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Microsoft's New Hurdles
gnuadam writes "The New York Times (free reg. required) is now running a
piece about how the recently accepted
settlement between Microsoft and the DOJ will affect the ever-so-loving relationship between them and the "worldwide community of volunteer programmers" who work on Linux and associated programs. Of interest, one interviewee quipped, "My prediction is that within three years time, Microsoft will `give away' its operating system to preserve its revenue in the applications business." Would Microsoft give away Windows to sell Office? Stay tuned." Update: 11/04 19:33 GMT by T : In related news, an anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Linux and Main Free Software Foundation General Counsel Eben Moglen reacts to Friday's U.S. v. Microsoft ruling and describes how it and 'trusted computing' will figure in formulating the next version of the GPL, expected in the next few months."
What would be a fair settlement is Microsoft doing exactly that. GPL'ing Windows would then allow a Red Hat Windows (if they so chose) or whatever. It would create competition in the desktop os category (or os for idiots category...call it what you will). Personally, I don't see them as a monopoly but it makes things difficult when exchange users continually spread worms thus causing the internet excess traffic thanks to the infectious messages being transmitted.
Gorkman
1. Free operating systems like Linux will become more popular. Revenue on Windows will drop and cease to be profitable.
2. Microsoft will get into the service market. Be it enterprise services, or internet/media (they're not close to the xxAAs' positions for nothing), the nature of their core product will change.
Giving the platform away will only encourage both enterprise and home users to go with the services that make the OS useful. Whether or not this is a Good Thing for the open-source community, I guess, is yet to be seen.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
Ignore the noise.
Keep coding.
Keep releasing.
That's what will win the battle.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
as time extends out, the need for a "visible" operating system" is going to be less and less necessary. The OS will be a part of the hardware. When was the last time you upgrade the operating software of your television?
As OS's become invisble, the need for upgrading them is going to be lost on consumers, so MS would have a hard time trying to sell it as a product. It will become a commodity only.
I think MS's only options for maintaining a business model are to either expand into other software areas (there aren't many left) or to start renting software, which they seem inline to do.
The Linux strategy is to undercut Microsoft,
Wow, is this really the Linux mission statement? I thought it was more about making a great operating system for free, not controlling the market.
This article really doesn't say anything, and says the above quite wrongly I think. I doubt Microsoft will ever give away windows...that would be an interesting day if they did. Over here in East Germany, almost everybody uses StarOffice because it's free and just as good. Free Windows and Free StarOffice...nobody would complain (except microsoft)!
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
The first, as you appear to assume (apologies if I'm misinterpreting where you're coming from), is that Microsoft opens Windows in the same way as AOL opened Netscape Communicator, or Sun opened StarOffice. This, however, seems unlikely - what would it benefit them?
The other is that Microsoft "gives away" Windows like bars "give away" peanuts, or in software terms, like Microsoft already "gives away" Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Sun "gives away" Java. Microsoft continues to control the platform, and could offer any number of degrees of openness, including none whatsoever. However, Microsoft allows users to freely distribute its product, to obtain it for free.
By doing the latter, Microsoft controls the APIs. At the same time, competition is reduced for the operating system because any cost advantage disappears and alternatives repidly become (er, always were?) the province of an interested minority rather than the mainstream majority.
I can certainly see the latter being possible. If it means giving the OS out for free for Microsoft to continue to control the APIs, then all precedents are that they will do this. Whatever it takes. The means justifying the ends. Microsoft has certainly given away software for free in the past, software that's phenominally expensive to develop, in order to crush potential rival APIs (such as with MSIE) and has made enemies and reduced the power of its own system because of a desire to prevent a new API from being controlled by an outside party (as they did to Intel when Intel came up with a Multimedia API, the details are in the FoF.) This is, in some ways, far sighted. Microsoft knows exactly what it needs to control in order to survive. And that's what it's doing.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It does mean that those who bought computers three years ago could get the latest software from Microsoft for free... and let it whip their three-year-old computer into a frothing frenzy of unimpressive performance. This is why so very few people actually buy a complete version or an update of an operating system. The prerequisites typically require new hardware which has for many years come with a free copy of the operating system.
I'm fully aware that this does not actually represent the economics of bundled OSs, but this is definitely the perception to the end user. Besides, if it is impossible to buy a laptop without a copy of Windows, we might as well count it as a hardware expense anyway.
Giving away their OS would be a great way for Microsoft to drum up interest in hardware upgrades. It certainly isn't a huge change from their current marketing strategy.
Oh, and by the way, bundling Windows with every laptop and virtually every desktop sold in the last 10 years has not been very effective at squashing Linux in the home. If they give away their OS in a cardboard box rather than a steel box it won't be any different.
Microsoft's own Steve Ballmer: "Linux is a tough competitor."
Sombebody's been lying...
This completely inane (I mean it, what I wrote IS inane!) moral sermon brought to you by someone who's not an AC. (now just try to figure out what I mean by that...)
.. I'm pretty confident we'll see MS giving away Windows very soon after they get Palladium and Digital Restrictions Management up and running properly.
The reason being is that they know damn well that Palladium has the benefit of:
1. Consistent, adjustable revenue streams
2. Heavy network effects (as in, good luck finding an Open Office to translate Palladium documents)
3. Governmental backing
4. Removing unwanted illegal evidence
5. Burying free software.
The only trick to getting all of these is to get a widespread base of people using Palladium in the first place. What better way then to "concede" victory to Linux in the OS market and start giving away Windows? This would take away the one immediately tangible benefit that Linux boosters can point to.
My reasoning to these benefits can be found at this here.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Same thing that the original article means, the author is speaking out the back of his trousers.
Microsoft has no intention to make Windows free, the anonymous comment came from a Linux weenie in need of a clue, the revenue comment was a deliberate troll.
The Microsoft decision means only that the states lost and in the process the cases brought by Sun et al were gutted. Sure they can rely upon the monopoly findings by Jackson, but the appeals court threw out the singificant ones. In particular CK-K found that Microsoft had a right to bundle an incompatible VM. Microsoft has a right to rely on that finding of fact in the Sun suit.
Microsoft will publish a small amount of additional information about their product. That is pretty unimportant since what is really needed is for Microsoft to write an architecture guide for Windows. VMS used to be like Windows, a vast operating system with an amazing amount of complexity. The key to understanding the 'gray wall' was a single volume called the VMS architecture guide. If you read that you knew how to use the rest of the documentation. There is no single similar guide for Windows, there are twenty partial attempts.
My experience of programmers set to work on Windows stuff is that they frequently cry 'Microsoft is the fault' when the real problem is that they can't be bothered to read the manual. Blaming Microsoft is a great excuse for the lazy or incompetent programmer. Now Microsoft certainly does not put out all the info it should, but don't think that it is any different out there in Redmond. If you work with those guys you will soon hear them complaining of having to do the type of reverse engineering that non Microsofties complain of.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I realize that your posting panders to the "Microsoft bad...everything else good" crowd, however I would like to call you on a few assumptions.
a) What amazing abilities does Microsoft Office derive via these secret covert hooks that the source to the OS will reveal? This is an oft stated claimed, and I'm curious what the thought process is behind it. Will the "MakeOfficeProgramGreat()" API call suddenly make Open Office that much better? Of course this is all moot anyways as open source programs usually don't capitalize on OS specific hooks even where there are advantages.
b) While this might be hard for the kids to believe, Microsoft Office earned the position that it's in right now. I recall when it was an underdog, and then review after review after review found it to be best. While it's far from perfect, in any overall, non-biased comparison it came out on top. It's my personal opinion that Open Office doesn't even remotely compare with Office XP.
c) This same thing can be said about virtually any other MS program. I run Microsoft SQL Server because it's a very powerful, cost effective database system. I use Visual Studio.NET because it's a fantastic development environment that I've never used a rival to.
MS was virtually non-existant in the applications space till the Windows OS (with its secret apis) became a desktop standard
Well, that isn't 100% true, which of course means that it isn't 100% false also.
What MS did do, was buy, early and completely, into the windowing metaphor. They did make use of undocumented MS Windows APIs, yes. But I really don't believe that made any substantive difference between their products and the competitors.
For example, before MS Windows was ever released, even in V1.0 form, MS was working on its Excel application, on the Mac. Not only that, they listened to the customers and Apple's user interface gurus on how to improve the product. The end result was that when MS Windows 1.0 came out, MS had a reasonably good worksheet program for it; and had a several year head start on the competition in how to create windowed applications.
Anyone who claims that building windowed applications is the same, and a quick port, from DOS based ones hasn't even had to do that port. It isn't easy or intuitive.
Add on to this the fact that many or MS competitors tried to create menu structures and interface conventions different from the "standard" (which, yes, was written by MS) only hurt them. I remember many journalists making a mark for themselves in the early Mac and MS Windows days by just finding and attacking those products which didn't follow the guidelines. (This was particularly true in the Apple world, where not following the guidelines was tantamount to being a satanist during the Spanish Inquisitions.)
Microsoft has done many illegal and morally corrupt actions in their history, including the use of undocumented APIs. But that use of "hidden" APIs was not the main reason their applications succeeded and others failed.
I don't see things in black and white; I see the gray. Heck, I actually see in color, which makes things more difficult
Think on this for a moment. When Microsoft developed the Win32 API, one of the design goals was to take full advantage of the 32 bit chips from Intel. No problem. The other design goal was to make it as backwards-compatible as possible with Win16 and OS/2. Serious problem. While developers were able to easily port Windows 3.x apps to 95 and NT, the OS was crippled.
Just as an example, the worst part of NT's core security protocol, NTLM, was not even written by Microsoft. It was coded by IBM for OS/2... and left in for backwards-compatability.
Fast forward to the present. Microsoft Windows, as a platform, is insanely difficult to develop for (unless you are using VB). The learning curve to get started with C or C++ is insane. (eg: COM, COM+, OLE, OLE2, OLEDB, ATL, MFC, ADO, RDO, etc.) Not to mention the cost of getting your hands on Visual Studio.
Linux, on the other hand, is easy to develop for. The tools are free, the compiler is free, and getting your code up and running is as simple as make, make install. It is one of the biggest advantages Linux has (forget security and stability for a moment). Also, Java never worked out on Windows. Even with the WFC extentions, Windows developers never used it to code Win32 apps.
Now, however, MS has .NET. Thanks to its deployment mechanism (assemblies), its somewhat unique object code (CLI, the rough equivilent of Java's VM), and its code libraries (covering about 99% of the Win32 API, but not dependent on Win32), .NET is in a position to make Win32 obsolete.
My guess is that the interviewee is right. MS's next version of Windows will most likely be a platform for .NET, with a stripped down API for 'native' apps. And MS wants .NET ported to everything. In fact, becuase the JITC compiles down to assembly, how much effort would it take to port .NET to Linux? On the IA-32 platform? That the JITC already compiles to? Think on that for a while.
Windows is dead. .NET lives.
MS is in the business of selling software.
That is the first mistake that people make when trying to understand Microsoft. They don't sell software but, rather, they sell you the right to use it for a preset amount of time.
Businesses do not have the right to transfer licenses - we saw that with the Kmart fiasco. Now that the licenses are tied to hardware, consumers do not have the right to keep their MS software when they buy a new PC.
So really, one can only rent the software. This is where the DOJ went wrong - they need to force MS to license users and not hardware or legal entities.
"Hi - thank you from ordering from Dell. To finalize your order, please give me your Microsoft Windows and Office license numbers and we can eliminate that cost for you right now."
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
The difference being that Sun wasn't giving the system away to sell software. Their business plan never really made sense to me; I'm sure that the widespread use of serverside Java has helped to sell a few systems, but mostly it seems to be a bit of charity. MSFT OTOH, in this scenario, would be giving away the .NET system so that they could sell their software; a connecton that seems to be a lot more direct.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
...giving away... essentially free...
Umm.... No.
If I'm a white-box OEM I have to pay ~$65 for XP Home or ~$105 for XP Pro at _miniumum_. This is for a sticker only. No CD, Manual, nothing. Office SBE is ~$150 and office pro is ~$250. Lets say some random person wants a $650 PC, for general purposes and working at home. The Microsoft tax is 33% of the purchase price. I'd hardly call that giving away!!
Step into the wayback machine for a moment. It is early Fall 1992. I want a commodity PC. I'll have to spend about $2100 to get a reasonable system. Dos, Win3.1 for OEMs was less than $80. Office 4.0 (I think it was out then??) was about $85 for OEMs. This is about 7% of the purchase price of the PC.
Dell, et al, have had to fight with MS tooth and nail to get non-ms products on their machines. Dell has some sort of really sweet deal on windows-- about $40 for the cheap version. Suddenly, MS wants to charge Dell $139 for that copy of XP Home because Dell is bundling RedHat. Or MS wants the volume agreement to include _every_ PC produced by dell to be licensed for MS Operating systems.
And lets not even talk about some OEM copies of NT Server and 2000 Server-- Copies of windows that can not possibly be upgraded to more than 10 concurrent connections. You have to buy the "retail" version and your previous OEM version doesn't count toward upgrade. If by " pretty much Free" you mean "pretty much free" as in the same sense the local neighborhood crack dealer means "free", then, yes, I guess the oem copies of MS's stuff is "free".
Windows XP Pro runs very well on our 3 year old PIII 550/256 mb ram systems. They used to have Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. XP runs remarkably well on these PCs. 2000 was slightly slower than NT4, but more stable, so I don't completely agree with the your apparent assesment that a retail software purchases don't really do any good.
Considering the licensing requirements of SP3 can put a compliant company on the wrong side of the law (1, 2) I would not consider it to be free (in any sense of the term). But considering the number of problems/issues that SP3 supposedly addresses (in the areas of "application compatibility, operating system reliability, security, and setup"), leaving your system as is (in a potentially vulnerable state) is also not something that people would feel free to do. Because of one law, they are in violation if they don't patch, and because of Microsoft's licensing, they're in violation of the law if they do patch.
So forcing users to make/keep their computers ineligible to be used legally seems to me to be a rather significant loss of functionality.
Never use a lawyer to fix an economic condition. Throughout history, whenever a particular company has a commanding lead in a particular market, its gross profit margin is very high.
Examples of former companies with high gross profit margins in their industries: IBM (computing), Rockefeller oil company (oil industry), US Steel (steel).
Why is this the case? Because hardly anyone knew anything about the business of that industry at the time because it was tied to a new technology. The oil and steel were tightly attached to the automobile, train, electrical appliances, and electrical machine industries.
In each of these cases, it took the consumer and technological investments from other companies to overtake these companies and make them just another company in the industry.
Forget what the government does--it matters what you do and how you (the person or the manager) spend your money that determines the outcome of Microsoft and any other monopoly. Research your decisions properly and make a wise business investment based on 1) your company's goals, 2) your division's goals, and 3) your ideas about the technology industry and how it can be used as a tool.
I truely believe that if people simply research the many different ways to solve a problem using technology that Microsoft would be by now simply one of many software companies out there.
How is it free? They look in the newspaper and see "I can buy this computer for $1295". They go to the store, and they buy a "computer". At no point whatsoever does it go through their mind that they are buying "a computer and Windows". They bring it home and turn it on. It is running Windows. At no point did the consumer ever think they were "buying Windows". At no point does the average consumer even have the tiniest smidgen of any concept of "I could save money by not buying Windows". For the average consumber Windows is FREE! in that it has no perceived cost!
If MicroSoft gave Windows away for free, *all* computers would go down a few hundred in price because of the elimination of the "MicroSoft Tax". The result would be about the same as it is now, to the end user Windows is just as free as before. The fact that a computer is cheaper may be noticed, but the percieved cost of Windows would remain zero.