It has been a week now since the Windows 7 release. I confess that I had not picked up my own copy in the store yet. Seeing that I don’t live near a brick and mortar Microsoft store, I have two choices to get Microsoft’s freshest operating system: 1. Best Buy 2. any office supply big box store. One office supply store mailed me a postcard offering a “free Windows 7 installation” and I assume that means the labor to install the operating system is free. Since there is no fine print on the card, I would have to go to the store to find out.

If it were not for this one postcard and the Today show, I would not have been reminded about the Windows 7 release. I am an IT professional and a huge geek. I thought I would be swimming in Microsoft gloat right about now.

For those who did not see it, Steve Ballmer appeared on the Today show which is a morning magazine show on NBC American TV. Matt Lauer was the interviewing host for the 5 minute Windows 7 launch segment.

Youtube has it on video but I will do my best to summarize.

Mr Lauer opened with a joke where he explained that most people don’t understand the difference between an operating system and an operating room.
Mr. Lauer asked Mr. Ballmer to compare to 7 to Vista. Mr Ballmer answered it boots faster – immediately up and running, better battery life on the laptops, the user interface being simplier and “snappier”
When asked to demonstrate “snappier” Charlotte Jones was introduced, a group project manager for Microsoft. Ms. Jones then raved about the variety of hardware available with Windows 7. Netbooks, a gamer PC, a thin and ultra light laptop – the Dell Domino XPS, and a touch PC: Sony Vaio L.
The discussion turned to home entertainment. “The computer can be the center of your media life ” and “Consumers will by 65% of the PCs in the world this year so we’ve got to make them fun” said Ballmer.
Mr. Lauer brought up the popularity of Apple products, especially the iPhone. Portability is the wave of the future, but Ballmer isn’t worried because people still like big screen.
When asking about desktop consumer market share, Mr. Lauer inquired how Mr. Ballmer expects to keep “it above 90%?” Instead of discussing software invovation, Mr. Ballmer said
“You are not going to find this cool diversity of hardware from anybody else with our family of Windows partners.”

When the interview was finshed, Mr. Lauer disclosed that Microsoft is part owner of MSNBC.com

I don’t know why, I was expecting more hype around this particular product. You can’t turn on an American TV without seeing an ad for Bing. Even radio is getting in on the Bing plugs. A top40 radio station near me has a dj who has been paid to plug Bing hourly but never does not mention Windows 7.

Microsoft took some risks in their marketing of Windows 7. They attempted to sponsor house parties for the Windows 7 launch. The host got a copy of Windows 7 and a deck of playing cards. Did anybody go? My friend Carol Rutz hosted a party where only one guest came.

Does anybody celebrate the launch of an operating system? Well, it just so happens that there is a Ubuntu  9.10 release party this Friday night which is 15 miles from where I live. I’ll let you all know if anyone shows up. The great thing about a Ubuntu release party is that everyone may install for free at the release party – not just the host.

Microsoft will lose majority market share by June 30, 2011.

I have many computers at home. The system I am typing on right now is a netbook running Ubuntu 9.04 UNR. I do own a full sized laptop but it was out for repair. The hard drive died however the repair was covered via a store bought extended warranty.
As I said in post one, I deleted the Windows Vista partition on this computer and installed Linux instead. Everything was going fine, until the disk spun with a clug clug clug. This would have happened no matter what operating system I was using.

When I sent the system in for service, I was asked for the restore disk I made upon running Windows for the first time…. But I didn’t run Windows, anytime. Instead, I sent a note saying that I used Ubuntu, and I included the media.

Today the system arrived. I had no idea what would boot, if anything. Right now its booted and on the Vista EULA screen.

This made me consider, what should I use?

• I could install Linux like I had before. Perhaps trying another distribution.
• I could wait a few days for when Ubuntu 9.10 launches.
• I could just go ahead, approve the EULA and start using Vista.
• I could approve the EULA, then buy Windows 7 tomorrow.

Do you remember how I blogged wondering if there was going to be fanfare for the Windows 7 launch? Well, there are no Microsoft stores near me. The neighborhood Best Buy will not have any launch parties, nor do they expect any campers. The geeksquad tech I talked to told me that she expects their store to have plenty of quanties of Windows 7 in stock. No hype. Just software. Now, if I go for the Windows 7 upgrade, it needs to be a version that is suitable for the Home Premium version, 32 bit. Did you know there are 8 versions of Windows Vista? Well, it looks like there are only 3 upgrade options. Hey, I’m confused on what the migration path is for me. I’m a sysadmin with a fresh Vista install. How will the general public decide?

I’ll let you all know what I decide to use. Until then, please make a recommendation on what should I use as an operating system for my laptop and why?

This blog took a slight detour from its purpose: studying Microsoft’s market share status until June 30, 2011. After this post, I promise we will get back to our regular content. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Trigger warning: some linked pages contain hate speech and threats of violence against women.

Today is a historic day for the non-proprietary software communities. A troll, who had undermined contributors with terrorware has now been given his just desserts with the help of my dear friends from geekfeminist.org. I want to thank Eric S. Raymond for seeing the cleverness of the solution. We could have been a down and dirty flame war which would have brought productivity to a halt for non-proprietary software contributors. Instead, we preserved safety and the integrity of institutions we hold dear: freedom of speech, sourceforge.net and gplv2.

There are many others who helped in this effort who will have my eternal gratitude. Thank you very much, Beth Lynn Eicher.

Comments will not be allowed on this post.

Hi, my name is Moose, and I use Windows.  If you run Windows, my writing is for you, too.

This is kind of ironic if you understand what this site is about — the idea that Microsoft’s own business practices will cause it’s own end.

I’m not here to come down upon any Microsoft users.  I’m not here to mock them or condemn anyone for what they run on the computer sitting in front of them.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to choose what operating system they run on their computer.  Some people are bound by work or by the need to run a specific,  non-FOSS program that requires windows.  Emulation is not always the answer for everyone.

There are also many people who are afraid to take a sudden leap into an Open Source operating system like Linux or one of the BSDs.  I can understand this — change is hard!  You’re used to the way things are now, changing means relearning everything all over again.

I’m a huge supporter and user of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS).  I’m here to show both of the above kinds of people that you can use FOSS on your Windows platform systems.   If you slowly add or replace existing software with FOSS solutions then when you’re willing and/or able to move to a Linux or BSD Open Source operating system there will be a lot less new things to get used to.

Let’s take this one step at a time.

TRIGGER WARNING: Victims of violence or sexual assault may want to stop reading. (I’ll try to be as mild as possible.)

Today, Tuesday October 13, 2009 the character known as “mikeeUSA” has been removed from sourceforge.net as well as the projects in which he was the sole contributor.

For those who do not know, mikeeUSA is an Internet troll who advocates violence against women and believes that it is his God-given right as a man to do so. He gets his jollies out of threatening women open source developers, as he has recently bothered the co-editor of this blog, Mackenzie Morgan.

mikeeUSA considers himself a significant open source contributor and has used his commits to his “projects” on sourceforge as his justification as to why he merits more than the female open source contributors he has insulted or threatened. This is not a simple difference of opinion as to what is offensive. mikeeUSA has been removed from communities, most recently the sourceforge.net community, for the extensively violent nature of his language and descriptions.

Since mikeeUSA thinks his code was of substantial quality, I downloaded a few packages and took a look for myself. There was one full program which was a text based slot machine game which displayed messages encouraging the denial of women’s rights. He also developed game add-ons, levels, and maps for already existing GPL-ed games. At best, these game components would include comments that would promote his agenda. At worst, the components would engage the player with his hateful themes. Sometimes variable names and function calls included evidence of hate-speech. Even if one were to ignore the politics of mikeeUSA, the product is not very good: low quality, dysfunctional, and not fun. The Nexuiz gaming community has repeatedly rejected his submissions. The reality is, just because you include a copy of GPLv2, it does not make you an open source rockstar. mikeeUSA’s claims of being a renowned open source contributor are unfounded. Now that the mikeeusa’s account has been disabled, it is unlikely that mikeeusa will be able to release anything with opportunity of claiming major open source contribution under a world-wide distribution ever again.

No one has the right to harass or threaten another human being. I don’t care who you think you are. If you have encountered mikeeUSA, do not be ashamed. As a community we will stand together to ensure safety in the open source neighborhood for all.

I am Beth Lynn Eicher, a director of the Ohio LinuxFest. As a concerned citizen of the open source neighborhood, I submitted a code review to sourceforge.net for and recommended removal of mikeeusa.  This was unpleasant reading but it had to be done in the name of neighborhood safety. The unfortunate content was the responsibility of mikeeusa’s alone. Sourceforge has over 230,000 projects they host. There two million users who release responsible high quality content that benefits the global society via sourceforge.net. Users who creates content that is against the terms of use are subject to review for potential removal. The volume prohibits them from verifying every project that they host, yet they are receptive to community feedback. Thanks to the reviewers at their legal team who also had to read mikeeusa’s vile code, my request for removal was approved.

I am incredibly grateful to sourceforge.net as they have proven themselves valuable parts  of the open source community by fulfilling the removal request. If you are in need of assistance, I suggest you contact sourceforge.net with the specifics. Alternatively, you can email me if you are shy at bethlynn AT ohiolinux DOT org.

To my fellow open source citizens, do keep vigilant for aggressive activity. I am not afraid to fight for the open source neighborhood to be safe and family environment.

Update: October 19, 2009

As an American, I see the “Noboby gets fired for buying Microsoft”
continuing to the the commonplace. Microsoft’s products have a habit of forcing institutions to deploy more of their products and upgrade their products. Take this example of how SharePoint 2007 is such a drag with Office XP or 2003 that customers cave and upgrade to Office 2007. Don’t they know that there are outstanding patent issues with Word 2007? Well, at least Motorola got the memo.

Well, Toronto Mayor, David Miller did get the memo. As Mr. Miller wrote in a proclamation:

“Through Open Source, communities, cities and nations around the world are presented with the opportunity to promote and actively nurture an environment of learning, collaboration and innovation.”

Apparently, Mr. Miller was so impressed by Open Source that he named this last week in October “Open Source Week.” On October 24, 2009, to kickoff the celebration for what Open Source has done for Canadians and the world, the Ontario LinuxFest has planned quite the speaker lineup: starting with a keynote from Zonker on how the Linux community can make the year of the Linux desktop a reality.

An inherent trust in Microsoft’s products seems to be an American theme. Outside the Untied States, it might be a different story. I am going to the Ontario LinuxFest to investigate.

Microsoft will lose majority market share: June 30, 2011.

Microsoft provided the desktop operating system for the first PC in my childhood middle-class American home. The year was 1992. This thing came with DOS 5.0 with Windows 3.0, no word processor, and a trial for a faux internet online provider called “Prodigy. ” Later we installed upgraded to DOS 6.2 with Windows 3.11, installed Microsoft Works, and signed up for a real ISP who made it possible to browse the internet through Mosaic after Trumpet Winsock negotiated. Wow, did I ever love this machine and the Microsoft products on it. This was the configuration of this system when I finally retired it after saving up several Best Buy Pre-geeksquad-geeksquad paychecks in 1998 to buy a system with Windows 98, Word Perfect, and Netscape. Disappointed with Microsoft’s distancing itself from the command line, I missed the days of DOS. Also back in those days, Microsoft was making things difficult for Netscape beause Microsoft did not like the fact that Netscape had majority market share in 1998, not Internet Explorer. A multi-year lawsuit ensued. Microsoft continued to litigate to death Netscape yet the suit carried over into the company who bought Netscape: AOL. The proceeds of this lawsuit, going to AOL. Microsoft paid out $750 million to AOL and 5 years worth of litigation costs to buy themselves majority market share. With some of their judgment, AOL set aside 2 million to setup the Mozilla Foundation to own the open source the technology behind Netscape while checking out of the browser scene in 2003. This 2 million of Microsoft money turned into a thriving open source non-profit responsible for Firefox, Thunderbird, and other projects for using the internet.

I tell you this story behind Firefox because I thought the Mozilla Foundation was the only time that Microsoft’s money would go to fund a non-profit. I was wrong.

Sam Ramji of Microsoft was the spokesman to the open source community from within the Microsoft corporate veil. He left.

Mr. Ramji is now the interuim President of Codeplex Foundation, a non-profit “goal of increasing participation in open source community projects.” It does not look like this is a case of a Microsoft employee bailing due to cultural dissatisfaction, as “Initial funding for the Foundation comes from Microsoft Corporation.”

It’s too early to say what this foundation will actually do, but Novell’s Miguel de Icaza is in. While BoycottNovell has plenty of bitter things to say about this, I am going a more positive direction.

What if Microsoft sees the writing on the wall? What if they have decided they can’t compete with an entire world of open source developers? What if the next Microsoft operating system after 7 is open source? What if it has a Linux kernel?

Microsoft will not have majority market share June 30, 2011.

I will be leading a discussion on the status of Microsoft’s market share at Ubuntu Open Week. Stay tuned and save the date: Friday November 6th.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek

There is just too much adversity in the open source community, and sadly sometimes it comes from within.

There are two blogs going at it, “BoycottNovell” and “BoycottboycottNovell”…
Lefty of BBN writes about those who are fighting for free and open source in the name of purity. While I don’t doubt Lefty’s commitment to the open source  community, he is doing what he finds so appalling, attacking other free
and open source advocates. The way I look at it, Roy Schestowitz of BN is making a valuable contribution by watching what the real adversary (Microsoft) is up to. Now, I don’t always agree with everything at the BoycottNovell site, but by no means am I going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I hearby call for a truce for these two and everyone else who is in current conflict. We don’t have time to fight among ourselves. We’ve got 21 months to go here.

Why can’t we all get along? I see five problems here.

Point #1: the quest of software purity is exhausting

Rob Landley gave up on the Linux desktop due to purity disgust. This is  particularly sad due to the fact that Rob and Eric Raymond wrote a paper in 2006 giving the Windows operating system a two year deadline in which to die. Oh, and for the record, it was Rob Landley who coined the phrase “GandhiCon3″ when Eric Raymond typed it.

Instead, I believe, we should not make open source users feel guilty  for the proprietary driver. Nor is running that special piece of software they can’t live without that requires Wine or Windows worth getting all excited about. Insulting users who are already doing what they can is not at all helpful.

Point #2: bigotry still exists
This year women have been visibly under distress, yet, I prefer to look  at the root cause which is bigotry. The same people who have seen me as being less competent because I am a woman would likely reject someone of another race, orientation, disability, or any other status that makes them look “different” in the eyes of the bigot.

Point #3: distro wars

Shawn Powers of the Linux Journal noted this problem during his Ohio  LinuxFest keynote: “When I do a video demonstrating something with Ubuntu, I get so much hate mail.” While I use 4 different Linux distributions, I understand how someone could have their favourite. What I don’t get is why people feel the need to get insulting about it. When
it comes down down to it, there is no point to being unreasonable with the BSD users if you are a Linux user. And vice-versa. We are one free and  open source community. We came from the same UNIX roots, we use the  same open source software, and we are going the same direction.

Point #4: elitism blocking new users from getting started, let alone contributing

Folks, there are more than 33 million people, each month, downloading open source
software from sourceforge.net

Due to the large amount of activity of people downloading open source
software, the “average user” myths are busted:

• does not care to use open source software
• will not trust free as in cost software
• can not have the ability to make their own software choices and install the packages themselves
• only wants to buy shrink-wrapped big box software

It’s about time we quit trading “I spent three weeks downloading  slackware floppies” stories with one-up-ditude. Instead we need to be phasing in open source where it makes sense. We will be surprised by the  numbers of heads that don’t explode with the idea of saying goodbye to Microsoft.

Point #5: so, what’s your contribution?

I personally have contributed to the success of over events, installed Linux over 1000 times, and used by choice open source software for over ten years. Yet, over this time, I have not contributed one bit of code.  Nor am I going to let an elitist make me feel gulity about it. My  efforts has brought more people to Linux than I will ever know. Still, after over ten years of giving back, I’m still needing to defend the answer to the question “who are you?” Excuse me, isn’t this a meritocracy?

You do not need to “be a big name” in the open source community to make a real difference.

Who are the people I see who are doing great things for the community without ever making a single code contribution?  Here’s a few: Ken Starks, Amber Granger, Michelle Hall, Rikki Kite. Never heard of them? Well, that’s part of the point. We need to look at contributions for their net gain, not the lines of code.

Being a centrist is the best way I have found to bring a diverse group of people to partake, enjoy, and celebrate the joy that is free and  open source software. Right now I declare

ENOUGH already on the in-fighting!

Why? Let’s face it.

We need a new and diverse group of folks to get to GandhiCon4.

Who’s with me?

In September 2009, whatwillweuse.com had 869 unquie visitors.

1      Linux      1,336      50%
2     Mac OS X     490     18%
3     Windows XP     403     15%
4     Unknown     185     7%
5     Windows Vista     129     5%
6     Windows 7     64     2%
7      iPhone OSX      15      <1%
8     Windows 2000     11     <1%
9     Windows 2003     10     <1%
10     Palm     3     <1%
11     SunOS     3     <1%
12     Windows 98     2     <1%
13     Android     1     <1%

Click on the W3Counter logo to see the global report for September 2009. Note that Windows 7 surpassed Linux on the global status. Another interesting fact, MacOS averages about +0.5% growth each month.