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Windows Source Code Proposal Confirmed
ChipX86 writes: "We've all heard the rumors about Microsoft proposing to open source Windows. Now it appears to be confirmed. This article on MSNBC says that Microsoft would '... provide open, timely and complete access to the parts of the Windows operating system code used by independent software companies to design their software applications to run on Windows.'" From the sound of it, this seems like more of a delay tactic than a straight proposal, but interesting nonetheless. (How open is "open," by the way? What about "Timely"?)
However, here's a small look at Windows' hidden APIs:
These are really things you would think would be readily available to other developers. they are not. It pisses me off being a shell developer and not knowing what function to call to get something to work (even though I know the functionality exists, since I see it every day).
IMO, I really think this would help. However, MS will find a way to make it really hard to find anyway. For instance, just publish the API that gets revealed right along with the current API. "Huh? That's what I'd expect!" Okay, answer me this: How in the world are you going to tell the difference and find new functionality which you really didn't see before? There's probably around a few thousand functions hanging around in the Win32 API, and it'll be pretty difficult to find that hidden API you were looking for a year ago. And by the time you find it, it will most likely be obsolete due to a new operating system.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Keiretsu is a business concept barrowed from Japan where a number of companies (who are not competitors) have a common interest and therefore form an association to leverage mutual business development and cross sales. These associations rarely have the formality of either a partnership or joint venture, and are often founded on bonds of family or traditional alliances from the past. Kiretsus can manifest themselves in a number of ways, including preferential rates, cross referrals, exchange of competitive and market intelligence.
I see this as the future (actually, the present if you look at their posessions and investments) of Microsoft, should it be forced to split.
Much more information on Keiretus is available at http://www.corpwatch.org/ trac/feature/planet/japan_k.html
Also see http://www.businessforum.com/keiretsu.ht ml
http://www.redherring.com/mag/i ssue51/american.html
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
This is just Microsoft scrambling to do anything to deflect the coming storm. They lost in court and here rather soon they are either going to be broken up, or face heavy sanctions.
If they were to actually release the code in some way, it would be nothing more than a trap. Old scratch may be the craftiest devil of all, but the imps at Microsoft sure give him a run for his money.
At this point in the game I wouldn't do anything other than ignore this. They've been intentionally leaking rumors about opening up the source code for windows for a long time now. Anything they say to the media is soley to manipulate public opinion.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
does anyone else remember something from history class, about the civil rights movement?
it seems to me that when the supreme court finally got around to racially intergrating public schools, the legalleese included the term "in due time," which some schools interperted as "years from now." these schools managed to keep intergration on the bottom of their to-do lists for a very long time.
now don't get me wrong. i'm not saying that this microsoft bull is nearly as important or as vicious as the antiblack sentieent held by the courts and schools of that time, but the tactics imployed certianly do smell familiar.
Second, regarding the proposed solutions. I'm sure it might have benefits, but it still misses the core of the problem. MS's monopoly is in *DESKTOP OS*. They are leveraging this monopoly as we speak to promote their server OS with Kerberos as well as with applications and protocols. This is less important from most peoples' points of view, where servers are ignored unless they're down, and even then it's a clueless "my computer's broken". We at slashdot know better. Allowing MS to leverage its current desktop monopoly to get a server monopoly in the future could have horrendous impact on computing in the long-term.
Breaking up a desktop OS corp separate from the server OS corp would probably be far too difficult and expensive. Making source available under NDA or without allowing redistribution of modifications would wouldn't necessarily solve the problem. Making it available as free software is just not going to happen. What we need to do is force all MS desktop OSs to be standards-compliant whenever possible, and force all non-standard protocols and APIs (and fileformats, etc) to be open and non-obfuscated, for at least a few more years. (It'd be great to do that for *all* MS products, but they don't have a monopoly in any others, so perhaps it wouldn't be fair. Feh.) Maybe that's just about as unlikely as freeing the source... but if it or something more drastic doesn't happen, I think MS is going to continue fucking its customers in the ass for quite a while longer.
My first choice would be splitting MS into a systems company and an applications company. I'm happy (and very surprised) that those seem to be the two options that the court is seriously considering.
I've been generally impressed by the rulings of Judge Jackson in this case. I knew he knew what he was doing when during the course of the pretrial hearings he was told that it would be impossible to remove IE from Win95 without completely crippling the system, and he went home and did it himself, then returned to the court with harsh words for Microsoft. He was not also terribly impressed by the way they broke a consent decree arrived at in an earlier case. I don't think he's going to be bamboozled by their bafflegab.
My initial impression that Judge Jackson knew what he was doing was confirmed by the fin ding of fact and then the dec ision. The proposal to split up Microsoft into two companies is also well-considered.
While I generally am leery of government interference in business, this case clearly involves blatant antitrust violations and is precisely what the Sherman Act was drafted to prevent.
As for Microsoft's whining about "innovation," and how this damages their right to "innovate," I hardly see how ripping off betas of your competitors' products, reverse-engineering them, then sending out goons to force computer manufacturers to use them constitutes "innovation." At most it is an "innovative" form of racketeering.
To be honest, I don't think the remedy goes far enough. I'd like to see Microsoft split up into about a dozen corporations. However, I'll readily confess that this is based more on blind hatred and animosity toward Microsoft than any valid legal reasoning.
After all, they are the enemy.
WIN 98 SOURCE CODE REVEALED:
/*
TOP SECRET Microsoft(c) Code
Project: Chicago(tm)
Projected release-date: Summer 1998
*/
#include "win31.h"
#include "win95.h"
#include "evenmore.h"
#include "oldstuff.h"
#include "billrulz.h"
#define INSTALL = HARD
char make_prog_look_big[1600000];
void main()
{
while(!CRASHED)
{
display_copyright_message();
display_bill_rules_message();
do_nothing_loop();
if (first_time_installation)
{
make_50_megabyte_swapfile();
do_nothing_loop();
totally_screw_up_HPFS_file_system();
search_and_destroy_the_rest_of_OS/2();
hang_system();
}
write_something(anything);
display_copyright_message();
do_nothing_loop();
do_some_stuff();
if (still_not_crashed)
{
display_copyright_message();
do_nothing_loop();
basically_run_windows_3.1();
do_nothing_loop();
do_nothing_loop();
do_nothing_loop();
}
}
if (detect_cache())
disable_cache();
if (fast_cpu())
{
set_wait_states(lots);
set_mouse(speed, very_slow);
set_mouse(action, jumpy);
set_mouse(reaction, sometimes);
}
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 3.11"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 95"); */
printf("Welcome to Windows 98");
if (system_ok())
{
bsod(random_err());
crash(to_dos_prompt);
}
else
system_memory = open("a:\swp0001.swp", O_CREATE);
while(something)
{
sleep(5);
get_user_input();
sleep(5);
act_on_user_input();
sleep(5);
}
create_general_protection_fault();
}
(Thanks to the 4 Guys from Rolla)
Now I can improve my code by reading the work of masters! Begone, bugs!
Any proposal to open Windows source code, even one that would be much more significant than Microsoft's, would ultimately only help Microsoft by making their APIs and software even more entrenched. Their proposal is by far the sweetest deal for them. In fact, it doesn't even represent a big change from existing practice: almost any Windows software company can get lots of Windows source code anyway if they ask.
The only way I can see to get Microsoft to document their APIs and to ensure that they aren't holding back is to break them into multiple OS and multiple application companies and to limit the ability of those companies to establish exclusive contracts with one another.
Microsoft hates that because it would finally bring up their costs to everybody else's: their current approach has allowed them to cut corners on interoperability and documentation, which saved them money and cut time to market, while at the same time excluding competitors. It's been a sweet deal for them, and it is precisely this conduct that needs to be addressed. A breakup with operating restrictions would create the economic necessity for Microsoft to do this. Any other remedy will just let them weasel out and involve endless debates among regulators and Microsoft about the intricacies of software design. In fact, we tried that before and it didn't work.
Stop me if I'm wrong, but I don't think MS is talking about "open source" in any sense; they're talking about opening the Windows APIs, i.e. giving outside developers the same access that the Office developers have. The press constantly confuses "open source" and "open APIs", in their attempts to stupidify news about the MS case.
From a purely selfish perspective (i.e. not considering whether the government has a right to interfere at all,) this is probably my second favorite remedy. My first choice would be splitting MS into a systems company and an applications company. I'm happy (and very surprised) that those seem to be the two options that the court is seriously considering.
MSK
Under the proposal, Microsoft would be required to provide open, timely and complete access to the parts of the Windows operating system code used by independent software companies to design their software applications to run on Windows.
"See we're giving our competitors exactly the same information our own apps developers have!" This is, to say it politely, bullshit. The Win32 API specs are carefully crafted to be incomplete. They tell you just enough to get locked in to Windows, but not enough to actually make a product that would compete with Microsoft. The apps developers in Redmond have direct access to the OS development team and can obtain detailed specs on DFS/COM+/LSA/ADSI/DHTML or whatever new whiz-bang technology is needed to beat the competition.
Several people (Andrew Schulman 1995, et al) have suggested for a long time that a Chinese Wall should go up between the Apps team and the OS team. All communication that goes over the wall should be made public.
My background is security, so I can give you some classic examples of almost-but-not-quite documented APIs that cripple attempts to compete with Microsoft:
Microsoft will only release enough information to ensnare users into the Windows environment. To publish API information that would give a competitor an advantage would be over their dead body.
'The DOJ plan would effectively reduce Windows to a small core of low-level functionality that performs only the most basic operations.'
-- MICROSOFT LOBBYING PAPER
Basic operations? You mean like acting as a virtual machine to run programs on, and controlling the computer's resources? It's funny because the DOJ has to tell Microsoft how to write an operating system.
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share and enjoy
I know all of you Open Source, anti-Micro$oft people are having a field day, but have you thought of the downside to this?
If the Windows API's are open to everyone, someone could use them to put a program into an innocent looking e-Mail that could be opened by a Macro reader in Outlook, and could then go through the system, ruining any kind of mpeg or jpeg file.
I think all you open source people really have to consider the security risks that could come up if just anybody was allowed to look into the guts of the otherwise safe, stable and secure Windows Platform.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.