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Gates Embraces Web Service Interoperability
djh101010 writes "In a CNN article which looks more like something out of The Onion, Bill Gates expresses his interest in participating in interoperability with rival technologies, through common standards. Specifically mentioned are IBM's WebSphere, and Linux. 'We're being as inclusive as we can,' Gates said of Microsoft's role in the cross-platform project. 'This is a fabric for someone to do e-commerce that's independent of the operating systems that are out there.'
We all know how Gates "embraced" XML for Office 11...
I mean this seriously made me think of 99. Obligatory /. .com business plan?
1. Create interoperable standards so users can migrate from one OS to another without rewriting code
2. ????
3. Profit!
Except I have a strong suspicion that number 2 is:
2. Erode competitions' standing in marketplace and watch customers gradually migrate to your software, because migration is no longer a hassle
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
And by "embrace", he means "bone-crushing bear hug".
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
If you can't beat 'em, join em...
...then beat 'em.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Gates said the Redmond, Washington-based company's work toward Web services standards would be "royalty free." That remark led to questions from the audience, which wanted to make sure Gates hadn't misstated the deviation from the company's royalty-based software sales model.
Royalty free? Not if SCO can do something about that. What I found a bit odd, would be his comments on standards: "Standards are always a give-to-get bargain," he said. Standards are also done on behalf of everyone for everyone in order to make services work the right way. It's the only way to get products working with eatch other. So for one, he is not obligated to participate in any standards, but at the same time he is as if he doesn't, his products might not perform well under other vendors' products. So in essence whether he likes it or not, he is obligated if he wants to stay in the game and make money. As for the Netscape mention, personally I don't see Netscape as being around too long as a browser considering Netscape's parent AOL recently signed a deal with Microsoft. Just my two coppers...
MoFscker
In other words, they are giving so they can get something which in the end they can use to further lock out other applications and companies from being compatible.
A famous quote comes to mind:
"I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts." --Virgil
Be curious to find out how they will try to spin this to their advantage while disadvantaging everyone else.
CNN did note it was odd Gates kept snickering and chuckeling to himself while making the statements.
and was heard to utter You think they bought it? as he left the interview.
The point is just because he said lots of fuzzy words today it doesn't mean he won't try to "cut off the oxygen supply" of those same groups tomorrow. Is he suddenly buddy-buddy with Linux? Nope, his company is still fighting it tooth and nail around the world, putting out FUD, doing whatever it takes to head it off at the pass.
Good PR moments such as this do not negate the overall approach Gates will take. Do not be fooled, he's the same old monopolist.
IBM should have learned from OS/2 about partnering with Microsoft. Currently they are very pro Java , for example take a look at their developer website. .NET suite.
Since IBM does not have a decent web/app server they probably are trying to get a foot in the door for their
I have so far understood their "embrace" part. But what I don't get is where does the "annihilate" part come in? By standardising the XML standards Java also benefits, right? So how does M$ plan to screw Java and IBM
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Why do you assume Bill Gates et al. is making the same mistake that a lot of other businesses make? For example, the RIAA member companies and several others. Everybody says, "Jeez, these business people are dumb and are fighting the inevitable."
What if Microsoft realized two things:
- Linux isn't going away.
- You get free shit from them.
Effectively meaning that they can start to actually embrace and integrate services, and actually expand and mutate their business model based on the economy and world, rather than what everybody perceives as their business model.I was chatting with a SCORE member, and he said that a true business plan should be a living entity that evolves with the world around it. Why is it so hard to believe that the most successful software company doesn't heed that advice?
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Bill Gates (to himself): "Hmm... Everyone hates me, and everyone is aligned against me, creating their own web services standards and ensuring that I won't completely capture the market. Let's see... This implies that they might take a significant part of the market, and if I'm not interoperable, I'll be essentially locked out. Ah, well, screw it."
(calls up Ballmer)
Bill Gates: "Hey, Steve -- do me a favor, would you? Round up some of our better R+D guys, and have them work up a system that lets us totally interoperate with all the other, competing web services systems out there, wouldja?"
Ballmer: "WTF???"
Bill Gates: "Why lock ourselves out of a big chunk of the market? We've got our section, now we can play with their section too."
Ballmer: "Ok, I'm on it..."
This is strictly hypothetical, but I bet it's pretty close.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
in that order??
Disclaimer: I work on the XML team at Microsoft but not directly with Microsoft Office.
How do "we" all know that, when it's not out in stores until Oct. 22? Are you an MSDN subscriber?
/2003/auxHint" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:dt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C1488 2" w:macrosPresent="no" w:embeddedObjPresent="no" w:ocxPresent="no" xml:space="preserve"><o:DocumentProperties><o:Titl e>This is a test of XML</o:Title><o:Author>User</o:Author><o:LastAutho r>User</o:LastAuthor><o:Revision>1</o:Revision><o: TotalTime>1</o:TotalTime><o:Created>2003-09-18T15: 29:00Z</o:Created><o:LastSaved>2003-09-18T15:30:00 Z</o:LastSaved><o:Pages>1</o:Pages><o:Words>3</o:W ords><o:Characters>20</o:Characters><o:Company>Whi te Goat Studios</o:Company><o:Lines>1</o:Lines><o:Paragrap hs>1</o:Paragraphs><o:CharactersWithSpaces>22</o:C haractersWithSpaces><o:Version>11.5604</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties><w:fonts><w:defaultFonts w:ascii="Times New Roman" w:fareast="Times New Roman" w:h-ansi="Times New Roman" w:cs="Times New Roman"/><w:font w:name="Verdana"><w:panose-1 w:val="020B0604030504040204"/><w:charset w:val="00"/><w:family w:val="Swiss"/><w:pitch w:val="variable"/><w:sig w:usb-0="20000287" w:usb-1="00000000" w:usb-2="00000000" w:usb-3="00000000" w:csb-0="0000019F" w:csb-1="00000000"/></w:font></w:fonts><w:styles>< w:versionOfBuiltInStylenames w:val="4"/><w:latentStyles w:defLockedState="off" w:latentStyleCount="156"/><w:style w:type="paragraph" w:default="on" w:styleId="Normal"><w:name w:val="Normal"/><w:rPr><wx:font wx:val="Times New Roman"/><w:sz w:val="24"/><w:sz-cs w:val="24"/><w:lang w:val="EN-US" w:fareast="EN-US" w:bidi="AR-SA"/></w:rPr></w:style><w:styl e w:type="character" w:default="on" w:styleId="DefaultParagraphFont"><w:name w:val="Default Paragraph Font"/><w:semiHidden/></w:style><w:sty le w:type="table" w:default="on" w:styleId="TableNormal"><w:name w:val="Normal Table"/><wx:uiName wx:val="Table Normal"/><w:semiHidden/><w:rPr><wx:fon t wx:val="Times New Roman"/></w:rPr><w:tblPr><w:tblI nd w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:tblCellMar><w:top w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:left w:w="108" w:type="dxa"/><w:bottom w:w="0" w:type="dxa"/><w:right w:w="108" w:type="dxa"/></w:tblCellMar></w:tblPr></w:style>< w:style w:type="list" w:default="on" w:styleId="NoList"><w:name w:val="No List"/><w:semiHidden/></w:style></w:styles><w:docP r
Having said that, for those curious, here is a sample of XML generated by Word, just now created by me. I'm posting this using "Code" as the format so it is formatted correctly.
Here is the original message (I gave it HTML tags so you can see the formatting I gave it in Word):
This is a <b>test</b> of <font face="verdana" size="24"><b>XML</b></font>.
Now , here is the resulting XML after saving that line:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<?mso-application progid="Word.Document"?>
<w:wordDocument xmlns:w="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/ 2003/wordml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:sl="http://schemas.microsoft.com/schemaLibra ry/2003/core" xmlns:aml="http://schemas.microsoft.com/aml/2001/c ore" xmlns:wx="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word
"Sufferin' succotash."
I know this redundant. But, I have to say it:
Microsoft has said this before, and the results have always been bad for developers and consumers (for example the Java and XML debacle).
I don't mind Microsoft using existing standards; I do violently oppose them guiding the course of standards, because they have been shown to be a bad steward for any public standard they get their hands on.
I would be so bold as to argue that it is not out of hubris that they are as they are, as much as from greed.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I fear the geeks, even when they bring GIFs.
- The Amazina Llama
"Breaking Windows" by David Bank?
The central premise in this book is Bill Gates' philosophy of product development. Although the author presents it as a pragmatic, thought-out business plan that evolved from Bill Gates' examination of the market, to me it always came across as a response to basic insecurities that exposed more of Bill's personality flaws than any understanding of the market.
It goes like this: it doesn't matter how good the product is; it doesn't matter how well a product works; customers are fickle and will switch software at the drop of a hat. Therefore, the only way to keep customers is to 'lock them in', to leverage Office to increase Windows share and Windows to increase Office share by continually tying them together and forcing one to require the other. I am paraphrasing and working from memory, read the book.
My points are:
1. the basic business philosophy of Microsoft is so deeply rooted in the insecurities of it's founder and the founder is still in control
2. the whole idea of "open" standards is completely contrary to the concepts of "lock-in" that has worked so well for Microsoft up to this point
that this DOES sound like something from an alternate universe as one poster here has noted and that this has about as much chance of being even partially true as a snowball's chance in hell.
If you want to convince people that Microsoft is becoming more open, you have a lot of work ahead of you learning how to distribute standards, sample implementations, and other documentation:
Until you start distributing stuff so that people can actually download and use it without Microsoft products and without signing their life away, all that talk of embracing open standards is just meaningless fluff.
Wow, got a problem with this business practice, huh? Well, can you name any major software company that has "embraced" standards, without extending them? Not Sun. Not Netscape. Not IBM. Maybe some Linux company?
I'm not defending the practice, just pointing out that it's considered legitimate by the software community at large, and used by some of the largest names in the industry. And that includes, but doesn't consist only of, Microsoft.
Standards from Microsoft are dangerous, even when royalty-free licensing is offered so that they can be implemented in Free Software.
Consider for example the ECMA standards 334 and 335 for the core parts of .NET - while Microsoft has promised royalty-free licensing for any and all patents that may be neccessary for implementing that standard, they are at the same time embracing and extending their own standard, and they have filed at least one patent application that seems to be designed to give them a monopoly on their extensions to the standard.
In some situations it may work to simply refuse to go along with the standards attempts from MS. Unfortunately, MS has so much leverage that this won't always work. For example, with .NET just ignoring it IMO won't work, that's why we're working on creating a competing "standard set of libraries" for the stuff which goes beyond the stuff that is safe from patent-based attacks (the safe parts are what is specified in the ECMA specs, for which MS has promised royalty-free licensing, plus everything which is thin wrappers around stuff that is simply too old to be affected by .NET patents, such as for example System.Windows.Forms). The strategy of the DotGNU project is to re-use a good number of existing Free Software libs (written in C) and compile them for .NET - again since those libs are old, they're safe from being affected by any .NET patents.
Greetings,
Norbert.
(Before you mod me down, at least read half the comment)
Gates has realized that Microsoft cannot hold the crown of the software world forever. It's great at competing against companies that it can buy out or undercut, but it can't do either of those to Linux. IBM lost their crown when it failed to realize the PC, and the software running on it, were the new champs of the computing business. Ironically, I think this is the first step in Microsoft converting from a software company to a services company. It's pretty hard to make money on software if some geeks are giving it away for free.
The decade of windows is about to close, it became the best OS for the average (non-programmer) user when Win 95 was released, and before that Macintosh had their decade. Linux's decade hasn't started yet, but Windows only has a few years left, and Bill realizes that. If you look at the way the economy is turning, you can see that while the pure programming jobs may go overseas, services can't. Many companies are already using the "give the software away, charge for services" model of doing business (actually, the company I work for is selling the software, services, and a required maintainance contract - I'm feeling pretty safe), and are surviving just fine.
Not that Microsoft hasn't turned every one of these initiatives in the past into either an "embrace-and-extend" or "embrace-and-block" (by being one of the founders and then never giving final approval to the standard) strategy. Maybe they'll go through with this one this time, but expect to see Microsoft make an about-face on software in the next ten years like they did with their position on the internet back in '97. It's just a matter of time.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
The strategy of the DotGNU project is to re-use a good number of existing Free Software libs (written in C) and compile them for .NET - again since those libs are old, they're safe from being affected by any .NET patents.
Even assuming this makes sense technically (see below), surely if you no longer care about portability between Dotnet and dotGNU, you've just lost the main justification for the dotGNU project?
If I have developed a Dotnet app, but I can't compile it on dotGNU because it calls Windows Forms, or ASP.NET or ADO.NET... why on earth should I care that, if I could compile it, the generated bytecodes would be the same instruction set as found on Windows? By definition, there cannot be any value for me to have portability at the bytecode level if it is missing at the application level. And, if I do go as far as changing every non-core API call in my app, I'm hardly going to care much if the bytecode is different - I have to maintain and generate two versions anyway.
Without portability, it seems positively perverse to seek to extend the influence of Microsoft technologies on Linux when there are already very well established equivalents (Java, Python, Parrot). Java-on-Linux investments alone must total something in the order of billions of dollars per year, judging by the number of large organizations doing rollouts of this type - I'd guess that currently Java is the single biggest factor pushing Linux into commercial organizations today.
So precisely what value is dotGNU bringing to the table?
Regarding the incorporation of old C libraries into DotGNU, it seems rather optimistic to assume they can just be wrapped or turned into managed code (ask MS about the effort invested in doing that for their code). Do these libs happen to support Dotnet style internationalization, multithreading, access control...? If not, you've got a huge chunk of work to do - and all to get you roughly where Python is already!
Microsoft has never had a problem with open standards in markets that they don't control. Weren't they lobbying for an IM open standard a while ago? At the time AOL had the lion's share of the market. At this time no one controls the Web Services market, if there even is one.
Right now Web Services is all about standards, since there isn't much in the way of implementations yet. MSFT and IBM seem to be at odds with the other major players; seems like every major new standard is being duplicated. Can't we all just get along?