[Am-info] An Open Letter To Microsoft

[Fred A. Miller]

http://www.informationweek.com/story/
showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15306233

About Linux: An Open Letter To Microsoft

Dear Microsoft:

I've long admired your warrior spirit, your commitment to
winning, and your drive for success. Lots of companies and
individuals have enjoyed many of your products and derived
significant value from them; your financial success has made many
people inside and outside of your company very wealthy; and you
have created a global brand that's the envy of marketers around
the world. Several years ago, realizing the Internet and the Web
were about to make you as relevant as Gray Davis, you executed
what could well be the fastest and most dramatic corporate
reorientation anyone's ever seen. You should be quite proud of
all that.

But today you face a challenge every bit as daunting as the
Internet, and how you choose to react to this challenge will have
profound and long-range implications for your company and your
customers. Your new threat is embodied within Linux and open
systems, yet those technologies themselves aren't the gravest
danger to your future. That gravest danger is you yourself.

A few years back, lots of people were saying that the greatest
threat to Microsoft was the U.S. Justice Department. I never
believed that for a second; back then, I always thought your
worst nightmare was your own approach to the world that, in
essence, proclaimed that in order for you to win, everyone else
had to lose. From Novell to Sun to Netscape to Corel to Borland
and even to your own half-child OS/2: All were/are the mortal
enemy and had to be kept under relentless attack. That is, I
guess, the warrior spirit; no quarter asked, and certainly none
given. I'm enough of a free-market capitalist to recognize that.

The problem with this Linux thing, though, is that in the battle
to marginalize, isolate, stigmatize and perhaps even cripple
Linux, it's not going to be just Linux that bears the brunt of
your assaults. Instead, it will be thousands of your customers
who will also feel the nontrivial effects of that isolation and
marginalization. Because for every Windows-only outfit like
JetBlue Airways, there will be hundreds that will insist on
running both Windows and Linux. And you are going to make--and
perhaps are already making--the lives of those customers more
miserable and costly than they need to be.

Here's a fact: A few weeks ago, we surveyed 400
business-technology executives about their attitudes toward and
impressions of the interoperability between Windows and Linux.
And of those 400 respondents, 88% of them--that's 352 out of 400
companies--believe that Microsoft has not done enough to help
make those two operating systems work together smoothly and
easily. Now, if those stats were reversed--that is, if 12% said
you're not doing enough but 88% said you were--I could see how
you might shrug and say, "Well, those 12% will just have to get
over it." Better than 88%, maybe, but that would still leave 12%
of U.S. businesses believing they are going to suffer due to your
unwillingness to build tools that let Windows and Linux work
smoothly together. Is that a warrior spirit, or is that
close-minded and dangerous inflexibility? Or how about this: More
than 80% of respondents say that if anybody delivers
technological solutions to the Win-Lin situation, it will be the
Linux community, and not you. And it seems to me that it would be
very easy for customers to look at those two stats and conclude
that Microsoft is not only causing the problem but is also
unwilling to try to fix it, and while that all might be well and
good for Microsoft, it sure stinks for me the customer.

Unless, that is, I'm willing to buy 100% Microsoft products. But
reality shows us that very, very few companies are willing to do
that. Reality shows us that large and medium-sized organizations
today have and will continue to have heterogeneous environments.
Reality shows us that those customers clearly and unmistakably
value Linux over Windows in terms of security, low cost, and
reliability. You are, of course, free to dispute those findings,
but I don't think that's going to get you anywhere except further
away from dealing with the fundamental realities: First,
customers will deploy both Windows and Linux. Second, they will
ideally want all of their systems to be able to work together
without requiring 5,000 man-years of workarounds. Third, your
value to those customers will decline if you continue to give
them reason to believe that you are intentionally refusing to
take the steps necessary to help them run their businesses,
including their heterogeneous systems, more effectively. Fourth,
it's a pretty danged competitive world out there these days, and
I think that pain thresholds of business-technology managers are
not as high as they used to be, making this the perfect time for
them to say, "Enough--it's time to switch to somebody who makes
it easier for us to do what we need to do." Fifth, those same
people, more than ever before, are being charged with making more
out of what they have and with ensuring that everything they
currently have plus everything they're going to buy in the future
will work together. And your actions are telling those customers
that you--one of the most successful, wealthy, and influential
corporations the world has ever seen--have thought long and hard
about that and decided that the solution is for you to turn your
problem, the growing appeal of Linux, into your customers'
problem. Is that a message any company, even one as successful as
yours, can afford to send?

Our capitalist system of vigorous and at times brutal competition
waged for the benefit of consumers is priceless, and I'm
certainly not suggesting you change your corporate name to
KarlMarxware and your product's name to Lindox. But as you strive
to move more deeply into the core operations of large
organizations and become a highest-level strategic technology
partner for them, you need to find ways in which you can win and
the customer can win without everybody else--particularly
Linux--having to lose. Because if you can't do that, then your
warrior spirit will have driven you into a corner where you can
indeed go right ahead and wage your war but you'll soon realize
that you have met the enemy, and it is you.

You're much better than that, Microsoft, and you have a
tremendous opportunity with Linux to do the right thing that will
have not only immediate benefit to your customer but also, by
extension, longer-range benefits for you. Good luck with this
hairy situation, and don't forget to write back. - Bob Evans is
editor-in-chief of InformationWeek. E-mail him at bevans@cmp.com.
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-- 
"...Linux, MS-DOS, and Windows XP (also known as the Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly)."