoft's behavior, and you can detect the early signs of a tangible sense of alarm.
Just a few days ago, I wrote from USENIX how thoroughly accommodated the UNIX Administrator and Developer communities are to the presence of Windows. To be fair, developers and administrators are not responsible for vision. They are usually implementors of visions already articulated. Articulated by whom? Why, by those very CxOs Microsoft plans to "educate and support."
In recent weeks, we had the spectacle of an honest effort to bring the power of Linux together in a cohesive vision. Failing to get out of the limited "your demise is my survival" mentality of Closed Source, even the computer press and industry analysts appeared determined to see this as, variously, "the Caldera group," or the "IBM group."
While addressing the needs of enterprise developers, the UnitedLinux initiative leaves the desktop right where it is -- out of the picture. Just when Linux is reaching maturity, when the desktop is ready for Prime Time, when home users are ready to switch by the thousands, and a mass consumer version of Linux is beginning to ship, we hear an awesome silence.
It is the silence of a community bruised, certainly, by the economic climate. But it is also the silence of a community which is stuck in 2000, when Linux was not really ready, when Corel planned a suicidal gamble on another battle for desktop dominance, and large vendors announced, then withdrew, Linux-loaded PCs from their catalogs. That was a time when it was briefly fashionable to be a Linux evangelist, and for corporations to fund their own Linux evangelists.
And what do we hear in that awesome silence? The distant drums of the Redmondcoats. Recognizing that the rebellion must be struck down now, before it flourishes further, Redmond is bringing the Hessian Guards, their hired guns in government and regulatory agencies. Like the pamphleteers of old, pseudo-philosophy mouthpieces such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution have been paid to raise concerns about Open Source and National Security, even though the Agency which bears that name proffers its own version of a secure Linux.
This gathering assault bears a significant trademark of the best military campaigns: mass propaganda. As Dave Kearns notes in a recent newsletter, "Fortune's Brent Schlender got to spend almost 12 hours with Bill Gates over the course of a few days. They attended meetings together and also spent one-on-one time in Gates' office. Throughout this, Gates revealed more about the upcoming release of Windows than he has ever done to all of the technology reporters who cover him day in and day out."
Newsweek had similar luck, and perhaps by no coincidence compared the current situation to the Trojan Wars. Cringely's take: "Steven Levy . . . ought to have known better."
If you think that an article or two don't really matter, see how Spencer Kittelson skewered the Wall Street Journal for its "grotesque ignorance" of Microsoft monopolistic strategies.
Mass propaganda is a key component of any serious conquest. Mick Underwood explains that Goebbels "hoped to benefit from the prestige and credibility of the great German dailies. Although their style continued to differ from Nazi Party organs, they actually contained no additional information. If you can imagine yourself in the position of a skeptical German at that time, you can perhaps see how that could have been quite effective - you use those traditional dailies to check the veracity of what you're hearing on the radio or reading in the Nazi papers; you find that the style is reassuringly different, similar to what it always was, there is no obvious Nazi propaganda, but you don't find any of the news in the other media contradicted, so . . ."
If the mainstream journalism cannot recognize its ignorance of technology, and fails to acknowledge its responsibility for balanced coverage, this leaves an ideal information void into which, Redmond now understands, all manner of historical distortions and "preparatory" memes can be channelled.
Obviously, we need a Linux/UNIX Ministry of Propaganda, a UnitedLinux of the Mind. We need vendors, network administrators, computer educators, and neighborhood Linux gurus to "get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'"
One by one, the Redmondcoats will be banging on the local doors, reminding colonists of the benefits of Monarchy and Motherland, while taking careful note of any rebel technology they encounter. Amnesty will be offered to those who see the light of day.
Like it or not, the Redmondcoats are coming.
Copyright © 2002, Malcolm Dean. Published by DesktopLinux.com with permission.
About the author: Contributing Editor Malcolm Dean is a writer and IT strategist based in Los Angeles.
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