Declawing Windows: Impossible?

hyrdra writes: "This story on CNN seems to indicate the intentions of the nine remaining states in the ongoing anti-trust case against Microsoft: to produce a stripped down version of Windows that will allow 3rd party vendors to insert components such as browsers, media players, and IM clients. While this may not be news, Microsoft's defense is. Microsoft defends the solution by remarking Windows was not designed to be a modular system, and the current operating system is highly dependant on core technologies like IE and Windows Media Player. Removing them would result in a slower, much-less user friendly Windows that would be a support nightmare."

Comments

have that version...

[westcourt_monk]

a slower, much-less user friendly Windows that would be a support nightmare

That about sums up windows now. For it to be faster, user friendly, and easy to support one must strip out all the crap.

Of course having a zillion different flavours of Windoze might be a bad idea but forcing them to think modular is a good idea (I suspect they do anyway). Will anything really change?

Re:have that version...

[Brian Kendig]

Will anything really change?

No.

The fundamental mistake people are making is that people are still listening to Microsoft's complaints about how oppressed it is.

There's a lesson that everyone should have learned by now: Microsoft tells lies. Often. They also ignore the law, since they've learned that making the government curb their behavior is much better than behaving well on their own -- especially since the government's been completely ineffective in slowing the Microsoft juggernaut so far. Beat up kids on the playground for their lunch money today and you might get punished next year, if at all... so why bother holding back?

Microsoft isn't going to release a stripped-down version of Windows, not in the sense that you think of a stripped-down version of Linux. Remember two years ago when Microsoft showed that removing the DLL's with IE code in them cripped Windows? This was because Microsoft went to a whole lot of trouble to take the IE code and scatter it all over the operating system, sticking subroutines in DLL's which had nothing to do with IE. The Windows code is made as difficult as it has to be to foil the government's attempts to separate out the parts which violate the 1995 consent decree. (Never mind for now that the videotape they used to show the Windows slowdown was revealed to be fabricated. Never mind for now that Professor Felton successfully removed IE from Windows early in the court case, then when he tried it again later he found that Microsoft had scattered the code throughout the operating system to thwart him.)

In the Linux world, a stripped-down version of the operating system is easy to support, since it's much less complicated than integrating lots of modules and applications. But in the Windows world, Microsoft is going to make absolutely certain that a stripped-down version of Windows will not work well. They'll follow the letter of any judgement handed down to them, but they'll ignore the spirit and exploit any loopholes: they'll introduce as many bugs as they can in order to make sure that people won't want to use it, and when the government challenges them on this, they'll cry 'oppressed!' and another seven-year cycle of courtroom appearances will begin. Who knows, maybe they'll even consider the TCP/IP stack to be part of Internet Explorer, so their stripped-down Windows won't have networking support?

The real solution is to require Microsoft to bundle only bare-bones applications with Windows, and sell their high-end applications on store shelves. They bundle Microsoft Write and sell Microsoft Word at a premium; they can do this with IE and Media Player. This would go a long way towards restoring competition.

But Microsoft has learned that the government is completely ineffective against them. They've also learned that by misrepresenting the case to the American public ('freedom to innovate,' indeed), they can garner a whole lot of support and put a lot of pressure on state and federal government to settle the case against them. They're going to continue doing this while at the same time they continue underselling anyone in markets they want to own.

In a few years someone's going to have a great idea for the Next Big Thing, some simple yet powerful advance which will revolutionize computing as we know it. That person is going to follow the American dream and go into business for himself capitalizing on his idea. Then Microsoft is going to copy his ideas and bundle them into Windows, and the guy is going to go out of business, and this will spawn another seven years of the DOJ trying to curb Microsoft's power and Microsoft viciously defending its right to give its customers great things for free.

It happened with Netscape. It's going to happen again.

Re:have that version...

[CoolVibe]

IE is faster and slicker then any OSS browser for Windows, and the second fastest commercial browser (second to Opera)

How convenient that MS loads internet explorer on startup. Of course it's faster! When you 'explore' your drives, you already have the bulk of MSIE running.

Finally, Apple packages Quicktime, iMovie, iTunes, Appleworks (a full office suite), and more with their OS

Check your facts, they are optional components. Easy to deinstall, or you can opt to NOT install them. Try removing MSIE from your WinXP or Win2k SP2+ system. You'll have a hard time.

I think that it is the OS makers right to include value added software, and the consumer benefits from it. I can go and buy a new iMac, plug it in, and have a full home video editing studio without having to do a thing (all on UNIX neverthless)!

The difference is choice. If you don't want something on your Mac, you just throw it away, and you'll never be bothered by it again. Or, if you like the default software, you can just leave it like it is. The difference is that it isn't forced down your throat.

Now, because MS has a monoploy on the desktop, our solution is to force them to make a less-valued OS with less features and bundled software? How is this better for the consumer.

No, nobody is telling them to oblitterate MSIE, Media Player and all that other crap. They just have to make it optional for the user to install or not. Right now, everyone that uses windows for the first time on a new box get confronted with MSIE. And MSIE is probably the only browser they'll ever know because that's that one that got installed with their new system. Thought experiment: What would have happened if MS bought Netscape and integrated Netscape in the OS? Then Netscape would be the dominant browser now.

The problem that most people have with Microsoft is how they throw their weight around with the Windows OS, pushing competitors out of the nest before they can get the chance to be real competitors. It's practices like these that send us off our collective trolleys. The quality of MSIE is irrelevant

Right, back to driver coding...

Re:have that version...

[Alsee]

the whole point of business regulation is to fight for the consumer, not fight against the corporation.

Right. If you look at it in terms of motivation it becomes clear why Apple is fine and Microsoft is not.

Apple's motivation to to get new customers. They add in things that the consumers want, and do not include things that they don't want. Quicktime, iMovie, iTunes, Appleworks are included for the customer's benefit. They are easy to remove. I have never heard of any issues of nasty mis-features in them.

Microsoft has no motivation to get new customers. Being a monopoly, they already have virtally all of them. Their motivation is to earn more proffits off of their existing customers. They included Internet Explorer so they could make money being the "gateway to the internet". They included Media Player so they could could make money by controlling your DRM. They abuse their OS monopoly to force these things onto consumers. They try to make them impossible to remove, they make them incompatible to kill competition, they include nasty mis-features like spying on you and tagging you with an ID number for Microsoft's benefit - at the consumer's expense. They commited extortion to prevent computer manufacturers from providing competing Operating Systems, Web Browsers, or Audio/Video viewers.

Microsoft broke the law. Repeatedly. They were convicted. They continued to break the law. Repeatedly. They were convicted. Again.

-

Isn't that what they said the first time around

[tzanger]

You know, with IE; they said it couldn't be removed and it was proven trivial.

I understand (and appreciate) the use of HTML for windows help; however there isn't anything you can't do in the help by using [JA]Script and CSS, and aside from ActiveX, that isn't anything that any other browser couldn't provide. And as far as WMP is concerned I don't see the issue; MP3/WAV/whatever can be played by lots of things. Window Media files may need WMP, but that's not monopolistic.

This is complete BS

[Khalid]

Wine by just emulating the win32 API, can now, (thanks to Codeweavers) run MS Office 2000, IE, QT, Photoshop and many major windows running software ! so has the Wine guys managed to do what MS with its Billion $ not managed to achieve ?

So they are saying is "punishment hurts"?

[stripes]

Yes, I know I pushed an old lady down the steps, but if you send me to jail I won't be able to drink beer, hang at the local bar, and work on my hot rod!

What kind of defense is that?

Re:So they are saying is "punishment hurts"?

[TandyMasterControl]

Ah yes, the you-can't-punish-me-it-might-hurt defense.

I hope the judge is equally familiar with the ancient Anglo-Saxon legal concept of "tough shit" and its corollary, "shoulddathoughtofthat".

(So do Microsoft get three strikes before they incur the ultimate & everlasting sentence and where do we start counting? Stacker? Bristol? Dr-DOS?)

They don't have to rip it out 100%

[Brento]

If they can't put it out the door without bunding parts of IE and Media Player or whatever, then just don't put them on the program menus, don't put them on the desktop, and don't make them the default file handlers. What's so hard about that?

It's a piece of cake compromise, and I sincerely doubt it's anybody's goal here to remove every bit of IE's code from Windows. If MS wants to use the IE code to display the user's desktop, or to show files in Windows Explorer, fine. Correct me if I'm wrong (always a given on Slashdot, people will even correct you if you're right) but I think the goal of the suit is to stop the anticompetitive measures, not remove certain lines of source code. Just start with the Start Menu, and go from there.

Not all that impossible

[jonathan_atkinson]

It is possible to remove a whole lot of the default crap that ships with Windows.

Before I switched to Linux full-time, I tamed my Windows box with 98lite. To quote from the specs page, the current version allows removal of:

* Internet Explorer
* Media Player7 (Me)
* MovieMaker (Me)
* PC Health (Me)
* Media Player2
* DirectX
* Direct Media
* Task Scheduler
* MS Cryptography
* Web Folders
* Internet Control Panel
* Internet Search
* Telephony
* ISDN Configuration Wizard
* Disk Defragmenter
* Scandisk
* ICM Color Profiles
* Imaging Support
* System Information
* CleanUp Manager
* Tune-up Wizard
* Active Movie
* Dr. Watson
* Data Access Components
* Connection Manager
* Email Stationery
* Windows Help Files
* Legacy Windows 3.1 files
* DOS command Files
* Desktop Color Schemes
* Desktop Tiles

98lite allows the removal of the entire MSHTML engine and all the other Windows Media crap. So, if "the current operating system is highly dependant on core technologies like IE and Windows Media Player", I sure didn't notice it after I ran 98lite.

--jon

Re:Not all that impossible

[teamhasnoi]

There is no excuse _not_ to run windows with 98lite. It's faster. More stable. I ran a win 98 box w/ lite and it _never_ crashed. (this of course was a pentium 200 OC'ed to 225) I'm now running w98 on a pentium 4 / 1.8 and it's great. It's the way windows should be. Until openBeos get done, that is.

For anyone wondering, "why windows?" Audio.

The reason you can't remove those components

[TummyX]

The reason you can't remove those components from Windows is precisely because windows is so modular.

Windows is HIGHLY modular and componentised which is EXACTLY why you can't remove certain components. It's all the component REUSE that causes windows depend on stuff like IE. You guys all think you're great software engineers but can't seem to understand that!

Java is OO and very componentised. But that doesn't mean Java could exist without java.lang.String!

Sure, you could replace java.lang.String with an implementation that acts just like it. That's precisely what you can do in windows too. You can replace the IE component with the Mozilla component (it has already been done). The only problem is that you're now forcing MS to sell a product that is made up of 3rd party components they may not want to be associated with their products. (Imagine what a nightmare it would have been to have the bloat that is Netscape 4.6 included in windows 98).

Anyway. I just wanted to point out again, that something being componentised doesn't mean you can remove any components. (It only means you could REPLACE the component). You can't remove IE from windows, but you could replace it. Just like you can't expect the MOTOR component of a car to be removed and still have the car work.

Re:The reason you can't remove those components

[Ozan]

IMHO comparing every software component with the engine of a car gives a rather distorted view on this issue. The engine of a car would be the kernel of a OS, and of course it is an essential component, but a program like MSN Messenger or Media Player would be more compareable to an A/C or a window lift than to a key component of a car.
Of course a car needs engine, gearing and wheels, but theese aren't under consideration here at all here. We are fine with the kernel and the file system.

Vizualize this defense

[rknop]

But, your honor, going to jail for my crimes would mean that I couldn't keep going to my job, and that I couldn't go to baseball games, and gee, it would make my life really hard!

Somehow, it seems to me that inconvenience to a party found guilty of violating the law should be laughed out of court as a defense against a penalty.

-Rob

Microsoft is being intentionally misleading...

[Munelight]

MSN Messenger ships with WIndows XP and likes bothering you to register a passport account. This is a pain in the ass, and it doesn't appear in the add/remove programs list. Luckily if you edit the sysoc.inf files you can find the msmsgs line and remove the 'hidden' option from it. Then you CAN remove it through add/remove programs. It seems to me that Microsoft is being intentionally misleading about what parts of their operating system can be safely removed and which can't.

If it's discovered that they've lied in court I think the company should be dissolved for a period of time not less than what an individual caught lying in court would be sentenced to. It's time that corporations enjoyed some of the responsibilities of being considered 'individuals' as well as the rights and priveleges.

Something called...

[j_stirk]

Disk space and bloat...

If I have another browser installed, why the heck would I want an extra 50+MB of space taken up on IE??

If I install another IM system, I dont want the OS nagging me to get .NET, or have more hard disk space taken up by MSN Messenger which I dont use...

If I install another Media Player, I dont want to have to have yet more hard disk space wasted because some if I try to remove WPM I get .DLL failures, etc...

The reason there is all the bitching is because if you dont want to use M$ products, you whould not have to have them on your system!

It is like Ford saying "Here's your new car, it comes with tires, but if you want another brand of tires, you still have to keep these four tires in your car otherwise it wont work..."

Its just stupid, pointless and, frankly, quite childish to prevent users from removing IE, WMP, MSN Messenger, etc. from their systems if they dont want to use it.

Take for instance my school. We have, for trials, migrated 2 workstations over from NT4 to WinXP in our CISCO lab. It comes with .NET Messenger (MSN Messenger), we cannot work out any way to remove this, and every day, we find some shmuck trying to use it. Why is it that we are unable to remove it? Is it a crucial part of the NT5 kernel??? Would XP cease to work without it??? NO! It is just bloat and pointless waste of space, and time.

So this is not just Anti-M$ bitching just for the sake of bitching. This is about M$ forcing its aplications down the throats of people who dont want it. Not everyone has a 40GB HDD, and why should we be forced to endure the waste of space and bloat of aplications we dont use???

Re:Design?

[IDIIAMOTS]

I'm not defending Microsoft and I'll admit that while I use their products I have quite a few gripes about the general state of Windows.

However, much like you I too have just recently made a transition from idialistic world of CS to the real world of software industry. I'd like to present a different take on situation if you'll bear with me, one offered without wearing the pink-engineering-my-product-must-be-perfection-ise lf glasses.

Over the years Microsoft has built up Windows into a commodity product (no glib remarks about marketing, please). The truth is, when the user buys a computer, I'm talking about an end-user purchasing a desktop system and not a server, they are purchasing an experience. The ability to write letters, check e-mail, listen to music, make home videos. How the machine helps them achieve these tasks is irrelevant. Right now, Windows plus some office suite (Works or Office) cover 90% of everything majority of users wish to do on their machine.

Now let's take a look at the OEMs. They ship machines with 90% of MS software, and while the OEM is responsible for the support of the system, they know that by having an all-Microsoft cast on the system they are assured interoperability. The OEM, thus, is not in the business of working the kinks out of their particular "distribution" of "computer usage experience". While the users may think of buying a "Dell" or "Gateway", who do they bash when their machines become finicky? Why Microsoft of course. There's a single point of blame in the industry.

If Windows on the desktop were to become modular, someone will have to pick up the resonsibility for ensuring consistent user experience and compatibility of middleware. Since modularizing Windows would mainly benefit vendors and through them users, it seems obvious that it is the OEM that should be assigned with such responsibility. Would Dell and Gateway really accept a new paragraph in their job description with profit margin being as thin as they are now? Call me a cynic, but I think in the end Microsoft will be stuck with this job. Moreover, the stigma of "I bought a Dell but it's Microsoft I blame" will hardly go away immediately once modularized Windows with 3-rd party middleware systems start shipping.

So in the end Microsoft ends up with extra chores, which IMHO are not their concern, even as a punishment, dilution of their brand image by products that are out of their influence (and they truly are, as any attempt to bring misbehaving 3-rd party vendor would surely be interpreted as anti-trust violation). No surprise they are opposed to this particular remedy, monopoly non-withstanding.

How can it NOT be modular?

[hillct]

Recently I've looked at a number of extremely complex software development projects. What I've seen - and this should be blatently obvious to any software development project manager - is that it is impossible to successfully develop complex software systems without making them modular.

Not only is modular structure required for design by a large development staff, but it is also required in order to facilitate future patching and upgrades.

Also, consider for a moment, the wording used my microsoft atourneys:

[Windows] was not designed to be modular

The question is not the design intent. The question is Is It In Fact Modular? I maintain that it could not have been written in a way that is not modular. While it might be possible to intentionally obfuscate it's mosularity, from a software design and loadbuild perspective, there is no way it could possibly function if it were not modular.

This does not preclude the possibility that from a consumer perspective the system does not appear modular. In order to meet the demands of the ramaining states in the antitrust case, Microsoft may have to replace vertain functions with stubs to facilitate the consumer-side modularity. This should be a trivial matter for a software development organization capable of producing such a vast system.

--CTH

Re:Design?

[TheConfusedOne]

Yes, let's take a loot at the OEM's.

Microsoft has reduced them to mere box pushers. Over the years, MS has removed every option that the OEM's have had to customize their offerings. When OEM's tried to go their own way MS threatened to remove their licenses for "dilluting the Windows trademark". Compaq wanted to offer Netscape. IBM wanted to offer SmartSuite and OS/2 dual boots. Other companies created their own custom GUI overlays. MS deliberately and systematically shut them all down.

So, Microsoft removed customization, they welded IE into Windows in an attempt to make it irremovable. Maybe they even succeeded.

The problem is that all of these actions were done solely to maintain or increase their monopoly. These actions weren't undertaken to make a better product. Since these actions have been deemed illegal and anticompetitive, then too bad if it's difficult to undo them.

Ironically

[A_Non_Moose]

I recall saying that the exclusive/secret OEM contracts should be the first to go, as a penalty.

True to form, this comment was ignored. No big deal.

Recently, when Gateway's CEO spoke up on this very issue, I saw my comment on abolishing OEM contracts "paraphrased verbatim"...including the 10 year moratorium I'd suggested.

I found this amusing, but it also got me thinking of how this could be improved.

Well, frequently invoked or ignored is the "grandma/joe6pack" arguement and could best be brought to the attention of those it affects the most:
1) No exclusive/secret contracts between ms and oems, period, for 10 years.
2) No OEM preinstalls/rescue disks on/for machines for those 10 years.
3) force ms to *support* all its OS's (9x/NT) for 10 years after release (this will decrease the upgrade treadmill, I think)
4) If windows is to be put on a machine (as per #2): The customer will have to purchase it directly from MS (thus getting rid of the EULA loophole where refunds can't be give because you did not "buy it *directly* from MS" and make people aware of the actual *cost* of the software).
5) and finally: Bugs/Features/security holes should be *fixed* in a timely manner.
By this I mean; if I don't want Outlook/OE, IE, WMP, .NET, IM, IIS, PWS or anything else (I, or another customer requests be removed) MS *must* provide the tools to remove it, without "crippling the os".

I'm sure the 98lite team would be perfect for providing insight on how to do it, if they need help. :)
.

Re:Windows IS modular

[Kibo]

Not really.

Things like cool bar are part of IE, but are also part of windows. If MS did what the states wanted it, whatever it would be, would not be windows. The users would have no way of knowing before hand if they had the right chuncks of the operating system to install supposedly windows software. The funny thing is, the market would kick this idea to death. Microsofts success is built on the idea that people want a common method to easily exchange information, and they care about the commonality and intuitive ease of use more than anything else, especially reliability. A hodge podge of frankenwindows would reduce that commonality, and everyone would flock to windows as we know and love to revile it on slashdot. Sure there might be a market for it places like cash registers, but that's a pretty small market that already has a lot of windows in it. Not to mention that all of this work the states ask microsoft to do will cost money, which will do nothing to push the cost of a windows license below 15 bucks, which is what 2000 goes for now, and ME etc used to go for. XP home is probably 15, pro maybe more.

What's really stupid is, they've already got their wish of a sort of bastard windows. Wine on linux would almost certainly work better than randomly removing windows componants.

Oh, and oem's do modify their versions of windows, in mostly cosmetic ways. (Adding things like support buttons to the "my computer" properties sheet. Almost every oem used to replace ms fax with something else etc.)

Windows is the common marketplace where people sell their software, microsoft makes it's coin of making it common, and charging admission. The states are proposing to make it a marketplace where no one can be sure they can use the software other people are selling, and no one can be sure they are making software all the people can, and want, to use.

But I don't think the states really want that anyway. My personal theory is that they see MS's $36B in cash and they see a quick way to make up their states budget shortfalls. The right or wrong of the matter doesn't really apply as they are lawyers and sophists by nature. They got a lot of money from the tabacco companies that most of the states didn't spend on "prevention" or set aside for health care costs. So search for another company with deep pockets, rinse lather repeat.

Re:Windows IS modular

[YellowElf]

The reason for all this confusion has to be that our definitions are all fuzzy. Microsoft seems to love fuzzifying things to allow its doublespeak. Of course removing IE will mean Windows isn't Windows, but then removing Solitaire also would mean the same thing in the same sense, even though nothing breaks.

Windows has become (has always been?) more than an OS in the strictest sense: a set of interfaces accessible to code which allows other code--including itself--to control the various parts of the computer. For sanity's sake, an architecture of items such as user identity and authorization, component and subsystem abstraction, and consistent user interface are provided to promote a convenient and reliable operation.

Obviously there are parts of Windows that, when removed, cause no problems--such as Solitaire. Some are required for normal user interaction, such as the GUI, but really aren't strictly necessary. (Other OSes work just fine without a GUI, thank you, and are in some cases, desirable.)

Microsoft clouds the issue by pretending that these components can't be modularized, but they can. How else would something as "vital" as IE be downloadable and updatable, or something as "deep" as DirectX be installed with retail games? They also cloud the issue by claiming that they have to ship a broken Windows to comply, but that is patently false. No one is talking about breaking Windows, but replacing Microsoft's components with different, working ones. Instead of IE, you have Netscape; instead of Media Player, you have RealPlayer.

Of course Microsoft's real issue is that they know this componentization will lead to readily substitutable parts, even of the OS itself. Such commoditization destroys their precious, precious, selfish cash cow because all the interfaces are defined for each module. Then they would actually have to compete on the merits, a situation that they have studiously made extremely difficult for anyone else to do. The monopoly would be destroyed.

This also brings up a difficult, separate issue: who defines the interfaces? There's the initial Microsoft-defined ones, but after componentization occurs, what next? There is a benefit to a centralized control I think, but everyone wants to be in control here. Design by committee is notoriously difficult and slow--OpenGL 2.0, anyone?

Another issue is, are we really ready to regulate what Windows as a product may or may not contain, and how it should be designed? Microsoft would have to make some effort to clean up its interfaces and design, as well as create the specification documentation necessary to comply with this request. They could do it, but they would cry about the trillions of dollars they would be losing in the process, only to commoditize Windows and see the selling price drop over time. Gosh, competition! But who is best to regulate this? John Ashcroft? The Microsoft Oversight Committee? Good questions, but really Microsoft has brought all this consternation on itself as it pushes every moral boundary it can find in the name of legalism.

But the idea that modularizing Windows destroys the common interface that we all benefit from is preposterous. How does Netscape break the IE interface? How does RealPlayer counter common look-and-feel? And how does making these downloadable and updatable, in the same way that DirectX is, cause problems for the end user? It only requires a fully published API, which Microsoft steadfastly refuses. Who cares which one you have, as long as it meets the specifications? Oh, it's that merit thing again.

It doesn't seem to me that the states want Microsoft's money. I don't see any compensation requests in any proposals. The real issue is that Microsoft makes people angry, mostly by its questionable borderline and over-the-borderline behavior. Then they put on their "who, me?" face, and complain about how everyone is unfairly against them. I'm not sure whether it's reasonable to allow the DOJ or other parties to regulate Windows, but since Microsoft won't control it's monopoly in a non-predatory fashion, whom else do you suggest?