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.'

Comments

Sounds like dot-com era dreaming

[merlin_jim]

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

Bear Hug

[Jad LaFields]

And by "embrace", he means "bone-crushing bear hug".

To paraphrase...

[weeboo0104]

If you can't beat 'em, join em...
...then beat 'em.

Heh, the key phrase is...

[Ratphace]

..."Standards are always a give-to-get bargain," he said.

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.

although....

[freidog]

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 usual tactic

[FunWithHeadlines]

Nothing new here. Every now and then Gates does something nice or friendly or inclusive. Maybe it's for humanitarian purposes such as through his foundation. Maybe it's motivated by a need for better PR. Maybe it's motivated by something else. Doesn't matter.

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.

Re:OK I'll bite...

[Xerithane]

This is something I'm thinking about here... I'm probably not going to respond to any comments in this thread, don't take it personally I just doubt I'll have the time.

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:

1. Linux isn't going away.
   
2. 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?

Re:XML

[molarmass192]

The namespace schemas are proprietary and redistribution is not permitted. No namespace schema, no way to make sense of what's in the XML.

Exactly

[Carnage4Life]

We all know how Gates "embraced" XML for Office 11...

You mean how Microsoft shipped XML vocabularies compliant to the W3C XML 1.0 recommendation with schemas for the XML formats used by Word and Excel, stylesheets to convert WordML to HTML, and Office products like InfoPath that use over a dozen XML and Web standards in a compliant manner. Yeah, it is really cool how Microsoft embraced the XML family of technologies.

Disclaimer: I work on the XML team at Microsoft but not directly with Microsoft Office.

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You have more balls then I would.


Three?

Re:Exactly

[Vaughn Anderson]

Disclaimer: I work on the XML team at Microsoft but not directly with Microsoft Office.

Because one developer says that MS is using XML standards correctly, does this mean that MS will actually keep it's formats open and backwards compatible?

Keep in mind it's the MS developement team that have created the file format mess in the past that is so horrid that entire countries are moving away from your closed formats. I can't even send an word 2000 doc to my father in-law who has OfficeXP with out it getting screwed up.

Even if what you say is 100% accurate, and MS delivers a compatible format that works with say, OpenOffice and Start Office, you have absoultely _NO_ gurantees that MS will not change the file format on the next upgrade and at that point turn the data to a completely proprietary form that is accessible only to the next upgrade of office.

Very few people in their right minds will trust MS anymore, and for good reasons.

Re:Exactly

[rutledjw]

I surpised believe you posted this.

The whole POINT of XML is interoperability. So can this XML be used by someone else? Is it limited to Office?

If the namespaces can't be reused by another applicaiton, then NO, it isn't "cool" what MS did. It's the classic MS crap. They may as well have forgone the entire process and left it in a binary format.

"Proprietary" XML is marketing blather and not something that adds value to the end user...

Re:Exactly

[Vaughn Anderson]

Either way, it's a user problem.

Let me clarify for you:

I send him the file with basic formatting and it looks fine in Word 2000. (office 2000) I send him the file and he opens it, and the words are in the wrong place, the formatting is either gone or changed.

This is even based on templates from within Word itself. He even sent me the file back to make sure it wasn't corrupted, and the file was fine on word 2000.

This is _not_ a user error, it's simple lack of proper backwards compatibility.

Here is a sample of Word 2003 XML

[Overly Critical Guy]

How do "we" all know that, when it's not out in stores until Oct. 22? Are you an MSDN subscriber?

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 /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

I thought it was...

[TALlama]

I fear the geeks, even when they bring GIFs.

Has anyone here read...

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Microsoft just doesn't get it

[penguin7of9]

Your "stylesheets to convert WordML to HTML" aren't particularly persuasive when they are distributed in .EXE format with no license information on the web page and with requirements of "Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP".

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:

• Put license information on the web page prominently. People should know what the license is before they download.
  
• Distribute your content in a neutral, non-executable format. ZIP is OK. Gzipped tar is OK.
  
• Pick a license for things like your style sheets and schemas so that people can actually use them to build interoperable products freely.
  

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.

Re:Microsoft just doesn't get it

[DickBreath]

He makes some very valid points. Can you?

I'll make one that is very valid.

Because of Microsoft's past behavior, people are naturally suspicious of any apparent attempts at good behavior. Especially if you liked Microsoft in the 70's, and then watched the development of the industry over the last 20+ years. It is just plain difficult to trust Microsoft. Too many times this trust has been betrayed. In fact, I would suggest that anyone who does trust may be a fool, and this conclusion would be supported by Microsoft's past action. Every time Microsoft tries to be "open" is always in some non-open way. The only time I have seen Microsoft embrace true interoperability with anything has been whenever they first get into something and are the minority player.

While the pointers to the Microsoft XML are very informative, the response to it does make valid points.

• Why is supposedly "interoperable" stuff downloadable as an EXE?
• Why use non-open formats?
• Why not have the license clearly visible before you download (or before you purchase for that matter)?

I hate to break it to you, but these ARE valid points.

These points criticize an apparent continuing behavior of trying to seem open, while not actually being open.

Re:OK I'll bite...

[__aagmrb7289]

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.

Danger - MS is trying to set the standards

[bizcoach]

In the past, the standards for the internet were decided through the community-based process of the Internet Engineering Task Force. This process is based on "rough consensus" and there is no way that a few influential companies could pervert this process in order to use it to establish standards that they can afterwards use to effectively kill their competitors.

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.