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

[mingot]

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).

Nah, we'd just be running OS/2 or OSX.

But lets answer the actual question that was asked... What would the world look like if we were all running Linux. In my view, it would look a lot different since I'd probably be an auto mechanic or cabinet maker instead of a programmer.

Re:Standards

[WindBourne]

They could hardly screw it up worse than it is now.
Actually, they could. Government went after MS and found them guilty. New President and suddenly we let the company go with only simple agreement and monitoring that shows MS is still disobeying the agreement. Things can always get worse with the feds in control.

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

[Monkelectric]

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

In the same way fucking that crazy girl down the street reminds you its not good to fuck crazy girls... I suppose

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

[slowbad]

Microsoft has actually show us the benefit of "standards".

If not for Microsoft's corruption of SLIP and PPP in 1994...
my very own TRIPLE Challenge Handshake Authentication
(CHA CHA CHA) would have ruled the dialup world instead!

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

[jcr]

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

You put "innovate" in quotes?

We have tort law to deal with the problem of buildings that fall down. What building codes do is impede the development of new construction techniques.

-jcr

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

[TykeClone]

Yes, I do. I work in banking. Most of the regulations imposed upon that industry are there because of the bad actions of the stupid few - and they do little good.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act added financial privacy regulations. What difference does it make to the consumer - precious little, they get a mailing once per year saying something about privacy. Like most other regulations, it's a paper chase for the financial institutions - we've got to send out those pieces of paper to stay in the good graces of the regulators.

I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but to say that the government can't make things worse is just plain silly.

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

[Warlok]

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. New materials meant innovations meant new ways of building buildings - all without building codes. Building codes are ways for government and unions to assert control over individual builders.

Do you think the highways would work better if each one was a toll road, allowed to design to their own needs?

Again, yes, like the Dulles Greenway, a successfully run private toll road to Dulles Airport.

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?

You mean like the competition between RSS and Atom news reader formats? How long do you think the market would stand two incompatible standards before one of the two started specing in some interoperability? In any case, your point is moot - basic telephone service was set up by a monopoly (remember the break-up of AT&T, aka Ma Bell?) - wireless phone service had to interoperate with the baseline to be useful and adopted. The standard was set in place by a single company - all the others had to deal with the existing infrastructure to be picked up by the market. Look at how much fun IPv6 is having trying to be adopted and spec'd - it needs to interoperate with the existing standard or it's just another hobby platform.

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.

It was a part, but a very small part. The bigger issue was the fact that the Federal government was trying to impose its standards on the southern States, leading to the seccession of South Carolina. Train track guages was a small factor - 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.

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...

Look it up - the early internet was controlled by the DoD under the DARPA program, one government agency dictating the standards, protocols, even the people who could connect. Even now, one corporation controls DNS, arguably the backbone of the modern internet (anyone know the IP address of slashdot.org? Thought not...)

The fact is Microsoft is involved in standards bodies and works to define and refine standards in use by everyone. Yes, MS embraces and extends, but even back in the day, compiler authors did the same to programming languages (Borland C anyone? UCSD Pascal?). Even modern BIOS manufacturers extend their products over and above the base spec. Extensions to standards lead to future extended standards - ever wonder what the world would be like with Bjarne Stroustrup's C++? How about Emacs Lisp?

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

[UnknownSoldier]

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

Reminds me of that quote off my giant poster on Murphy's Law about Computers ...

"If engineers built buildings the way programers write code,
the first time a woodpecker came along, it would destroy civilization."

And yes, I am a programmer. :)

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

[ortholattice]

If think Microsoft really promotes good standards, ask Andrew Tridgell (Samba team leader) who's practically dedicated his life to reverse-engineering Microsoft's SMB protocol. In this interview he says:

"The protocol is so incredibly convoluted and bloated and badly designed -- there are ten ways of doing everything. You end up with these massive exchanges going on the wire between Windows 95 and NT, just because they are trying to work out exactly which sets of bugs the other guy has so they can figure out how to actually stat a file or find its size or date or something. And we've found from talking to people who work at Microsoft how much of a headache it is to maintain the damned thing and keep it secure."

This, my friend, is a Microsoft "standard".

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

[nickos]

Yeah, and you can certainly tell. I love the GCC, but I wish they would follow the standards. Taken from here:

It [GCC] will compile and link almost anything. It would probably compile Perl without too much modification and wouldn't even emit that many warnings. Look! Look at this!

*&(int)f = 1;

Is that C? I don't fucking think so. And look at this:

FILE *
concat_fopen (char *s1, char *s2, char *mode)
{
char str[strlen (s1) + strlen (s2) + 1];
...
}

Yes, that's supposed to be C, not C++, because the things they've done to C++ are almost bloody unspeakable. The words "embrace" and "extend" come to mind. How about this, for instance:

It is very convenient to have operators which return the "minimum" or the
"maximum" of two arguments. In GNU C++ (but not in GNU C),

a <? b
is the minimum, returning the smaller of the numeric values a and b;
a >? b
is the maximum, returning the larger of the numeric values a and b.

What? What the hell is that about? And you know the worst thing? People actually use these abortions in real code, because obviously, if it compiles on Linux with gcc, it'll compile anywhere. That's why you're having problems linking on AIX - because nobody's even thought about AIX before. We use autoconf, right, so it must be portable? Yeah, fucking right. Portable between GNU OSes, I think you'll find.

Part of the reason Parrot 0.0.1 was so slow getting out of the door was because of all these stupid idiots writing GCC "C" and not realising how completely fucking broken it was.

And while we're on the subject of standards, does anyone know if Linux has a standard way of treating the keys that Microsoft added to the keyboard. Is the left Windows key Super_L or F13, and is it a modifier or not? Enquiring coders want to know.

Re:Standards

[g-san]

> 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?

You mean like the competition between RSS and Atom news reader formats?

though ye may be trolling, i must say thats the second worst comparison i have ever heard, besides the apples and oranges one.

count how many people on this planet use/care about phones vs. news readers.

btw, the width of railroads was determined by the width of a horses arse.

Re:Standards

[stephanruby]

"The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire."

The fire-part was because of the ensuing riot. The mayor of San Francisco was so afraid that San Francisco would lose its reputation that he had the riot covered up.

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

Please note that the overwhelming majority of people who died during that earthquake were located on *government* built/maintained structures (i.e. the Oakland freeway and the bay bridge).

Re:Standards

[include($dysmas)]

well done, have a standard-conforming biscuit

Re:Standards

[robinsoz]

In the county where I grew up, (Josephine County, Oregon) we have no building codes. Actually, the county does have building codes but the voters passed a law 30 years or so ago that it was illegal for the county to enforce its building codes so it amounts to the same thing. You see some very interesting buildings in places, especially out in the country, but I can not remember any cases where a building fell down and injured anyone. It can also be very handy, when we decided to remodel our house we just bought building supplies and started building...no permits or anything.

Re:Standards

[plusser]

If Microsoft were to develop property building standards, then you would be charged 50% of the property value for use of Microsoft's building standards. Then if the toilet broke 2 years later, you would have to purchase an upgrade standard to get it fixed, otherwise there was a risk that the building might collapse.

However, if this happened and property developers countinued to use building standards set by goverments, then SCO would try to sue the builders of the Empire State Building for $50billion (been there this week) for use of Intellectual Property regarding the use of open source calculations for load bearing, building structure and the like.

That is the problem with the computer industry at the moment. There is currently no real innovation and everything new just requires more processing power. When the industry understands that most home PCs are nothing more than games machines and word processors, then computers will be designed more for their final application and not for the benefit of the few people that actually can program them. The computer industry would belive that most consumers would prefer a 50 story office block rather than a four bedroomed house to live in, and charge you the appropriate amount.

The problem is Microsoft are learning, they already have the X-Box and the Pocket-PC....

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

[wtrmute]

Just put "-ansi -std=c89 -pedantic-errors" into your CFLAGS variable and then chew the developer team whose code doesn't compile. Send them a list of the errors; most teams will be glad to fix them if they're aware of what they are.

Re:Standards

[plugger]

I guess that would work in a place with plenty of free space. I'm in the UK, and space is pretty tight. We need building codes to make sure our neighbours don't block all the light from our houses with their new garage, or cause our house prices to fall by erecting a rickety shack at the end of the street.

Re:Standards

[42forty-two42]

FILE *
concat_fopen (char *s1, char *s2, char *mode)
{
char str[strlen (s1) + strlen (s2) + 1]; ...
}

This is actually legal in C99, though the others aren't.

Re:Standards

[dpilot]

Forget building codes. Problems like you mention are what Neighborhood Thermonuclear Weapons were made for.

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

[mkoenecke]

Re: "It was a part, but a very small part. The bigger issue was the fact that the Federal government was trying to impose its standards on the southern States, leading to the seccession of South Carolina. Train track guages was a small factor - 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."

You do know that South Carolina seceded in response to Lincoln's election, before he was even sworn in, right?

Lincoln made a big point in his speeches of not wanting to (or claiming to be able to) interfere with the South, BUT was firmly opposed to expansion of slave states at all. The South saw that, as the United States continued to expand, its influence would continue to wane since no new slave states would be added under a Republican administration.

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.

Re:Standards

[Coffeesloth]

Or on a more worldwide scale you forgot the London Bridge. I've seen pictures of the buildings on the old London Bridge, if there had been building codes then perhaps the fire there never would have occured.

Oh, and a lot of those homes built on beaches, cliffs, floodplains, etc...were built to standards, so the existence or lack of standards doesn't guarantee a thing. People will be people and will make bad decisions.

Purely in the interest of standards, I for one am glad there are building codes so I can be sure of the wiring and plumbing of my house being built...

Re:Standards

[mjmalone]

Your analysis of the situation in this case is incorrect... I'm not quite sure where you got your information, but I can assure you that building standards are very important when it comes to failure investigations the outcome of most civil cases is based on whether the builder took a rational approach to interpreting the standards set forth and the building met all per se requirements for the structure.

In fact, the investigation of structural failures and the subsequent litigation is big business in the US, and in most cases equity is restored. My dad is a forensic engineer and has worked for the two major firms in the industry Exponent and forensic technologies, incorporated. He recently incorporated his own company, doing the same thing, and I can assure you that there is no shortage of clientelle.

I have heard stories of insurance companies or corporations found guilty of not meeting standards writing settlement checks of hundreds of thousands of dollars each to members of class action lawsuits involving hundreds of people (tens of millions of dollars in total). Not to mention the typical forensic engineer charges in the somwhere between $250 and $700/hour for his time and several experts are generally required on each side of a case, all of this is separate from the insane legal fees.

In any case, standards are typically met because construction companies realize the potential losses that can occur if they are not.

Re:Standards

[drsmithy]

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 would propose to you that prostitution is a vastly more profitable enterprise.

If Windows were to diappear

[Ralph JH Nader]

Apple would see a rather large market for all the inexpensive x86 machines and would likely port a version of OS X to run. Given the commercial applications available already for OS X and a big name such as Apple, they could step in and dominate the industry in a rather short time.

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.

Re:If Windows were to diappear

[clifyt]

Why?

Apple is based on having decent and predictable hardware to run the OS.

OS X is great software -- I'm using it right now, but unless you are using the hardware along side it, its not the same. One of the problems with Windows is that there is WAY too much hardware to support relyably...thats not totally their fault either. The fact that you want to encourage folks to make hardware for your platform means that you have to make the code easy to program against -- which means you have folks vastly unqualified to write driver software writting it.

Apple raises the bar and makes it a bitch to program some drivers for this very reason. That probably means that having a dozen types of motherboards with different integrated parts would not work as relyably...or if Apple kept their standards - not at all. Witness every so often when they patch their systems to remove specific pieces of hardware that is known to be buggy -- I've been told some updates were there to simply KILL some hardware so that it wouldn't make the machine unstable. There was substandard RAM that was sold for a while on the G4s and Apple put out a patch that disabled all of this from being used and they pissed off a LOT of folks -- but Apple needed to do this to keep their standards up (otherwise folks were bitching about stability issues that had nothing to do with the OS or Apple branded hardware).

So would they move over to inexpensive x86s? They might. probably not...at least not from a supported perspective...

Re:If Windows were to diappear

[Ralph JH Nader]

Actually, the move wouldn't be entirely unprecedented. Even if the OS wouldn't run quite as well, it'd still be in the interest of Apple's profits for them to take advantage of such a market. Why do you think Sun Microsystems releases Solaris for x86? They see that people are interested in running UNIX on relatively inexpensive hardware.

Re:If Windows were to diappear

[Daleks]

If Windows were to disappear the world would be very, very dark inside.

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.

Re:If Windows were to diappear

[pebs]

The inexpensive x86 machines out there all run Windows.

Not this inexpensive x86 machine.

Say hello to my little friend...

Re:If Windows were to diappear

[clifyt]

Actually, YellaDawg should run a little more stable than other linuxes (theoretically) simply because it has less hardware it has to configure for. The exact opposite of what I was arguing against and you kinda make my point.

I know a lot of PC hardware the just won't work relyably on the Mac. I deal with a lot of estroic audio interfaces and some work well on the Mac, while others work well on the PC -- all claim to be xplatform, but they really aren't.

As for using standard PC parts -- a lot do work, some need their internal bios flashed and I've done this to save $100 over the price of the PC Version (my last SCSI card for example). Exact same hardware, different bios.

As for the security -- thats all conjecture. Microsoft wouldn't have all the security problems if they implemented a way to deal with this crap that didn't involve trying to prove they weren't at fault, it was just because they left a hole open so that others didn't have to change their code and users wouldn't have broken apps and blame M$ that this is the case.

M$ *IS* working on the security problems in a more proactive way -- they've already said the next service pack is going to kill a lot of software that didn't take security into account and used shortcuts in their programming. Its something that can be guarenteed to piss off their client base and folks that make software for windows users. They've realized that if they don't take the hard choices now, they will never have decent security -- even if it means a few months of folks blaming them for breaking their applications (instead of the idiots that programmed the stuff in the first place). As I mentioned, Apple already does this and pisses off a lot of people when they do something Apple says not to do and some smart ass wants to prove he can do it anyways, and then Apple fixes it and the stuff stops working -- and who gets the blame.

I can say if Apple were in the same situation, it is clearly uncertain if they would have the same security problems...they seem to fix things as rapidly as the OS guys...mainly because its the same software...there have been a few times where Apple has supplied the fix to the OS guys (and then they reported the fix across the other platforms a few days later).

Its just an asinine statement to say just because something has a monopoly type marketshare that they will abuse it and take their users for granted simply because they know even if they don't take the time, the sheep will buy it either way. M$ treats users like sheep...we don't know how anyone else would react under the same circumstances...

We'd all be using IBM OS/2

[Anonymous Coward]

And we'd be loving it!

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

[larry bagina]

OS/2 was a joint venture between MS and IBM.

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

[geekoid]

yes, and when MS sucked all they could out of IBM, they abadonded it and crated on OS/2 bastard called NT.

OS/2 was damn good. It's marketing sucked.

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.

Without Microsoft...

[bfg9000]

... we'd have no idea how bloody good Linux and Mac OSX really are.

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.

One thing's for sure

[-kertrats-]

A lot less /. comments. With no microsoft to complain about, half the comments wouldn't have anything to rant about.

Re:One thing's for sure

[LGagnon]

Sure we would have things to rant about:
- George Lucas messing up Star Wars
- SCO
- duplicate articles
- the lack of an MS substitute to complain about

Re:One thing's for sure

[System.out.println()]

That wouldn't change anything. People rarely need to talk about anything to post comments....

Re:One thing's for sure

[Endive4Ever]

Also, since SCO was founded as a Microsoft subsidiary to produce Xenix, Microsoft's UNIX variant (yes, Microsoft did the first UNIX that ran on x86, I used to have a copy of Microsoft Xenix on an Altos 8086 box), SCO wouldn't have even been born without Microsoft.

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!!!

[Neo-Rio-101]

Blah, there were never any decent games on the Apple.
We were all Commodore's slaves back in those days. By the time the Amiga went away, we were all slaves to the PC.

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)?

The world without windows

[QEDog]

Yikes! That is scary! But not as scary as a world without doors.

Re:The world without windows

[kfg]

Without doors you could always climb in through the Windows. They're always the greatest security/intrusion risk, being, by their very nature, terribly insecure. You'll never find a maximum security facility with Windows where they want to be absolutely sure no one can get, or even see, inside.

I'm not exactly sure how chimneys fit into this, but be extra careful around Christmas time. Leaving out a honeypot is reputed to work against malicious behavior in case of actual intrusion though.

And maybe some cookies.

KFG

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.

More like...

[Anonymous Coward]

What would Bill Gates be like without Microsoft?

Now THATS something I'd like to know.

Less microsoft means...

[zaunuz]

more people use open source software, which means
more people will develop open source software, which means
more and better open source software

The downside would be that not 'everyone' can use a PC, the way they can today, since MS Windows is by far the most newbie-friendly operating system availible for PC.

What will happen to ./ !!!

[vinit79]

If microsoft disappears I guess ./ will be the worst hit.

Just like ,if there is only good left in the universe then wont religion be redundant!
Dont let it happen !! Save microsoft so we can have something to bitch about .

As a social service I am accepting contribution for saving MS. I promise all the money will be spent on buying licenses of MS Office and Windows XP.

forgotten windows?

[VValdo]

What about the forgotten windows?

Or the other one. (Apple II Version)

W

But what would we do without Microsoft?

[mboos]

We would have no one to blame for all of our computer problems.

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.

Re:If Microsoft ceased to exist today...

[DerekLyons]

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.

Dell probably wouldn't even exist. Keep in mind that Dell got started by selling cheap PC clone hardware out of his college dorm room. Something that would be all-but-impossible in an Apple dominated world. Sure, there was aftermarket stuff, but the real money is in systems, not cards, and in the Appleverse systems come from Apple, not a college dorm room.

Many folks today forget that in it's day Apple was every bit as evil, sly, underhanded, and monopolistic as Microsoft is today.

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.

mmm

[gho]

We'd all be running (and enjoying) AmigaOS 8.

Without Microsoft?

[ObviousGuy]

IBM needed an OS, and if MS wasn't there, CP/M was. So on that front we'd just have different person reaping the rewards there. Of course, Kildall was a business moron and blew his chance at that time.

Apple would have risen much more strongly, as well as console/PC makers like Atari and Commodore. We'd probably see computers with more advanced graphics systems, but with less memory and less hard disk space as most media would be self-contained cartridges. Which is an interesting idea, that we wouldn't have software available separate from a cartridge. We would have to have the physical cart to plug into the slot array on our PCs to enable software, but it would also be easier to move software from one machine to another as well as conserve primary disk space as documents could be saved directly onto the cartridge.

We wouldn't have the powerful CPUs that we have now, we'd probably be a couple generations behind as the hardware demands of the software would be much lower. Hard disks would be small, memory would be low, and video screens would be optimized to view on both TV and computer monitors. Digital TVs that could display computer video output at high resolutions would be the standard as the console/PCs would have merged the computer into a central position in the home entertainment cabinet.

Many companies would only just now be moving their businesses to computerized systems. Until now, computers would have been viewed as toys. Without Microsoft, the concept of a computer for business would be unthinkable except for large institutions, so many smaller accounting firms, warehouses, and mom'n'pop stores would still be doing their paperwork by hand.

In short, the computer as a personal entertainment device would be much more ingrained in our culture, but the computer as a business tool would only be catching on. The prices of "serious" personal computers useful for business purposes would still be astronomical and software would be expensive to purchase.

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:Without Microsoft?

[k_head]

I think you are playing revisionist history here.

You are forgetting the revolution in business brought about by dbase and visicalc.

By the time MS came on to the scene business had already embraced computers.

Re:Without Microsoft?

[_Sprocket_]

IBM needed an OS, and if MS wasn't there, CP/M was. So on that front we'd just have different person reaping the rewards there. Of course, Kildall was a business moron and blew his chance at that time.

Maybe, maybe not. This is one bit of computing history that has me stumped. MS-DOS exists because CP/M wasn't an option for IBM. Or at least wasn't an option at the time IBM needed it to be.

MS-DOS was, essentially, QDOS. QDOS existed because Digital Research was slow to produce a version of CP/M for the newer 8086 line of processors. Seattle Computer had a new line of hardware based on the 8086 and eventually created their own CP/M clone to fill the void lefted by Digital Research - QDOS. Microsoft licensed QDOS.

Oddly enough, IBM had approuched Digital Research about CP/M. However, they were not greeted with much enthusiasm (some niggling over a non-disclosure agreement). It seems that Digital did not have a version of CP/M ready. The question I have is - why not?

Apple would have risen much more strongly, as well as console/PC makers like Atari and Commodore. We'd probably see computers with more advanced graphics systems, but with less memory and less hard disk space as most media would be self-contained cartridges.

I disagree here. Yes - Atari and Commodore did have an early preference for cartridges. However, that mode was quickly overcome by a growing industry of software producers selling software on cassette tape and floppy disk. In short, cartridges were being out-moded. Floppy disks were catching on. And that was happening on every microcomputer platform.

We wouldn't have the powerful CPUs that we have now, we'd probably be a couple generations behind as the hardware demands of the software would be much lower.

I'm curious as to what you base this on. If IBM hadn't lost control of its platform, I could this this happening. But once the IBM PC became a commodity platform, competition began driving performance as hardware producers grabbed whatever edge they could - and as fast as Intel (and then later AMD and Cyrix) could provide one (and thank AMD for pushing this cycle even faster).

Now - the question would be... would Compaq been successful in starting the commodity / clone market if Microsoft hadn't been there to license MS-DOS?

Hard disks would be small, memory would be low, and video screens would be optimized to view on both TV and computer monitors. Digital TVs that could display computer video output at high resolutions would be the standard as the console/PCs would have merged the computer into a central position in the home entertainment cabinet.

I'm not so sure about the whole monitor bit. Sure - the ability to use a TV tube as a monitor was a consumer-friendly practice. A practice started by Apple. However, dedicated computer monitors weren't too uncommon even with consumer systems from Commodore and Atari. I don't see things going any differently.

Many companies would only just now be moving their businesses to computerized systems. Until now, computers would have been viewed as toys. Without Microsoft, the concept of a computer for business would be unthinkable except for large institutions, so many smaller accounting firms, warehouses, and mom'n'pop stores would still be doing their paperwork by hand.

First, you're giving credit to Microsoft for the IBM PC platform. IBM drove sales of the PC - by name alone.

Secondly, IBM itself was playing catch-up. They ignored the microcomputer market. That is, until the first killer app. That application was Visicalc - the dawn of the spreadsheet. Microcomputers stopped being simply hobbiest curiosities and became a tool for business. It might be

That's easy!

[pergamon]

There'd be no war, starvation, or crime, and every child would have a pony.

without microsoft...

[bsDaemon]

I'll likely get flamed to hell and moded out of existance, but I believe every word of this:
Gary Kildale died in a plane crash and never got the chance to give CP/M to IBM. Without Microsoft getting DOS for IBM, Intel never would have gained the marketshare. Linus would not have been hacking on the 386 and needing badly to break the confines of what he had available. Therefor, the likelihood of Linux existing today would be significantly lower. It may not have happened. You might still be waiting for HURD (or, more likely, using BSD). Hell, Intel woulde never have gotten so popular. You all might all be on using Macintoshes right now like I am.
Microsoft's products might suck, but they made Intel hardware the comodoty that it is today in order that you can afford to tinker with Linux or whatever it is you want to do.

Well... there's the obvious

[ValourX]

Well Jim's been dead for more than thirty years... Robby, Ray, and John are still around though. They don't play much anymore.

Or were you talking about ports to games on old Amiga BBSes?

-Jem

Re: Obligatory Quote

[seaswahoo]

And we wouldn't have the obligatory quote: "640K of memory should be enough for anybody." (Bill Gates, 1981)

An Interesting Idea

[MBCook]

Without MS, where would we be? That's a very good question.

First off we have to consider the fact that MS has really pushed the PC market very far. Without MS, IBM may have made their own OS for the PC or had a company make it that wouldn't have sold it to clone makers. This would give IBM a monopoly on (what became) Wintels, so we would have had more kinds of computers (at least for a longer time). Would this have forced more innovation, or would everyone be re-implementing everyone else's ideas so things would have slowed down?

The standardization of MS has also pushed us a long way. I know that I can take a disk from my computer (Win XP right now) and read it on nearly every other computer I'll find (Windows PCs, Macs, BSD, Linux, BeOS, etc). When Microsoft has backed a standard, often it's the one that survives so who knows how many more VHS/Betamax type fights computer users would have had to go through without them. At the same time, who's to say Apple wouldn't have become dominant and caused the same kind of standards.

In software innovation, MS has done many things too. While they are stagnating now, back when Apple was a major contender they really pushed things. Some things have really improved because of them (most computers run the same API for games, DirectX), but then again they have tried to strange/take over other things (Java).

So I guess it all depends on who would have existed if MS didn't become who they did. There are a couple of options.

• A bunch of companies competing - Great for consumers, quite possibly where we would have ended up
• A different monopoly, but with stiff competition - Like when Apple still kept MS on their toes all the time (unlike what we saw when the Mac wasn't much of a challenge, like the OS 9 days). I think we're approaching this thanks to OS X and Linux
• A different monopoly who would have done the same - From a business point of view, a (near) total monopoly with a strangle hold on the market is a great place to be in

While computers have stagnated (relativly) in the last few years due to lack of competition, I think the increased incompatabilites that would have stayed around if there were many computer standards for a while might have kept the computer from becomming any more advanced from what it is now. So I guess I don't things would be too different (ability wise), although interfaces and such would probably look quite different.

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.

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.

If Microsoft were to vanish ...

[SmoothTom]

... there would be a huge effect on the economy and on future development of computer operating systems and other softwear.

If Microsoft were to vanish, it would become very difficult to maintain or improve their closed, proprietary software. If their softwear wer to vanish along wioth them, it would be utter disaster for a good while until everything could be pieced back together with other softwear.

Some of us would only have secondary effects felt because others use Microsoft softwear. For example none of my computers have any Microsoft softwear installed, and I try to ensure it remains that way.

A related question is "Would I *like* Microsoft to disappear."

No, I wouldn't. I'd very much like for them to be broken into independent, managable-sized pieces ("bite sized chunks"), as that wouild likely help innovation and pricing by making it possible for others to compete without suddenly vanishing away ...

--
Tomas

"But o beamish nephew, beware of the day
If your snark be a boojum for then,
you will softly and suddenly vanish away
and never be met with again." (Lewis Carrol)

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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, but there was a sunny day back in 1992 when some of us affirmatively choose to use Windows. And then install it on all our colleagues' machines.

Sorry about that. Guess it was partially my fault we're stuck with Windows.

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.

Re:MS Bashing

[dswensen]

It's true that it is an imperfect analogy, but to some degree it creates an example people can understand. Working in tech support I hear a lot of things along the line of "but it was working yesterday!" and users who are outraged that their computer will not run forever without any kind of maintenance.

What I tell them is that a person generally wouldn't buy a car, drive it constantly without checking or changing the oil, putting gas in it, or doing any maintenance at all, and then take it to the car dealership, furious, when suddenly it will no longer run for whatever reason, and say "but it was running yesterday!" Yet people do this all the time with computers.

Computers are a mechanical device and require maintenance to keep running properly. True, they are unlike cars in most other respects, but it is a helpful primer for people so clueless they think computers operate on a mix of fairy dust and moonbeams.

Re:MS Bashing

[MoneyT]

Mac OS 6.0

And yes it was better.

Re:MS Bashing

[lth]

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

I'm reasonably certain that you're wrong.

Personally I use windows because I choose to. Why? Better hardware support, apps I don't want to do without and the occasional game.

I've tried Linux regularly since Redhat 4.2, and I basically think Linux seems like a fine OS. But guess what? I don't really care what OS I'm running as long as I can use the programs I like, and can do what I want.

I've thought about running things with Wine or installing VMWare and running my windows apps this way. But every time I just stop short, because it doesn't seem worth the effort. I can't find Linux' killer app.

Linux needs to be able to do something, that I can't do with Windows, and that I would actually want to do. :-)

All the arguments about bugs and security don't work on me. I'm pretty well firewalled, and I choose my hardware with care. I can't remember the last time I experienced a blue screen but its several years ago..

I'm using lots of open source software, and I think open source is a great movement.. But I'm always going to use the tool that fits the task, and doesn't steal my time away from reading Slashdot. ;-)

Perhaps the introduction of DRM in Windows, will be what gives me enough incentive to switch to Linux..

Without Microsoft

[RufusDark]

Personally I have nothing against Microsoft. People constantly complain about Microsoft, yet Microsoft has certainly made things a lot easier for the standard end-user. Windows 95 was a near revolutionary thing. It brought computers into most households which otherwise probably wouldn't have had computers. A world in which microsoft never existed would be harder on all of us because it would make little things that we all do every day that much more difficult. If Microsoft were to fall right now, I would silently applaud their former riegn of the PC industry. Corporations don't become giants without reason.

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. Okay.. I went quite a bit off subject. But essentially I'm saying that Microsoft has been a *good thing*. And while whether or not they do or will continue to be is up for debate, they have been. And I will always chear on a nobody that can go from being nothing to the world's most powerful corperation and only a decade or two's time.

Rufus Dark

Re: One Word

[seaswahoo]

Imagine a world without...Microsoft Bob!

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?

MOD PARENT DOWN Re:Computers wouldn't be as easy

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I can't believe what I'm reading here. Computers weren't easy to use until Windows 95? Hello? HELLO???!! Evidently we've all forgotten that Windows '95 == Macintosh '84 == Xerox '81 ?? Easy-to-use desktops are just one more thing that were invented elsewhere and didn't go mainstream until later because IBM and later Microsoft were keeping the drooling masses locked into inferior technology. Sheesh. There are already too many people who think that Microsoft invented the PC and even the Internet. You'd think even the lamest Slashbots would know otherwise about the GUI.

x86 machines would not exist.

[markv242]

Without Windows, x86 would be the busted platform that it really is. AMD probably wouldn't be a player at all, and Motorola would probably be where Intel is today. Let's not forget that when Windows came out, the Mac and the Amiga absolutely ruled the desktop GUI world. Chances are really good that DOS-based machines would have simply succumbed to the Mac paradigm, and Amiga might even still be alive today (Amiga zealots: flame off for a moment).

On the other hand, we almost certainly wouldn't see OS X in the form its in-- FreeBSD almost certainly wouldn't exist. Linux _might_ exist, in some strange Yellow Dog format, but I have no doubt that Apple would be the marketshare leader.

The better question is: what sort of power would computers of today have, if Microsoft didn't exist? Other than gameplay, Office and Windows are the two biggest reasons that Intel/AMD/etc make faster processors. Chances are really good that Apple and Motorola machines wouldn't be as fast as they are today, because there'd be no speed gap to close up.

My hypothesis: Sun on the server side, Apple on the client side, and small offerings from companies like Be, or Amiga, or other nontraditional platforms. (NeXT?)

One of two situaions

[Sycraft-fu]

1) The same as it is now, more or less. It is probably that had Microsoft not come to dominance, someone else would have. Apple perhaps, or IBM. Their OS would dominate most systems and would be around what Windows is. IT would suffer from the same problems, instutional rot, trying to block competitors, sacrificing security for ease of use and would probably have the same benefits. While it would, of course, be good and bad in different areas, I imagine qualitatively it would be on par with Windows (much as MacOS is today).

2) We'd have two or more incompatible camps duking it out, probably at the stratification of the market along usage lines. If you did X, you'd use system A since it would be the ONLY system that did that well, if you did Y, you'd use system B, etc.

It's a cycle that many industries have taken. You get divergence, sometimes dominance, and then convergence. The computer industry did diverge, I mean there was a time when it was UNIX or nothing (almost exclusively on big iron) for servers/science, DOS/Windows for bussiness and MacOS for graphics/sound. There was little crossover. Then MS moved to dominance and became viable for about everything, though not always the best option. Now I think we're seeing more convergence, slowly. Windows is getting a real worthwhile POSIX layer, many apps are being written for more than one platform, and cross platform dev tools and APIs are becoming more prevelant.

If you look at the history of other industries, you'll find this isn't an uncommon cycle, though not all of them grow to have one dominant player.

Re:Loss of microsoft now....

[RufusDark]

Indeed. There would almost undoubtably be a widespread economic depression. People are stubborn. The masses would just stick with whatever the latest version of Windows was when Microsoft went down. Most people probably wouldn't buy a new computer until they had to, because like you mentioned, they don't want to have to learn how to use another one. Hell, most people barely know how to use Windows, as easy as it is. It would be years before people started buying personal computers again on a large scale. The PC gaming industry would likely never recover. But worst of all? I'd have to get a new email address.

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.

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.

Ahhhh... the venerable old GEM

[Trolling4Dollars]

As a longtime Atari ST user, I have a fondness for GEM. So much so that when I moved to the PC in 1994, I bought a used copy of GEM for DOS and ran with that baby for quite a while. Looking at that simple desktop (luckily the ST still was able to use the disk and trash can icon metaphor unlike GEM for DOS) and the simple fonts really takes me back to when computers were REALLY fun. All those old ST games, paint programs, and of course MIDI software and the demo scene. Sure the Amigas had slightly better graphics (duck) but you couldn't beat the ST for MIDI. And since I was a musician at the time, that's mostly what I used the ST for, everything else was just nice icing on a very sweet cake. I also used to subscribe to ST Format magazine and hav it shipped from the UK to the states. I looked forward to those cover disks every month. You never knew what was going to come next. Somehow, it seems the Brits know how to do cover discs. Even with last year's issues of Future Music, there's actually useful stuff on cover disks. Here in the states, all we get is crappy AOL CDs or shit game previews. Oh well... it's been a long time since I've bought print magazines on a regular basis. But sometimes you just mss the old days, when magazine were glossy and used dense paper covers and there was a floppy with an attractive game or two on it. Ahhh... the old days.

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.

Well....

[Shadwell]

...people on Slashdot would have a lot less to complain about.

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!

Comdex 1983

[rixstep]

There's an old story oft repeated back home and taken as truth. It's about Comdex 1983. Microsoft were still a small company back then, still in Seattle, and had a minimal representation in Vegas with Gates himself behind the counter.

All of a sudden there was a bit of a stir, and Gates found out it was a demonstration of GEM. He wandered over and pulled one of his big poker bluffs.

Heckling the product demonstrators, he told everyone who he was, what company he represented, claimed his own company had a similar product in the works, far more developed than this beta of GEM, but his company, ethical as it was, would never dream of luring the public with a demonstration of a product what wasn't ready for market.

He then supposedly stalked back to his own exhibit, closed it down demonstratively, and proclaimed that he was leaving Comdex in protest. He traveled immediately back to Seattle.

Where he immediately convened the 'board' of MS and appointed Steve Ballmer manager of the phantom project. Ballmer started getting phone calls from the media who wanted to know what the product would be called (here Ballmer was impressively creative) and also wanted to know why it was taking so long: Gates intimated MS had been working on it for several years already in 1983.

When the 'product' finally surfaced in 1985, and looked (and performed) as poorly as it did, a few people understood: it hadn't taken that long at all.

Re:Comdex 1983

[razmaspaz]

thats funny change 1983 to 2003, GEM to linux, and the phantom product to longhorn and you realize microsoft has gotten nowhere in 20 years.

Re:Comdex 1983

[mah!]

At Comdex 1983, Microsoft announced [...] Windows, competing directly with [...] "Vision". After all, Microsoft had been given a prototype pre-release Mac since late 1981!

More such information at Andy Hertzfeld's folklore.org

Re:Comdex 1983

[Ian.Waring]

Gates demo'd a Windowing system to us at DEC (albeit in Reading, UK) in May 1983 - on the Compaq Plus he carried in. At the time, the car parks at dealers were full of people getting demos of the Apple Lisa, VisiOn and (later) Quarterdeck DesQ. The first question he asked everyone was when they were going to drop CP/M and use DOS instead. Meanwhile, the management in LJ02 (Barry James Folsom and co) were happy to wait for CCPM and it's 4 hot-switchable tasks it could run, and largely ignore MS-DOS. They got back to the instruction Olsen gave them ("to produce a machine to run industry standard software, whatever it was") a bit later. At the time, they thought it would be a Motorola 68K box running CCPM or some kind of UNIX derivative. The success of PC-DOS dictated otherwise... Ian W.

Like the saying goes

[suso]

A computer without Microsoft is like ice-cream without Ketchup.

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.

Without Microsoft.....

[vwjeff]

Let's see. A world without Microsoft. What would I be complaining about right now. Oh, yeah, I would be talking about the evil empire Apple and how they have a hold on the market.

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.

Re:Without Microsoft.....

[BerntB]

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.

Apple more or less invented most of what you think of as the GUI. It was their property. The world might be a better place if ownership of lots of property was moved around, but without general respect for ownership rights, the world doesn't work.

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.

In short (from the reference above):
Microsoft got a license from Apple to port their applications to other platforms and managed to get a judge to allow them to copy the GUI. So this was original work from Apple that Microsoft managed to steal.

Well, low business morals are something that you could admire Microsoft for... (You're a big fan of the mob, too?)

It is really strange that this is not written in articles. It probably have something to do with the large Microsoft ad budget -- and helped along historically that companies with large ad budgets was dependent on the Msoft monopoly for their survival...

Re:Without Microsoft.....

[anothy]

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.

um, no.

Apple sued Microsoft not because they had produced a GUI, but because they had produced a GUI that was largely a clear derivative of Apple's. i really wish Apple had won that suit. not because i wanted to see MicroSoft get it (hey, i thought Macs were dumb back then, and was a DOS user!), but because it would've forced them to do something else. there are other ways to do GUIs. look at the dozens of X11 window managers that use totally different designs (okay most are trying to be just like MS or Apple, but some aren't). Look at Plan 9, with rio and especially Acme - or Oberon, for that matter. there's tons of sucky examples, too (Bob!). hell, some were even concurrent with Apple's work! read up on the blit/jerq from Bell Labs and all the PARC stuff Apple got their ideas from.

Apple has certainly used litigation to achieve some goals in the past, but i've seen no evidence of them holding the same "we'll sue you if we can't come up with a better way to own everything " model MicroSoft seems to have. i can see no support for the statement that Apple was trying to "own" the GUI market or the GUI - although you could argue that they were trying to "own" the metaphor and design. but i think that's justifiable, and would likely have been a good thing, forcing people to come up with other ideas.

Re:Without Microsoft.....

[ArhcAngel]

It seems every few years the Apple vs. Microsoft lawsuit debate gets refueled. It also seems that the reason the debate rages is that the facts have nothing to do with the debate. These are the facts IIRC:

Apple was working on porting this new cutting edge operating environment, GUI, for the Apple hardware Steve Jobs had seen while visiting Xerox Park.

To speed up development Steve Jobs contracted a little software company called Microsoft to help in development of what became the Macintosh OS.

In said contract was a clause prohibiting MS from creating a GUI for any other platform.

Now this next part I gleaned from the made for TV movie about the subject so it's validity is suspect but as the story goes MS created MS Windows and began selling it in Asia. Since Asia is outside the US market MS didn't feel they were bound by the contract.

Apple found out about the new GUI and the lawsuit ensued. The case was pending for over ten years until a couple of years back they finally settled (read no court ruling) and MS invested a few million into Apple and agreed to keep making Office for the Mac for a few more years.

disclaimer: I didn't say anything you think you just read.

Re:Without Microsoft.....

[AmigaBen]

Oh the horrors! All these years we would have had to suffer with a stable, multitasking, REAL OS...

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

[hyc]

Apple's hardware has always been uninspired, 2nd rate dreck. The best hardware designs came from Jay Miner and friends in the Atari and Commodore camp. While Apple was inventing new ways to make a fast processor slow (single 68000 CPU running the entire system, no DMA, etc. etc.) the Amiga and Atari had custom coprocessors for disk I/O, graphics, sound, keyboard, mouse etc., getting *great* performance out of the same CPU. And doing it all for less $$ overall.

I totally agree that Microsoft *and Intel* have retarded the state of the art by at least 15 years. There have been so many other worthwhile, efficient CPU architectures (MIPS, Alpha, 680x0) that have gone by the wayside, while the bloated hulk of x86 keeps rolling on.

I really do wonder where Linux would be today without Microsoft. I wonder why Minix didn't experience the same explosive growth. (Anyone even remember it?)

One can only hope that as we push thru the 21st century, marketing will less frequently win out over superior technology.

Re:I am writing in Ada! & MS Ruminations

[Endive4Ever]

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

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.

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?

[Llywelyn]

Simple. That is what people are used to and it is emulating what they have seen before.

It isn't because it is "better" on any level, it is because that is what people use.

Re:missed the GUI?

[ThaReetLad]

I don't get it. On one hand you moan about microsoft being a monopoly and abusing it's IP, and on the other you defend Apple for trying to prevent a small company from making a GUI that is similar to an existing one. Had Apple won their look and feel lawsuit there would be no KDE or Gnome today. Hell there would probably be no linux at all. Apple, lest we forget, is a company that refuses to allow anyone to make comodity hardware that will run its OS's.

Personally I believe that if there had been no microsoft then the development of the PC as an essential part of modern living might never have happened. OK they might be somewhat over zealous and use dubious business methods, but what company doesn't. Let us also not forget that they could, if they so wished, use their position for rather more unpleasant things that just squashing the competition. Imagine what would happen if microsoft was owned by Rupert Murdoch for example *shiver*

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.

Is a single roll of paper tape to blame?

[talexb]

You know what roll of paper tape I'm talking about .. that was the one containing the version of GW-Basic (yep, stood for Gee-Whiz) that Bill Gates and Paul Allen had hacked together. They were showing it in their hotel room in the late 70's or early 80's to a couple of (Comdex?) visitors and were talking about selling it when someone saw a copy of the tape and scarfed it.

They made a copy, and passed it on with the admonitiion to 'be fruitful, and multiply' -- make a copy and pass it on. Bill Gates wrote a scathing letter to the community (and no doubt, swore to wreak his own revenge).

So, it's 25 years later, and he's still battling the same people that stole his reel of paper tape from that hotel room. So consider this .. what if he'd had good security and no one had been able to lift that reel of tape? Bill Gates and Richard Stallman might have peacefully co-existed.

Obviously...

[mog007]

What would the world be like without Microsoft?

More stable.

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.

Re:Not in a plane crash

[Anonymous Coward]

The storie was that he was flying when IBM came to talk about the original PC. He left his wife to talk to them. She did but most people do not know was that she was the Companies attorney.

IBM found Gates because MS was the source of BASIC. They wanted to include basic. MS offered to sell them a OS but IBM did nor want to buy (anti-trust issues) So they argeed to have MS keep the rights. Gates Mother was on the United Way board wit the Chairman of IBM who said that he knew "Mary Gates's son" and IBM would do business with his small company.

DR lost out to DOS because they were 7 months late in releasing thier PC product and cost $145 to DOS's $45.

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?

OT

[PsiPsiStar]

In the same way fucking that crazy girl down the street reminds you its not good to fuck crazy girls... I suppose

And God how I need that reminder now and again. ... Just got a letter from an ex-girlfriend...

If Redmond disappeared into a black hole tomorrow

[Rogs]

...after the obligatory period of shock, somebody would eventually find a set of backup sources somewhere, but they'd probably prove useless.

The ideal operating system is componentized, not monolythic: a microkernel, surrounded by a few standardized core API's implemented by replaceable OS components, surrounded by a larger set of services API's also implemented by replaceable OS components. That way there is no natural monopoly. What it takes are well-defined semantics for the APIs. It also takes a committee to administer upgrade discipline (anything that requires API changes requires a newly versioned module to coexist with the old module.)

The problem is that it's been impossible to move the market towards a standardized, componentized solution, since every OS has always been faced with Windows' existence. Sure enough Windows was never going to be componentized, so every other OS has been captive to the "David vs. Goliath" syndrome, or the need to build a "full solution" in order to be able to compete. But if Microsoft were to disappear, the Goliath would lay slain, and it'd take about as long for another Goliath (Apple? Linux?) to grow large enough as it would to introduce a componentized, "cooperative yet competitive" solution, the latter being much more attractive to consumers, and to producers with no realistic chance of becoming the new Goliath.

But the greatest effect of Microsoft's disappearance would be the resurrection of the software industry. There is no software industry today, no matter what Oracle, Adobe and EA tell you. It's a fraction of what it was in %-GDP terms in the 80's, and a microfraction of what it would be without MS. Simplistically put, software has been grossly underinvested in because MS deprives business plans of most of their upside. As a new software venture, you can be grossly unsuccessful, mildly unsuccessful, mildly successful, but you can never be greatly successful - if it looked like you were going to be, MS would step in and turn you into the next Netscape, by either acquiring you for pennies, or by copying your technology and leveraging their OS business to overcome any time-to-market or superior-technology advantage you might have had. That depresses the expected return of any new venture so much, that most of them go unstarted or unfunded.

This last effect alone is probably worth 100 to 1000 times what MS's continued existence is worth. In other words, if the DOJ commended the dissolution of Microsoft (probably about as likely as the black hole option, at least in this administration) it'd do economic wonders.

Re:Software Standards

[xtermin8]

IBM set the standards for PC hardware, and would have done the same for software if M$ had failed. I think the more valuable benefit has been that an established company like IBM can be beaten at their own game. Would there have even been a Linux or open source movement without a monopoly like M$ to fight against?

While at Microsoft today...

[descil]

I had a rather interesting experience at Microsoft today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

I talked to a Microsoft engineer, and out of curiousity I asked him whether or not he uses Linux, and what he uses it for. This guy works for Microsoft Research - which publishes more white papers regarding algorithms and technology than anybody else. Essentially they're more open source with their ideas than any other community out there. Now this is a specific niche of Microsoft, and I'm not saying that MS in general is like that at all; obviously they're not.

A lot of microsoft's reputation, however, is out of date. In fact, it's downright obsolete these days. MS shares their code with quite a few people. They approach things from a monied perspective, but hell, if they didn't, a lot of us would be out of a job (and of course, not just those at MS.)

The point is, this guy who works at MS research is aware of the advantages of Linux, the advantages of Windows, and uses them accordingly. There's this huge battle being waged in the mind of geeks everywhere; for some reason a lot of us feel that Microsoft needs to -die-.

MS doesn't need to die; why anyone would want that, from a cognitive standpoint, is beyond me. MS does not hinder open source production. Open Source has its niche and it's not going away any more than MS is. Microsoft employees recognize the value of linux. Why don't open source advocates recognize the value of MS products? There's value in both Linux and Windows - understand the values of each, and you'll be far ahead of everybody else. Try to destroy either one, and you'll find it's impossible no matter how far you dedicate yourself.

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)!

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.

Off topic reply to sig

[PsiPsiStar]

I can see the "Post Anonymously" option, but where do I find the "Post Humously" option?

I could tell you. But then I'd have to kill you.

link mirror

[rat_axe]

The link in this article got slashdotted. The Google cache of the page is here.

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.

Re:There would be no Open Source...

[zakezuke]

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

[x] Strongly disagree

I believe OSS would have continued to develop regardless of the existance of microsoft. If i'm not mistaken, Linux it self was developed so one could play with a *nix type system on x86 hardware without the high cost. If this is true, then it has little to do microsoft at all, but rather something to do with the very high cost of a true blue AT&T licensed *nix.

My belief is based in part of all the free software I could get on compuserve pre 1985... many of the applications you could request the source. Also, basic code was commonly published in computer mags, which is about as open source as you can get.

Re:Microsoft is Morgoth

[DaveAtFraud]

I have argued the same point but offer some more specific reasons.

1) If you assume that, without Microsoft, there would be multiple competing OSes (e.g., the multitude of Unix variants in the 1980s) then just having FOSS to provide a choice wouldn't be needed. For all intents and purposes, the only alternative to Microsoft on i386 hardware is FOSS. This leads to:

2) The FOSS movement is getting support from various companies (e.g., IBM, Novell) since FOSS is the only way they can compete against Microsoft's lock-in with hardware vendors through marketing agreements. If you dig into the record of the Microsoft anti-trust case you'll find that Microsoft even had enough leverage to pressure IBM into not offering alternatives to Microsoft products (e.g., OS/2) on IBM made PCs by threatening to no longer provide IBM a price break since they weren't giving Microsoft an exclusive.

3) Kind of fall-out from item 1, above, but if you had competition in OS and applications, you wouldn't have Microsoft's monopolist pricing on buggy bloatware. Choice means the freedom to choose between different products basd on their merits. Generally, in a competitive market this means that price goes down while quality goes up.

I'm not saying that FOSS wouldn't exist without Microsoft but it would be one player among many instead of being the only alternative.

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.

Microsoft, Hardware and Open Computing

[MikShapi]

Microsoft may seem like the opposite pole to open computing concepts (like open source, open standards, etc.) to some, and to an extent that's true.

What most people overlook is that Bill Gates is the Linus Trovalds of PC hardware.

Before MS, HARDWARE WAS PROPRIETARY. UNIX Machines had proprietary hardware. Macs had proprietary hardware. Mac wouldn't make IBM-compatible hardware, and IBM wouldn't make HP-compatible hardware, and specifications for some hardware for the purpose of driver-writing was not available.

Windows revolutionized this. (or rather made it possible for corps like Intel to start lobbying for standards and for concortiums to start emerging - think ISA, PCI, USB, etc).

If it weren't for Microsoft, EVERYTHING may not have been running on one unified platform. There may not have been such a boom of 3rd party hardware vendors. There wouldn't be an ATI and NVIDIA. Your IBM computer would still be using an IBM graphics chip. The PC may not have evolved as the universal platform we know it today. And Linus may not have written anything.

It's all assumptions and whatifs, but there is a good chance Linux owes its existance to Bill Gates winning the fight over Open Hardware with Apple (who still wants to sell us computers with welded hoods), IBM and whoever else competed with him in that neandarthal PC market of the 80s and early 90s.

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.

Come Again?

[EventHorizon]

Dude, this is slashdot... You have to be more specific.

What's a girl?

The answer depends on perspective

[OC_Wanderer]

Not revealing my age, I was around for the progression of computers to the desktop. I have worked with various flavor of Unix, DOS and Windows.

For me, Microsoft helped to usher in the generation that went from the CLI to the GUI. Although I'm very confortable with the CLI, I prefer the GUI. Visual representation makes it easier for everyone to compute, not just the geeks and nerds.

Where would we be without Microsoft? IMHO, we'd be stuck using expensive computers with a CLI or more expensive computers with the Mac, Amiga, or some other GUI with proprietary hardware.

Of course, I could be all wrong... It's a matter of perspective.

Nahhh... microcomputers didn't depend on MS.

[Stormbringer]

If Dartmouth BASIC had been GPL'd, there probably never would have been a Microsoft, because the code wouldn't have stayed stolen.

In which case somebody would have done more or less what they did, that is, write a BASIC that'd run on an Altair, because the Altair-8800 come out before there was a Micro-Soft. Maybe Gordon Eubanks would have written CBASIC earlier. Or maybe Mountain View FORTH would've replaced it.

Instead of MSDOS and Microsoft, we'd have CP/M and Digital Research (Gary Kildall contracted for Intel, not for MS, before starting DRI), and they would have been pricier and more hardnosed (MS knew how to look friendlier back then). Would that have stopped Stallman and BSD? Not a chance... so there would have been a Unix-style OS when Intel CPUs, and hard drive densities, and DRAM densities, matured enough to support them, and sooner or later there would be a free-as-in-country Unix-style OS for commodity PCs, just-because-there's-a-Richard-and-his-ilk.

Maybe GEM would've matured enough to provide the just-enough-windowing-environment category that the 386s needed, or maybe Desqview would've gone graphic, because neither PARC nor Apple depended on the impact of MS for their existence, so the WIMP interface was inevitable.

From a 50-year retrospective, it all would have looked substantially the same if Microsoft never happened, except we'd probably all be bitching about Gary Kildall instead.

Now, Intel, on the other hand... No matter what their business ethics might be, those guys were pivotal. TI was the other first-microprocessor contender, and they didn't get it right for quite a while. Making Intel go bankrupt, say, by making them buy back all those pattern-sensitive 1101 DRAM chips, would have seriously delayed the computer technology we're so fond of.

That's my take on it, anyway.

Umm... Better? The Same?

[TheCeltic]

Let's see.. what has MS given us?

Office? No.. stolen from Word Perfect
Windows? No.. stolen from Mac
Internet? No.. Not ONE of the root servers runs MS anything!
Web Browser? No.. stolen from Netscape
Streaming Audio? No.. Stolen from Real Networks
Innovation? No.. Just imitation

64 Bit Hardware? Yes.. Oops.. I mean NO
Bloated Code? Yes
Nimbda? Yes
NetBUI/Bios? Yes
CodeRed? Yes
Closed source insecure/virus prone OS? Yes
Monopoly? Why yes!

Sorry Bill, but I can't think of a single MS innovation. Perhaps the world without Microsoft would be one where the servers are all stable and secure UNIX (or variants like Linux/BSD) and the workstations would all be stable and easy to use (like MAC). As far as cutting edge hardware, plenty of companies would create new hardware for those platforms. If anything, Microsoft has slowed technology. Did MS come up with DirectX before OpenGL? Nope.. The BEST games are OpenGL (Unreal/Wolf3d/Doom). Did MS develop a single internet protocol? I can't think of any. (they did corrupt a couple.. Kerberos for example).

The world would have moved forward without Microsoft. Probably much further forward.

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.

As much as I'd hate to admit it....

[nekoes]

Microsoft may be the devil reincarnate, but if it weren't for Microsoft and their OS then I'd probably not be into computing today. Perhaps I wouldn't want to be either. Let me explain.

Back when I started using computers, pre 1997 perhaps, I was quite the youngin' (still am) and was teaching myself how to use computers and the still growing internet. It was windows 95 that allowed me to do this, and it had the games that kept me interested in computers. I can't tell you how much having warcraft 2 on the platform helped. But games were just the gateway drug to the technology addiction that was to follow. Now Mac OS also had a port of War2, but Macs back then (and today still) are rather expensive, and I'm sure my family would not have been so keen on using one. Linux, on the other hand, is cheap (it's free!) but there's no way ten year old me would of been able to use it. Windows is the beast that allows the blend between ease-of-use and configurability, and that's what I enjoy in an operating system.

Now today, things have changed, and Operating Systems have changed too, but Linux still is a bitch to set up and use and MacOS still makes me feel dumb using it. It's Microsoft that allows me to get things done when I need it, because more often than not I can just install a program without having to do much more work than a few clicks, and have it work. That's important because I feel my time is better spent working on what I want to do, instead of updating dependancies and wondering why the fuck this make is throwing up errors. When I decide I need to tweak my computer and get it running better or faster, that's easy to do too, and I know just how to do it. I don't have to deal with Apple's shit or hard to use third party programs. It's just Windows, and as much as I'd hate to say it, sometimes it just works. Now it does come at a price, and I'd love to lose all these explorer crashes and odd little (or big) problems that using Windows presents, but until Linux moves to carry the games and starts being easy enough for me to set up, it will still remain that beast that I need to tackle. And it shouldn't be that way. When I'm using a desktop computer it shouldn't be an arduous exhausting task.

Had Microsoft not been around, most likely something would have moved to fill it's place. However I don't think that the world we're living in is too bad. I just wish that more game developers would support OpenGL and make the linux ports. That way maybe someday I'd have something to look forward to in a switch to linux.

Re:There would be no Open Source...

[Brandybuck]

Do you read Slashdot often? Doesn't this give you a bit of a clue as to the OSS mindset?

The vast majority of Slashdot posters couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag. They have nothing to do with the development of Open Source software.

...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.

Re:The world would be different...

[NotInTheBox]

Very valid point.

MacOSX is really kind of like Jobs vision of how NeXT 1.0 should have been like and a backward-looking, if-we-had-this-then, re-edited Star Wars kind of way.

I however don't know anybody which has a dream anymore... I like to think that if Lisp/scheme had been on every computer in stead of basic we now would have beter programmers. It could still happen.

If MS would close shop now, the world would just go on...

XP wil be used for 10-15 years and slowly system would be replaced. Some Apple, some Gnu/Linux, some Gnu/BSD, some Gnu/hurd -- GNUStep would get a boost.

Upgrade cycles would slow down, people would not over hype feature creep anymore. We would become more realistic about computers and use them where they make sense and not where it would be pointless.

For the blind there would be specially designed computers for when MS is gone Windows will no longer be the default OS for everyone... When your blind a GUI is kind of a pain in the ass.

More variation and standardization on (abstract) protocols, which would together mean the end of worm's and viruses which grow out of control exponentially and disrupt 80-90% of the internet.... (He... isn't that how much MS is used?)

EMail (MS = hotmail) would become a niche and Jabber will grow, taking over much of the email communication. Running your own server (http or bittorrent) would become common
place.

People would be forced to RTFM, realise that computers a difficult hi-tech devices which are sometimes hard to use, and that you should not expect it to be easy -- just as that no-body would expect a 747 to be easy. More respect for the programmer... maybe that some children will say, when they are 8, that they too want to become a programmer when they grow up. (Just kidding)

Open Source would have no Windows to copy and they would be forced to think for them selfs... to think of new way's to do things. To be really innovative. This would force Open Source to change some of it's structure, maybe even loose some of its openness: invitation only commit-access to the SVN server?

The new culture of 'copy-paste-edit' would bloom...

Mmm... maybe we'll get there despite MS still hanging around? How relevant is MS really and how much is hype?

What if the geeks (like the people here) would choose to ignore MS for 10 years -- don't look at it, don't use it, don't work at it, don't copy it, don't helping that friend who's XP has failed him, not even saying a word about it anymore -- Believe that Windows is irrelevant, not something anyone how is serious would use. Consider it a toy and behave as such... Gee... We could change the world!

Windowless world: Open Unix on Apple Clone

[Tatarize]

Although, I agree Linux as it stands would never arise as a protest OS as such. The talent would still be there, the ideas would still be there, the people would still be there.

Apple wouldn't have crashed and burned as soon. They would have retained more of their market share for a while longer. IBM would have more than likely had DOS written for their machine, though it wouldn't have succeeded. The alternate machine for the apple could have been anything from the DEC to NEC to perhaps still the x86, or most likely a mac clone. The only sure thing would be it would be as cheap to produce as the PC clones, were in the early days. Without an obvious alternative much more pressure would have been placed on breaking Mac's stranglehold on the hardware, this would have lead to cloning of the Mac as it had lead to cloning the PC.

Without direct competition Apple prices would be higher than they were causing more pressure to create a cheap counterpart for the OS. Without windows ripping off the interface early on, a few other mac clone OS's would come around, though they would only serve to contribute code to the later clones.

The real shift would be when AT&T built Unix. Although they would have developed an extensive GUI'd OS to rival Apple, so much of the code was contributed and tossed around that surely a either a quick scratch project or a release would dump this into Open Source Which wasn't so much reactionary to Microsoft as it was idealogical after Emacs was written/stole. After the start of a free Open Unix for Mac/Mac Clone, it would continue to grow from earlier than linux started to grow. And would have overtaken Apple in the early 90's. As all the game hardware and games would be supported, and much more easily integrated with the hardware than what Apple deam Mac. Hardware manufacturers would be some of the greater contributers to Open Unix as they would prefer their technology be used. Apple would have effectivly be cloned out of existance. As the hardware clones would kill their hardware market, and Open Unix would take over the OS. Rather than see the revival of Mac we have seen in the past 5 years or so, they would have died out quickly after losing market share, only having the same functionality for much more money.

Conclusion: Most likely we would be using an Open Source Unix clone, on Apple clone hardware. Apple as a hardware/software company would be completely dead.

Life without MS?

[Vskye]

Humm, this one is kinda tuff. I have positively hated MS since day one. 8-) I personally started out on a Commodore 64 using the "Compute" magazine to code from, since back then there was either tape or floppy for storage. God forbid if the power went out! Then I upgraded to a Apple IIc and added 2 external 3.5" floppys, running a bbs.. people would call to have me swap disks. GEOS was also "the" GUI at that time. Then I upgraded to a IBM clone XT, stuffed in two 20MB hard drives with (name not remembered) RLL controller which expanded the drives capacity... set me back around $2000 US. I ran DESQview, and networked another system via LANTastic. I ran DOS, went to ESIX Unix and toyed with Xenix, discovered Linux at like 0.90 or so version and have been here since.
I hated Windows when it came out, but my clients started asking about it and I had to support it. If nothing else (as others have mentioned) it has progressed the market in terms of faster CPU's, ram, video cards, etc. Personally I still think there is alot of programming "overhead" nowdays.. but then again, I still enjoy playing empire and sopwith. ;-)

If there wasn't a MS, then there would be either Apple, or IBM and who knows if OS/2 would have even popped into view. (along with Linux for that matter) Speaking of Apple, I'd love a new G5 but damn it! .. drop the prices! I guess I could go on for quite awhile, but I'll end it here.

IF not for M$, web apps would be much simpler

[botik32]

Funny we just discussed yesterday the unfortunate effect Microsoft has on software.

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

Here I would like to stress what a mess Microsoft has made of web applications by meddling with Java and killing off it support in Windows.

I am a web programmer and I know the hurdles encountered when delivering a web application.

My experience says 80% of the development and maintenance efforts go to the presentation layer. Why? Because it is done through the ass. Excuse me, but HTML+JavaScript was not designed as a user interface layer. Implementing thin-clients in Javascript is suicide, a slow and painful one. Re-sending the form to the browser every time an action is made is assinine.

It is ludicruous, the things companies do right now to implement a web user interface. When 20 programmers and 15 designers spend all day explaining to each other what bits in the entangled mess of a page the designer should change to change the interface , it is not programming, it is extremely distorted masochistic masturbation.

Enter client-side java. Thin clients? Easy. Security+sandbox? Yep. Custom widgets? Yep. Direct graphics rendering? You bet. And it can be done in a few weeks by a programmer + UI designer. As a result, half the burden is off the server, the interface is natural and easy to use, maintenance costs are minimal.

Face it, Browser-embedded Java is the answer to all these freaking mammoth problems web development has drowned itself into. This technology is how many? 10 years old?? Why has not it been accepted???

Enter Microsoft.

Had Microsoft not interfered, client-side Java would be as ubiquitous on the desktop as are GNU tools on unix'es, due to its superior design and concept. But no, M$ had to distort it and obstruct it so it never made it to the users' desktops. Instead it promises .NET shit that is even slower and more complex than current implementations.

And this is just one example. Killing off good ideas is M$'s job. Not innovation, not better products, not open standards, not fair play. Microsoft has just killed everyone in the IT and scared the shit out of everyone else. It stands alone on a pile of skulls two stories high.

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"

We'd be more productive without Microsoft

[SgtChaireBourne]

Before Microsoft, it was posible to install a system an it would run more or less indefinitely without need for the "three fingered salute". If Microsoft were to disappear, businesses and later home users would migrate to more stable platforms and spend less time trying to maintain or diagnose their machines and more time using them as tools to get their work done.

Aside from the psychological shock to the MBAs who worship Chairman Bill, a marketing behemoth like Microsoft could disappear and the economy would pick up. How much time is and money is wasted on MSTDs like Bagle, which are the result of design flaws? How much time is wasted on incompatibility issues between different versions of MS-Office? How much time is wasted with end users being shoe-horned into being amateur sysadmins and security specialists? How much time is wasted reinstalling a system after a supposed patch or upgrade or general cruft takes it down? How much time is wasted getting back to where you left off after such an interruption? How much time and money is wasted on "upgrading" hardware and software every 12 - 18 months?

All that comes out of your company's or organization's result.

Identity theft would be harder ( or involve more social engineering). Industrial espionage would be much harder since other OSs are more secure, designed for a networked multi-user environment.

Communication would be easier, sendmail/exim/postfix/qmail just don't lose mail like MS-Exchange which has 5% to 15% just vanish without trace or, perhaps worse, generate a "user does not exist" error.

In all, I see the disappearance of Microsoft as a positive and, really, a necessary step not just for the advancement of technology but also for the re-growth of the world's economy.

CP/M

[turgid]

Back in the day, CP/M (86) was supposed to be the OS for the IBM PC, but Gary Kildall had had an argument with his wife when the IBM guys came to do the deal, so she told them he was out flying his plane...

The rest, as they say, is history.

CP/M was interesting because it was portable. It was written mostly in PL/M (vs. 8086 assembler for MS-DOS). It started out on the 8080 and went to the Z80 (and enhanced 8080 clone from Zilog). There were also ports to 8086 (and enhanced but incompatible 8080 derivative from intel) and the Motorola 68000.

If IBM hadn't chosen MS-DOS inadvertantly, there would have been a more diverse early market of CP/M machines with various different binary architectures. Since the Z80 was so popular, there may have been more of a 3-way battle between Z80, 68k and 8086. The 8086 might not have been so successful (IBM wanted to use the 68k but it wasn't ready in time) and there may have been a significant market in Z80-derived enhanced processors i.e. 16-bit extensions and even 32-bit ones! If only IBM had chosen the 68k though, and Gary hadn't had a row with his wife, the abominations that were the 8086 architecture (and the Pentium) and MS-DOS (non-portable, proprietary, half-baked, buggy, etc.) would not have happened. Bill would not be the richest man in geekdom. IBM, it's all your fault.

A news headline from the business section

[Jack Schitt]

Apple Corporation (Nasdaq: AAPL) was found to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by a federal grand jury, today.

Though most of the allegations made by the plaintiffs against Apple were found to be false, the allegations of monopolizing the consumer software and hardware markets and the allegations of fraud were not false.

"The next phase [the penalty phase] of this lawsuit should be a bit fun," said Mike Rotch, representing the more than a thousand plaintiffs in this case. "This is where they will be made to take responsibility for their actions."

"My client is simply providing what its customers want," said Johnnie Cochrane, representing Apple Corporation. "Why is that a crime?"

-----

This is from a fictional newspaper in a fictional reality. This is not to be construed as libel.

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.

Sorry, but that's utter high-end bullshit.

[Qbertino]

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.

OpenGL was way ahead of DX. Everybody and his brother in the gaming industry protested when MS said they did'nt give a damn and started to roll their own. Which came on par with OpenGL something around DX 4 or 5.
In fact DX is a prime example for MS'es embrace and extend - even if it is at the _cost_ of inovation. OpenGL is heading for V.2 and it's behind DX only since the DX 7 days. V2 will catch up almost entirely again. Even though the OpenGL consortium has nearly zilch power in the gaming field nowadays. If MS had used and joined OpenGL, computer GFX optimization would be way further today.
But I guess marketing-buzz weighs heavier than true innovation. You're statement actually proves the shareholders of MS right, in a way.

Not a mirror but a copy

[Lproven]

There's a Google cache of the text of the page here:

http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:Pq0ZnZAS5qAJ :m embers.aol.com/nickjc67/gem.htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF- 8

For more info on GEM, try...

FreeGEM home:
http://www.deltasoft.com/

For other sites, see its Links page:
http://www.deltasoft.com/links.htm

FreeGEM development mailing list:
http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev
( Anyone interested in GEM should certainly join this.)

Shane Coughlan's OpenGEM distro
http://gem.shaneland.co.uk/

Jon Elliot, AES developer:
http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/index.html

Ben Jemmett, desktop developer:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/

My own GEM revision history:
http://members.aol.com/liamproven/reference/tos_hi st.htm
(Contains links to active GEM developments on the Atari)

Aranym ("Atari Running on ANY Machine"):
http://aranym.sourceforge.net/
(The most sophisticated free ST emulator around. Comes with free GEM-
compatible OS Afros (Aranym FRee OS) and instructions on how to install
the free multitasking GEM extension MINT).

Re:Anarchy

[soulhuntre]

"Everytime I plow through the Linux source code, I gasp!"

Tell me about it. Just reading the Kernal Traffic list lets you know how crazy things are in there.

I am always amused when a client asks me if they should move to Linux because they are worried that there are too many bugs in commercial software. The answer is...

"well, if you think betting your enterprise on hundreds of thousands of lines of code written by thousands of amateurs with almsot no oversite and no quality control is a good idea... you go right ahead".

Re:Windows keys

[Spirilis]

I think Super_L and Super_R (left and right windows keys) are modifiers.

The "menu" key throws a "Menu" keypress:

KeyPress event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0x2000001,
root 0x48, subw 0x2000002, time 43446434, (48,44), root:(55,108),
state 0x0, keycode 117 (keysym 0xff67, Menu), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes: ""

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.

What if M$ were gone NOW...not "never existed"

[jav1231]

No one seems to be addressing this. (Then again, I didn't read every post). I think Linux would step up and share the market with Apple. More importantly, you'd likely see other OS players come along. I think in general, it'd be a good thing. I see other devices with similar OS's making bigger strides too. I'm not a teeny PC fan per se' but with M$ out of the picture, the world would open to innovation. Without the threat of M$ calling Intel to tell them not to cut you a discount on your P4 or ARM CPU's, you'd get much more equal footing to build that new gadget/PC. Right now, they wield way too much influence over companies, though we're starting to see that whittle away some. So my answer is, in the short run Linux and Apple would become the big players. Apple would likely port to Intel processors to compete more fully.

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."

Innovation

[Choc Ice]

Microsoft have never been innovators, they've simply started with mediocre software, added in features that competing software has got, and marketed it like crazy.

Microsoft started with BASIC. They didn't invent BASIC, it had been around for years.

Microsoft then moved on to MSDOS. They didn't invent DOS, it had been around for years. They didn't even write MSDOS from scratch, they bought it off another company (QDOS).

They then moved onto Windows. They didn't invent GUIs, they'd been around for years.

They then started copying other stuff:
MSWord: A WYSIWYG word processor. Already been done (WordStar).
Excel: A WYSIWYG spreadsheet. (Lotus 1-2-3 anyone?)
Internet Explorer: A graphical web browser - done before by Mosaic.

Microsoft have never invented anything new, they've just attempted to produce something better than the competition. Even if it's not better, that's nothing a good bit of marketing can't fix.

What about technologies invented by Microsoft? I can't think of any. Multitasking was in UNIX long before Windows. Long Filenames? UNIX again, and countless other OSes. What about OLE and later ActiveX? Nope - Microsoft stole bits of this patented technology from Wang Labs (settled out of court, so um - they didn't really "steal" it. Honest guv).

There's loads of things MS has patents for, but nothing they've done has been innovative. Without Microsoft, what do we have though? All of these things listed above existed, but in different places. Microsoft packaged them up, made them easy to use, then marketed them to death.

Would do we have now that we wouldn't have if Microsoft hadn't existed?

GCC non-standard? puh-leeeez...

[Shaddup]

There are worse offenders in the compiler market than gcc. MS's Visual C++ is far more permissive than gcc when it comes to "standards". For example, vc uses the ancient c++ scoping rules (circa 1995-ish) and will gleefully compile the following:

void somefunc(void) {
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
i = 23;
}

What's worse is that you *have* to follow their archaic scoping rules... the following *will not* compile with vc:

void somefunc(void) {
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
}

VC claims that the variable 'i' is declared twice.

There are many more examples. Here's another code snippet that vc will compile, but is not standard:

enum MyEnum {
FOO,
BAR
};

void somefunc(void) {
whatever = MyEnum::FOO;
}

The problem is that the c++ standard states that enums place their contents in the scope level immediately above their own, *not* in a separate scope (this is a holdover from c). You can't reference the contents of an enum like you would any other name space, ie 'MyEnum::FOO' should be simply 'FOO'.

I'm sure there are many many more examples, but who cares? No one will ever read this comment anyway.

Re:AOL site

[CanadianMikey]

Keep up the anonymous posting. I was that douchebag.
Who is the Douchebag motherfucker who is scared to post there user name with that comment??

And I might be slow,but I'm not stupid...wait a second...I meant, the link is not that important STUPID!.

Enjoy your day!

Lincoln and secession

[ChrisMaple]

South Carolina seceded: Dec. 20, 1860.

Abraham Lincoln inaugurated: March 4, 1861.

Lincoln's administration was trying to do what WHEN South Caroline seceded?

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.

And In other News:

[Jediman1138]

Today the multi-billion dollar corporation Microsoft closed up shop. Few know why, but we had a chance to ask Bill Gates why.

When asked why he would do such a thing Mr. Gates said simply "Fuck It, I've got all the money I need."

________________________________________________

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.

Re:GCC non-standard? puh-leeeez...

[man_of_mr_e]

MS's Visual C++ is far more permissive than gcc when it comes to "standards". For example, vc uses the ancient c++ scoping rules (circa 1995-ish)

Uh, no. MS's compiler for the last two versions has had a switch to turn off that behavior. Yes, it's on by default because there's a lot of legacy code, but you can turn it off.

What's worse is that you *have* to follow their archaic scoping rules

Again, no. Just use the switch: /Zc:forScope

The problem is that the c++ standard states that enums place their contents in the scope level immediately above their own, *not* in a separate scope

This one is controlled by the /Za switch that turns off MS extensions. There is a difference between supporting an extension (which many compilers, including GCC do) and non-compliant behavior.

Re:Before microsoft... (long, old fart reminiscing

[Mistah Blue]

I have to disagree with this particular fragment: cheap Xenix boxes from Radio Shack... so you wouldn't have to scramble for a real operating system

I cut my teeth (for Unix) on SCO Xenix 86 and later 286. They were real multi-user OS's. This was back in 1986. Any shortcomings were more processor related than Xenix. I agree with the rest of the article though.