The Microsoft antitrust case has gotten so ridiculous even the judge is losing her patience. As U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly asked for testimony from MicrosoftÕs rivals we are seeing the true colors of most high-tech business leaders (and it ainÕt red, white or blue).
Last week, Judge Kollar-Kotelly barred
former Netscape CEO James Barksdale from her courtroom. Judge Kollar-Kotelly recognized that BarksdaleÕs testimony against Microsoft had become increasingly irrational and was no longer of any value to the case. Since Netscape started the antitrust furor back in 1996, having the CEO of said furor-starter marginalized by the judge was not a good sign for the anti-Microsoft crowd.
On Monday, Judge Kollar-Kotelly heard from one of the darlings of the open source crowd, Michael Tiemann. Tiemann, the Chief Technology Officer of Red Hat Linux, testified that regardless of how much effort Red Hat put into developing applications, his company would be unable to gain any PC desktop market share (stats show Microsoft Windows owning between 80%-90% of that market) as long as applications such as Microsoft Office remained unavailable for Linux. Many tech industry insiders and analysts have long maintained that MicrosoftÕs dominance of the desktop PC market is due to their Microsoft Office suite of applications. Found on both Mac and Windows PCs alike, the Office suite programs like Microsoft Word (the word processor), Excel (the spreadsheet) and PowerPoint (used to create insufferable presentations at company meetings) are familiar to anyone who has worked a desk job in the past ten years.
To Tiemann, Red Hat Linux is poised to take over the PC, but the monopolists at Microsoft have been holding back Red Hat by not allowing Red Hat to produce Microsoft Office. Tiemann and all nine states still suing Microsoft for alleged antitrust violations are adamant that Microsoft must allow other software makers to license and produce Microsoft Office in the interest of competition. No, you heard that right. A software maker other than Microsoft claims that the Feds should break up Microsoft because only Microsoft can make Microsoft Office.
Tiemann posits that Red Hat is unable to make anything comparable to Microsoft Office regardless of how much effort or resources Red Hat throw at that project. Tiemann admits defeat in the marketplace. Tiemann officially, under oath, in a court of law, admitted that Red Hat will never come up with a Red Hat Office on Red Hat Linux to rival Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows (or Mac OS X) because applications such as Office remain unavailable for Linux.
However, that not true because there already ARE applications like Microsoft Office available for Linux. ÒStar OfficeÓ from Sun Microsystems is the de facto standard for Linux office suites, mainly because there are no other office suites available for Linux. CorelÕs competing Word Perfect Office for Linux suite was abandoned soon after the project was announced and never even got a chance against Star Office because Corel wanted to charge customers for their Linux office suite. SunÕs Star Office is a free download, but where are the Corel people suing Sun and StarOffice for being anti-competitive? Could Corel possibly compete with a price like Òfree?Ó Even with zero competitors in the Linux office suite market, ÒStar OfficeÓ is ignored by Linux bigwigs like Tiemann and many others in the open source crowd.
This testimony is very telling about the difference between how real businesses operate and how these New Economy businesses perceive free markets. In effect, Tiemann admits that Red Hat cannot compete with Microsoft with their present level of technology or abilities. Office apps that mimic those found in Microsoft Office exist for Linux - they are even Òfree-as-in-beer,Ó no cost to you, make as many copies as you want and share the wealth. Yet despite all these incredible advantages over the ÒclosedÓ and expensive Microsoft system of competition, Linux is failing to gain market share outside of the server space. The only remedy, according to Tiemann and other non-competitors like him, is to impose a government mandate forcing Microsoft give up their business. All because MicrosoftÕs non-competitors decided they wanted MicrosoftÕs success without spending the money Microsoft spent in marketing and R&D to win in a competitive free market economy.
Speaking of expense of competition, Tiemann acknowledged to the court that financial disclosures from Red Hat showed the company had spent $18.8 million on research in fiscal year 2001. Genuine software makers like Sun, Apple, Siebel and Microsoft spend considerably more on research and development because they know that the best things in life arenÕt free. Tiemann also conceded that Red Hat does not have any Ôtechnology evangelistsÕ to convince software developers to write programs for Linux. Genuine software companies send these technology evangelists to third-party independent software developers to utilize their ÒstandardsÓ for their products. For example, Sun would send out technology evangelists to convince programmers at an e-commerce firm to program their websites in SunÕs Java programming language. Tiemann said that Red HatÕs strategy was to take advantage of ÒLinux enthusiastsÓ outside the company to do that kind of work for nothing, gratis, free-as-in-beer, no cost to the boys that run Red Hat. IÕm amazed that Red Hat finally admitted they didnÕt have much of a plan when it came to marketing and were just taking advantage of their users. What must that courtroom scene been like?
ÒTell me Mister Tiemann: You don't think of Red Hat Linux as a product to be marketed in a conventional manner, is that correct? I mean, unlike every other successful software business, your company took a different approach to development evangelism?Ó
ÒWell, yeah - that's correct. See, at Red Hat we believe that the strong sense of community shared by unpaid and benevolent open source developers around the world is more than sufficient to get the word out and develop great software for the Linux operating system. There are over 1,000 programs developed for the Linux operating system by the open source community every day.Ó
ÒUh-huh. So how's that brilliant no-cost marketing/R&D strategy workin' out for ya, Mikey? Any of those 1,000 free programs as good as Microsoft Office?Ó
Anyone that thinks I ÒhateÓ Linux is dead wrong. I donÕt hate Linux or open source. I donÕt like cowards that refuse to take responsibility for their bad business decisions and want to blame the successful in the hopes of making easy money.
Email me with your comments on this or any other tech-related subject.
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