What Would The World Be Like Without Microsoft?

CanadianMikey asks: "The debate with the business side of computing rages on about the validity of Open Source. Is it good or bad? What is the future of computing? Could it have been different, and where will the 21st century take us? Is Microsoft just the big nail that always gets hammered first and will someone step in to take their place when they are finally taken down? If Microsoft were to close up shop, who do the readers of Slashdot think would be tomorrow's Microsoft? What about the forgotten windows?"

Comments

Standards

[BWJones]

As loathe as I am to say it now, Microsoft has actually show us the benefit of "standards". Only the benefits are not quite in their definition as they want to control all of the standards and get a cut of all money from the use of those "standards". Also, it should be noted that Microsoft is not all bad. They actually produce some nice code (Office for OS X is quite nice), however, they always seem to be behind the curve as if they are not able to innovate anything. They missed the GUI, the Internet and now notably the search engine all by quite a while only to turn the company around and focus all of their efforts on exploiting what they missed. The market dominance however, has shown us the benefit of having "standard" file types such as .doc that just about everybody in certain industries uses exclusively.

Re:Standards

[SatanicPuppy]

Actually, I think IBM, the original scary tech monopoly, showed us the benefit of standards (abliet mostly hardware standards).

Microsoft just shows us how little we learn from historical mistakes, REGARDING standards. This is the one place where I wouldn't mind a little government intervention, toward an open and efficient standard. They could hardly screw it up worse than it is now.

Re:Standards

[TykeClone]

This is the one place where I wouldn't mind a little government intervention, toward an open and efficient standard. They could hardly screw it up worse than it is now.

Doesn't sound like you work in a regulated industry.

Hi. I from the government. I'm here to help you.

Re:Standards

[Snad]

As loathe as I am to say it now, Microsoft has actually show us the benefit of "standards".

That's true, but in the absence of a behemoth like Microsoft dictating what a "standard" is we would probably be working with true (ie open) standards rather than simply what Bill declares is Good For You(tm).

I'd like to think that absent a Microsoft-like controlling entity, the continuing mayhem of opposing formats and standards for data and documents would have become so untenable that developers would have been forced towards working together to come up with standards that actually worked. And that were actually supported and were actually standard. This would be simply to ensure that the multitude of word processors (for example) could reliably utilise each other's documents since none would have the market leverage to ignore the others.

This assumes, of course, that not only is there no Microsoft, but that there is no company in a similar position of power.

There is also an Easter Bunny, and I saw Santa yesterday at his summer job at the beach...

Re:Standards

[MBCook]

Standards are nice, but it's NO PLACE for government. An industry board of some kind (like IEEE, or whatever) maybe, but NOT the government.

If the government were to decided the standards, we'd all be writing programs in Ada. In other news we would just be getting the standard for 10Base-T later this year (because of the special interest groups for the lithium industry trying to require the the wires in Cat5 cable are made of 20% lithium), and a byte would soon be 37 bits long (becuase it's the only number that doesn't offend lacto-vegitarian-femi-nazi-free-range-chicken-head s) or some other weird thing.

I would be nice to have the government say something like "OK all you companies, decided on a format for word processor documents and stick to it untill the you issue a new standard after that", but for government to decide the standard its self probably wouldn't be good.

I agree, though, that open standards are important. We have standards now (.doc, Internet Explorer, etc), but they're not open. Opening them would make all the difference.

Re:Standards

[JebusIsLord]

Lets not forget that the internet was originally a government project founded on government standards.

Re:Standards

[MBCook]

Yes, but it was part of another project, and it was something they needed. All to often what would happen (IMHO) if the government was asked to make standards now would be a big committe would be formed that would take recomendations for years, then argue for years, all while various groups lobby their own odd ideas.

It's one thing to have a group of engineers sit down to decide a standard. It's another to have a panel of engineers hear a bunch of companies argue why their product is better.

Re:Standards

[gfody]

Microsoft is an inevitability, just like Neo. Asking what the world be like without microsoft is like asking what the world would be like if WWII never happened.

To answer the question, the world would be exactly the same.. except the software company holding a monopoly on operating systems wouldn't be called "microsoft" it would be called g-soft.. and today you would be asking the question "what would the world be like without g-soft?"

a better question would be why is the microsoft-anomoly inevitable.. that one, I think, is because anything that makes up an integral part of our infrastructure (such as an OS) that isn't yet mandated by government will naturally fall into a monopoly simply because it's convenient.

Re:Standards

[Johnny Mnemonic]

It doesn't sound like you do, either. You think buildings would be safer if every builder was allowed to "innovate" their own designs? Do you think the highways would work better if each one was a toll road, allowed to design to their own needs? Do you think it would be better or worse for communications if ATT and Verizon each designed and developed phone technology independently of each other, meaning interoperation didn't happen?

Actually, IINM, there is some historical precedent: the South had different guage of train tracks than the North, and it's part of what led to the cultural divide, which in turn led to the Civil War. Relaying tracks so that troops could be moved was a great burden--but once accomplished, and the standard set, notice how it's been preserved since.

Institutions that purport to operate on a national level, and become part of the national infrastructure, should be standarized so that there are no boundaries of information exchange. On this point I agree with Ashcroft, who said as much when Bush took office. However, I disagree that one company should be in control of that standard; instead, it should be controlled by an open forum. As was the early internet, and it's why it remains as strong as it is and grew to the popularity that it acquired.

Do you think that if Microsoft was in control of the early HTML specifications, or even TCP/IP for that matter, that we'd have the ubiquitious internet now?

Re:Standards

[tdemark]

I would be nice to have the government say something like "OK all you companies, decided on a format for word processor documents and stick to it untill the you issue a new standard after that", but for government to decide the standard its self probably wouldn't be good.

It's actually much simpler than that. The government doesn't need to dictate that a standard be agreed upon... what it can dictate is that "We will only purchase products that read and write open, pubically documented formats by default."

In this case, there doesn't need to be agreement between companies in the form of a standard. But, it brings all the benefits of a standard in that the "popular" products will be well-documented.

- Tony

Re:Standards

[seasleepy]

Yes, governments have stupid regulations sometimes. See the topic, though? We're discussing standards, which are different from regulations.

Standards are always a good thing for consumers. They can, however, give businesses trouble (you're allowing their customers to potentially go elsewhere but still be able to have the service they want and/or interoperability between their new widget and the original company's widget), which is why the companies on top of a field tend to not push standards.

Re:Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that have to do with the President. Last I checked we had a balance of power with a legislative, executive and judicial branch. regardless I thought the Judges on the case where around prior to Bush.

Re:Standards

[barthrh2]

Sir, I have some bad news... the building collapsed and your family is dead.

The good news is: (handing card) Lionel Hutz, Attoney at Law! Sir, today is your lucky day!

Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to find a more unscrupulous group than building developers. Because of the incorporation techniques that they use, getting sued is essentially no problem. They hide behind the corporate veil and just declare bankruptcy for the shell corporation that built that 30 story condo building that now leaks like a sieve. That's if the company hasn't been wound down by the time the problem crops up.

Using tort is completely reactive. The burden on police, fire, hospitals and the legal system itself is only increased because the building has already burnt down. Standards are preventative.

Re:Standards

[RetroGeek]

And using a document framework called OpenDoc.

Another great concept buried by Microsoft.

Re:Standards

[KamuSan]

Standards and regulations are the same when we're talking about government. How do you think those standards will be enforced?

And given governments' track record those regulated standards will be:
- years late
- still in effect when they're useless
- more formed by political considerations and those of pressure groups than technical necessity.

Re:Standards

[jcr]

Sir, I have some bad news... the building collapsed and your family is dead.

That can happen with buildings that meet the building codes, too. It does not follow that only government can inspect a building.

-jcr

Re:Standards

[Angry Pixie]

Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to find a more unscrupulous group than building developers.
Real estate people. They often work with unscrupulous building developers, especially in small towns where their power can rise to the level of local magistrates. Real estate people and building developers, by setting the market price for space, have the ability to influence countless many others. Consider cities like New York, LA, San Francisco, or Chicago. Rent is a big determinant of the kind of job you can accept in order to make ends meet. If it didn't cost $1200 for a shack just because it a real estate company decided to milk the value of a hip area code or high-growth zipcode, people could afford to accept one of the many wonderful thousands of jobs El Presidente has created for us.

Re:Standards

[senahj]

> > You think buildings would be safer if every builder was allowed
> > to "innovate" their own designs?

> Yes. Before building codes, people built buildings that stood and
> worked properly because if they didn't, they might die.

Bah.

The Great Chicago Fire.
The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.
Bam, Iran.
the Lisbon earthquake that stars in _Candide_

Left to their own devices, people continually, seemingly irrepressibly
build unsafe houses on beaches, cliffs, floodplains, earthquake faults, mudslide-prone hillsides -- and die in droves in consequence.

Without building codes, 10 X more fatalities in
the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California.

Re:Standards

[Flashbck]

You can run a certain portion of the binaries written for MS-DOS 2 still, ya know. That's one hell of a legacy.

I fully understand that M$ has a large amount of backwards compatibility, and that can be nice...but there comes a time when you have to admit that a bug ridden failure is not something that you wish to support anymore. At least not when it means that you have to have so many workarounds and hacks set up that it makes everything totally confusing.

I used to own a pair of jeans that kept getting holes in them and I kept patching them. Eventually I had enough of it (mainly I think b/c I patched a completely new pair of jeans) and bought a new pair of jeans becuase the old ones looked like cripe. Sometimes you just have to let go of the old stuff and move on.

Why can't M$ just supply a win9x emulator like the OS9 emulator for osX? Yeah it sucks, but eventually the old stuff phases out and the potential for properly working new stuff grows tremendously. C'mon, how many times a year do you pull out some old DOS version of WordPerfect(I still have mine) and try to run it?

Re:Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a few posts in, and we are down analogy alley. What is it about programmers that makes them draw on analogies at every opportunity? This is not a critisism, I'd realy like to know.

Re:Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not get into futile points here. Sure you can cite a few exceptions, but if we really get down to gritty reality. Then the basic truth is that in places where building regulations are poorly maintained like in forinstance turkey or iran. That many structures are destroyed. Secondly noone ever said you can exceed building specs. But you seldomly see someone do it.
What this all comes down to is, is that people are cheap, they don't want to expend to much money on reinforcing there houses, if they wern't forced to the larger majority wouldn't do it. Some argue that historic buildings hold up better, when regulations were weaker. But people tend to forget that you only see the surviving buildings, all the cheapshot building were long gone destroyed. Just something to think about.

Quickshot

Re:Standards

[anothy]

[on Building Codes]

Yes... ...Building codes are ways for government and unions to assert control over individual builders.

nonesense. the fact that some people did, indeed build safe buildings for a variety of reasons before the widespread adoption of building codes does nothing to change the fact that codes have generally made buildings substantially safer. i've had the benefit of being involved in small-scale construction projects in areas with various degrees of strictness in their codes (or just none at all for the scale we were working on), and i can tell you first hand the codes result in a much safer construction on average.

[on private-owned roads]

Again, yes, like the Dulles Greenway...

having lived in the DC area, this is indeed a tempting example, but one example does not an argument make. as a counter, i would point to the entire US Interstate system - much larger in scope, highly efficient non-toll, and federally defined. the US Route system is a less formal example of much the same thing.

[on Communications Standards]

How long do you think the market would stand two incompatible standards before one of the two started specing in some interoperability?

quite some time, and we've all seen it! GSM vs. CDMA? DVD*? MP3 vs. WMA vs. Real vs. whatever? PPTP vs L2TP? the list goes on. there's plenty of innovation here, but it's all hugely inefficient. AT&T, for all their faults, did an excellent job of offering a unified, consistent, and efficient communications system to their users, and without a tenth the abuse much smaller modern monopolies heap out on people. the result is the PSTN and SS7, which provides a solid framework so that users are assured some minimal interoperability, but other operators still have the ability to innovate. recognition of this is why people like vonage and packet8 are "real", and all the folks who're just doing VoIP without paying attention to the PSTN are toy players.

[on the Civil War - wow]
okay, i totally agree that the parent is off in attributing such importance to the difference in rail gauge... but you're on pretty thin ice yourself.

...the big problem was that Lincoln's government was trying to dictate what the States could and could not do, imposing one set of standards for radically different geographies and economies.

that's a pretty darned one-sided view of things. the South was also pissed that the federal government wouldn't impose the standards they wanted. the north was perfectly happy (as political entities, anyway - not all the people) to have slavery continue in the south, they just didn't want to have to respect it. there was a huge issue around the South's desire to force the North to recognize their individual laws. you could even say that this tension was all caused by the lack of firm, clear standards early on, and that - as is always the case - back-fitting them afterwards caused things to break. but, of course, this was a real war, not a point in an argument, and the real reasons were tremendously more complex than we're going to work out in a slashdot article.

[on the early and current Internet]

...the early internet was controlled by the DoD... ...Even now, one corporation controls DNS

the early internet was a DARPA project, yes, but implemented by a handful of universities. there were mandated standards, yes, but that's exactly the point! these standards allowed interoperability, but were minimal enough to allow for a tremendous amount of innovation (even if much of it does suck - i'm no fan of most Internet tech). and i'm curious which company you think controls DNS. it's a cooperation between a number of companies appointed by an organization (supposedly?) operating in the public trust. verisign's recent stupidity with SiteFinder should show that there's less central control t

Re:Standards

[hak1du]

Standards are nice, but it's NO PLACE for government.

Of course, standards are a place for government. The government doesn't need to set every standard, but there are many areas for which the government is the best single body to pick the standard or even to define the standard.

If the government were to decided the standards, we'd all be writing programs in Ada.

Instead, we have millions of programmers writing C++ and MFC code because a completely unaccountable entity that's larger than many governments made that choice. It's a tough choice, and we are picking from the bottom of the barrel here, but frankly, we might actually be better off with Ada.

In other news we would just be getting the standard for 10Base-T later this year [...]

In other news, because Microsoft picked it, we still don't have a decent interoperable object standard--we have been stuck with 1970's technology (COM) until this very day.

and a byte would soon be 37 bits long (becuase it's the only number that doesn't offend lacto-vegitarian-femi-nazi-free-range-chicken-head s) or some other weird thing.

And with corporate-defined standards, companies make stupid choices because they have some stealth patents or other weird interests. Frankly, I'd rather make "lacto-vegitarian-femi-nazi-free-range-chicken-hea ds" happy than pay an extra dime for each music download because Sony decided to use their market position to screw me over even more.

I would be nice to have the government say something like "OK all you companies, decided on a format for word processor documents and stick to it untill the you issue a new standard after that", but for government to decide the standard its self probably wouldn't be good.

That's how almost all government standards get created anyway: by private companies. Or do you think George W. Bush sits down and drafts them up? Even when a standard was "created by" the government, it's usually contracted out.

Re:Standards

[Glonoinha]

The US government loses money as a drug dealer. The most profitable 'job' on the planet is dealing drugs and the US government is losing money doing it. That pretty much sums it up.

I love my country, would happily kill in all sorts of violent manner any foreigners that try to harm my country - but that doesn't make the current (or any recent) administration angels. They are a hell of a lot less corrupt than other country governments but they are still a corrupt bunch of thieving losers.

And part of the reason tracks had to be relayed in the South is that the North Army pulled up rails, heated them on a fire and twisted them around trees - in effect destroying the South's ability to travel. Good tactic (it worked) but afterwards it sort-of needed to be fixed.

If I was going to trust all of this computer standards stuff to anybody it would be either PARC, IBM, or a combination of the two. PARC did a pretty good job, who funded them, Xerox?

Re:Standards

[pboulang]

Is this a rally against capitalism?

If the people that are being milked had no other options, then yeah, I might be able to see your point. However, it is the high demand that drives the prices, not some guy with a price gun. Don't you think that maybe if there ceased to be a demand and vacancies went up, then the prices would drop?

Sounds to me like you are simply bitter that you can't afford to live in a hip place. Be that as it may, I think you need to re-evaluate who/what you are railing against.

Re:Standards

[ChrisMaple]

Homeowner associations can be good, but they cause their own problems. Some are essentially micro-tyrannies, where, for instance, you are forbidden to use any but one lawn care service, or make your house look nicer than your neighbor's.

probably using something like CPM

[SmartyPants]

or out of jobs completely.
MS brought computers to peoples desktops.
without DOS & Windows we would probably still be on green screens.

Re:probably using something like CPM

[TheSpoom]

Bullshit. Without DOS we'd be using QDOS, and without Windows we'd probably be using Apple computers or the like.

AOL member page?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is a troll post. Why in $diety's name did you post a link to an AOL member page?

Re:If Windows were to diappear

[nacturation]

The inexpensive x86 machines out there all run Windows. Would people have bought them if there were no OS to run on them? Odds are likely that Apple would be the already dominant force in the home, similar to how they were in the Apple ][ days.

Apple of course!!!

[Jubii]

If Microsoft were to close up shop, who do the readers of Slashdot think would be tomorrow's Microsoft?

I honestly believe if there were no Micro$oft we'd all be sitting around here bitching about Apple. They "owned" the education market for a long time. So long that those students that first learned on an Apple are now consumers. I believe that alone makes Apple a strong contender for the desktop crown ... if only....

Re:Apple of course!!!

[anaesthetica]

All the Sim* games started out on Macintosh. Where would we be without Sim City (and its rather random cousins, Sim Earth, Sim Ant (which was awesome), Sim Tower, etc)?

what would it be like

[starworks5]

what would the world be like without microsoft?

what would the world be like without GW?

what would the world be like if there was no hate, war, stupidity?

some say it would be harmony, but humans bring these things upon ourselves, its our nature i believe. not that WE like to be subjected to these sort of things, but many of us like subjecting them on others. why else do we watch professional wrestling, reality tv. why else do we say "at least im not him", instead of say "man i should help him out" these are more important questions that we should ask ourselves

IT folks would be worth more

[superpulpsicle]

Windows has made things easier with the GUI. We need to go back to that world when unix and wang computers dominated the scene. Things were ugly and only techies have the answers. Windows has made things harder with all these security BS. Unfortunately HR don't give a fuck, they won't hire people just to install patches. Security folks I think, have too much on their hands nowadays. In the end, windows put IT folks in a shitty situation. Abandoned by HR, abandoned by economy, screwed by viruses and hackers on a daily basis.

open source has a long history

[Anonymous Coward]

The various algorithm books, complete with source, predate the existence of MS by a longshot.

And CP/M had a open source replacement, ZCPR that was doing pretty well for awhile.

I'd say Microsoft is an abberation, one that will gradually lose ground and fade.

Information and knowledge want to be free. Imagine a world where opening a math or physics book required a license...I'm sure the publishers would love it, but the fact is, it's kind of unimaginable now that we have had a taste of freedom.

Software is getting to be this way, too. A time will come when all the licensing and secret codes will seem quaint. At least I hope that time comes...it's hard to tell what will happen with all the laws being twisted by money and influence.

If Microsoft ceased to exist today...

[cipher chort]

Well it's pretty clear that Apple would win a huge chunk of the desktop market by default, but probably not the the extent that Microsoft has today. The rest would be carved up by various Linux distros, and maybe new or revitalized OSs?

The server market would just be consumed by UNIX-like OSs and probably Apple would gain ground there as well, but not nearly like the desktop situation.

It would be a huge win for IBM and Apple, and even Sun could probably make some ground.

I wonder if Dell would come up with their own OS to start selling, or a highly customized version of Red Hat? Hmm... one would think that Dell wouldn't want to lose it's grasp on the PC market.

The real problem would be all the chaos that would ensue when no one was dominating the standards. Despite being Pure Evil, Microsoft *does* give everyone else standards to integrate with. Everyone at least makes their stuff as compatible with Windows(TM) as possible. Without the standards, companies like IBM, Sun, Apple, Cisco, HP, etc would all compete with their own proprietary stuff and it would probably be a real nightmare for application developers.

without Microsoft

[morelife]

IBM would be the three headed monster, devouring everything in sight.

Re:Without Microsoft

[citking]

People often complain about how buggy and how full of security holes. Bugs are what occur when you make something that is very large and very complex. People want stuff to be easy to use, which means advanced programming, which in turn results in bugs. As for security holes. This is a subject that really bugs me. The people that tend to be the most critical of microsoft for their numerous security holes (which also result from having such a complex system), also tend to be the ones that like to exploit them. Which is a damn hipocracy if you ask me. Security holes exist, they always have, they always will, and there is nothing whatsoever that you, I or Mr. Gates can do to change that. The problem isn't the security holes, it's the fact that there are people that exploit them. And then those innocent people who don't exploit them will get mad at Microsoft, effectively siding with those malicious jerks who exploit the holes. People should be supportive of Microsoft to fix the holes and bugs, while denouncing the jerks, letting them know that they are neither cool nor respected.

You say that the problem with bugs are that they are present in complex programs and the people who exploit them should be beaten with a donkey. I concur.

HOWEVER, it's not the fact that the bugs were created in the first place that pisses most people off. It is:

-Microsoft consistently releases software with known bugs...23,000 such known in Windows 2000 upon its deployment.

-Microsoft takes its time to fix even the smallest bugs. Remember this?

-Microsoft's patches often cause compatibility issues on down the road for enterprise systems (I don't think I need a link to prove that one).

My point is, you can whine about Microsoft being exploited all you want and complex software having bugs...it's life, it happens. But when the company in question releases buggy software on purpose, takes months to fix critical issues, gouges customers on support costs, releases patches that are not working and/or break other parts of the operating system, etc etc it shows a level of deception that rivals only the tobacco companies.

That's why, for one, I don't complain about release dates being shoved back and the public beta of Windows XP SP2. This shows that Microsoft is trying to become more responsible...but those few actions are but a whisper in the jet engine of Blaster et al.

Re:Without Microsoft

[burns210]

Agreed, bugs are inherit to a large program (or OS or set of programs, etc)... Two things make the difference.

1. The style and process taken in coding and trying to catch bugs before they are released into a final product.

2. The manner in which bugs are corrected and patched once discovered....

Apple and the Open Source Community are both using systems AS or More complex than Windows (accomplishing the same level of tasks, atleast). Yet the way Microsoft handles bugs compared to Apple or the OSC is hugely different. The OSC has a turnaround on a discovered bugs that is quite high. A critical level bug may be patched in a matter of hours. Apple's policies are nearly as good, where most important bugs are handled in a matter of several days, to, a couple weeks(the more important the quicker, ofcourse)... Microsoft however, has left(and still leaves) critical remote bugs unpatched after a matter of years, relying more on the publicitiy to the masses of a bug rather than the severity of it... When Microsoft is in a hurry, there turnaround is much closer to the level of Apple, releasing a patch in a few weeks... However, Microsoft has repeatedly taken months, years and even ignored critical bugs in the OS.

Re:Without Microsoft

[Billly Gates]

Shit.

Do you remember running memaker and creating boot disks under Dos6 just to run some dumb game?

Extended memory, expanded memory, conventional memory?

What if you had a situation that took 2 minutes to log into a network and 2 minutes to boot Windows3.1. Now lets say this system ran Borland C++ and was cooperatively multitasking as usual back then. What if you accidently create an infinite loop?

Boom 5 minutes of time gone!

This was just one example I can remember back in my early highschool years. God it was a piece of crap.

How many years since the 386 was launched until we had protective memory and premptive multitasking? how many more years did we all have to wait before it became reasonable stable and reliable?

Answer is 10 years to turn 32 bit... and 15 years before it became reasonable stable!

Os/2 by the way did all of the above in just a few years after it came out if you ran it on a 386 or 486.

Now fast forward to the 21st century. How many years or decades did we have to wait for a 64 bit OS for AMD's Opteron? Try a mere few months.

Thank god for opensource.

I remember being told in 1995 that we would have to wait until 2015 before Microsoft would make Windows 64 bit.

Hate to say it but MS was AWEFULL!

Today they are alot better and some of their software is good. But they surly were the worst software maker in the world in my opinion back in the 80's and 90's. Shudder.

Re:If Windows were to diappear

[Anonymous Coward]

There wouldn't have been any inexpensive x86 machines because the IBM PC's OS would probably have been retained by IBM and thus the clone market would not have been created. If Gates hadn't had the gaul to ask for the right to relicense DOS to third parties, we'd probably be paying 10K for a basic PC.

Re:If Windows were to diappear

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely companies like Commodore, Tandy, Texas Instruments would own the home computer industry, while IBM would own the business market, and Apple would have lower educational markets. A lot like it was before MS.

What would the world be like...

[Anonymous Coward]

...without people asking stupid, senseless questions. I mean, really, this is a completely idiotic question. It's pointless. It's mental fucking masturbation. It's the geek equivalent of a dozen fratboys sitting around with a half ounce of Northern Lights and a 48-pack of Pabst asking what happened, man, if the tail chased you?!

Aren't there any REAL questions being asked, or is /. so desperate for material that this is what passes as discussion fodder?

Could have been worse then microsoft

[zakezuke]

Microsoft's business model, like it or not, made the clone industry possible... causing the clone PC to actually take a hold of the market. If it wasn't for the fact that you could buy / pirate a copy of MS-dos for your clone... we may have had no alternative but to buy from IBM / Apple / Commodore / Atari / Dec / Sun what ever what have you. While this may have been good in many ways, all seem to have been more interested in the end user just buying a new PC every few years without assurances of binary downward compataiblity. If we're talking Sun / SGI / Dec... I highly doubt that your typicaly home user would be able to afford a license. Microsoft was sub $100 for your sub $1000 pc... and like it or not, this wasn't a bad deal esp to those who just pirated a copy from a friend... as it was the custom.

God

[110010001000]

Can we shut up about Microsoft already? Damn, every other story is some "anti-M$" drivel. Lets imagine life without these kinds of "discussions", just for one day.

Re:We'd all be using IBM OS/2

[TykeClone]

I worked in an AS/400 shop in 1995 and 1996. At that time, OS/2 wasn't quite dead (I think that they had just launched Warp!) and OS/2 actually integrated quite well into that environment.

I think that IBM probably launched OS/2 Warp a bit early - they had an OS designed to take advantage of the internet (as opposed to Windows 3.1), but that was before the internet had taken off.

MS Bashing

[thirdofnine]

I am an avid Slashdot reader, and I regularly moderate, and attempt to even the balance here (which is very difficult with so much bias).

I do not have any affiliation with MS, and have both Linux and MS machines at home.

I know someone will probably mod me down for this, but why does it appear that Slashdot has a tendency to continually bash MS.

I mean at the end of the day, if Windows was really as crap as some people make it out to be, no-one would use it, simple as that. I have used many OSes over the years, W95, WNT, W2K, WXP, W2K3, OS2, Linux, UNIX. I know that they all have their problems, but really, name an OS that doesn't have a problem in it.

Not only that, a computer is very much like a car, if it is not looked after, it will eventually die, be it Linux, Windows, UNIX or MAC OS.

I am not claiming that MS does no bad, but really there is not many large companies out there that have not done something bad at some stage. And there is not one company out there that would not defend themselves the same way that MS has, if they were under attack, be that a legitimate attack or not.

Now, I understand the concerns of the Open Source community, and Linux has come a hell of a long way in recent years (which is why it is starting to be used in the real world now), but do not think for a second that the tables would not be turned if Linux was in MS's position. I do not like SCO's tactics, but if they do prove that Linux has their source code, then you might as well put Linux in the same box as MS, as it would prove that not even the open source community is always the GOOD IT community member it claims to be.

So mod me down if you wish, but really, the MS bashing is starting to get boring.

But to answer you question, someone else would be in their position, with a different name, with it's own bugs, exploits and vulnerabilities (just as every program and OS does), and would probable cop the same bashing that MS does.

Third of Nine.

Re:MS Bashing

[tuxedobob]

I am reasonably certain that the only reason (today) that everyone uses Windows is because everyone uses Windows.

Just my two cents...

Re:MS Bashing

[zrobotics]

Sure, windows isn't the greatest, but then again, examine the average user. If most of the people that I knew used Linux, their machines would crash & burn within a week. Fact is, microsoft is easy to use, so most people use it. If set up correctly Windows can be very stable, provided you know what you are doing. Linux is more stable because the user base is more knowledgable. There are less security holes found because less hackers are looking. I don't condone Microsoft's business tactics, but that doesn't make Bill Gates satan.

Microsoft again?!

[borg1238]

Without Microsoft we wouldn't have posts asking what the world would be like without Microsoft.

Aren't there enough articles about Microsoft on Slashdot? Do we really need to delve into the hypothetical?

Re:Without Microsoft?

[geekoid]

If IBM went with CP/M in all likly hood they would have retained the rights and we would all be locked into IBM.

Re:Computers wouldn't be as easy to use

[fiendracer]

Like what would the internet be like without AOL?

For many AOL was/is "the" internet. Until they learned that they were mistaken. Learned they didn't have to go through all the hoops, learned they could "do it" themselves.

People investigate, learn, adjust, and then are better off.

gunnar.

There would be no Open Source...

[spectecjr]

Because without a large "evil" bad guy to rail against, no-one would bother writing OSS.

The only reason you're using Linux today is because people hated Microsoft enough to write OSS to compete with it.

Intresting question for linux

[SmallFurryCreature]

Exactly wich OS was linux written on? Does history record?

Anyway MS got its chance when IBM decided to launch a cheap crap machine. IBM wanted one since Apple was doing not to bad selling very light hardware and software (compared to the big iron of IBM) to both consumers and horror of horror even businesses. IBM didn't want to let that market go but neither thought it to be very big or important. It just wanted to be in there fast.

So they let two upstart outsiders do a lot of the work. Intel for the hardware and Microsoft for the software. There is probably a dungeon somewhere at IBM where a couple of bodies lie behind glass where new bosses are taken and shown the ghastly remain of those who drew up the Microsoft contract.

Microsoft was loose and all has not been well.

So where would the world be without Micosoft? Pfff that is a thoughie. Would IBM have developed their own software instead? Would it have been a solid piece of software as we find on big iron but immensly expensive? (if you think unix is good you never worked on a mainframe)

Then apple would have been the low end supplier with IBM PC's coming in at the top end, you know like now but in reverse. Would apple have allowed clones? If not then PC's would still be expensive, the lowest price would be Apples, yes ouch, and the top segment of PC's would be IBM's, take it bitch.

MS was told to build a dirt cheap OS and Intel to build a dirt cheap piece of hardware. IBM never really intended the PC revolution. It wanted thin clients powered by big hardware. Not dozens of single task crap machines. It just wasn't prepared to let apple take that market.

Maybe the PC market would be better without MS but there also might not be a PC market without MS. or might there? We do have the home computers. Might they have filled the role? C64000 anyone? The sinclairs, the ataries and god knows what else?

I think a world without MS is certainly a world that would have been a whole lot more fun.

probably someone like them

[hak1du]

I suspect that if it hadn't been Microsoft, it would have been some other company like them. The PC market shows that there have been plenty of other companies willing to take shortcuts for quick time-to-market and for hardball business strategies.

If you recall Apple's history, first, they claimed to own "the GUI" and started suing people over it, then they saddled us with a decade of horrendously poorly designed and flaky operating systems (until OS X). Sun hasn't been much better: they took BSD UNIX, created a proprietary product around it, and more recently claimed to establish Java as an "open standard" only to protect it heavily with patents and try to keep complete control of it. And the only reason IBM didn't try to monopolize the PC market was because they were already under intense scrutiny for anti-trust violations and couldn't do so.

On the whole, among the potential monopolists that could have assumed the role of evil monopolist, Microsoft was probably one of the less harmful ones: they didn't wise up to patents until recently, they bungled a lot, and their technology was so poor that it allowed UNIX and Apple to co-exist for a while and OSS to take off.

But the fact that the combination of our laws and the computer market seems to predispose us to having an evil monopolist around doesn't mean we have to accept their behavior as natural. Just because lots of people loot when there is a natural disaster doesn't make the behavior acceptable. Likewise, just because people can behave like monopolists in the PC market doesn't mean that they are justified in doing so.

Fortunately, a company as big and predominant as Microsoft is also a big target. In the long run, they won't keep their position: the combination of antitrust enforcement and plain old free market forces (including open source) brings companies like Microsoft down in the long run.

Re:Not in a plane crash

[Fortunato_NC]

The PC popularity was a large art do to the fact that you can tinker with it. When Macs started, they went out of there way to prevent you from opening them up.

I think if you really looked, you'd find that the PC's popularity had more to do with the fact that it wasn't locked to one particular manufacturer. Once Compaq clean-roomed their own BIOS and built the first PC compatibles, it wasn't long before half of Taiwain was making motherboards and selling components to white box computer builders. Remember how many computer manufacturers there were and how big Computer Shopper magazine was in the eighties and early nineties? Those guys weren't building computers for people to tinker with, they were building IBM compatibles because the parts were cheaply and easily available. If someone had reverse engineered the Apple MAC ROMs and not been pounded to dust by the Apple Legal Team, we might well all be using Macs today.

The ironic thing is that without two things that IBM would view as absolute disasters - the non-exclusive deal Bill Gates and Microsoft cut with IBM to supply DOS, and the arrival of the "clone" market, the IBM PC line might well have been a commercial failure. But once all the clone makers were pushing "IBM compatible" everywhere you turned, computer manufacturers who kept their designs proprietary simply couldn't get and keep the shelf space/mind share they needed to keep their platforms viable. (With the exception of Apple, of course - having a rabid fan base helps, but as the Amiga folks know, it's not a 100% guarantee of success)

Solaris 2004 Home Edition

[gopherd00d]

Maybe if there were no MS, we'd all have a SparcStation on our desks instead of a PC, and we'd be complaining about the latest CDE virus. There would be an ongoing religious debate over the merits of Apple vs Sun, and an ever-growing third faction would be educating both sides about the wisdom of Open Source.

Realistically, folks, if there wasn't a Microsoft, someone else would take their place. Perhaps we should be grateful for Microsoft's existence, because if someone more competent were in that position (say, some company that could write good code, for example), there'd be a whole lot less need for open source. So, thanks Microsoft for showing us all just how bad an operating system can be!

So many hours.

[openmtl]

So many hours of our lives have been spent fixing SCANDISK, SCANREG and missing DLLs.

So many hours of our childrens lives asking "Why has it stoppped working"

So many hours trying to get DOS to do simply tasks. So many hours spent on Legal, Licencing, and reboots.

I see computing technology as allowing humanity the freedom to explore and innovate. The games industry has driven the hardware manufacturers and their engines stay well away from Microsoft except in recent years.

The Internet is run by Open Source, yet it has been polluted by Microsoft through their poor security model. Where would we be without open relays, zombies and Windows scripting hosts ?. Microsoft have regulated our freedoms too long.

Like some command-economy control, it regulates what it wants and suffocates what it doesn't.

It is also NOT the largest IT company in the world by any means; IBM has many time its turnover so the loss of Microsoft in percentage terms of the Worlds top 100 companies, will barely be felt.

I am writing in Ada! & MS Ruminations

[Sean Clifford]

I am writing in Ada, you insensitive clod! :)

Seriously, though, I have to agree with you that the government is the last place you want programming standards to come out of. Shudder. The technology sector should develop its own standards in cooperation - sure, it leads to a BetaMax versus VHS situation sometimes, but in the end you get general interoperability.

Much as I hate to say it, I don't think that the computer industry would be as far along as it is today without games.

Games have driven the market and the platform of choice has been the PC. Why? Because it was there.

Apple became tied to its hardware/software model, expensive. (And excellent.) The IBM PC clone gained ubiquity by being cheap (And...cheap). Microsoft was in the right place at the right time and kept on the ball in crushing competition and playing bondage with PC manufacturers.

And here go my mod points and karma

I doubt that Linux would be where it is today without the domination of Microsoft.

Re:I am writing in Ada! & MS Ruminations

[RAMMS EIN]

``I really do wonder where Linux would be today without Microsoft.''

Keep in mind that GNU/Linux has mainly been taking market share from commercial unices. This is to be expected, as it has much in common with those and their technical strengths and weaknesses are very similar.

As far as competition with MicroSoft goes, the GNU system just doesn't have what it takes. Windows has all these graphical configuration tools and wizards that can make even a complete agnostic feel in control. These are just not there for Linux, so you'll need people with actual knowledge of the system as sysadmins. With companies hiring only people with x years of experience, this is just not going to work. Besides, Linux has this hippie feeling to it that companies are uncomfortable with.

As for the home desktop, don't even think about it. People want their gadgets supported and they want their games to run. They don't want to break their system, so they'll stick with what it ships with and not experiment.

The successes of Linux, clearly, are in the server area, particularly against commercial UNIX systems. MicroSoft hardly has anything to do with it. Of course, some people like to run Linux on their PCs, because they feel it goes against MicroSoft, but keep in mind that most PC users think MicroSoft is GOOD.

``I wonder why Minix didn't experience the same explosive growth. (Anyone even remember it?)''

MINIX was never meant to be big. It's a teaching OS and it strictly abides the KISS principle. No improvements that increase the complexity of the system are accepted. I believe there was or is a fork that tried to expand the system and make it more useful, but it obviously hasn't made high-profile achievements.

Re:I am writing in Ada! & MS Ruminations

[robnauta]

Minix still exists, and there is a Minix usenet group that gets traffic. It was never intended to be anything like what Linux became. It's a pedagogical OS whose main method of distribution is a CD in the back cover of a textbook. It 'inspired' Linus to go off and do something of his own. It's wrong to act like it 'died' or in any way is a failure because it's still primarily a pedagogical OS. I once used Minix 1.3. It was an OK operating system, but its limits of 64K for data and 64K for executable meant that there was no software except stripped basic commands. GNU tools optimized for speed while BSD optimized for memory use back then.
Its big problem of course was that it was a commercial OS, sold together with Andrew Tanenbaum's book on Operating Systems.

There were patches to 1.5 available, but that was so much trouble it tooks days just to compile part of it. I got an account on mugnet.nl (or .org), a minux user group, and found out all the executables were chmodded 111 to prevent people from downloading them.

By the way, I don't think it was on CD in 1990, I remember having it on 3-4 360K floppys.

Re:I am writing in Ada! & MS Ruminations

[mattrumpus]

Minix didn't have the same explosive growth because Andrew Tanenbaum wouldn't let others contribute to the codebase. He wanted to keep it clean and clear for educational purposes and therefore refused to add new features.

Re:I am writing in Ada! & MS Ruminations

[hak1du]

As far as competition with MicroSoft goes, the GNU system just doesn't have what it takes. Windows has all these graphical configuration tools and wizards that can make even a complete agnostic feel in control.

"Feel" being the operative word--in real life, that's actually an illusion. The vast majority of PC problems aren't fixed by using those "graphical configuration tools and wizards", they are fixed by rebooting, returning the machine, or having a 12 year old whiz kid fix it.

(And do look up the meaning of "agnostic" some time.)

These are just not there for Linux,

Sure, they are: distributions like SuSE need not fear any comparison with Windows when it comes to that sort of thing.

so you'll need people with actual knowledge of the system as sysadmins.

Sorry to break it to you, but Wizards and GUI tools don't obviate the need for knowledge. If anything, Windows requires more experience to manage well, and it keeps changing. Seems like you have fallen prey to Microsoft marketing claims.

As for the home desktop, don't even think about it. People want their gadgets supported and they want their games to run. They don't want to break their system, so they'll stick with what it ships with and not experiment.

Contrary to popular opinion, gadgets are not well supported on Windows. Sure, lots of hardware ships with Windows drivers and installers, but a lot of the time, they don't work, and with some regularity, they mess up the entire Windows installation.

Less hardware pretends to work with Linux, but the stuff that works usually really does work and works really well; unlike hardware under Windows, hardware under Linux will also keep working through system upgrade after system upgrade.

Re:I am writing in Ada! & MS Ruminations

[silicon not in the v]

I feel like I'm being baited by a troll, but you got modded insightful, so it's worth replying.

As far as competition with MicroSoft goes, the GNU system just doesn't have what it takes. Windows has all these graphical configuration tools and wizards that can make even a complete agnostic feel in control.

"Feel" being the operative word--in real life, that's actually an illusion. The vast majority of PC problems aren't fixed by using those "graphical configuration tools and wizards", they are fixed by rebooting, returning the machine, or having a 12 year old whiz kid fix it.

I call "straw man". You missed the boat here. Did he say "problems"? He didn't mention any problems that need to be fixed. He mentioned configuration tools. If people want to adjust the screen size, they want to bring up a properties box, select the size they want and click OK. They don't want to bring up a terminal, run a config utility or edit config files and then have to restart X windows and reload their desktop environment. (hmm, here's one where Windows doesn't need a reboot to change the setting)
Yes, I just discovered SuSE that has an easy configuration utility after frustration with a few other distros. (3 cheers for Novell for deciding to open source YaST!)

Sorry to break it to you, but Wizards and GUI tools don't obviate the need for knowledge. If anything, Windows requires more experience to manage well, and it keeps changing.

I think you're in a different world than the parent poster. We're not talking about a Windows Server. He's talking about just being able to use the computer and make a few adjustments. You are thinking of being able to control and tinker with everything, set up a custom firewall, NAT addressing, proxy servers, user authentication, and I don't know what else. My analogy is that there is a 1-foot step of learning for people to be able to effectively use their Windows system and get it to do what they normally want. The advanced configuration stuff is then an 8-foot step for them to climb. With Linux, it's a 6-foot step from the beginning to get the system to do what you want, but then once you have gotten up there, you can do anything you want with it.

Contrary to popular opinion, gadgets are not well supported on Windows. Sure, lots of hardware ships with Windows drivers and installers, but [HOGWASH]a lot of the time, they don't work, and with some regularity, they mess up the entire Windows installation.[/HOGWASH]

Less hardware pretends to work with Linux, but the stuff that works usually really does work and works really well; unlike hardware under Windows, hardware under Linux will also keep working through system upgrade after system upgrade.

You forgot an HTML tag in there, so I put it in for you :). Driver discs for devices in Windows just about always work, and they sure won't corrupt your Windows installation. (I'm probably going to get responses from Linux people saying, "I tried to install something in Windows and then went into regedit and messed with some stuff in the registry, and then Windows was all corrupted! Those Windows drivers must have messed it up!") It is a little disappointing that some hardware didn't have good support going from the Win95/98/ME type of platform to the WinNT/2K/XP type of platform, but that is a major shift in the type of OS, so it's a little understandable. Linux has been the same type of design from the beginning, so there has generally just been added hardware support, rather than dropped support.

No microsoft=lots of substandard games

[zedpol]

I will be the first to tell you that i like open source software, but linux, apple, and everything else out there (but windows) just don't have good games. Some people mentioned standards is one thing microsoft has done for us, and the game world really reflects this..looks at direct x. Now i know lots of you will point out opengl as an alternative but with so many people trying to contribute to it (matrox, 3d labs, nvidia?, ati?, etc etc etc) nothing ever gets implemented. peace

missed the GUI?

[1000101]

If Microsoft missed the GUI, why does almost every Linux desktop try to emulate it?

Re:missed the GUI?

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm...I think you have it backwards...why did M$ emuluate X, steal Xerox ideas, etc.?

All depends on Apple...

[goMac2500]

It depends on what Apple would have become. The Apple of yesterday was locked into their own standards. They weren't willing to comply with the industry, or work with others. Apple learned their lesson after Microsoft. Steve Jobs returned and instead of creating new closed standards he embraced open ones. The closed Apple would not have survived. The open Apple would have flourished and created a rich community.

It would suck.

[SphericalCrusher]

I was actually thinking about this a lot last week.

To make a long answer short: The world would suck without Microsoft. We see all of these Linux fans (me, included) bash Microsoft and its products all of the time, but it's rare to see one of us actually want Microsoft taken away. Without Microsoft, we wouldn't have had motivation for more than half of the stuff we have here today. Also, our gaming would be nowhere near as good as it is -- Take at Direct X for example.

Through the good times and the bad times, Microsoft has given us all something that we like, at least. Whether it be Microsoft Windows, Office, Direct X, Dungeon Siege, The Xbox, Halo, or whatever, the world would not be the same without Microsoft.

Oh, and you think Mac OS and Linux would be as good as it today without competition from Microsoft Windows? Hell no.

I'm not a Microsoft fan at all. I just know how to pay my dues and respects well.

I agree, and would add:

[Zathras26]

Microsoft is a greedy monopolist, convicted of illegal behavior to maintain its monopoly. If Apple had had any business sense starting in the mid to late Eighties or so, though, they would be the monopoly today, and frankly, we'd be even worse off under them than we are with the Microsoft monopoly now; Apple is a far, far greedier company even than Microsoft is. Remember how they priced Macs from 1984 to about 1994 or thereabouts? The price discrepancy today is annoying, but back then, it was absolutely appalling. If Apple had managed to dominate, competition would probably never have forced them to start striving for more competitive pricing, and many of us today probably wouldn't even have computers.

Disclosure, for anyone who is wondering or cares: I'm one of the many longtime Macintosh enthusiasts who loves the computer but hates the company that makes it.

Well, I'd Like To See It

[The Patient]

Just for curiousity's sake. Not out of any ill-will towards any particular company, since I'm sure that a lot of other companies are getting away with a lot more shit than the shit for which Microsoft got nailed.

I was ruminating the other day on how cool it would be if the oceans suddenly disappeared and we could all walk around on what was formerly the Bottom Of The Ocean. Yes, it would be cool, but it would severely fuck up a lot of other things.

Re:An Interesting Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I apologize ahead of time....

IBM may have made their own OS for the PC

You mean OS/2? It existed and is still run on cash registers around the world. Remember, microsoft screwed IBM with Windows 95.

The standardization of MS has also pushed us a long way

I have to disagree, Microsoft hasn't done much for standards. Instead, they take other peoples standards and screw them up. Example? Java(screwed), Javascript(screwed), HTML(screwed), Word Document(closed format), WMA(closed format), win32(closed format)... standards my ass.

back when Apple was a major contender

Are you smoking crack! Have you been asleep the last 4 years of OS X? Hello, Expose! OpenGL accelerated! lets not forget about hardware. Microsoft rarely invents? Evidence... GUI - no, Games - no, Security - no. About the only thing that I see Microsoft pushing is the damage that Viruses can unleash on us.

Your post seems to worship Microsoft for what it has done, I just don't see it that way. Microsoft brought us Office for Mac first. So without Microsoft, we would all be driving around OSX or OS/2 with Word Perfect.

It's Office that matters

[Animats]

Microsoft's real business is Office. Everything else either loses money (development tools, Xbox), or exists to lock people into Office (Windows). Look at their financials.

If it hadn't been for Microsoft, the leading applications companies would still have the leading applications. Remember Lotus? Ashton-Tate? VisiCorp? MicroPro? The industry would probably be more standards-based, because having incompatible spreadsheets and word processors would be too annoying.

Has anyone else decided...

[athlon02]

to stop worrying about this? I know this may sound inflammatory, but I'm really curious... Has anyone decided to stop caring about which is best: Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX, xyz OS, etc? In the past I cared more, but time has shown me that they all are beneficial in certain areas and that they add to the collective good, so why drown so much energy in this? Why not use the energy for something more productive and less stressful?

Novell Servers

[Punchinello]

To be honoest, if MS never existed I suspect most of us would still be running Novell servers. When the Windows NT 4 server came on the scene most of my cliets quickly migrated from Novell to the NT platform. Since this migration predated most mainstream awareness of Linux or the maturity of the Linux server, I can't imagine any of us would have considered it. Linux proponents would have been calling Novell the big bad server monopoly and trashing them on slashdot every time a new Linux distribtion/version/build was released. On the desktop I imagine OS2 would have matured and been the accepted platform. Perhaps Linux would just now be making the scene as a desktop solution in fierce competion with OS2. Maybe Apple would have made a push for acceptence as the perferred desktop in Novell server environments, but who knows. I'm not sure their focus would ever have been for the corporate desktop.

Microsoft destroyed tech support

[humankind]

You could list for days the software companies that went out of business as a result of Microsoft's dominance of the industry, but nothing is more substantive than the fact IMO that Microsoft single-handedly destroyed the entire computer product support industry.

Back in the 80s and early 90s, software companies offered toll-free tech support and were easily contacted to resolve problems. When Windows came along, there were so many incompatibility issues that most of us software publishers found the majority of our tech support resources were going towards fixing Microsoft problems that were inadvertently blamed on our own products. The unstable and chaotic Windows environment, where one il-behaved app or library could screw everything else up, made it a nightmare trying to support even the most simple applications.

Microsoft, single-handedly eradicated the entire product support market by forcing developers to hide or else become pawns in helping microsoft debug its own OS.

I abandoned the desktop market when Windows became dominant. It wasn't worth it trying to develop a useful product for consumers when every new release of an operating system would make your application malfunction and cause all your users to blame you for something that was outside your control.

Thanks Microsoft.

I hate to be the one to say it but.....

[abolith]

who the fuck cares? MS IS here, and we live in a world that INCLUDES MS, so unless someone out there has both a time machine and wants to go back in time and stop MS than this entore article is a moot point.

Re:While at Microsoft today...

[bfree]

When Microsoft stops using it's monopoly position to protect and extend it's monopoly and instead focuses on simply producing a better product, then I will stop "bashing" Microsoft. As of right now, Microsoft have been convicted both at home and abroad of being an anti-competitive monopoly (that means that MS does hinder open source production, ask the samba team, or OpenOffice.org) so while their products may have advantages for certain niches, I for one am very wary of funding their war chest. I don't want MS destroyed, I just want them to not act illegally, preferably because they are no longer a monopoly (most of what they have done would be ok if they weren't a monopoly but they are)!

A lot better.

[miffo.swe]

Compare Windows to BeOS, Amiga OS, Geos, MacOS and imagine where those would have been with a couple och billions in research money. Windows is a hack and has always been a hack. There is nothing novel stemming from Microsoft, every last bit and piece is traceable to some other company except maybe the TCPA. I would rather ask myself how would our computing be without Xerox, IBM, 3dfx, Compaq, Norton and the free internet (compared to MSN 1.0)?

I think computing would have been all ok without Microsoft because they arent sitting on any knowledge that is absent elsewhere.

Yin and Yang

[CherniyVolk]

Microsoft has it's purpose. I think we are mostly concerned with their practices, but generally I think Microsoft makes an OK product for non professionals.

We (or I) want diversity. I want documents, regardless of their format to not pose a problem regardless of platform. People will ALWAYS purchase commercial software, if anything, to pay for the convience of NOT having to build it on their own. Or, as odd as it may seem, some will pay to generate a feeling of value in their merchandise; this can be seen in the clothing industry from all angles, otherwise known publicly as 'buying the name' such as Nike versus shoes from the 99cent rack.

I think, a world without Microsoft (assuming a Microsoft that is NOT unruly), is a world contrary to what we really want or imply we want.

The day all of my computers, can be 100% compatible with Windows (documents, file sharing, database access etc.) is the day I'll purchase and use a version of Windows. Till then, Windows will continue to be the odd ball on my network, relatively handicapped and limited.

Other side of coin

[Anonymous Coward]

Right.. lets get rid of the regulators. Lord knows that banks have the public in their best interests and wouldn't dream of ever trying to abuse their position as an essential public service. We should just leave it up to international banking consortiums to decide what is best for American consumers.

Sorry, it was the "Most of the regulations.." part of your statement that got me going.

...with slower computers and lighter wallets

[answerer]

Without MS, there are two likely scenarios:

1)Apple ends up with the monopoly. Computers remain the playthings of the rich and corporate. The poor become more disadvantaged since they can't afford them. The Internet exists only in the US because people in other countries can't afford Macs.

2)3-4 major computer/OS manufacturer ventures come out with competing platforms that are completely incompatible. An ugly battle is fought between them with corporations caught in the middle. We inevitably end up with the manufacturer who sold at a loss and overpromised, setting computer technology development 15 years behind what we have today.

The King is dead! Long live the King!

[Angry Pixie]

If there were no Microsoft, there would be no savvy competitor to rival Apple. IBM and HP couldn't do it. They lacked the entrepreneurial creativity and energy Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Ballmer possessed. Jobs was only going to be defeated by someone with that new generation forethought.

Apple would have dominated, and Steve Jobs' meglomania would have only escalated. Eventually Apple would hold majority share and small developers would find themselves getting squeazed. So essentially, a world without Microsoft would be still be the same as a world with Microsoft.

I won't even entertain ideas about greater unchecked innovation. There are a lot of great technologies that have been killed off by kinder gentler cooperations that MS.

Remember Linus Torvald's quote

[LS]

"Thank God for Microsoft"

Re:Without Microsoft.....

[Endive4Ever]

Oh, yeah, I would be talking about the evil empire Apple and how they have a hold on the market.

That's not at all far off from the truth.

Apple intended for quite awhile to own the GUI market and be it's only vendor. They sued various entities and ran some of them out of the market. Because that's just how Apple does things.

When Microsoft came out with Windows, Apple sued Microsoft in the famous 'look-n-feel' lawsuits.

If Microsoft hadn't prevailed in those lawsuits, Apple would own the GUI market and be it's sole vendor.

That would suck bigtime. Microsoft plowed that ground for us. In fact the legal precedent that Microsoft set by fighting that fight for us is what allows people to 'clone' Windows GUI concepts and incorporate them into Linux/Free Software projects.

If Apple were in charge it would suck a hell of a lot more.

We'd all be screwed

[dedazo]

We'd be paying $4000 instead of $400 for them shiny "boxen" running Linux or BSD.

Whatever else, Microsoft Windows commoditized the PC market to the point where it was feasible for Intel to invest $4 billion instead of $4 million into R&D because they were selling 50 million CPUs instead of 5 million. AMD probably wouldn't exist, nor would all the mobo makers. There would probably be one or two graphics chip makers.

And of course, the tech boom of the 90s probably wouldn't have happened.

What do you want the world to be like without ms?

[minkwe]

Is what the real question should be.

Nobody can answer the question that says what will the world be like if X did not exist? Or what will the future be like if X stops existing?

The point is our decisions today will determine what the future will look like to us. We haven't made all those decisions yet so the question is:

What will you want the (computer) world to be like in the future, and what decisions should we make toward that.

Re:Computers wouldn't be as easy to use

[nathanh]

Hate him if you want, but there's no denying that Bill Gates made PCs mainstream

Apple and Commodore made PCs mainstream.

nd accessible-with Windows 95 onwards, anyone could use a PC-no need to muck about with a terminal, or config.sys

Ahhh, you're talking about IBM PCs. Well, young person of little experience, Microsoft made all those problems like "config.sys" in the first place. They hardly deserve praise for fixing them almost 15 years after introducing them.

Ask the other way around

[Qbertino]

What would the world be like today if Daimler Benz had a de-facto monopoly on cars just like MS has a de-facto monopoly on Software?
Right.
A world free of MS: Think various flavors of DOS and various flavors of GUIs, something like a Geos 2004 (that would probably be better even that todays Aqua) and competitors and Apple would be smaller yet due to the lack of contrast it could provide in a truly free market. And we'd all have fun and a feeling of meaning to what we're doing: tinkering with computer stuff.
Right now I only have that feeling when I'm working with Linux and am not forced to emulate a sick proprietary application or 'standard'.

Some people here think that MS forced innovation, but that's absolutely wrong in ever which way. They only managed the near impossible: Lock in a actually open plattform: the PC. And that did nothing but seriously stall inovation.
SW Developement would be ten years ahead today. Think somethink like BeOS V.9.0 with a GUI burned onto a BiosChip that boots into GUI in 5 seconds flat.
MS managed to lurr all vendors into the now-yet-more-crappyness upgrade mill promising everybody who joined big bucks. They made the biggest bucks. Curiously, I recall it started to become evident with the Windows Keyboard stunt. The Keyboard vendors kissed MS feet for having them sell new KBs.

No, look at it from the distance and it's absolutely evident: We have to programm every single bit of our stuff ourselves in order to reclaim a minimum of control that we had in the Amiga days. And Amiga was a proprietary Plattform!

In fact, if DRM/TCPA would get foothhold in a way that MS would like it, I'd aktually drop out of computing entirely - even though I've been with it since nearly 20 years and Sharp PC 1402 assembler. But hopefully that will never happen, since VIA and Transmeta would rejoice over a DRMing/TCPAing Intel and AMD. Thank God MS doesn't have control over the x86 hardware. Not yet at least.

Microsoft - always bad?

[cute-boy]

Maybe Microsoft did a lot of good. I am sure a lot of posts will show that.

Maybe. A long time ago I used Microsoft Quick C to do some cool stuff with my first PC, a 386SX, that replaced a Z80 system I had... When every other manual was I had was printed in a font like you'd find on a type-writer, Microsoft's manual were in readable Times. Dos 3.3 was OK, too I seem to remember. Back then Microsoft did seem like a good force... they brought affordable software to us.

We were able to move all our old Fortran 66 and 77 programs accross from IBM mainframes where we had to book time and even load cards sometimes, (and I am only 39) into a world where things ran fast and you didn't need to wait a day to get your print-out.

In short their software heralded a new age.

The we all moved on, and Microsoft got caught by it's own success, at last. Getting smaller is not easy or painless, but it's probably the journey they are about to embark upon.

I look forward to the day when they need to compete again (and that day is near). They may suprise us yet, and really innovate.

Happy weekend all who read this...

RG

Fewer Home Computers

[smchris]

As someone who dual-booted Coherent (UNIX clone) and Windows 3.1 in the early '90s, then OS/2 from '95 to '00 and then linux, my first urge is to say something snotty like "people would have been running stable 32-bit apps from the start and would appreciate good computing".

But to give the Gates his due, Windows has always been the games machine and that is partially because Windows 95 had a throwback DOS base. The performance on crummy '90s equipment was superior if one was willing to accept the occasional crash. That had to greatly increase the home penetration of PCs. How many home users were playing Castle Wolfenstein before getting onto the internet?

Before '90? Well anybody else could have bought CPM for the IBM PC.

Lotus role

[RetiredMidn]

The ironic thing is that without two things that IBM would view as absolute disasters - the non-exclusive deal Bill Gates and Microsoft cut with IBM to supply DOS, and the arrival of the "clone" market, the IBM PC line might well have been a commercial failure. But once all the clone makers were pushing "IBM compatible" everywhere you turned, computer manufacturers who kept their designs proprietary simply couldn't get and keep the shelf space/mind share they needed to keep their platforms viable.

When the IBM PC was released it had the benefit of a killer app: Lotus 1-2-3. When all the IBM clone and near-clone vendors emerged, one of the key questions asked by buyers was whether a new computer would run 1-2-3. Lotus was besieged by hardware manufacturers seeking ports of 1-2-3 to their machines, and even started a "1-2-3 compatible" certification program.

This was not limited to 1-2-3, of course. dBase was an important business app, of course (but had fewer compatibility issues); Flight Simulator was another big compatibility benchmark.

Application compatibility had a significant impact on the monitor and graphics card vendors as well.

Without Microsoft...

[emtboy9]

who knows. While I dont really like them, or at least dont really like their software at all, I do freely admit that without them we would probably not be as far as we are now.

For good or ill, Microsoft is what made PCs household items. Well, MS and falling hardware prices, but still, MS made it easy for Joe Average to use computers in the home, and the falling hardware prices made purchasing one or more for the home attractive.

Also, Linux, as it is today would probably not exist without MS. Without the feverent hatred of all things MS that the OSS zealots have, AND most linux geeks at least have some disdain for MS, development would not have proceeded as quickly, IMO, simply because there would have been no real common enemy.

Because of MS, the common enemy, developers, especially developers who dont particularly care for MS, worked harder than they otherwise may have on the kernel and other projects.

Flame if you wish, but its honest. No good thing arrises without struggle and strife and an opponent. Thanks to MS being the way that it is, we all have a common enemy, and have focus. I dare say that without that, we would not have that focus, and Linux would still be a hobbyist project OS, instead of the incredibly stable, world class enterprise OS that it is today.

There were better GUIs

[dpilot]

Kinda torques me off, too.

I wish someone would do a decent job of porting the OS/2 WPS to Linux. It was the only gui that was able to keep me away from a command line for any significant amount of time. Most of the time, to do 'real work' I just open an xterm. (or dos prompt, under Windows) Under OS/2, I found I could actually function well under the WPS, though I still had to drop to a command prompt at times.

The WPS took the 'objects' on the screen and truly made them into objects, in the programming sense, rather than make them behave roughly like objects with file and drag/drop associations and the like.

But naaaah, let's chase Windows.

Not quite

[ThousandStars]

Unfortunately, your analysis of torts is wrong. Most (all?) states require builders to have insurance, and large builders -- like these guys -- aren't some tiny operation that's going to collapse under a lawsuit. In addition, these days building torts come from more subtle problems than buildings falling down: for example, water leakages that result from using ineffective building material. Then one sues not only the builder, but also their insurance company. If you type "construction defect litigation" into Google, you'll find a million law firms specializing in it, and they're very good at what they do. If they couldn't win money for themselves and their clients, they wouldn't be in business.

Still, there's one part of your comment that's dead right and worth reiterating: "Seriously, you'd be hard pressed to find a more unscrupulous group than building developers."

Before microsoft... (long, old fart reminiscing)

[argent]

To get an idea what the world would be like without Microsoft, you need to start with another question.

What was the world like before Microsoft?

Not before Microsoft formed, but before Microsoft Windows started really hammering down the competition. Back when Microsoft's OS, DOS, was simple enough it could be emulated and when platforms running on top of operating systems from simple common libraries through virtual machines... what we call middleware, now... were the standard way of writing portable software.

You had a few common families of operating systems. DEC had RSX-11, TOPS-10 and TOPS-20, VMS, RT-11, and RSTS, though they were settling on VMS as the way forward. You had IBM's mainframe systems running native and under VM. You had MUMPS both native and hosted. You had EXEC/1100, PR1MOS, burroughs A-series. You had CP/M and its descendents (CDOS, MS-DOS, etc). You had UNIX and UNIX clones like Regulus and Idris and Cromix. You had Mac OS and AmigaOS and GEM. You had Atari-DOS and TRS-DOS and their enhanced clones like LDOS.

On top of these you had GEM and DesqView and Mumps and the UCSD P-System (Daddy's playing Pascal, that's where you try and see how many dots you can get before you start swearing). You had databases and interfaces and transaction protocols and network protocols in a huge fight between OSI and TCP/IP that ended up with TCP easily winning the bottom level because none of the OSI people could agree on a low level protocol so nobody could talk to each other without expensive gateways... but there's still plenty of OSI living on above that.

You had Pascal and Modula and ADA and C and REXX and the Lisp languages and a billion Basics blooming in everyone's garden.

And so, we get to the next question.

Where was it going?

Well, standards were ever more important. We had a network running OSI and TCP at the low level, UNIX/Xenix, VMS, EXEC/1100, RTE-IV, DOS, Netware, NFS, RFS, DECnet, OpenNet, ... and I was able to largely flatten the whole thing because every platform interoperated with three or four different standards. You could always find something that would talk. And things were getting simpler, as newer and better standard interfaces supplanted or complemented older ones. Increasingly, there were a handful of languages with good standard implementations that were widely (almost universally) available: SQL, REXX, C, and newcomers like Tcl and Perl.

Microsoft never bothered to fit into this world, except through a valve. You could check in to the Windows hotel but you could never check out. Even companies like IBM had a culture of interoperation: they had multiple platforms specialised for different things and they worked well together... and with other systems.

But all these systems had one thing in common... they were first multi-user and secondarily end-user.

Advanced end-user systems had always been islands, with very few exceptions. Your IBM or Xerox word processing systems, your Macintoshes and Wangs, these never had to depend on networks, they had one user, and that user was in control, and the interface to other systems was through the user... where networks existed, they were often (usually) job-oriented, with Word Processing on one and Drafting on another. So interoperability was secondary to everything else.

The open source community has developed from the shared systems that were dominant though to the end of the '80s. Communication was paramount, secrets were death: if your software didn't play well with other software people ended up avoiding it.

What would have happened without Windows? Apple would have continued to spread their only slightly less extreme end-user system, at a premium price. VMS and other decent minicomputer systems would have fought it out, alongside a variety of UNIX systems all running common applications and sharing files. Amiga's UNIX and Apple's UNIX and Microsoft's Xenix would have bridged the gap between end-user systems and minis. OS/2

You'd see a lot of switchers

[JeffTL]

Because frankly, about the only thing keeping a lot of people from going to OS X is their Windows software, and if people quit making software for Windows most people would probably think something to the effect of "Oh well, I guess I'll try that Macintosh thingy my cousin Mort uses." People switch to Mac, less crashes, only new problem I see apart from yet more Windows software lost to the sands of time save for those who hoard old computers is that people attached to external towers would have to buy a fullblown Powermac G5, but an Apple at >40% marketshare (which would seem a year or two or three after a sudden Microsoft collapse) would probably bring back the Cube to reach these people.

Alternate PC History

[TheOldBear]

Before the IBM PC existied, microsoft [they did not capitalize their name back then] sold programming interpeters and compilers for CP/M-80 systems [S-100 buss, Apple 's with a Z80 'softcard' and oddball systems like my Osborne/1]

They were a minor vendor, offering no unique products. [Then and now, development tools are a small market].

Assuming that Bill Gate's mom did not make the critical IBM connection [or the author of QDos did not sell all right to microsoft]:

IBM would still have introduced their 5160 'PC', with the same hardware configurations as originally shipped.

IBM would have still provided a choice of at least two operating systems [CP/M-86 and the pSystem]

The microcomputer software vendors would still have had difficulty with the transition to 16 bit software [QDos was actually an easier target than CP/M-86, when starting from CP/M-80 ver 2.2]

Z80 add on cards [Baby Blue, Blue Lightning] would have remained popular for a while longer [until 1985 or so]. Developers would have continued improving common code for CP/M-80 v3.x and 'tiny' model 16 bit executables.

Terminal based systems would have survived longer in the mass market [MP/M-86]

The word processing market leaders [Electric Pencil, WordStar, Valdocs] would still be upset by the entry of WordPerfect.

Lotus would still have introduced it's VisiCalc clone. VisiCorp would still have squandered an early lead [anyone remember VisiOn office?].

[BTW, Lotus 123 was available for CP/M-86, and non-PC based MS-DOS systems [Zenith Z100, DEC Rainbow] in our timeline. Platform portability combined with speed is possible]

Compaq would still clone the PC BIOS [the rest of the hardware was fully specified, as a result of prior anti-trust rulings against IBM]

Without the clones, the world would look very different - more non PC machines surviving [Epson, Osbourne, TRS, Amiga, Atari - even NeXT]. A lot of the read IBM PC's would be running 3270 terminal emulators & APPC client/server applications [both of which are quite similar to today's browser based applications]

About the time of the introduction of the PC/AT, MP/M-286 would already have been available. The Apple ///, Lisa and Macintosh systems would still have been introduced.

Power users on the PC/AT [and its clones] would use MP/M-286 as a series of virtual consoles, with tasks continuing to execute in the background. A BBS system might be one of the backgroud tasks. [OS/2 1.0 equivilant - but in 1984]

Software vendors, envying Lotus's display speed, would start directly accessing the video buffer. MP/M would use protected mode memory access to share the hardware's video buffer - DRI's GEM.

Altair, Heath/Zenith and other S-100 manufacturers would still drop out of sight. Server class machines [SASI/SCSI disks, heavy duty power supplies] would adopt the PC/AT buss. [The EISA and MicroChannel designs would still be introduced about 1987]

Fast forwarding to today.....

Linux would still have been developed, following much the same path.

Computer networking would still be as common.

WIMP interfaces would be common.

Client/Server and other distributed processing architectures would still be in use.

I would hope that vendor lock-in could have been avoided [unless DRI started favoring/distributing 'office' software] - interface and file format standards might be more stable [many more vendors in all software categories].

Since DRI's multitasking grew [like UNIX] from a multiuser orientation, it would likely be more secure than systems descended from extended memory managers.

microsoft might still be around - but likely still a development tool vendor - and complaining about gcc, cvs, emacs [and Java?] competing with their products.

M$FT impact minimal in the long run

[anomalous cohort]

I'm surprised that I didn't see another post along these lines. Moderators, feel free to mark this as redundant if I missed it.

I was a coder before M$FT gained its power. Back then, IBM was the 800 pound gorilla. I hated IBM because their tools were so primitive and expensive. I prayed for some upstart company to transform the market. Be careful what you ask for.

Unix was very expensive too. I paid over $1K for a port of Sys V to the PC of that day.

My take on the market at that time was that the other vendors were very greedy and elitist. They wanted software development to be so difficult that only the smartest and the best could ever do it. They charged as if they thought that only a very few people would ever write software. Certainly not the millions that write code today.

M$FT changed all that. Their take was to make software development easier so that more people could do it. They could sell more licenses and make it up on volumn. Also, they would leverage all that development since it locked the employers into their technology. Did it cause a lot of lame code to be written? Yes, but from a business perspective, it made a lot more sense than the other, elitist, approach.

Of course, open source would have eventually changed all that anyway. M$FT got there first but, in the end, software would become commoditized with or without Bill.

M$FT also was very aggressive on their competition to the point where there really is no place in the horizontal tool space for new vendors without deep pockets or backing from an already established player.

Would this have happened anyway? Probably so. M$FT did it in a way that was very high profile but other companies stifle this kind of innovation that comes from competition too.