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The
messaging on the wall Jan
2003 As
long as Linux can be portrayed as the refuge of nerds who are
happy to type documents directly in the form of longhand
Postscript using Vi (the only text editor that’s less
comprehensible than Microsoft’s famous Edlin), the cosy world of
Microsoft was safe from threat. So having disposed of one
potential Armageddon from the upstart Netscape web browser when
Gates famously got into gear and took the internet seriously,
after originally trying it on with his usual proprietary efforts,
there was only one thing that could go wrong in the cosy monopoly
of the desktop productivity software business: someone might
devise a suite of freeware applications for Linux that rivalled MS
Office. Well,
although not quite freeware, Star Office has been around a while
and continues to nibble at the edges of MS Office.
But if you were one of the steadily growing band of Linux
fans looking for the breakthrough moment, what would you ask
Microsoft to do that would be most useful in really turbo-charging
your hopes for an open source world? Correct – you would ask
them to complicate their already draconian licensing policy, put
the cost of ownership up, and keep on producing gratuitous annual
buggy upgrades to keep the stockholders happy, and the users
paranoid wondering about essential productivity aid that they
might be missing. Meantime,
Linux seems to be attracting a number of old-time PC luminaries
running companies in the sector as hobbies. Ray Noorda, the bloke
that made his bones as the founder of the once almighty Novell,
has nudged Caldera along for several years now without making a
real breakthrough, but doing steady and progressive work to make
the Linux and Unix more accessible. And now another of the independently wealthy founding
fathers of the desktop computing era, Mitch Kapor, co-founder of
the curiously named but highly successful Lotus Development of
Lotus 1-2-3 fame, is heading up (and financing with $5m of his own
money) a project to build a free, open-source “equivalent” of
Microsoft Outlook. Well,
it’s early days and early reports tend to get distorted by the
scarily non-technical reporting of financial journalists, but
although I doubt if the news has Bill Gates running for cover just
yet, it’s the sort of news that we need to hear to remind MS
that their present monopoly of the desktop is not guaranteed in
perpetuity, even though it is getting on for 10 years duration. Early reports indicate that the software (working title
“Chandler”) will incorporate Jabber, an open-source instant
messaging system, as well as an easy-to-use e-mail encryption
system. Kapor intends that his Francisco-based Open Source
Application Foundation (OSAF), which he founded last year, will
eventually raise funds by licensing its code base to companies
seeking to build commercial applications on top of the software,
such as a version for larger companies. Don’t hold your breath
just yet though, since the first version which will run on the
Windows, Mac OS/X and Linux operating systems will be available by
Q4 2002, with a first full release due 12 months later. There is a certain irony and poignancy about Kapor’s
position here, since Lotus did so much to put the companies that
attempted to subvert the market share of Lotus 123 by producing
functionally superior products at a lower price. Borland’s
Quattro, Paperback Software’s VP Planner being examples of two
businesses that took on Lotus and were buried by legal costs. And
then to cap it all, after a dose of smugness at having trounced
the competition in the courts, if not the products reviews, Lotus
123 was eventually all but exterminated by Microsoft Office in the
marketplace and subsumed by IBM, who are well known for marketing
PC software products with all the panache of an elephant
performing the Lambada. With the usual caution expressed by one who probably
wants to see Bill Gates in the welfare line but is not willing to
say so directly …just in case, Kapor explains: "It's not a
business threat to Microsoft.
On the other hand it's an alternative to lots and lots of
users. This project has a positive motivation--to provide people
with more options and great free software. It's not motivated by
the wish to do something that harms Microsoft." Perish the thought, but I would suspect that 90% of
Office users who gave the subject of the benefits of competition a
moment’s thought would like to see Mitch give Office a good
kicking and try and ensure that the desktop productivity software
business showed a fraction of the innovation of those areas that
are not being stifled by MS, such as the graphics software
business. Read more at http://www.osafoundation.org/,
and Kapor’s personal musings at http://blogs.osafoundation.org/mitch/
where the last word goes to Kapor: “If Chandler gets initial traction, then perhaps with
another turn of the wheel it will grow up, much as Linux did over
the course of quite a few years to become an enterprise-class
product. So, in this sense, it's a potential long-term threat,
just as Linux emerged as competition for Microsoft in the server
market. If I were Microsoft, I'd be worried about open source in
general, not about losing Outlook/Exchange market share any time
soon. With or without OSAF, I believe all of the applications in
Office will be commoditized with equivalent free versions. I can
see it happening . It's not quite there yet but I bet it will be.
I'm imagining there are teams of programs around the world working
on this at this very moment. In a few years generic PC's will come
with a free, competent office suite bundled. That will challenge
Microsoft's hegemony in desktop applications.” |