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Dave Stutz's Parting Advice To Microsoft
thasmudyan writes "Like probably many others I followed the recent link to Heise only to get a much more interesting story than the one about Mozilla/OpenOffice: Dave Stutz, an influencial guy at Microsoft, is resigning his position. He posted an open letter to his ex-employer and this rest of the world, explaining what MS is doing wrong in his opinion. I thought it made an interesting read, maybe Open Source projects should consider some of the key points (as MS seems to be too slow to adapt, it may be good time to move faster than 'the industry')." (Read this Slashdot post from 2001 to see an interesting interview with Stutz about "shared source" and .NET.)
He used a Microsoft security hole to go back in after he left and post it on their website.
What was this guy doing at some random company selling windows, desktops and office material? I know it's impressive they can fold windows and even whole offices into small lightweight boxes, but personally I only trust hard heavy furniture.
This note was originally published at John Munsch weblog on January the 14th.
.NET to fail and fail badly
.NET "rebuttal" that I linked to above, "For non-profit use VS.NET can be had pretty cheaply, especially if you know anyone that is in college somewhere." Pretty cheaply? For a non-profit (that means charities, churches, universities, the hobbiest who is going to give away his work for FREE)... pretty cheaply? Wow. That is well and truly pathetic. To try and justify it, and say, oh well, you can try to scam an educational discount so it won't be so dear, is even more pathetic.
.NET commercials with William H. Gacy telling you how great it is without really ever telling you anything about it? Microsoft doesn't trust .NET to stand on its own technical merits and it knows it may go like cod-liver oil down the gullets of a lot of people who have seen how the company works behind closed doors even if it were the tech shiznit.
.NET just in case there wasn't any grassroots community who actually wanted to do it. Or maybe just in case there was and they couldn't control it.
.NET for other platforms? If those same people were working on giving us new libraries and new tools for an already existing language instead of pouring in the thousands of man hours it's going to take to build a copy of the C# compiler or a .NET version of Ant and JUnit?
Lots of reasons why I want
It's benefits a criminal organization. Not one that's been found guilty of crimes once or maybe twice, but lots and lots of times. Those crimes are many and varied, but here's just a few of them: Stac Electronics v. Microsoft, DOJ v. Microsoft, Sun v. Microsoft.
P.S. If you want to split hairs, Stac v. Microsoft isn't a criminal action, it's doesn't stem from a criminal abuse of their monopoly like the other two cases. Instead it was just a case of a small company being driven out of business by willful patent infringement, theft of trade secrets, etc.
Microsoft isn't just one thing anymore. It's too damn big for that. I'm sure even Bill himself knows better than to think that he truly controls the whole ship because it's become big enough that he can't possibly know all the projects, people, etc. anymore. But even a really large company still has a kind of collective personality that it exudes and a large part of the personality both internal and external to Microsoft for many years now is that of a total control freak.
If they don't own it, if they don't control it, if they didn't create it, if it doesn't have a broad stamp from Microsoft on it, then they don't want it. Sometimes it's sufficient for the thing to merely exist and they'll refuse to acknowledge it, other times they need to actively stamp it out because they can't control it.
When was the last time you can remember Microsoft saying they supported a standard? That is, not something they invented and submitted a RFC for, an actual, take it off the shelf and re-implement it without renaming it or "improving" it so it doesn't work with anybody else standard. C++? Basic? HTML? A video or audio codec? Java? Anything?
I'm sure there's something, somebody will point out their excellent support for TCP/IP or something and I'm sure that's true. But if you were to look at Microsoft as a person in your life, you'd wonder what was wrong with him or her such that so much had to be controlled by that person.
When your business is selling the operating systems that 90+% of everybody uses, software development tools should not be a profit center.
Why should I have to plunk down a couple of thousand dollars for a "universal subscription" in order to have access to compilers and basic development information? Sun doesn't have to do that? On this point I'll quote from the
Marketing. Have you been "lucky" enough to catch one of the
So they are going to pull a page out of Intel's bum-bum-buh-bum "Intel Inside" playbook and try to sell the brand like it's sneakers and cola. Trust us, you'll look cool if you use it, and we'll keep hammering the brand on TV so somebody who doesn't have much tech savvy in your organization will ask you if you are using it, or have plans to port to it, or whatever, even if he hasn't got a clue what "it" is in this case.
They don't trust you. They don't like what they can't control and they can't control you. They can try and they always will keep trying but ultimately you are going to see them keep trying to do things and always keep a step towards the door just so they can bolt if they have to. Want to see what I mean? Go visit GotDotNet sometime if you haven't already been there. It's the grassroots community website that Microsoft put up to support
Ever been to SourceForge? Of course you have, everybody has because that's one of the hubs of all open source projects. You can go there and get the source of thousands of cool open source projects and it really serves the community well. There's even hundreds of projects now that list C# among their programming languages. So why did Microsoft feel compelled to create their own GotDotNet Workspaces that is clearly just a ripoff of SourceForge?
A few reasons are fairly clear: First, at many of their workspaces you don't get in unless they know who you are. Ever been stopped at SourceForge and asked for a name and password to look at a project? What about download binaries or source? No? At GotDotNet you will, lots of projects are marked with a lock. Second, forget about all those messy licenses that Microsoft might not approve of, you don't need to worry your little head about BSD vs. GPL vs. LGPL. You've got the one true workspace license that you have to agree to, or else you won't be putting your project there. Lastly, well it's kind of obvious, but it's really all about control isn't it. After all, if you aren't under their thumb, that has to be a bad thing. So a SourceForge that they control is pretty much a requirement, isn't it?
It's a really sad way for a lot of people to waste a whole lot of time rebuilding that which already exists. Wouldn't the whole computing world be a lot better if there wasn't a team of people, maybe a couple of teams of people building complete copies of
In the end, we'll all just be left with another way to do the exact same thing only in a different language. Lord knows the world benefits now from being unable to share media between France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the US, and Japan because we can't all speak the same language. I benefit every day from the fact that I can't read a Japanese manga I might enjoy or understand a TV show from Europe. Once you are done building this tower, go build a few more right beside it using Perl, Python, and Ruby too. They're all trailing behind in certain areas, we need to make sure the same set of stuff is reinvented and rewritten for all of them too.
Visit TheOpenCd.org project burn copies for you and for any businesses or schools you know. each copy you give away is 4-500 dollars Microsoft does not make or hold people in a strangelhold.
/ in dex.html
http://www.theopencd.org/mirrors.php
the ISO is about 300 megs or if you want Office alone
get it at:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/1.0.2
Linux already has enough ground an influence to make Microsoft want a piece of that pie... They will try to do something 'innovative' with it, hoping to control that too. And as I read in a story a few months ago, they may just build the next Windows on Linux, but I doubt we will see something quite like that.
But what if M$ tries to get in the Linux market? Would you guys use it? I mean, is it about Linux to you guys or strictly OSS?
Well, he is not so much telling them to embrace open source, but to borrow from them.
More specifically, he thinks Microsoft needs to stop looking over it's shoulder and actually invent and innovate, intead of maintaining the status quo.
He is also saying that Microsoft has not yet realized that software is nearing the end of its life as a shrinkwrapped-box product. It is quickly becoming just a commodity, and part of an overall package.
One other point he made is that the One-Size-Fits-All approach does not always work anymore - i.e., people don't need a whole Office Suite, or a whole Windows platform for some things. They may just want one little piece of it.
Overall, a pretty good read, nothing ground-breaking or anything.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
it's not been uncommon these past years for MS employees to expand their embrase by leaving on such supposed terms that allows them to be accepted elsewhere where they otherwise would not be. And in time to undermine any competitive ability against MS, of where they go. Note: such leaving doesn't mean they sold their stock in MS.
.net patent applications should be enough indication of MS intent to bait and switch and commit acts of entrapment, etc....
AS an example: what remains of the Amiga Intellectual Property is now controlled bith directlky and indirectly by MS thru Gateway held patents and an agreement they have with MS and former MS employees now in important positions at Amiga Inc.
The Recent
Here on slashdot even, there is an infilteration of MS from the spectrum of buying ad space to posters.
He, rather eloquently, makes the point that has been made over and over again here on /. about what MS should do. It also points out weak points in MS's strategy that need to be exploited. The question is who is best suited to take advantage of these ideas. Some companies seems to be headed in this direction but is anyone, commercial or Open Source, already on this path?
IMHO, I think that M$ will never be able to recover from these stigmata because M$ refuses to change. For example, I go to the University of Wisconsin Platteville and we aren't going to be able to renew our M$ contract for next year. Why? Because M$ has decided that the amount we paid a few years ago to renew is no longer sufficient even though we have not deployed any new software from them!
Another unfortunate side effect is that fact that the students who were able to purchase software at discounted educational prices are going to be hurt to discover that their licenses won't be valid any longer! So try explaining to a student who knows nothing about computers that the $30 he forked over for Office XP was just wasted.
"This food is problematic."
Right. We 'wannabe' wealthy criminals so badly that we offer our work freely to the world.
Step 2: profit!
Microsoft actually happens to adapt to things very quickly at times, in comparison to organizations with their size and complexity. Some large corporations take years to adapt to the presence of a new product, a new strategy, or a new competitor. Microsoft has, in the past, made big changes in weeks.
Sure, a small development team may be able to change directions more quickly, but that's an apples-to-oranges comparison.
So, if MS really wants to adapt to something, they will, and they will do it quickly, and they will roll over anyone who tries to stand in their way. And, as far as I see, their current strategy is still making money and is still leading the software industry.
Just for concession's sake, though... the fact that the open source movement (or for that matter, Apple) has been able to live and thrive on the niche markets and margins of the software/hardware industries is a great credit to their tenacity and robustness. It's a difficult market out there...
To my reading, that sounds more like a side effect of the arguement he's making, that the golden age of consisting soley on delivering closed consumer-end software packages is wrapping up (no pun intended).
I think what he's suggesting, and what I've been telling people for a while, is that to remain successful in its traditional markets (as opposed to entertainment, 24 hour news, etc), MS will have to migrate into a services-related role. IBM is doing, or trying to do, something like this for its business clients (although IMO they're being symied by pushback from ground-level people who can't get with the program). If MS could do this for the normal desktop user, allow them to use MS to do the hard stuff with their computers and use online resources to work, they'd have found a whole new area of potential to expoit.
The real questions are (a) will MS recognize this shift sooner than later, and (b) will they be able to refocus themselves into a mindset very different from the one which has made them a very successful company up until this point (as I mentioned, I notice that IBM is having serious problems with this -- even if the management of a company sees the shift, there's the obsticle of the ground-level know-it-alls who want to keep doing things the way they used to).
MS might be able to avoid problems with this given the necessarily lower level of direct customer interaction -- they can't send consultants to all of our homes -- but it's still a big change. They got a lot of press for "embracing the internet" back in '94 or '95, but really they just bought some new products. Their existing line is still struggling, as the author of the article noted, to utilize the potential offered them.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
To any seasoned observer, the points in his letter were obvious to the point of banality. They may seem like revelations to an "executive" (read: heard about the internet at HBS or on a golf course) audience, but to the rest of us (apologies to Woz), this is like an open letter declaring that the atmosphere contains nitrogen.
"Stop looking over your shoulder and invent something!"
That's just it: Microsoft has never invented anything. Everything Microsoft ever sold (with the possible exception of that first BASIC interpreter) they either bought or stole (sometimes both) from somwhere else. Microsoft can't innovate because they've never known how.
Some people seem to think that the letter suggests that Microsoft should embrace OSS or that the letter is saying something very positive about OSS. The letter does no such thing.
It's a very candid evaluation of what the threat of open source looks like from someone who is not really interested in the values and politics of the movement and doesn't see open source as innovative:
There you have it. His point, if you read the rest of the article, is that Microsoft is too focused on the PC-client side of things, and that's hopeless because anything Microsoft can create on the PC client document-centric side of things the Open Source "cloners" (his word) will just copy and give away for free, and this eats into MS's profit margin. He wants Microsoft to go into network-centric software that will presumably be difficult for open source to clone.
Basically, he sees OSS as cheap, inferior copies of MS's beautiful software (the "best client") not worthy of admiration except for the fact that cheap customers are willing to settle for the inferior thing.
"Any move towards cutting off alternatives by limiting interoperability or integration options would be fraught with danger, since it would enrage customers, "
He was spot on with this - they made MSN break Opera browsers and it sure pissed off a lot of people, (especially me).
I have a side question to any Yahoo staff here.
Your terms for being submitted to Yahoo Directory include the requirement that the site must work properly across different browsers.
You have MSN, msn uk etc. listed under Portals in the World Wide Web section.
Many of MSN portals still do not work properly in Opera. What procedure do you have in place for delisting those Microsoft sites that do not support different browser?
SO I ask this: how can a post asking a question about open source be offtopic?
... even if it is in PHB babble.
It's offtopic because the topic is a story on why a guy left Microsoft. NOT Mozilla or web browsers in general. If he wants his question answered, he can post it as an ask slashdot question!
On this topic, I hope M$ continues to ignore this guy. It could be very scary if they actually do anything he says
... also a very nice collection of free software for Windows. It's what I use, and I've been very happy with it.
:)
Plus the mascot is cute.
I really like this comment of his:
"...and disgruntled Microsoft wannabes have poured huge quantities of often inferior, but nonetheless requirements-driven, open source software"
synthesist.net runs on Apache.
it seems unlikely I'd use it. Not necessarily because it was MS, although that would be part of it ( as someone who ran an all Windows shop for years they've damned well *earned* my distaste).
No, it would be because they did it on the Apple model. Take an open source core and heavily wrap it in a propriatary shell.
Odds are I wouldn't like the shell either, and would be just as constrained from changing it as I am in changing Windows now ( where I have to hack the executable binary just to change the label on the "start" button).
I've already rejected a pure Linux company's offering for similar reasons. That would be Lycoris. Why should I accept MS's?
KFG
Some parts of it were coherent and insightful, but he also said stuff like:
Unfortunately, network protocols have turned out to be a far better fit for this middleman role, and Microsoft, intent on propping up the PC franchise, has had to resist fully embracing the network integration model. This corporate case of denial has left a vacuum, of course, into which hardware companies, enterprises, and disgruntled Microsoft wannabes have poured huge quantities of often inferior, but nonetheless requirements-driven, open source software.
Huh? Open sourcers are "disgruntled Microsoft wannabes"? Most open source software was created because either
a) There WAS no such program, and someone needed it
b) There was a program, but it lacked certain features/was too expensive/the author just wanted to write a new one, etc
He clearly understands how big a force the Open Source community is becoming, and how it will affect Microsoft - but he doesn't seem to grasp the reasons. And his remedy was very vague to me. So, Microsoft should stop looking over their shoulder, and go with network apps instead of their OS... what network apps would those be? Yeah, if Microsoft doesn't change and roll with the punches, they surely will be going down. But I'm not sure their future lies in some fluffy concept of platform-independent "networked applications". I don't think we'll see a networked linux version of Office anytime soon, but it's good to know the ol' 800 pound gorilla is starting to get anxious.
There's a lot of reasons Linux/OSS users don't use Microsoft:
Even if those issues were addressed, it doesn't change the fact that Microsoft's history has been one of "extend and embrace". Regardless of how good their Linux products would/could be, it would be difficult to accept them unless Microsoft changes as a company.
might be referring to James C. Christensen's book, "The Pelican King" having to do with the growth or aging of organizations related to becoming obselete quickly in a very innovative climate. Just quickly did some searching on this so I might be off though it seems like what he was getting at. Also, IIRC, Windows 95 was released and the Y2K scare was in sight at this time and so there was a massive upgrade cycle going on though network fed upgrades were not the norm.
That was also the time of the Internet wave, a phenomenon that Microsoft co-opted without ever really internalizing into product wisdom.
Microsoft was able to win the browser war and get Exchange and LookOut dominant but didn't/haven't been able to proprietize it or enable all their software to effectively use the network. That with the exception of their virus platform.
While those qualified to move the state of the art forward went down in the millennial flames of the dotcom crash,
Many of the innovative ideas and people had their business's collapse around them when the dotcom bust removed much of the funding. Again, a Christensen like reference to better/faster innovation happens in the smaller organizations.
Microsoft's rigorous belief in the physics of business reality saved both the day and the profits.
Might be realated to Microsoft owning the OEM channel and therefore maintaining profits because nobody else could sell their products directly into the channel. Profits keep flowing to Redmond while others lose them left and right.
But the tide had turned, and a realization that "the net" was a far more interesting place than "the PC" began to creep into the heads of consumers and enterprises alike.
It's the network stupid... And finally, that concept is getting accepted throughout the industry.
IMO, this is VERY important to Microsoft because 30% of it's profits come from a PC OS and another 30% come from using that PC OS monopoly to sell their office suite. Because Microsoft is losing the server war to Linux, their plan to make the network proprietary has been foiled while at the same time, their PC OS is becoming less and less important to consumers and the business world.
That's MY take on what that means.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
My favorite quotes:
Recovering from current external perceptions of Microsoft as a paranoid, untrustworthy, greedy, petty, and politically inept organization will take years.
Linux is certainly a threat to Microsoft's less-than-perfect server software right now (and to its desktop in the not-too-distant future)
My absolute favorite: Any move towards cutting off alternatives by limiting interoperability or integration options would be fraught with danger, since it would enrage customers, accelerate the divergence of the open source platform, and have other undesirable results.
There are many clever and motivated people out there, who have many different reasons to avoid buying directly into a Microsoft proprietary stack.
I like how he doesn't judge people who go against MS - he respects their intellect and their decision making process. OSS folks should do the same for those of us who make the decisions to use MS in certain areas.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
And you really think that closed source accepts responsibility for anything at all?? The difference between the two is that with OSS if you don't like something,and are willing to invest the time and effort, it can be changed.
really serves to show how out of touch with OSS he really is.
Naturally MS, and MS's employees, would be most aware of the OSS software specifically designed to make the switch easy for Windows users. This is also the software that the MS oriented computer press focuses on, and the software that new Linux users are most likely to come in contact with.
Just because the innovation is below your radar doesn't mean it's not there. Linux is now the OS of choice for those doing innovative work, particularly in the academic setting, most because it's the most viable OS for *doing* just such work. It's free, you have the source, and the right to dick with it all you want.
If he wants an example of something the OSS model has already produced he could start with the World Wide Frickin' Web.
KFG
Which you can't. BASIC was an academic teaching language developed at Dartmouth College.
Bill just wrote a propriatary interpreter.
KFG
That's his point. What do I spend time on my computer doing? Well, I use emacs (for coding), freeciv (for fun), slashdot and indymedia (for news).... What's out there on the net is as important as what's in here on my computer. It's a big shift -- and one M$ has been trying to ignore.
Of course, what's on the computer seems to make a whole lot more money than what's on the net, so this decision has done well for them so far. They just can't keep it up.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
What would it take to put a clause in the GNU license that says "except Microsoft" ;-).
That would be the "No Homers" clause.
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
I work at Microsoft, David Stutz was influential. He was the driving force behind the closest Microsoft has come to Open Source with his efforts on the Shared Source CLI. Your post is uninformed garbage.
Disclaimer: The above comments do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. They are solely my opinion.
No, OS is not "good" for you economically as a developer or for software producers. Consider this below:
The High Priests of the Bazaar
This paper presents a case against the open source movement and explains why the open source model does not work economically for the vast majority of those involved in the production of commercial software. There are several arguments against the OS (open source) model.
Open Source Doesn't Make Economic Sense For Most
The open source organization has presented a few cases that supposedly explain why OS works economically. However, if you examine the cases objectively you will find that the cases are flimsy and non-specific and do not address any specific concerns. They attempt to bolster their case by pointing out a few "successes", among which Caldera and Red Hat are displayed as shining examples.
The real economic question of the OS model is how is money made, and who is making the money. Who is being rewarded financially for the enormous development effort? The open source initiative claims that there are at least four different models that allow someone to reap rewards. Oddly, it is not mentioned that it is not necessarily the people who did the development work that gain financially.
The four primary business cases mentioned by OS proponents are "Selling Support", "Loss Leader", "Widget Frosting" and "Accessorizing."
The first case proposes that money can be made via selling support for the free software product. This is by far the strongest case and is proven to work, for a few small companies. The two companies that are shown as positive examples of this business model are Red Hat and Caldera, who distribute and support the Linux operating system. What is never mentioned is that neither of these two companies has contributed significantly in relative terms to the Linux development process. Its important to note that using this business model, the people that make the money are usually not the ones who have invested in the development process. So much for the strongest case.
The second case is based on the idea that you give away a product as open source so you can make money selling a closed source program. This also can work, but it should be noted that the money is being made off the closed source product and not off of the open source. An example of this model would be Netscape, who gives away the source code of their client browser so the OS community can do development, but keeps their "cash cow" products completely closed. Obviously, this case may only work if you have a software product that lends itself to this sort of "give away the razor and make money on the blades" system. The truth is that the vast majority of software is monolithic. So much for the loss leader case.
The third case, "Widget Frosting", sounds completely practical. The premise that hardware makers produce open source software so that the OS development community will work for free to produce better drivers and interface tools for their hardware products. It sounds great on the surface, especially for the company that produces the hardware: they get free drivers and do not have to pay for expensive developers. The OS community wins by getting presumably stable drivers and tools. What is not mentioned is the reason hardware makers usually don't do this is because they do not want to reveal trade secrets regarding their hardware design. Production of efficient drivers requires an intimate knowledge of the hardware the driver is for. It is almost always the case that it is in the hardware developers' best interest to keep their hardware secrets close to home. This also brings up the question of why isn't hardware "open"? So much for the frosting case.
The final case, "Accessorizing", is similar to the first, but throws in the idea of selling books and complete systems with the open source software, and other accessories as well. It is obvious that selling books qualifies as support, and that it really belongs in the first case. The idea of selling computer systems, T-Shirts, dolls, again begs the question: "Who is making the money?" As with the first case, it is not necessarily the people who have done the development work. Additionally, the question of how much money can be made selling books, t-shirts, mugs, etc, is never answered. O'Reilly Associates is frequently used as an example to be a company who has made money using this case. The reader should notice that O'Reilly Associates are not the people doing the development work. Indeed, it is never asked why all the O'Reilly books are not available for free or at least at manufacturing cost? This also brings up the question of why isn't book production "open"? Perhaps they are waiting to see if they could sell enough O'Reilly T-Shirts to pay their bills. So much for the accessories.
Open Source Does Not Necessarily Produce Better Software
The open source proponents frequently state that OS necessarily produces better software. This statement is made without any evidence. Indeed, there is evidence to the contrary. GCC is a standard compiler produced by the GNU organization. It lags its commercial counterparts in both efficiency and features. The reason behind is illustrates the largest weakness in the OS plan. It is very hard to convince qualified engineers that they should do such boring and unglamorous work without any sort of financial reward. The idea of throwing large quantities of people at the source does not work in this case, since there are not large quantities of qualified individuals available.
Open Source Did Not Make the Internet Successful
Another statement made by the OS community is that somehow open source was responsible for the success of the Internet. The reason behind this is probably a result of the confusion between what is open source and what is an open protocol. It is easy to see that the foundation of the Internet was built on open protocols. This does not equate to open source, for the two are quite different. The vast majority of the machines on the Internet run on closed source operating systems running mostly closed source software, which communicate using open protocols.
Where Does Open Source Work?
Open source does work in certain cases. A good example of where it may work well is Netscape. The act of giving away the source to the OS community so they can work for free and produce a product that helps the sales of their server software was a stroke of genius and proved very profitable for the relatively few at Netscape. But is this truly making money off of open source? Isn't the money is made off of the closed source software?
Another example of where it does work is the aforementioned Red Hat. Red Hat has been successful making money off of the work of thousands of others who have contributed to the Linux operating system and the associated GNU programs that have shipped with the Linux distributions. The question is: do those who work at Red Hat deserve to be rewarded, or do the people who do the actual development work deserve to be rewarded? Should the money go to the few, or to the many? It seems that the High Priests of the Bazaar believe the former.
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This is the #1 reason Linux et al will achieve the famed world domination in the not too distant future.
It is like a rite of passage for the best and the brightest. Look at the cost benefit ratio to your CV (cost measured in time, benefit measured in getting a desirable job) of having some of your code accepted into a key high profile OSS. There is no better way to spend your time. This will secure that the very best this world has to offer will add value to OSS. No corporation however rich can match that. No one.
There is currently 1000+ people working on the various aspects of the Linux kernel. (source IBM) How can anyone organization match that. It is like NASA in the 60's or the Manhattan project during later part of WW2.
The idea of MS innovating its way out of this is silly. Innovations will arrise at the grassroot level and continue to rise to the level the initial idea merits. Attracting the skills needed at the appropiate levels thru a natural selection process from an endless pool of talents.
Help fight continental drift.
..just a thought, but maybe you have misread or misconstrued a lot (not all but a lot) of the anti microsoft and what you see as anti corporate posts on slashdot. What I see more, and I agree with, is that people are anti unethical behavior and criminality, and anti what happens once any entity has a lot of power with little or no check to what they do with that power.
The obvious example, following the main thread focus, on microsft, where millions of people have noted that they did, in fact, abuse their position, that they got to a dominate position via some pretty questionable means, and that their security models combined with this position have put people in the "pretty much stuck" position of spending a lot of money to be abused on an ongoing basis. yes, I am aware of "don't use their stuff", well, this has been answerd over and over again by noting it's pretty hard to not be affected by "their stuff" whether you use it or not, especially if your clients and cuistomers are still using it. Catch 22 there, so we will get past that sticking point, it's been answered. We all use the net, and all of us are affected when a significant size hole appears and gets exploited, and once a pattern of many years time and of noting exactly where those holes appear and exactly who is responsible for them and how much money they continue to make by this inclusion into the internet world of this swiss cheese approach to expensive software, well.... I mean, really.... the sky IS really blue.
As to "corporations", recent revelations over the past couple of years have proven there is a lot of outright lying, obfuscation of finances, over hyping to small investors to shill up stocks worth to absurd and reckless levels-fraud in other words, and so on. It's not a true black and white issue, it's more a pick an example (examples again, say microsoft, enron, etc) and point out data and take it from there, normal empirical analysis. the gestalt is, there sure is a lot of criminality going on, and people are beginning to wonder exactly how widespread this is, after example after example comes to light. It's endemic, and probably epidemic, if you would allow a small amount of anthromorphism to be used to describe it..
Of course this can be called bashing, but to millions of people it's "bashing" based on the reality of an obvious need to bash. Blaming the victims for a crime committed against them is not considered to be an intellectually viable form of expression that is valid, at least not amongst rational civilized people.
Now for me, a regular old 'murican capitalist, and a proponent of self-reliance and independence, and ALSO a proponent of above board rational and ethical business behavior, there are some corps I think do a good job, and others I can see as being..well.. crooks is the word. Serious crooks, crooks who not only need some fines, but some jail time. Want an example? any of the corporations who sold weapons of mass destruction materials to saddam back in the 80's, when he was obviously using them in warfare. any of those corpos officers, chucked in the pokey. the corporations dissolved. Well now, that would sure be an interesting set of bignames now, wouldn't it? I have more examples, that is "enough" for ocnversational purposes. And yes, I could name names, but anyone with google access can find out as well.
And to add to the stewpot in the fines and jail list some of the more bribed politicians who behind the scenes and in collusion with other industry heads (and being conflict of industry heads themselves) and semi-faceless regulatory bureaucrats, who have allowed this sort of behavior to become a lot more of the "norm" then what people are comfortable with. Yep, fines and jail. Yep, their businesses dissolved, as being "not in the public interest". Cross the line, do the time. It's like that for joe little guy, should be the same for frederick fatcat.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to "bash on crooks". I think it's perfectly acceptable to go back to the original founders ideas on state chartered corporations, wherein they were tasked with not only following normal business laws and ethics in order to do their business and accumulate "profits", but they also had an additional duty to be of the public interest and benefit, and if it can be shown a continuuing pattern of unethical behavior, that said corporation should be dissolved, with no thought to whatever "profits" are involved,no more than any petty gangs busting would involve consideration of their "profits", and that officers of said corporation should be brought up on criminal charges, as well as civil charges. No one really much cares what the "financial considerations" are when the local crack house gets taken down, this exact same philosphy should be applied on any scale, because, well, a crime is a crime is a crime. I know as joe littleguy that the system cares not about my profits if I should be convicted of a crime, they are more than happen to seize or incarcerate. It's "funny" to note the regardings these very large enterprises the almost total lack of significant level fines and significant numbers of corporate officers who fail to make it to the pokey once busted and convicted. It isn't the bashers' fault that we notice this, in fact, it's an ethical and moral and common sense stance to take..
This doesn't happen enough to suit my tastes, and I maintain that if it did, we wouldn't be seeing near the bad business that occurs, nor the amount of boom and bust cycles, and practically speaking on a tech oriented forum, the IT and internet world would be more robust, more profitable and not less, and much more secure. That it doesn't happen enough is just obvious-thee is no provision for a "who watches the watchers" in our modern "system". We have a theoretical way to do that, but with the seizure of our governmental system by two for-profit organizations, who operate in a "scratch my back and I'll scratch you'rs" mode, a lot more than what they will admit to, you can see how this system is broken and how abuses will continue. Occassionaly, in order to show they are "doing something", they will "sacrafice one of their own" in order to throw a bone to the "bashers", but it really is more of a busywork facade than any true expression of "cleaning up business and it's partner government".
please excuse remaining typos, spent enough time on this post for now
although IMO they're being symied by pushback from ground-level people who can't get with the program
You mean IBM is not making money because people don't want what IBM has to sell?
Gasp-gaspity-gasp!
IBM is not being stymied by ground-level folks who can't "get with the program". It's being stymied by the fact that the subscription model for software is LIMITED to very few applications and markets.
Areas where leasing makes sense include SOME areas of research and development (for instance, there are a lot of VERY expensive ASIC tools; these are mostly on a subscriptions model already, and have been for years), a few types of business applications (though ADP and similar firms seem to have payroll tied up nicely, there might be a few places where outsourcing is good), and MAYBE some publishing tools (though I doubt it-- $50 a month for 12 months for Adobe Acrobat, or $500 up-front for as long as you have the disks?).
The fact of the matter is, no matter what Sun Microsystems tells you, the network is most emphatically NOT the computer (and, as I recall, they've mostly dropped THAT slogan, anyway-- there's a telling sign). The computer is quite capable of acting on its own, and to offload trivial tasks from the computer onto a central server (i.e., storage of programs, storage of data, even most of the number-crunching) is a waste of resources and a monumentally stupid way to go about things.
YES, there would be some advantages to having everything done over the network: simplified management, simplified tech support/troubleshooting, and even some cost benefits in the short term. But they don't outweigh the vast waste of resources, and they don't outweight the benefits of keeping a lot of stuff local to one computer (e.g., you're not left with a single point of failure).
Not to mention the fact that most of the software companies that I've dealt with for network-based applications have had really shitty attitudes about users; a typical meeting with one of the companies I dealt with involved the sales and the engineering teams openly mocking my users. Other companies were more subtle, but the same attitude was present: "fuck the user".
Maybe THAT'S why IBM is being stymied-- because network applications are NOT a good solution to most problems.
The sins of Microsoft for charging big money for crap like Windows ME deserves a class-action lawsuit. You could argue Windows 98 was not much better than Windows 95.
In the linux world, how dare RedHat charge for their shipping of each version of RedHat. All they do is add new versions of packages and maybe change the kernel. (That's all sarcasm, btw. And consider RedHat as the archetype commercial linux distro.)
There are plenty of costs associated with managing releases from a company standpoint and Apple has been very generous in its updating of Mac OS X. We got disk journaling as a freebie, as an example. With Jaguar, maybe Apple's mistake was not manipulating people with marketing. Should they have called it "Mac OS Y"? Would that make you feel better about spending money? Or are the new features and performance what you want to spend money on?
"Because Microsoft is losing the server war to Linux"
Since when? Linux has about a 17% marketshare on servers, using the most optimistic of measurements. Microsoft is in the 50-60%, with the remaining 25% or so being commercial Unix, Novell and such.
If what you mean by losing is that Microsoft is not making signifigant strides to gain additional marketshare, then ok. But if you mean they're losing marketshare to Linux, then you are incorrect. The only entity losing the server market to Linux is Sun/HP/IBM commercial Unix solutions.
I realize you probably didn't mean to intentionally lie. I'm sure you truly believe that Microsoft is losing marketshare to Linux. But you'd do yourself a favor by looking up the facts, and then deriving conclusions based upon those.
I think the letter is somewhat interesting, but I also disagree. Customers do want networkable solutions, however they still want them as shrinkwrapped solutions that they can run on their own networks. The problem stems from the internet still being unreliable. As that improves, then there will be more acceptance for the networked paradigm.
One just needs look at the ASP model and how it has succeeded and failed. Yes, it's working, but nowhere near as widespread as it's proponents claimed it would be.
He clearly understands how big a force the Open Source community is becoming, and how it will affect Microsoft - but he doesn't seem to grasp the reasons.
To the contrary, it seems clear that he grasps the reasons, and points out that Microsoft isn't paying attention to those reasons. He doesn't say "requirements-driven, open source software" with nothing in mind -- this man knows exactly why open source software exists and thrives, and I believe this is main idea he's trying to get across.
He's saying "Wake up, Microsoft! You're so impractical that people have come down to making their own small software in leiu of buying your expensive bulky crap! Unless you change your closed-minded ways, the people will toss you aside in favor of the streamlined customized software they've always wanted, which the open-source movement will give them."
-=[You cannot consistently judge this statement to be true.]=-
"Christensen obselescence" refers to Clayton Christensen's book: "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail". Christensen is a professor at the Harvard Business school. He is a renowned expert on disruptive technologies, which is really what the Innovator's dilemma is all about, and thus, the reference to the Internet and Open Source.
But, getting the two confused is understandable, they are both BYU grads. :)
That's why I don't support Suse, Lindows, Xandros, or UnitedLinux. Taking an entirely opensource group of software and then dropping a small fraction of proprietary code that if removed cripples the distro or prevents redistribution is something I don't believe in and try not to support. Using your example of what Apple did, at least they did it right. They used BSD software properly and thankfully didn't try to hijack linux which is what the above companies are more concerned with. I've gotten flamed in the past for complaining about Suse in particular, but considering how Redhat and Mandrake opensource some very good gui admin tools, Suse just ends up looking stupid for the way they treat Yast.
It's a hard line to walk. On one hand I believe the core distro should be free but at the same time you should be able to run whatever closed source apps you want on top of that. For example I would have no problem running a port of Photoshop on Debian, but I would never support a proprietary version of APT no matter how well it worked. I also REALLY don't like companies basing their distro on Debian and then adding a lot of proprietary crap and preventing distribution. That really makes no sense and I always write the companies telling them they should have used one of the BSD's instead.
My logic may be flawed but that's just the way I feel. If the future of linux is distros in which many parts become proprietary and they all cost money then I'll just use something else. It's not about being cheap either. Its about having a quality free OS available that truly belongs to the community and is above commercial interests.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"Dave Stutz, an influencial guy at Microsoft"
If the guy is so influencial why didn't MS follow his advice before he left? I can understand how you might want to give some parting advice to your employer, but releasing it to the world suggests his motive is really publicity for himself rather than any real concern about the future of MS. Looks like he's positioning himself for Guruism.
Well there IS also a big problem with OpenSource. The problem of no one is responsible for problems, damage and other stuff.
:)
Hmm, last I checked, I can't sue most of the closed source companies for any damages to my data that their software may cause (indirectly or directly) as their "shrink wrap" license prohibits it.
OpenSource will never be able to program the way the customer needs the software.
Neither does closed source. When's the last time you could go to Adobe and say "I need suchandsuch feature right now, can you add it for me?" Nope.
If you look at commercial Companies such as Apple for example. Most of their applications look equal, feel equal and behave equal because they spent a lot of money into their design, their usability and their programmers. All this is missing on OpenSource.
They are different libraries providing different feels, yes. And this is the reason Red Hat included a theme for KDE and Gnome to make them look the same. Yet, there are a fair amount of complaints I have with the Windows Explorer and I'm not completely happy with the Mac OS desktop, although I like it now in Mac OS X more than I did previously. Thus, closed source isn't perfect there, either.
Specially if you as developer work freely on your program and realize how other companies such as RedHat, Sun, SuSE and many others outsource your hard work and sell it for cash to other people.
Depends, some OS developers are getting compensated for their work, as there are project developers working for some distros.
- Developers seriously like to get money for their work.
Yes, people, in general, like to get paid for work. However, a good portion of OS programmers I am willing to bet are professional programmers who do this on the side because some personal fulfillment doesn't get met at work.
- OpenSource is a free ticket for companies to have your shit outsourced for cash.
Can be. Not always.
- You work hard on your own project trying to reach some big stuff with other community members such as in a GNOME project but you always fail to convince them because everyone plays as an individual instead in a team.
Team play is hard to achieve sometimes even in a closed source environment, that's where people get reassigned, let go, etc... Happens in the OS world, too. People have left projects, or in some cases, kicked out.
I'm not saying that OS is the perfect solution, but it works pretty well for some companies, and I would venture to say that there is room for more companies, if they can get it right. Red Hat manages to
Microsoft pays a lot of money to demonstrate to investors that it does R&D, but the bottom line is that Office and Windows bankroll the company. I have not seen one innovation from their research dept make it to market. Please indicate if you have contrary proof.
MS has not had a real profit since 1.995, as Bill Parish has shown.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I don't like M$ software for several reasons, in order: it's buggy, i's inflexible, and M$ ethics.
Several months ago, I had to use Visual Studio 6, for the first time, and within a day had found several bugs in it. Now whether these bugs were me not knowing the "proper" usage, or genuine bugs, that has been typical of my experience with M$, and leads to the second point, inflexibility.
If you don't use M$ products in the M$ way, you can't use them at all. Take windows, for instance, multiple windows. You get click to focus and raise on focus whether you want that or not. Sometimes I like to have several windows open for reading while typing into another window which is mostly hidden behind the others, and the mouse is in the small visible piece of hat window and thus my typing goes there while reading from the windows I have arranged so I can read what I need. This is not an everyday usage, but often enough that using M$ windows frustrates the heck out of me.
Lack of ethics is the third reason, but not nearly as important.
Infuriate left and right