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MS Rails On Open Source, Appeals To Gov't Greed
Bill Harper writes "Open source software is a 'waste of money,' a Microsoft executive has said. He goes on to say that governments planning to use it will damage their own economies and that giving away source code is shooting yourself in the foot. What's interesting though is that this is just the latest in a series of nonsense arguments put forward by MS in Asia because it's scared of Linux stealing the market. An early one was that open-source software is anti-competitive!" Funny thing is, the MS executive (Chris Sharp) used to work for Red Hat.
Its NOT funny that he came from Red Hat. It will lend some 'creditability' to his words, in the public's eye.
"See...he had to move to Microsoft to make an income and not work for one of those evil/stupid 'Linux companies'".
Microsoft's marketing machine is in full motion these days, and we are taking a beating beacuse of it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think I have met him once at a RedHat presentation in Sydney - he wasn't terrribly open source centric back then either.
I think it's probabaly a fallacy to think that the RedHat managers are open source evangelists - they are more "executives" than evangelists.
Even the current local RedHat CEO doesn't come across as your typical oss advocate. They are more business driven (perhaps unfortunately - perhaps not, depends on your view).
Jon - TheSpork
To propose that sharing code is by nature insecure is saying security can only be achieved through secrecy. It says once you have my windows code, windows is no longer secure.
I think if these guys had any brains they would give away a base version of windows that had enought functionality to be useful.
Jeoin
Of course, he's just some greedy bastard
I would be a little more hesitant to call anybody who goes to work for MS a greedy bastard. I go to a small university in Pittsburgh that has a rather large anti-MS student body.... but at the same time I have never seen a larger turnout for prospective job seekers than when MS comes to town. Microsoft has the luxury of being able to hire the best people, and in the marketing business they can often come from the competition. After all, who better to detail the flaws in a competitor's products than someone who used to hawk them?
That being said I think the arguments are bunk but if you ever want to succeed you should learn to never hate your enemy since it clouds your judgement.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Really? Huh. So tell me again... as a Microsoft marketing strategist, when you look at me, what do you see?
Or perhaps the best example, from cache Borland's web site back before they were payed off^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H settled their case with msft.
-
Microsoft's Concerted and Systematic Efforts to Unfairly Compete with Borland
...
.... As Gross put it, without even asking him to interview, "Microsoft gave him an offer he could not refuse." Borland is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that Microsoft's offer included a $1 million signing bonus, stock options and title to selected real estate in or near Redmond, Washington. Microsoft also informed Gross that it would increase the already substantial offer if he would accept it immediately, even though he had already scheduled a three month sabbatical to plan his wedding.
...Borland is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that Microsoft viewed Gross as key to its successful recruitment of Anders Hejlsberg ... Hejlsberg was reluctant to leave California, but Microsoft offered him a $1.5 million signing bonus, over a base salary of approximately $150,000 to $200,000 and extremely lucrative options to purchase 75,000 Microsoft shares.
Wonder if the RedHat guy got anything close....the method Microsoft chose to develop its answer to Delphi, as well as to C++ and the Internet tools, was to hire away the people at Borland who had developed Borland's superior products. By taking Borland employees, Microsoft reduces the number of people working on products that can compete with Microsoft and support open industry standards.
Gross had always been vehemently opposed to Microsoft and its way of doing business and had tried to discourage many of Borland's employees from taking jobs there. Representatives of Microsoft set their sights on Gross, however, and one day Silverberg and Bob Muglia of Microsoft arrived outside of Borland's headquarters in a limousine to pick up Gross to recruit him over lunch at an expensive restaurant.
Personally, though, I think it's nice to see that Microsoft recognises individual talent and rewards these people well.
The thing you have to ask yourself is if MS were a buggy whip manufacturer facing competition from cheap automobiles, do your pro arguments make sense? For my part, closed-up jack-booted-thugs-may-ensure-EULA-compliance software is already unacceptable to me. MS' marketing machine likes to talk about OSS liability and promote themselves as the "safe" choice. A PHP coding site I was looking at today had one of those SPA pitches to disgruntled employees.
Even one SPA audit kills any number of the "advantages" they're touting; they always find something and they always extort something from you. The time your business is effectively shut down is costly too.
For many categories of software, MS' methods are outmoded. Now the buggy whip manufacturers need to buy and cajole their way out of the jam they're going to be in.
All that and well, MS complaining that FOSS is anticompetitive is pretty rich. You know what they say about people who live in glass houses.....
Lest we forget, Microsoft has at least one OpenSource project. While copyright, and restricted use, microsoft has many, many example source programs on MSDN as well. Not GPL, but certainly open (as in viewable and modifiable) source.
MS seems to fairly regularly confuse say "this is good/bad for consumers" when it really means "this is good/bad for Microsoft". Do they knowingly take MS-internal-only presentations and show them to the public as normal business?
A statement such as "With open source, there is no way to make more software" may make sense to a bunch of coders inside of Microsoft, but it's so obviously stupid outside of that context that it doesn't even survive cursory analysis.
Could they actually define at what point this "no way to make more software" statement has/will kick in? Was it after Linux was released in 1991? After Apache was released a year or so later? Maybe OOo was the last piece of software that could be produced? Is it happening right now, and the code that's being developed at the moment can't be finished? Maybe it's in the future sometime; I'd really like to know the date that it's gonna occur so I can get into another industry beforehand.
Idiots
who is writing open source ? people who know how to code, and have some income
how is it possible ?
because they are good in something, yet have enough time to work on opensource
if you have comparable abilities in writing code and it is the only thing you know, then you'd better start learning something else, because there are already people doing it for free
if you are better then that, you can analyse, you can design, you can think, then someone will pay you for that
if you want to get more money then someone else, you have to be better, or to sell yourself better
if someone else is doing the same for free, you have a problem
but this is not about open source, this is about capitalism, isn't it ?
wait a minute!
when you install your copy of XP professional where is your support agreement...
YOU DONT HAVE ONE. Microsoft does not profide free support when you buy their OS you have to pay for support. JUST LIKE LINUX.
I dont know where this myth that microsoft OS has syupport built in comes from but everyone in the business that works with MS operating systems knows that MS support comes with a very large price tag and is never EVER free.
XP=$300.00 PLus a support agreement price... Linux= $0.00 plus a support agreement price..
even if Mandrake or Suse/Novell support was the same price as MS support (it isn't... it's cheaper) you are STILL ahead by $300.00 + the cost of the Office Suite + the cost of the server seat licenses + the cost of the assorted support software that comes free with the linux distro and is supported by the linux vendor.
the cost of support that is supposedly attached to linux is also there for Windows. nobody ever seems to mention that... or they somehow forget that HUGE bill they pay to MS for that support agreement they signed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Microsoft's continuous raiding did not stop after Microsoft took the top Borland strategist and Borland's top tools developer. Before 1996 was out, Ramin Halviatti, a Delphi Development Manager and, Jean Marie Babet, a C++ R&D engineer, had moved to Microsoft. In the past few weeks alone Microsoft has successfully recruited at least three more key Borland employees: Bill Dunlap, Marie Huwe, and Roland Fernandez."
"In April 1997, Microsoft hired two Borland marketing managers. Both Bill Dunlap, the Product Manager for JBuilder and Marie Huwe, the Product Marketing Manager for C++Builder,"
"Microsoft also hired Borland's senior Architect for its C++Builder product. Roland Fernandez, who resigned from Borland on April 25, 1997 played the key role in Borland's development of C++Builder, Borland's Rapid Application Development ("RAD") tool for C++. He left Borland with detailed knowledge of the overall architecture and feature set definition of C++Builder. At Microsoft, he is now doing exactly the same thing: creating a RAD C++ tool that competes directly with C++Builder. Unable to fix its tools products on its own, Microsoft has recruited Borland knowledge to do it. Minds that previously worked on products that support a wide variety of open industry standards are now limited to products that now support Microsoft platforms and proprietary technologies"
" Microsoft willfully, deliberately, according to its plan, and with the intention of harming Borland, hired at least 34 former employees of Borland, and set them out to use their knowledge of tools development, some of which is proprietary to Borland, to create tools for Microsoft. Microsoft continues, and will continue unless restrained, to accomplish this illegal course of conduct by continuing to solicit and recruit Borland employees. ...Borland is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that Microsoft=s solicitation and recruitment of Borland employees is intentional and being done for wrongful purposes: to inhibit Borland's competitive position in this technology area and to acquire Borland confidential information -- all with the express intent and purpose of unfairly benefiting Microsoft."
"He goes on to say that governments planning to use it will damage their own economies and that giving away source code is shooting yourself in the foot."
Well it'd shoot Microsoft in the foot as they wouldn't have a competitive edge. But the gov't isn't in the software business.
I'm not exactly anti-MS, but this comment isn't very persuasive.
"Derp de derp."
They actually (at least used to) have that quote large on a wall of the main lobby of Red Hat's HQ. One of the things I noticed on a visit...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Sure they get certified. HP is one of the biggest certifiers of hospital equipment in the world. We use them hear for our main cardiac equipment. Main OS? Windows 2000. Previously? NT4. Previous? VMS. We have yet to have any problems with any certified systems as they are basically 'hardened' versions of the OS.
Longhorn will drastically improve this, as certifying companies will be able to remove hundreds (if not thousands) of un-needed components instead of needing to manually remove dozens, and then needing to manually hack out the rest.
A huge bonus to those of us with healthcare dollars to spend.
Couldn't agree more.
The worst thing is all those government health, safety and reliability regulations that relate to plumbing. Don't even get me started on national open standards. The fact that a property owner can go out and choose any old vendor and installer for their plumbing needs is ludicrous.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Yeah.. and since Hejlsberg, the former Chief Engineer at Borland, is Microsoft's Chief C# Language Architect , About.com even speculates about a Conspiracy Theory: MS's .Net IS Borland's Product
Stepping into your plumbing example, I'm saying that it's nice to pay a plumber to fix a problem, and kinda irritating to have the person manage the problem for an extremely long, financially draining time.
Who ever said charging for software was evil? Requiring a price is frequently a self defense mechanizm as much as anything else. See 'pay the piper'.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Forget the prostitute analogy. MS's argument is more like the marriage argument: "sure, you can get free sex now, when you're young and there's plenty of people who will do it for fun. But what about later, when it's not just for fun anymore? Don't you want to get your sex as part of a sustainable long-term relationship?"
I'm not sure I agree with their argument (open source looks pretty sustainable to me), but it's not really about $$$-versus-no-$$$. It's about the nature of long-term commitments.
I don't think your experience is much different than your peers in the United States, Europe, or any other computer-using economic base.
That's exactly what Microsoft is worried about. They're after the base architecture everyone uses. Anything that dilutes their impact on that architecture is a threat. That means servers.
Microsoft isn't cleaning up. They're fighting an increasing perception of the OS as a commodity. Windows being widely available for free, even illegally, re-enforces the perception that the OS itself is generic.
Delving a bit deeper into that; if you're sufficiently motivated, you can learn to fix your plumbing for free; and not only is plumbing knowledge essentially free ( if you are willing to look for it ) but the standards on how to do so are published in the books available for a small cost.
:)
Oh, and there are many people who will teach you about plumbing if you are willing to learn (it's part of my current job).
That's why the money to be made (and that is being made all over) thru open source belongs to the service trade. (There's no shame in being a software maintenance guy; the nice thing about open source vs. closed is that you have a lot more options open to you, whether you are a programmer or DIYer
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
It doesn't matter what Microsoft says. Microsoft is not going to beat linux _or_ the BSDs. This is not a fight to be won by marketing droids. The decision to use, or not to use, will be made by hard-ball CIOs and CFOs. Open source is good software; in most cases it is the best software of it's kind. It is inevitable that businesses will use it. Those decision makes that don't use it will be taken care of by the darwinian marketplace and the not-so-stupid managers that don't want to waste their company's money.
Microsoft is stalling for time while they build a new OS that uses the incredible security and power of *nix AND the incredible product branding they've built up with Windows. Look at what crap Windows is. Remember Schwinn? Microsoft is dissing *nix while feverishly copying it and hiding the result under the Windows UI with the hood screwed shut. The BSD license would let them do this. Just like Mr. Jobs did. (At least he's giving back a bit.)
Don't be fooled. Bill Gates is a technological idiot. But he's a very, very dangerous business adversary. People should be using linux and the BSDs not because they're free (in either sense of the word), but because they're the best damn software in the world. That's the message businesses will listen to. Price is farther down their list.
Governments are in a position to establish vendor neutral specs that could dominate the industry. If the IRS established XML specs for tax forms (rather than letting Intuit or another vendor dictate proprietary formats as the standards) then they can drive real competetion for good software that implements the standards. If this sort of thing expands it could make communication of data about patents, censuses, and parking tickets as easy to find as looking up a zip code is online today.
Governments don't seem to recognize that by giving power to the little dictators and their proprietary products they are ceding their own power as the neutral referee and protector of their people.
Giving up mod points (and postings as AC)...
Having lived near Redmond (and while working for MS) I can tell you that Redmond (and WA in general) do not get much from MS. Certainly while I was living there (up to 2000) the almost total gridlock around the MS campus caused Redmond considerable problems. Also through various means MS avoided giving much money to the city.
Incidentally this also applied back then to Boeing, who managed to avoid the full property tax on their sites.
WA was in serious trouble from lack of money - the huge cash pile that MS has doesn't seem to help the local economy much.
A few years ago I was one of a bunch of religious freaks who hit Sydney's Chinatown. Fantastic location. We didn't pretend to speak Chinese--in fact, we did our thing with some simple street theatre and a couple of really cool dance routines. We had a crowd of people watching, and some of the local businesses even gave us lunch because we were getting business for them!
If anyone wanted to talk about what we had presented, that was up to them. If people wanted to watch the concert and leave, that was fine too. We did the same thing in King's Cross and Darling Harbour.
What wrecked it was the freaks who followed us. The moment they started with their fake Chinese and bible bashing, people ran. We actually gave away over a hundred Bibles that day, and people seemed pleased with what they got. These other idiots didn't get to base one.
The moral of the story is that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. We said what we had to say in a non-confrontational way, and moved on. Everyone was happy. Go out of your way to offend, and end up going backwards.
This applies to the Linux evangelists as well as anything else. I can't stand Windows or anything else by MS (apart from their mice!) But I've found the easiest way to get people thinking about changing over to the Light Side is to use Linux, maybe show off a little bit, and know what the differences are. When people get interested, I can explain the benefits, and give them a copy of Knoppix. Easy. By treating people as human beings instead of targets to be hit everyone benefits.
Cogito, ergo sig.
Microsoft's value proposition is product based, i.e. sell lots of units of software product to make profit.
:-). I won't go political.
OSS value proposition is service based. Give the software away, and provide services, consulting etc. to help companies deploy and use the software. Companies may get support from either internal and/or external resources - either way they cost $.
Note: You still need services for product based vendors.
IBM (and others) have a hybrid model, services and software product sales. IBM get much more revenue from services than they do from software product. Interestingly, IBM will heavily discount there products (80%) in competetive situtaions - guess what? they want the service revenue!
Which model wins in the long run? The market will eventually sort that out.
Assuming that a service based model wins, then product oriented companies will fail: Which is why M$ are poohing their pants on this issue.
The basic economic free market model for OSS assumes a service based model. In fact for OSS to really work, it needs a really free market. Software patents are a really big risk for OSS, praticularly where the granted patent is for the trivial (one click, scroll bars, progress bars etc.)
Now we talk free market - we get political (where are Stallman and Raymeond when u need them
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
.. then duly ignore the stupid American who is trying to tell them how to run their country and go off and do precisely whatever it was that they intended to do before the stupid American started mouthing off.
Unless the stupid American happens to be Microsoft, who is quite fluent in the international language that everyone know$. And I'm not talking about love, smarta$$. Frankly, I wonder if MS will be reduced to bribes/unrefuseable deals of the sort they used to lure Gross and Hejlsberg in order to prevent foreign governments from defecting to Linux. They already offer major sweetheart pricing/licensing terms to such governments; how long will it be before various governments (and corporations) refuse even that, forcing MS to take whatever next step they deem appropriate?
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
In most other circumstances I would agree that open source is a bad thing. But destroying the software marketplace is unfortunately the only way to free us from Microsoft's monopoly.
In other words, they're saying that in order to protect the US economy the Government needs to, pay excessively for the software it is using and tie the rest of industry to an ageing software development model and its Monopoly vendor to the detrement of competition.
Yup, that looks like a recipe for a healthy economy, if you live in Redmond. It would screw the rest of the country and damage our international competitiveness.
Look, the very fact that Microsoft is pitching this to the government means it cannot win on fair terms and it knows it. Surely is Microsoft believed it's own story on TCO lobbying government to eliminate the competition wouldn't be required.
Thought that would get your attention :)
Let me explain my reasoning:
Ok, initially, the majority of open source development was dev support based (libraries, support and development applications...and a few OSes). However now there is a plethora of open source work being done in the application domain. Writing open source applications puts companies out of business. I'm not arguing if that's right or wrong yet, just stating fact. I write an application, sell it...someone comes along and starts giving it away...I go out of business (generally).
So, where does selfish come into it. One developer, who doesn't have to worry about the other parts of software development (administration, quality control, iso certification etc) because he's giving his product away, develops a product simply for the glory of it and maybe some cash in support money. If the application get's big, maybe he makes enough money to be well off from support and on the conference circuit.
Now, if he'd had the courage to take a chance and develop his software as a going concern...and it took off...he would be building something bigger than himself. A company that supplies income to many, perhaps even 1000s one day, employees and their families. But instead, he puts a company out of business (or at the least reduces market share)...all for his glory he puts 100s of families out of work. Sounds pretty selfish to me.
p.s. I'm now a microsoft nut, and do contribute regularly to several open source projects (library projects). I just think open sourcing applications of every variety is going to end up killing our industry
The link in my sig is commercial software I offer built on open source such as JBoss, Tomcat and MySQL. It works, however, with applications running in commercial J2EE vendors such as WebSphere.
There's room for BOTH open source and commercial software.
Open Standards Portal
Microsoft is Un-American because they are anti-capitalist.
I blame Microsoft for falling for the broken window fallacy and arguing for greater government spending. Government spending reduces investment in the economy because it takes capital away from the economy in taxes and borrowing.It would help if our own government, especially the California legislature, understood this.
In some respects i agree with MS... But really this is silly.
:)
If you look at it from the same point of view as outsourcing American jobs to low wage foreign workforces... Its the same argument. Funny that a Corperation is now using it to battle the free will of the people. How convient.
But the truth is... Open Source software still requires a work force to maintain it, author it, and contribute to it.
Microsoft is really concerned with sales of their software... not the jobs of people
If we put our super secret microsoft pr decoder glasses on, the statement actually reads:
"if you dont buy our software, it's going to hurt our company"
Well DUH Microsoft. It seems as if someone is affraid of a fair competitive market.
Microsoft could switch to the redhat buisness model and still hold the same market dominance with an open source Longhorn...
But they're all too greedy for that.
Its so funny to see Microsoft complaining about how free software is impossible to compete with... IE anyone?
Nope.. Mozilla firebird for me!
That's why you combine Emacs with the excellent QT Designer. Emacs is meant for writing code, and being *good* at it.
I never said that anyone who isnt for OSS lacks beliefs. I said that someone who worked for Red Hat and then went to their staunchest competitor apparently had no emotional connection to the product he was promoting. And considering this is what he's chosen to do for his life, it's pretty sad that he switched his public stance on the issue just because he wanted to be paid more.
I work for a commercial software company and I don't see anything wrong with the commercial software company business model. I just don't think Microsoft's employees are very ethical.
my blog
Sharp, who used to work for Red Hat before joining Microsoft, said building open-source software is a "waste of money" and that a company was in effect giving away its intellectual property, preventing it from getting future benefits. "If you are compelled to give back to the community, then you don't have the opportunity to benefit from that knowledge," he stressed.
So MSFT is trying to have it both ways:
- drinking this "milk" thing is stupid, because no one wants milk,
and it's bad for you
- selling "milk" is stupid, because there's no way to make money at
it.
- therefore everytime some sells milk to some else, they're both
STUPID
- why doesn't everyone just drink Microsoft Cola (tm), which is good
for you, strengthens teeth, cures rheumatism, and helps our stock
price?
- And Also: if you don't...you're stupid.
Economics 101 teaches "The Principle of Revealed Preference": you may not understand why people are choosing A over B, but the fact that they are means that they prefer A over B. It's darn-near tautological, but it's not actually 100% trivial. Real world observation beats ivory tower speculation 10 out of 10 times.I don't know why it is that you feel it necessary to bash any particular religion, especially one that you don't seem to like.
While I can't agree with anyone sending you a hate mail, I do think you are being excessively inflammatory, trollish, and otherwise offensive to a group of people who are trying to live their life the way they feel is best. The goal of proselyting is not to _force_ an idea on anyone, but to allow others to hear your view and hopefully off them information that they did not previously have.
Many people, LDS missionaries (which you oh so politely refer to as 'morons', and obviously have no hatred for whatsoever) included, make the mistake of being overly heavy handed.
As someone who has been involved in missionary work, I find it very disturbing to read accounts like yours. If you don't want to hear the message someone has, then ignore them. If you do, then fine. But I don't see the point in doing what you are doing. It only makes you seem immature.
I do agree with part of your post, however. That there is a huge difference between Asian and American culture. Americans, for the most part, have forgotten how to be polite. We are, by and large, an excessively rude group of people. I am sad to see that the Australians seem to be following in our footsteps (the Europeans are marching lockstep in the same direction too, so don't get on any high horse there). It seems that only the Asians (and not all of them), are maintaining a culture of politeness and civility (at least on the face of it).
I do hope you have a wonderful day, however.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Every company I've ever seen that is run by a "salesman" and does more than just sales has always failed. They may make an initial splash, but a salesman's job is to appear to please everone while screwing them out of as much cash as possible. Sooner or later, everyone notices that they're getting screwed. Salesmen generally can't see past the next sale, and are extremely shortsighted.
People with real business acumen know that while their role is to attempt to please everyone and make money, they cannot screw people over regularly, because in the long term, that is not sustainable, and they'll have destroyed their company. They also know they cannot please everyone all the time, and sometimes not gouging a customer and only making a modest amount of cash, or even none, will result in more money over the long haul in repeat business.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I think it's perfectly valid to say inquisitionists weren't "real" Christians any more than Russia's Liberal Democrats are real liberal or democrats. Of course they'll try to twist things around with convoluted logic, but their ideas and actions can't stand a minute of reasoned debate.
In the end all these debates boil down to meanings of key words, but I'm confident it's possible to capture the essence of "Christianity" or "Liberalism" to the extent that you can show they contradict these people's ideas and actions. Such actions and motives don't stem from their convictions, but from the fact that they are mentally ill, power-hungry, feeling marginalized, angry, they didn't get enough attention as kids or whatever.
Ideologies are power tools. If you were to start a war, you'd have to mobilize the masses. Pick one from: Democracy, Freedom, The Nation, The Flag, King and Country, God, Allah, Protect your family etc. If you have a secret agenda you take an accepted ideology and use it for your own purposes.
Lastly, I'm not sure how fruitful or even possible it is to try to compare the "value of religious convictions". Values stem from convictions and vice versa. If you are a Christian you're quite likely to end up thinking Christianity is better in line with your own Christian values than other religions, i.e. most "valuable". :)
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Who cares about the Baha'i? They screw up broad definitions of any religion, because they tend to accept any and all spiritual leaders as prophets of their own faith. For example, if I were to define a Mormon as someone who believes that Jesus was the Son of God and that Joseph Smith was his prophet, the Baha'i would be in that definition as well. As far as religious definitions go, I consider them a mere technicality, and not one worth pursuing. Whole different situation from your "Catholic" example.
I'm not sure what the babtist faith is. Google only brought up naked women and alternate spellings of "Baptist". I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Baptists don't accept Mohammed as a prophet of God.
Until you can find a more substantial example of non-Muslims who accept Mohammed as a prophet, I'm standing by my definition.
Now, who defines which specific teachings and doctrines a person must adhere to before they are considered a member of the faith? With churches that have a well-defined heirarchial organization (Catholicism for example) the answer is clearer: A person is an adherent to that faith if they believe the things that the person at the top says they should. If the Pope says person X is in breach of the fundamental doctrines of the faith, then they are.
If the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says excommunicates a person, then they are no longer members of that faith. On the other hand, the term "Mormon" is broader, as it encompasses dozens of splinter sects. Some are polygamous fundamentalists, others (like the RLDS) are virtually indistinguishable from liberal Christians.
While every one of these splinter groups would love to keep the name "Mormon" for themselves (even the LDS Church, which has begged the media to stop using the term, to no avail), it cannot happen. It doesn't matter which is "the true church" or which Joseph Smith would be happiest with, none of them have the ability to excommunicate any of the others from "Mormonism," because the term is defined only by those principles shared by all factions commonly considered "Mormons": Belief in Joseph Smith as a prophet and the Book of Mormon as scripture.
A similar situation exists in Islam. The Sunni and the Shi'ites are both branches of the faith. Neither has any control over the other, neither has a strict organizational structure, and neither group can claim the right to define their beliefs and teachings as "Islam." There may also be other branches I'm not aware of.
The point is, in order for your definition to work, there has to be some group or organization which demands adherence to certain teachings. If I run a church called the "Holy Fellowship Church (1300 S. and Sunset, behind Jerry's Bait Shop)" I can set myself up as the guy who decides who is a member of the Holy Fellowship Church. I can even claim that no person not a member of HFC is a "true Christian." But this puts the rest of Christianity under no obligation to accept my definition. And if the rest of Christianity denounces my ministry as an abomination, that puts me under no obligation to stop calling it a Christian ministry.
Maybe the Bible and Koran would help to solve the question of what constitutes "True Christianity" or "True Islam." But both are often maddeningly vague and give at least the appearance of self-contradiction. While some readings of these books are more justifiable than others, there is still plenty of room for interpretation. Furthermore, in the case of the Bible, you can get even more traction by criticizing the process by which the books of the Bible were selected, and therefore add and remove early books as you please. You could even reject the Bible outright, and by maintaining a belief in the divinity of Jesus you would still maintain at least a small claim on the title "Christian."
It is therefore foolish to try and compile anything but a very short, very general list of attributes for such labels
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!