Breaking Windows

With Open Source software projects, understanding why certain features are developed while others aren't, or even why entire projects split apart into contending factions, is often as simple as reading mailing list archives and web sites where the involved parties hash out (or at least air) their differences. Within a large corporation, it's a lot harder. Slashdot reader (and "former Microsoftie") Adam Barr contributes this review of Breaking Windows, which he describes as an imperfect but revealing look into the internal politics of Microsoft, and how clashing groups within the company have struggled to get their vision of Windows on the desktop -- sometimes a messy process.

Breaking Windows author David Bank pages 288 publisher Free Press rating 8 reviewer Adam Barr ISBN 0743203151 summary Tells the story of the battle that raged within Microsoft from 1997 to 2000, between those advocating sticking with the Windows strategy and those wanting a full-fledged shift to the Internet. The Scoop This is one of the best-written books about Microsoft that I have read, and as a former employee I have read most of them. Focusing on the internal battles gives a new perspective on the company. It hopefully shatters, once and for all, the myth that Microsoft is a hive community marching in line behind Bill Gates. Executives and regular employees are shown battling over issues large and small, with a consistent public story emerging only at the end, if at all. Bank also shows how Microsoft's legal strategy in the Justice Department case was affected by the political and technical battles that were simultaneously going on within the company. What's To Like The book does a great job of telling its story efficiently and clearly. Bank quotes from internal emails, but doesn't overuse them, preserving the value of these rare glimpses into the Microsoft decision-making process. He gives just the right amount of history, and avoids ill-fitting analogies to describe the various pieces of software (in most cases he simply gives a minimal explanation, which might confuse a computing novice but is perfect for a typical Slashdot reader). He also describes the right reasons for Microsoft's success: not marketing as many people say, but its strategy of defining a small number of software platforms and evangelizing them to other developers.

The battle being fought here is between the "Windows hawks," led by Microsoft Vice President Jim Allchin, and the "Internet doves," led by another Vice President, Brad Silverberg. Allchin was in charge of Windows NT; Silverberg shipped Windows 95 and early versions of Internet Explorer. The book has some great insight into how this battle proceeded and why the participants acted as they did.

For example, the book discusses Jim Allchin's famous email in early 1997, in which he discussed competing with Netscape and wrote, "I do not feel we are going to win on our current path -- I am convinced we have to use Windows, this is the one thing they don't have -- We need something with more Windows integration." This email was brought up in the Justice trial to show that Microsoft used browser integration to unfairly attack Netscape, but the book shows that Allchin at the time was trying to counteract feelings within Microsoft that the browser was all that mattered, and was therefore concerned not so much that non-integration would hurt the browser as he was concerned that non-integration would hurt Windows.

Or consider the following sentence from the book: "In the same way that Gates began to view Microsoft's Internet team as the internal representation of Netscape, he came to see Microsoft's Java team as the internal agents of Sun Microsystems." This is an extraordinarily perceptive statement, and the fact that a reader can appreciate its meaning 74 pages into the book is a tribute to the explanatory powers of Bank's writing.

What's To Consider If the terms "Internet doves" and "Windows hawks" didn't tip you off, Bank is trying to show that the "fumble" of the subtitle occurred in 1997, when Bill Gates decided against supporting a Microsoft project known as Megaserver. This would have been a platform for Internet development: a set of back-end services, tied in to the browser.

Bank also discusses another, more well-known "fumble," the mismanagement of the Justice Department lawsuit. His writing here is still excellent, but this topic has been covered elsewhere so the information is not as surprising.

In the Justice lawsuit, he does a good job of showing how Gates was the main force behind two of Microsoft's poorest showings in the case: Gates'evasive videotaped deposition, and the response to the judge's order to allow computer manufacturer to ship Windows 95 without Internet Explorer (which involved allowing them to either ship a two-year-old version of Windows 95, or one that did not work at all).

In fact Bank spends much more time talking about the legal foibles than talking about his first argument, that Gates blew his role as technical leader of Microsoft by not endorsing Megaserver in 1997. But this really needs to be the core of his argument: saying that Gates' main mistake was made in the legal arena, in which he was a novice, is not nearly as compelling as claiming that Gates, the ultimate geek, botched the kind of technical decision that should have been his strength.

Megaserver was a Brad Silverberg project, and Jim Allchin was the main opposition. In Bank's mythology, Silverberg is the hero, pushing for the Internet. Allchin is the villain, sticking with Windows. But what really went on here?

Consider a story Bank relates from a Microsoft developer named Ben Slivka, one of the most strident of the Internet doves:

Slivka recounted the experience of one Windows developer who presented Allchin with his ideas for a simply, reliable operating system suitable for home users. Instead of saying "Great idea, go do it," Allchin had insisted that the new operating system be based on Windows NT. The developer objected that the huge NT operating system wasn't suitable for the drop-dead simple appliance he had envisioned. Allchin challenged him to list the parts of Windows NT he would strip out.

To me this looks like Allchin is doing his job. What would happen if he authorized everyone who so desired to go off and write their own operating system? I/ll tell you what would happen: Windows CE. Enough said.

Allchin also had little patience for Microsoft employees who were advocating a move towards Java and free software:

I don't want to be remembered as the guy who destroyed one of the most amazing business in history. We could have done it [meaning we could have destroyed the business] with engineers who didn't understand and didn't have any responsibility for the financial aspects of the company at all. Who live in this paradise where the stock goes up, revenues keep going up, earnings keep doing up. And all they have to do is crank software. Somehow it gets into packages and makes money. Well, it doesn't work that way.

Sounds reasonable to me. The notions of first-mover advantage and trading profits for users have been discredited in the dot-com meltdown. But the quote doesn't fit into Bank's view of Allchin as the bad guy, so he simply throws it out there, with no discussion.

History is often written by the winners, but in some ways the middle of this book is history written by the losers. The path not taken is discussed, but since it exists only as a perfect creation in the minds of its inventors (who obviously had Bank's ear when he was doing his research), it is depicted as flawless. Statements claiming that the new goal "was not to get thousands of developers to adopt your arcane PC programming interfaces but rather to get tens of millions of users to use your services every day=94 are accepted as holy truth.

Bank is convinced that Megaserver would have somehow "expanded the commons" of software development, that any Internet platform would have been an open platform. But consider what the Megaserver would have been as proposed back in 1997: A set of Microsoft servers with Microsoft data, talking to a browser that was customized to talk to those servers.

In short, it would have been a clone of AOL. Furthermore, this would have been architected by the team that brought you Windows 95. Would this have been a good thing? Does integrating your browser with your Web servers produce a more open environment than integrating it with your operating system?

Thus, it is hard to fault Gates for not supporting Megaserver in 1997. In fact, Microsoft is now pushing heavily towards .Net, which is the 2001 version of Megaserver. Why support it now? As Bank himself writes, about Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, "He had long known the problem was bigger than Win32, Maritz said. But now he could articulate the message. The difference, he later said, was XML." It was not so much that Microsoft did not recognize the need to move beyond the Win32 API; it was that in 1997 it didn't have the technology to do so.

Bank makes the claim that Gates was forced out as CEO because of his "fumbles." This is arguably the big revelation in the book, but it is hard to prove this conclusively: The trial missteps certainly did happen, Microsoft was drifting from a technology perspective, and Gates stepped down. Did he fall or was he pushed? The timing of events supports either conclusion. In any event, I found the behind-the-scenes descriptions much more interesting than this particular allegation.

Furthermore, Bank points out that Gates allowed an employee to set up a hands-off incubator within Microsoft that eventually led to the company-wide adoption of XML and .NET, and was the only top executive who really understood the .NET protocols. Thus it is hard to fault him for not supporting an Internet platform in 1997, when he planted the seeds for an Internet platform in 2001.

If the middle of the book is imperfect but still fascinating, the last chapter gets really strange. After playing Brad Silverberg up as the hero, Bank suddenly cuts him down. Earlier in the book, the decision to adopt Active Desktop in Windows 98 is mentioned, but with mysterious silence on who made the final call; it merely states that after seeing Netscape demonstrate a similar product called Constellation, "the browser team was given the additional job of creating a shell for all of Windows." That shell was Active Desktop, and this particular decision got Microsoft in antitrust trouble both because it increased the amount of browser integration that Microsoft had to defend in court, and because Microsoft started leaning on computer manufacturers in an effort to freeze out Netscape's product. Furthermore, the battle was basically for naught since Channels, the big Active Desktop feature, went nowhere. Gates himself said later, "That's a case where the browser guys, they had the Internet religion, but they pushed it too far in terms of what was a practical user experience."

So who decided to go with Active Desktop? You figure it had to be Silverberg, but Bank doesn't say that. In the final chapter, however, he slips a bit, pointing out that Silverberg's team was responsible for the tying of the browser, the semi-exclusive contracts with content and access providers, and the war against Java -- the main issues that the Justice department sued over. Furthermore, if the Megaserver strategy had been pursued, Microsoft might have been in even more legal trouble.

Gates, meanwhile, gets rehabilitated in the last chapter. His tactics in 1998 and 1999 are now described as a strategic stall, waiting for the right technology to appear for Microsoft's Internet platform: "The power to control the pace of innovation is a competitive advantage at least as crucial as the ability to innovate itself." Gates is portrayed as a leader once again, planning strategy ten years out, and the book ends with a prediction (for no reason other than the author's gut feeling) that Gates will do the right thing and usher in a new age of innovation, whatever that consists of.

I'm not sure what to make of this flip-flop. I assume this book was originally proposed to a publisher in 1999, written in 2000, and polished up in early 2001. In 1999 a book about the demise of Microsoft seemed a plausible undertaking, but two years later it turned out that the story wasn't over, and Microsoft appeared to be bouncing back. So Bank had time to equivocate, modifying his original thesis and explaining how perhaps Microsoft had a future after all.

Describing this latest turn of events, however, Bank doesn't have reams of email released during a trial, or sympathetic former Microsofties to interpret it for him. As a result, he can fire off sentences like, "The infrastructure for the digital age will be based on competition on the merits and a common code of open interfaces," with apparent complete sincerity. He believes that Microsoft asking AOL to open its Instant Messaging protocol is a harbinger of this golden future, and that Microsoft's Shared Source program shows it is moving towards open source. In short, he is buying the current Microsoft PR story, hook line and sinker.

Well, let this former Microsoftie (and former Windows hawk who worked in Allchin's group) explain a few things. Statements like "Interoperability, not lock-in, has become the winning strategy" are patently false. Right now there are two Internets: The AOL one, with its own client, servers, content, email, messaging, authentication, billing, security, and all the rest; and the plain old Internet. Microsoft wants to create a third Internet, the .NET Internet, with all the stuff that the AOL Internet has. Then it will pursue a lock-in like the world has never seen before.

Summary and Table of Contents But hey, enough quibbling. Bank may be wrong about the future of Microsoft, but he does a fantastic job covering the past. I spent some time discussing what I disagreed with, but there is so much more that I agree with. I knew about a lot of the events that are described in the book, but I still learned an incredible amount. If you want to know what things are like inside Microsoft, buy this book. Table of Contents

• Prologue: The E-mail Trail

1. Track the Inevitable
2. Hawks and Doves.
3. The Path Not Taken
4. Citizen Gates
5. Vicious Cycle
6. Monopolist's Dilemma
7. Loosely Coupled

• Key Dates
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Index

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Comments

Re:Bad things really do happen.

[zerocool^]

Microsoft really is abusive. Microsoft's abusiveness costs billions of dollars in lost time. For example, Microsoft releases software with poor security. Right now the Code Red II worm and the SirCam virus are causing huge amounts of damage. These both exploit Microsoft security weaknesses.

This isn't a microsoft abuse. I can go down the street to bob's lawn care and get materials to create a car bomb. Does that mean that Scott's Turf Builder is responsible for my actions? Microsoft creates a product (outlook) that checks email. It checks email, and fairly well, and in a way that is easy to understand and simple to use.

This is simple applied economics, supply and demand. There are more windows users out there than anything else, by alot. And the average windows user does not know as much about how their computer works as the average *nix user, again, by a lot. To bring the supply and demand into it, it is easier to write code for windows, there are far more windows boxen, and the users know less about the inner workings - therefore more time is spent by hackers/scriptkiddies learning exploits and writing viruses. If linux was the world's premier operating system, and my mother used KMail or Pine, i'm sure the k|dd|3z would be writing exploits for that.

Now, i don't pretend to say that Microsoft makes a superior product. It is definately less secure. However, there's a world of difference between a windows user who may, sometime in the lifespan of his computer, go to www.windowsupdate.com and download patches, and Bruce Perens using apt-get update on a daily basis. You can't reasonably hold microsoft responsible for the upkeep and mantinence of literally millions of desktop computers in the united states alone. Nor can you fault them for releasing a product that is not "hack-proof", as, to my knowledge, no such product exists.

To listen to CNN and some of the posts by the slashdot crowd, you would think that Microsoft created Windows solely for the purpose of propagating the Code Red Worm. Let's not forget the simple fact that somewhere, someone wrote that bug, and they wrote it for the platform that would allow it to do the most damage, and that platform is windows.

Now, if you're gonna criticize microsoft, put your money where your mouth is, and write your own operating system, and get it on the desktop of 97% of the computer users in the united states, and have it impervious to viruses. Or be logical, and talk to people about linux. Educate them that there's something better out there, more secure, crashes less. Put debian on your mom's box, teach her Opera. Use the line i saw on someone's .sig here - "Frustrated? Don't throw your computers out the window, throw the windows out of your computer!"

Less bitching, more solutions.

~z

Re:It wasn't Russian marketing, it was US Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. rip on conservatives, +1 for the ac. socialist bitches.

Re:Its interesting that Internal...

[Kierthos]

There's a few things to look at here:

1) There are probably some contract terms that prohibit MS employees from working in the same field for N months/years. While these are occassionally, if not routinely struck down, it does cause some employees to not consider that option.

2) The "Anything you develop while working here is ours" clause. If J. Random Employee starts up some little software company and starts releasing programs, if MS doesn't like it, they definitely have more cash to throw at legal proceedings and can bog down things for the guy trying to prove that he developed whatever on his own time.

3) Dotcom crash. If you were an investor right now would you support a new startup? Especially one that's likely to have legal troubles? (Based on point #2)

Now, I'm not saying that no one has ever left MS and started up their own company. But given the current state of things, it would be a much riskier thing then in the past.

Kierthos

Its interesting that Internal...

[Pyrosz]

...strife has not produced more spinoff groups from MS. Is working for MS that good that nobody wants to leave to start a new business? I can't see that from this book. It looks like there are very clearly defined groups. If one of these groups becomes angry/upset/etc.. enough, will they break out to become some competition? Can they?
---------------

.NET aimed at AOL?

[SideshowBob]

It's interesting that he casts .NET as an M$ strategy to compete with AOL. I hadn't thought of that before, but it makes sense now. I think the reason I hadn't seen that is because I've never used AOL. Ever. I've seen it being used over the shoulder of a couple different people, but for the past 11 years I've used what he describes as the plain old Internet.

I plan to continue that course: I'll avoid .NET just like I avoid AOL.

I imagine it's going to be difficult to avoid without completely avoiding XP and future M$ OSes; I currently have 3 machines, a Mac, a Linux x86 box, and a Win98 box (mostly for gaming). I think Apple and the Powers That Be in the Linux world need to get the word out that if you value personal privacy and want to see an Internet in the future that isn't locked up by M$ (and M$'s henchmen), then people should consider using an alternative OS.

I made an assumption about the reader...

[Futurepower(tm)]

I made an assumption about the reader when I blamed the Code Red worms and the SirCam virus on Microsoft.

I assumed that the reader knew, or thought, that the security weaknesses in Microsoft products are more than just mistakes. They are the result of a widespread lack of caring about making a good product. The lack of caring is possible for a monopoly, but is, over the long term, self-destructive.

People who are programmers, and understand the issues of program development, often say that the vulnerabilities of Microsoft products go beyond the normal software bugs. If you look at the patterns of bugs, there seems to be a sloppiness that true professionals don't allow.

An instant way for a programmer to make a name for himself or herself would be to find a serious security bug in Open BSD. They have been bragging for four years that there haven't been any serious remote exploits. (http://www.openbsd.org/ "Four years without a remote hole in the default install!") There must be many, many people who would like to find such an exploit, because of the way it would look on a resume. But there hasn't been even one.

During that time, there have been more than 300 serious security bugs in Microsoft products. At some point, it seems reasonable to say that the bugs are more than just the inevitable programmer mistakes, but are indicative of a failure in management that is giving Microsoft billions of dollars of bad publicity. That's self-destruction.

Astroturfers and propagandists in pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn. There's not a minute of the day someone isn't in these forums posting tripe like this. Insulting the editors of this forum, posting pro-Microsoft propaganda to counter the stories, or simply disrupting the forum with links and/or ascii "art" of offensive material. One would think this is an organized and funded effort to destroy this forum. What I find so striking is the trail of suspect moderation that happens almost instantly after stories get posted. Usually the moderation is evened out after the story grows old, but not before the majority of comments are posted. So forum readers and writers get a skewed look at what the community finds interesting while the story is hot, and only those interested enough to look into a story a day later learn how the forum community might have reacted without these dirty tricks. These are the same games the CIA plays in foreign countries when they want to skew an "election," though I'm not suggesting this is CIA work (it's clearly a corporate game).

It really is time for Rob to implement consorship ala K5 here on /., so us old timers and computer professionals can get our damn forum back.

It's all about perception of invincibility

[alewando]

We all know that Microsoft is king of marketing, but even more important than marketing your product to consumers is marketing your image (an image of invincibility) to your competitors.

To pick an inappropriate example, look at the former Soviet Union. They suffered numerous political, economic, and technological setbacks, but how many did we hear about in the west? In 1960, no one in the US knew that almost a hundred people died on the pad of a failed R-16 ICBM launch (the Nedelin Disaster). Half the arms buildup during the 1980s stemmed from a misconception about Russia's actual military capability. Frankly, they did a great job of marketing their image towards us.

If Microsoft appears suitably invincible, then all sorts of things just fall into their laps instead of requiring effort on their part to obtain. Competitors are more likely to get out of their way when a vaporware product is announced. Even lawenforcement is likely to give a good hard second look before diving headfirst into a prolonged legal battle. There is no downside.

Does it surprise me that any of this internal strife has occurred? Hardly. Does it surprise me that it's rarely come toight. Again, hardly. That's just the way these things go.

two quotes from the book

[AdamBa]

"Gates was an introvert who liked people mainly for the intellectual simulation they provided...Ballmer was an extrovert who enjoyed the pleasures of socializing for his own sake."

"Ballmer's easy bonhomie and meat-and-potatoes approach to the business seemed to be just what Microsoft needed, the perfect antidote to Gates's enigmatic aloofness."

So I'm sure Bank would say (and I say), "Go Steve!" He does get the employees fired up...and it's nice to see a guy worth $25 billion (or whatever) who is running a $30 billion company but still doesn't take himself all that seriously.

- adam

Re:Bad things really do happen.

[janpod66]

This isn't a microsoft abuse. I can go down the street to bob's lawn care and get materials to create a car bomb. Does that mean that Scott's Turf Builder is responsible for my actions? Microsoft creates a product (outlook) that checks email. It checks email, and fairly well, and in a way that is easy to understand and simple to use.

I think Microsoft is directly responsible for these problems: they are using development tools that causes their software to be susceptible to buffer overruns and they put features into their products that make them easy to attack. It's like shipping cars without safety belts and blaming drivers when they get killed in accidents, or building homes without front doors and wondering why the burglars wander in.

If linux was the world's premier operating system, and my mother used KMail or Pine, i'm sure the k|dd|3z would be writing exploits for that.

Who said that Linux was necessarily better? Linux shares many of the problems that Windows has, in part because the more modern components of Linux have been copied from Windows. By setting the bar so low and pushing outdated technologies into the educational system, Microsoft sets the tone for the whole industry and damages the quality of both commercial and free software.

Still, I suspect that crackers would find it a lot harder to create a "Code Red" worm for KMail or Pine.

Now, if you're gonna criticize microsoft, put your money where your mouth is, and write your own operating system, and get it on the desktop of 97% of the computer users in the united states, and have it impervious to viruses. Or be logical, and talk to people about linux.

The value of Windows isn't in the code. The value of Windows is in the community built around it: the software vendors, services, hardware vendors, and users. Microsoft only got that because they got the original IBM PC deal. Even much better and much easier to use technology wasn't enough to displace them from that lead. To Microsoft's credit, they didn't fumble. But Microsoft has an enormous head start, and displacing them even with a much superior product and massive investment is still an uphill battle. Though, it will happen...

Oh, let's give 'em a hug....

[sdprenzl]

Some of the Allchin insights where he's chastising the MS geeks "money doesn't grow on trees yadayadayada" is the very heart of the difference between corporate and open software. The open software allows much more freedom of exploration. Something that's cool and good will first pick up a small cult following, then get bigger based solely on its merits. Look at Python. I don't really know if using Python alone will revolutionize computing, but not having to worry about profit, instead technology, has given a great language solid legs. Profit is a harsh, blind master. Somebody has to lay down the cash in exchange for something that will in turn do them right on their own profit hunt. But the greater reality is different. I download/investigate a lot of stuff that looks cool, eventually I sort through it and get going in maybe one or two directions. For example, right now I'm looking at Lisp and Python and wondering if doing functional programming in Python offers any advantages. What got me on this path was a /. link to Paul Graham and a series of articles at IBM by David Mertz. This is a much more natural way to handle the evolution of computing and IT. No stampedes, no hype, no sweat. The open source world will progress in a far more natural way, while the corporate world will lurch from one lock-in/safe-bet monopoly technology-for-dummies to the next. The more I hear about super-big IT firms, the more obvious it is that their precarious "skunkworks" nooks and crannies are pale shadows of the greater open source world. Why worry about secretive, proprietary nervous skunkworks-ware just days from the accountants' axes? Microsoft and their ilk will always be a murky world for good technology to ever thrive in. Open source will triumph because their proponents are free people.