What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

Thanks for hanging in there folks for the What Will We Use Browser and Operating Systems reports. In February, we had 1,691 unique readers. This is amazing considering that I have not had time to post much.

Nonetheless, Microsoft continues to creatively self-destruct. While Microsoft fails to sell Windows 7 to XP users, Apple’s market share picks up. How can Steve Ballmer justify his raise? I’m sorry but patent extortion of I-O Data’s Linux devices and Amazon’s Kindle are not work product. Meanwhile, Google’s Linux-based products grow market share exponentially. Google has not been sued because Google would not be the type to pay out of court. Is Microsoft turning into a litigation company? How did that strategy work out for the bankrupt SCO? As I already pointed out, being in court all of the time distracts Microsoft from making real technology that people actually want to use. If Microsoft could sell software on the open market profitably, why are they on the patent lawsuit FUD warpath?

Since Microsoft lost their own patent battle to the tune of $290 million to I4i over Word 2007, maybe they find it safer to sue other companies than make browsers, office suites, and operating systems. Go ahead Microsoft and mock Firefox’s success, you only look like jealous crybabies babies.

The writing is on the wall, Microsoft has lost in the long term. Gartner’s 2008 prediction of open source having majority market share in 2012 is really growing roots. Come June 30, 2011, Microsoft’s fate will be clear, until then, I will bring your my market share reports and other commentary.

This month I decided to compare my percentages to W3Counter, a no-cost analytic service that shares their global market share figures on a monthly basis.

We are worlds apart on the browser market share, but as far as the operating systems go, there are areas where we agree save Windows XP and Linux…

And now for the browsers…

What do you think world? What will March of 2010 hold in store for us on our journey to understand what will we use come June 30, 2011?

I have never met Mr. Starks, better known as Helios. Nor visited his educational charity, the HeliOS Project in Austin Texas. Yet, I was glad to be able to help. My job as a Linux system administrator, a debt-free life style, and great friends that I would have never met had I stayed loyal to Microsoft products have given me a life that is better that I deserve. Helios is an easy choice to invest in because he gives +1000% of himself to make free software available. When Helios gives away a computer because he believes it is a human right for a child to have such essential educational tool, more open source contributors are born. The census of non-Microsoft users will exponentially grow at a pace that tips the scale. On June 30, 2011 the change will be apparent.

Had Helios retired this summer, no one would blame him since he had already given back plenty.  Yet he steps it up a notch by giving back to his mentor., on his blog he writes…

I told them about how a global community came together and helped me heal from an illness that could have easily killed me.  I told them about a global effort to bring computing freedom to people who before now, had no idea they had a choice.

Open source is not just a methodology for releasing software for people like Helios and I. It is a way of life that we pay for by giving back in abundance with the resources we have to our avail. So, when Helios posted that the founder of the website that him understand Linux was dying, I was happy to help again. This way the website: brunolinux.com and the “Bruno Knaapen Technology Learning Center” will leave a legacy.

With open source, we all own the product of all of the contributions since the founding of UNIX in 1969. With Microsoft, one corporation owns the products such as Windows 7, Internet Explorer, or Office 2007. Quality software, when the code is freely available, lasts generations. Inferior software, when the code is proprietary, dies when the company who owns it no longer thinks it is profitable.

Many Microsoft products have died because they were no longer profitable to Microsoft. Here are some examples…

Microsoft Money was a household financial package. It has been replaced by online services such as mint.com, personal banking accounts with web access, Intuit products, Moneydance, and gnucash. All but Microsoft Money had options for MacOS and Linux users. Everyone is balancing their checkbooks without Microsoft. The world goes on.

Microsoft Encarta in its hay-day was the ultimate in hyper-linked encyclopedias. I even owned editions from the mid-nineties on CD. The release yearly paradigm is no longer useful in the information age. Going online, however, did not save Encarta, due to the popular community-contributed no-cost Wikipedia. One company could not hire enough writers and editors to compete with the Wikipedia’s massive almost 15 million article collection contributed by unpaid volunteers. The world is better served with over 200 languages without help from Microsoft.

Microsoft Works was Microsoft’s first office suite product combining a word processor, spreadsheet, and database. While Microsoft Office components such as Powerpoint can be purchased outside the suite bundle, Works was an all-or-nothing deal. While it came at a small enough price that computer manufactures could ship Works with a new computer, it could not compete with other office suites. While Works suffered from lacking a MacOSX version, Microsoft Office supports the modern Apple operating system. By favoring the more expensive product, Office, Microsoft customers will be looking elsewhere. In fact, Microsoft admits that OpenOffice.org is more powerful than Works.

As Microsoft product offerings decrease, the neighborhood of open source users increases. Each citizen of open source is doing their part when they they share with their friends, coworkers, and family the tools that have enriched their lives. Every contribution, no matter how small is an investment in a better world.

We will win. I promise.

Come June 30, 2011, the world will understand they do not need Microsoft.

circle of friends by PixelPlacebo in Flickr

I believe in something that Stephen Covey calls the “Circle of Influence.” Even though I am only one person, when I need something really important accomplished, I start with the areas of my life that I can personally change. By choice I stopped using Microsoft Office on computers I personally own in 2003. I was using MacOSX on the desktop then and with Microsoft Office. It annoyed me because its default behavior annoyed me because visited links in Power Point would not be visable in slideshow mode. There were other reasons, but I stopped using MacOSX around that time too. The tools I was using on my other computer that ran Fedora such as OpenOffice.org were far easier anyhow. I have never used Microsoft Office 2007. One time I tried to do a quick edit on someone else’s computer but I gave up on trying to use that Ribbon thing after about 5 minutes. I am a technology person and if I can not use a Microsoft product it must be seriously broken. Again, I am only one person and not a market share indicator.

I’ve asked around about office suite use. Almost everyone who had a choice in the matter is not using Microsoft Office 2007. Some have stayed put with older versions of Office. A few have moved onto OpenOffice.org, Google Docs, or Apple’s office suite called “iWork.” There are sectors in the United States, like the legal profession, who never quit using Word Perfect. Lotus Notes is still out there too. In my travels I have only found one person who prefered Microsoft Office 2007 above all other office suites. However, he admitted that he would not use Microsoft anything if he had to pay full price. Through some soft of employer-specific discount, he was using a copy he bought for $15.

Last night I attended a club meeting for general computer users. They know I am a Linux fan. I gave out copies of The OpenDisc which contains open source software for Windows, including OpenOffice.org. People were confused by my motives but joyfully accepted the gift anyhow. People were very happy that they will not have to buy a product costing hundreds of dollars just to open a document created with Microsoft Office. It makes me wonder how many people break down and buy Microsoft Office because they think they do not have a choice.

Some people only like OpenOffice.org because it can be obtained cheaply. People sell it on ebay for $9 or less. I’m OK with that. I would rather people use OpenOffice.org because it is an quality open source project that listens to user feedback. Instead I suspect that some people assume Open Office is pirated and therefore decline the option to register. That I am not OK with.

All the people who created OpenOffice.org ask from its users is some indication that people are actually using it. I too would appreciate it because I have a $20 bet to win. Without any money-oriented transaction to confirm that the license was accepted, how else will we calculate market share?

Charles-H. Schulz of the OpenOffice.org marketing team wrote a long article on the problem of counting office suite market share. Here is an except for consideration…

By this I mean that we’re having clear indications and reports that not only do people download OpenOffice.org but that they stop using Microsoft Office altogether. Of course this last trend -abandoning MS Office- is not going to be witnessed soon, for two reasons: MS Office’s market share is accounted by entreprise sales and by OEM bundling. Because Microsoft’s domination is encroached on well-known monopolistic practices, we are often put in the situation where market shares ‘ comparison ends up very much like comparing apples and bananas: The office suite market is a Microsoft Office market, with different slices owned by different pedigrees of Microsoft Office, while any outside incumbet is left at the fringe as the calculation method ignores downloads and values “entreprise sales” and OEM contracts.

It is a difficult problem but I will not give up. I will continue to pass out copies of The OpenDisc to Windows users without ever knowing if people will throw the disks in the trash. There is a possibility that people think I am trying to give them a virus because I do not use professionally pressed media. That is under consideration although it would be time consuming and expensive. I am als considering switching to DVD-RW as well, that way the new owner of the OpenDisc may choose to keep it since it has a little more value. Ideally, I would like to find a bunch of other folks who will also help distribute the OpenDisc upon professionaly pressed media.

Until we work out the details of the distribution program, I will ship anyone a free OpenDisc copy to anyone who expresses interest by responding to this post.

If we put our heads together, by June 30, 2011, Microsoft Office will not have majority market share.

Like I promised, I did not go out to the stores on Friday November 27 but today I felt the urge to hit the market. There are not too many choices in town for electronics since Circuit City and CompUSA closed their brick-and-mortar stores. Today I visited Office Max, a office supply chain that sells computers and accessories too. My mother badly needs an all in one printer because her fax machine, her scanner, and her printer take up most of her desk space. I also must add that her Lexmark printer lacks Linux drivers. It’s too bad because anything that can do basic postscript works with CUPS now-a-days. CUPS is the printer driver mechanism in MacOSX, Linux, and any other modern UNIX based system – basically anything but Microsoft Windows. While comparing two printers out for sale, I overhead a conversation between the store manager and a customer who was a father with a ~10 year old son.

the conversation went something like this…

customer: I upgraded from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate. When I did, Microsoft Mail program disappeared. I called Microsoft who told me to do this and that to bring it back but it still is not there. Do you have any suggestions for me?

manager: That’s Microsoft for you.

customer: Is there a separate Microsoft product I can buy to bring back Microsoft Mail?

manger: No. Sorry. I don’t carry anything like that. Sorry I can not help.

ble: Mind if I make a suggestion?

(exit stage left store manager)

customer: Sure.

ble: I am writing down a website were you can get a free mail program called “Thunderbird.”

customer: Yes! I have heard of that. I use Firefox too. I do not know why I never thought to use Thunderbird for my mail.

ble: Who is your internet service provider?

customer: $telco

ble: Then $telco should be able to help you setup Thunderbird to check your mail. While I am writing things down, I am going to suggest go to openoffice.org too. It is a free office suite.

customer: Good because I do not like using Microsoft Office. It is too complicated.

ble: Open Office is not complicated and it is free too. Free software is great!

customer: Yes. Thank you very much! And Merry Christmas to you!

ble: Merry Christmas to you too sir.

The ten year old child got to watch his father not buy more Microsoft software which may mean a better Christmas for him. The father looked so thankful that there was a non-Microsoft answer to his Microsoft woes that did not involve opening his wallet any farther. I ended up buying this brother printer for my mother for Christmas on sale for $65. With the help of the Droid, I was able to that Brother supports Linux.

A "Demotivational Poster" for Microsoft: "Regrets Those were the droids you were looking for"

So what do you have to say for yourself Microsoft?

As Chairman, Bill Gates stayed pretty silent on the Android issue at the November 19, 2009 stockholders meeting. Steve Ballmer, the current CEO of Microsoft, decided to discuss the issue instead.

“We have greater market share to Google Android. Our objective is to have a leading position among these competitors,” Mr. Ballmer said.

Well, when we have the 4th quarter numbers for SmartPhone market-share, I believe that the Linux-based phone share will be above Microsoft. I do not even think that Nick would bet me another $20. Oh, by the way, Nick has an Android phone. He has been using it since June 2009.

Mr. Ballmer also boldly made another ten year prediction on November 19, 2009.

“When we meet back here in 10 more years, we will look back and say, ‘Wow, wasn’t technology really primitive in 2009? Computers didn’t recognize our speech, they didn’t recognize our gestures .. we didn’t have instantaneous access to the world’s information, we still used pen and paper.’ … Microsoft is investing to be at the forefront of these changes.”

Sorry, Microsoft, you blew it. The Droid already does all that thanks to Google. These were the droids we were looking for.

You had all of the resources to make it happen in 1999:

• You had three of your founders as the richest men in the world. The MSFT stock had peaked at $119 (US $60.928 adjusting for splits) that year. If the 3 billion in research was not enough, you could have found the money somewhere. Now you are only about half of the company value you were ten years go. Where did all the money go? You still do not have a competitive product to show for it. Pink will not pan out. Vaporware is the kindest way to put it. Your own employee put it much more harshly. Success can not be bought.
• You had over ten years between Mr. Gates’ June 15, 1999 testimony and November 6, 2009 Droid release date. Time was on your side as you were already a giant name in computing when Google was a start-up under your radar.
• You had just secured over a hundred licensing agreements for all sorts of “intelligent devices” like personal digital assistants.
• Your company head-count has doubled over the past ten years yet suffers from a brain drain of engineering talent according to this another anonymous Microsoft employee.

How did you let a couple of kids from Stanford who just announced their little search company start-up in the summer of June 1999 beat you to your own Congressional promise?

You a great excuse: you were in court the entire time.

First you had to convince the Unitied States Department of Justice that you were not being monopolistic when it comes to the desktop operating system and web browser. You sited Apple, Linux, and Netscape as competitors in this space. You lost but later you settled with the United States while litigating Netscape to death. Your 750 million settlement with AOL/Netscape bought you browser market share. Even though you supposedly out of court by 2003, you were funding SCO in hopes of killing Linux. Now that SCO is bankrupt, you are busy defending your office suite in court with the Word patent suit and Novell is still suing you over Word Perfect. Do you still find it profitable to sue smaller companies that use Linux in their talking-devices based on the Linux kernel like the TomTom?

You have failed in court.

You fail to profit.

You fail to buy your competitor, Yahoo!

Your corporate ally, Best Buy, is tanking too.

The ultimate problem for you, Microsoft, is that you can not buy and/or sue open source out of business. Sourceforge does not even scratch the surface at 32 million visitors monthly.That’s right are are millions of us who passionately support non-proprietary software that we use. Is that why you have sponsored the open source census? Face it: you can not innovate faster than open source either. With 2 million of user/developer accounts on Sourceforge alone, your 93,000 person company seems really small. PCWorld asks: Has Microsoft Lost the War against Open Soruce? The answer is yes. Some say you died in 2005.

No matter how you look at it, the facts remain. You lost…

• The kernel behind Google Android phones like the Droid is Linux.
• Netscape is now the open source browser Firefox. There have been over 400 million downloads since I made the bet with Nick in June 2009.
• Sun Microsystems, one your targets via SCO suits, is still sponsoring Open Office. In a few short months, you will have lost majority market share to the Open Office suite.
• The Google/Ubuntu hybrid web-optimized Linux system called ChromeOS will hit your operating system, browser, and office suite market share hard.

Think your cloud computing product, “Azure”, can help you? Your lack of attention to high performance computing has sunk your top500.org market share down to an embarrasing 1%. Why should the world trust your ability to perform under a cycle renting paradigm?

It is all over. You failed your users, your government, and your former CEO’s vision. Your market share is tanking and will be less than half by June 30, 2011. Nick will pay me $20. This personal wager made at the South East LinuxFest in June 2009 has enough interest to attract over 12,000 readers in just a few months. A world with significantly less Microsoft is afoot and this website gives people a forum to talk about it.

This is the beginning of the end for you Microsoft.

“On June 30, 2011, Microsoft will lack majority market share,” says Beth Lynn Eicher.

On American paper money, you will find the phrase “In God We Trust.” Even though it is Constitutionally not a requirement to believe that phrase literally, it goes to show you that there are very few things that Americans hold above the all mighty dollar. Therefore, the things that make us part with our wealth had better be worth it.

A cash machine running Windows is hung. Click on the image to see the orginal on flickr. Thanks to the photographer "tim_b

My belief in software freedom is not about how much I am willing to pay for it. I am not alone. Ken Starks recently blogged about how Linux users are more willing to pay for software than their Windows user counterparts.

I am considering buying Windows 7 for the purpose of research for this blog. In my “what should I use” post I discussed the fact that I now have a PC with Microsoft Vista. Since then, I approved the EULA. Not because I agree with it but because I wanted to try Vista for myself.

So far, it has been slow going.

In fairness, the software that I have become accustomed to, such as virtual desktops, do not come by default with that operating system. Even if I shell out hundreds of dollars for Microsoft Windows 7, which is supposedly great, I will need to spend days of my time hunting down the applications and installing them to fit the way I have wired my brain over the past 10 years of being a Linux on the desktop user.

Change is painful, even for an ubergeek like me. I too need to accept that those accustomed to Microsoft Windows will have similar conversion troubles and emotions. Does a reluctance to try something new equal trust in status quo? I think not.

Which leads me to my next point, how did I get to from a Microsoft user to a Linux user? When I had my first computer at home, I loved Microsoft and its products. Microsoft earned my trust by providing me something that no other desktop operating system could in 1992, a command line: MSDOS. There was only one other serious desktop operating system back then, and it was a graphical-only pre-UNIX/Darwin MacOS. I loved MSDOS to the point that if UNIX-based operating systems like Linux, BSD, MacOSX, or Solaris did not exist, I would still be using MSDOS. Why? The command line was very straight forward. It did not hide the details of what exactly was running on your PC with distractions such as screen savers, icons, cascading windows, etc. Instead it told the truth about what your PC was doing. You know what, it took seconds to boot. When it was time to close up for the night, you exited the ONE application you were running and then hit the power button. I felt respected as a user compared to the get-a-cup-of-coffee boot times that my MAC user friends experienced in that era. Who could forget the acronym: Most Applications Crash If Not Then Operating System Hangs.

Microsoft meant stability pre-Windows 95. Imagine no blue screens of death. No patch Tuesday. No digital rights management. No need to prove your product that you bought was authentic. Instead, when you bought software you bought a product that took your money and kept out of your business.

Windows 95 was the first time I felt like Microsoft betrayed me. It introduced the blue screen of death. For the first time, the graphical interface was the operating system, not a layer on top of it. Some may call this innovation, but I to this day see this is a dishonest trick to hide from the users what is really going on. None the less, people liked it. I even used it, supported it, and installed it oodles of times. To some, it had a Hollywood level of fun to PC computing. Bill Gates paid the licensing for the Rolling Stones tune “Start Me Up” and people were hooked.

While I see the start menu as a technical step back, it was great marketing. It was also an obvious copy of what MACOS was doing at the time. Today, any desktop operating system will have some form of application launcher. This includes Linux.

The start menu was part of the Microsoft brand until Vista in which it phased in a Windows circle which added to the list of many frustrations that Windows 9x/XP users had with the Vista operating system.

While I have not tried Windows 7, I have seen many folks in the Linux community jokingly point out that it looks like the popular Linux environment, KDE4.

The loss of the start menu branding consistency paired with the “innovation” of the Microsoft Office ribbon confuses users. This leads to distrust of Microsoft from the user base.

I believe Microsoft distrust will cause users to do one of the following:

• Apple agrees that this moment Windows users who have lostMicrosoft trust may switch to their products. So much so, they have a wholemarketing campaign.
• Those who mistrust both Microsoft and Apple with their money will look to Linux systems as desktops. USAToday thinks so too. As of today, my mother uses Ubuntu and Xandros. Other babyboomers are likely to follow as they network with people like my mother and see they can do everything they want to do without Windows.Non-MacOSX BSD-based desktops will continue to be a novelty among geeks and will see next to no growth.

Before I close, I leave you with this thought. Please do comment…

Do you trust Microsoft with your money so much that you would willfully use Windows as an Automatic Teller Machine?

Microsoft will lack majority market share June 30, 2011.

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 has been fighting free and open source software in court on a patent issues for quite some time. It is no secret that Microsoft had funded SCO’s lawsuits against many major players in the Linux market which Bill Gates used to slow Linux’s growth. Now, nobody cares about SCO anymore? Why? SCO filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in May of 2009. Microsoft used SCO to do ligation five years ago but lately it is has been taking matters into its own hands. First they extorted Novell into “partnering” with them. Now, I personally like Novell products, especially SUSE Linux, therefore I hope Novell stops being a willing victim in Microsoft’s patent warfare. Microsoft has bullied smaller companies too, most notably, Tomtom into settling out of court over patent issues. All three cases, Microsoft was the aggressor where it tried to hinder suing those who wish to be in the business of open source software over patent issues.

This week a small company sued Microsoft under a patent it holds and won. Microsoft was beaten at its own game. A US federal judge ordered Microsoft to stop selling Microsoft Word 2007. Should this stick, for sure this will be the end of Microsoft Office.Growlaw is following it, so we should be able to tell if Americans can buy Microsoft Word two months from now.

And I thought it would die off to technical irrelevance.

In any case, I’m sure there would be a long line of folks at this funeral. Not mourners though. These are people who want to pound another nail in this coffin.

If you are a Microsoft Office user asking yourself “What will we use?” I suggest you download Open Office for Free. It’s not complicated to install or use. With the Open Document support, you will never need to worry if your documents will open when you upgrade versions or share files with your friends. Did I mention that Open Office is Free?

What a day folks. The unique visitor count is pushing 400 now. That’s fourfold growth in 24 hours. Amazing.

Did you know that Microsoft today has finished the RTM release of Windows 7.

If you are one of the corporations to subscribe to an “open” licensing package like this one

THEN

you will get your very own, non-beta Windows 7 copy  any day now

ELSE

you will have to wait until October 22 to get your hands on a system pre-built with Windows 7.

If you think you can’t turn on the television now without seeing a “if you can find it, it is yours” campaign or the “Bing” commercials, you have not seen anything yet.

On October 21, will we see people pitching a tent in the Best Buy parking lot just to get their hands on this product?

Just one moment, maybe they will be sitting outside a Microsoft store instead!?

Yes I said Microsoft store.

Where ever they may be pitching tents on Wednesday October 22, are there Microsoft fans anymore who love this stuff that much? I assert that the true computer fans, in their heart of hearts, already love other software cultures such as Apple, Free and Open Software, or vendor UNIX. Just in case, I will visit a store that evening to see if there are any campers and report back.

explanation prompted by the entire wu-tang-clan :

For those who don’t remember, when Microsoft released Windows 95 they made a big party about it and Microsoft fans were camping out for the very opportunity to have their hands on the very very latest copy of Windows. As I recall, they actually sold out. Ever since then, Microsoft has attempted to duplicate this lever of excitement without any of the pitfalls by taking preorders. Are you going to pre-order Windows 7? Vote here

In the meantime… OK internet, here is your chance. If you are a person who isn’t on the Microsoft payroll out there who can say you love Microsoft and you can’t wait for Windows 7, comment here.