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Bill’s on a War-footing

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DQI Bureau
New Update

This ain’t the latest update on the Saddam-US situation. The food for

thought here is the open source software tussle between Microsoft and Linux,

which has now spilled over onto Indian shores. And Bill Gates seem to be trying

all the tricks of the trade to oust Linux, while still trying cling onto his

market share in India.

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Freebies ahoy



Government-owned enterprises increasingly prefer open source software like

Linux compared with packaged software from commercial vendors. The reason for

the recent rise in the adoption rate of open source software is rising concerns

about security, cost and control among buyers. Computers are not only used for

computing, but for communication as well and it is becoming difficult to protect

sensitive data in a networked world. Most of the operating systems sold by

vendors have obvious security flaws in them that make the networks in these

organizations open to hackers. Though vendors like Microsoft update the fixes to

cover security flaws regularly, the more important part is that the users of

these operating systems do not have any control over making any changes, as the

source code is proprietary. Whereas in open source, the code is available to the

public to use and make changes. Linux is just one of the softwares available in

open source.

It is not that the cost of an open source software is zero. Only the package

is free. Installation, implementation, and maintenance costs money. Third party

service providers provide all these services around Linux. Therefore, open

source software can be freely downloaded from the Internet but to install and

run it support is needed.

The battleground



India is an important market for Microsoft given that last year alone the

country purchased packaged software worth $409 million–of which 80% were

Microsoft products. Also the packaged software market grew by 37% in India in

2001. Growth rates are expected to continue at this rate for a few years to

come. Estimates put the present size of India’s developer population at

anywhere between 450,000 and 600,000. That’s about 10% of the world’s

developer population. By end-2002, India will probably have more developers than

any country in the world. And with the government, which is the largest and

fastest adopter, making a conscious move towards Linux, Bill Gates sure has

reason to lose sleep.

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Till now India has been a safe haven for Microsoft. But this was till the

tech downturn unfolded and there was a major slashing of IT spends by corporate

houses. Public perception that using open source technologies reduce the cost of

technology deployments convinced companies across the world to seriously

consider cheaper alternatives.

In India, manufacturing and telecom companies are looking at some form of

Linux, though banking firms are staying away at the moment. And the reasons for

going the Linux way is that it decreases their dependence on the hardware

vendor, the companies can negotiate with multiple vendors and hence get better

deals, it lowers the total cost of ownership and offers flexibility. The irony

according to Microsoft is that choosing Linux may prove more expensive in the

long run.

Factually speaking



The most fundamental problem with Linux is that it is an amorphous entity

around which robust business models are yet to evolve. Also,in spite of a major

drive to promote the acceptance of Linux in India, the lack of a clear-cut

policy has stalled its growth.

What happened with Linux can be likened to the ‘roaches-under-the-board

theory’. Microsoft never saw it as a potential threat to its existence. But

neglecting this software has proven costly and the behemoth needs to state its

case soon enough or the carpet will be pulled from under Gates’ legs.

Dhanya Krishnakumar In New Delhi

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