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Bill Gates Claims OSS Has Poor Interoperability
XeRXeS-TCN writes "In yet another example of Bill Gates seemingly 'not getting it' (or getting it just fine and spreading FUD), he has sent out an email to all MSFT's corporate customers, stating that if they are looking for interoperability, they should not look to Linux or OSS software. What he really means of course, is free alternatives trying to interoperate with Microsoft's non-documented proprietary standards."
What's next!? Cigarette companies are going to claim that they aren't harmful to your health?
I'm a big tall mofo.
who brought us Windows ME, an OS that isn't even interoperable with itself.
OSS can't work with MSFT stuff for the same reason that some websites only load in IE...microsoft doesn't like to follow the rules
Sorry I didn't get the email, my email client thought it was a SPAM !!
You want interoperability? Just dump Microsoft and use everything else.
I love how the spyware the Windows OS attracts interoperates with other spyware on the system.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
He is the world's leading expert on lack of interoperability, dammit! He knows what he's talking about!
Bill Gates would say the human body doesn't need oxygen if it meant a few more billion dollars worth of profits. Little snide remark aside, let's ponder this. Bill says to his customers "Linux isn't good with Microsoft products." Big surprise. The real fun part though will be when the "independent" studies start confirming Bill's claims. You know, the studies done from independent research firms...that just happen to be 95% bankrolled by Microsoft...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Every day, businesses face an ongoing challenge of making a wide variety of software from many different vendors work together. It's crucial to success in streamlining business processes, getting closer to customers and partners, or making mergers and acquisitions successful.
This email outlines some of the work Microsoft is doing to make its products interoperate well in a diverse IT environment; it is one in an occasional series of emails from Microsoft executives about technology and public-policy issues important to computer users, our industry, and anyone who cares about the future of high technology. If you would like to receive these emails in the future, please go to *link removed* to subscribe. We will not send you future executive emails unless you choose to subscribe.
Whether you are connecting with partners' systems, accessing data from a mainframe, connecting applications written in different programming languages or trying to log on across multiple systems, bringing heterogeneous technologies together while reducing costs is today a challenge that touches every part of the organization.
Over the years, our industry has tried many approaches to come to grips with the heterogeneity of software. But the solution that has proven consistently effective - and the one that yields the greatest success for developers today - is a strong commitment to interoperability. That means letting different kinds of applications and systems do what they do best, while agreeing on a common "contract" for how disparate systems can communicate to exchange data with one another.
Interoperability is more pragmatic than other approaches, such as attempting to make all systems compatible at the code level, focusing solely on adding new layers of middleware that try to make all systems look and act the same, or seeking to make different systems interchangeable. With a common understanding of basic protocols, different software can interact smoothly with little or no specific knowledge of each other. The Internet is perhaps the most obvious example of this kind of interoperability, where any piece of software can connect and exchange data as long as it adheres to the key protocols.
Simply put, interoperability is a proven approach for dealing with the diversity and heterogeneity of the marketplace. Today I want to focus on two major thrusts of Microsoft's product interoperability strategy: First, we continue to support customers' needs for software that works well with what they have today. Second, we are working with the industry to define a new generation of software and Web services based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which enables software to efficiently share information and opens the door to a greater degree of "interoperability by design" across many different kinds of software. Our goal is to harness all the power inherent in modern (and not so modern) business software, and enable them to work together so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We want to further eliminate friction among heterogeneous architectures and applications without compromising their distinctive underlying capabilities.
This may seem like an obvious approach, but the desire for interoperability is sometimes mixed up with other issues. For example, interoperability is sometimes viewed merely as adherence to a published specification of some kind, either from one or more vendors or a standards organization. But simply publishing a specification may not be enough, because it overlooks much of the hard work it takes to successfully develop interoperable products - namely, ensuring that the "contract" defined by a specification is successfully implemented in software and tested in a production environment.
Sometimes interoperability is also confused with open source software. Interoperability is about how different software systems work together. Open source is a methodology for licensing and/or developing software - that may or may not be interoperable. Ad
I'll accept that the day Office doesn't have problems opening .doc files from different versions.
PS: It's all marketing, that's what Microsoft's about. Can we please move to something else?
Linux and OSS are compatible with less than 1% of the viruses, worms, and trojans that have been created by third party Windows developers! If you're running Linux (or even Firefox on Windows) you're denied the rich environment of advertising available to users of MSFT products!
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
Gates is telling the truth here. If the whole world standardized on one set of standard software, it would (obviously) make interoperability a lot easier. That's common sense. And we can understand why this vision would appeal to him, especially if the world decided to standardize on his software.
However, there is far more to choosing software than just that. OK, so we work harder to make interoperability work between software. It's worth it so people can have choice.
So does this mean Microsoft are going to fully adopt Open standards? Surely they aren't going to keep everything totally closed and proprietary if they are aiming for a good level of interoperability? That would be obviously hypocritical!
Yeah, if you want Windows interoperability, you should just go with Windows. Just make sure you have the exact same versions of everything you want to have interoperate.
A while ago I set up a home network. Linux gateway/fileserver running Samba, other boxes on the network running Linux, Win98, WinME, WinXP Pro & Home. Everything could see & use the Samba shares on the Linux fileserver. All the WinXP Pros could see & use shares on the other WinXP Pros. Trying to access shares between WinXP Pro & WinME - no can do.
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Then how come M$ not keen on using open standards?
Take Outlook for instance.
Works great with M$Exchange, but how about the support for SyncML, iCal, vCard and so on?...
-Nybo
I find that every single product I could possibly use or buy has wonderful interoperability, except those Microsoft makes. I even find every operating system I could possibly buy-- from Apple, from Sun, from Redhat-- natively runs the same (POSIX) programs... except the ones Microsoft makes.
Bill Gates is right, of course, that switching away from all-Microsoft products makes interoperability with Microsoft products harder. After all, he specifically engineered things that way. It's too bad the antitrust "settlement" a couple years ago was an absolute sham; if something like that settlement's "document your protocols and formats" clause had actually been enforced, Gates wouldn't be able to engineer them that way anymore, and interoperability would no longer be a problem anywhere.
Anyway, this is a common tactic in advertising. Attack your competitor for flaws you have but they don't; that way you tie up your competitor's ability to attack you on that grounds because they're too busy defending themselves, and you lessen the impact when people point out your own flaws since there's a perception your competitor has those flaws as well. Like, say you're a political candidate with a disreputable and possibly illegal military history? Get your supporters to pay people to claim your opponent has a disreputable and possibly illegal military history. Works like a charm.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
That man is right or at least not totally wrong. Just because you have the source it doesn't automatically make your software work together. Simple examples:
...
.png or plain-text and somehow get the job done, but smooth interoperability is something else.
- open a OpenOffice document in AbiWord
- copy&paste between different applications
- embbed an Gnumeric chart into some OpenOffice document
- try to edit a LaTeX document with Abiword or OpenOffice
- try to open a Gimp xcf in anything beside Gimp
- try to copy&paste some webpage in a Office application and get something more then plain-text
-
None of this works or only in a much less smooth way then it does under Windows or MacOSX with similar software. Free Software has improved a lot in these regions in the last years, but there is still lots and lots of software floating around that doesn't operate much with other software at all. Sure, you can always export to
So when someone designs a virus for outlook express it can even work when opened at the hotmail website with internet explorer.
Any mention of Linux? Nah, some noserubbing on the Great Forking Problem.
*Yeah*, let's all use microsoft office because that's the only way to achieve interoperability between different parties!
.NET. i can assure you that interoperability is NOT the reason!
unless i totally misunderstand that word, aren't open standards BETTER in terms of interoperability than closed, proprietary ones??
i say we publish official and open standards, protocols and file formats for all major interactions and make it everybodies choice whether they like to have an open client for the standardized communications or if they'd rather take proprietary tools!
obviously, not every program can be delivered with full source, but if a vendor wants to reach various platforms, there is either a common standard in place (like POSIX for example) or some porting is in order *tough luck*.
why did mr. gates fight java as language and instead went with
why would a quasi-monopolistic company preach interoperability when this can only weaken its own position???
jethr0
According to Bills dictionary:
The ability to read, and only read, old data formats into new versions of software from the same vender. The aim of interoperability is to simplify upgrade from one version of software to the next.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
This letter amounts to a veiled threat: Use our software or someone might get hurt. Gates and company plan to make it as hard as possible to prevent interoperability with OSS. If you use OSS they will make as life as difficult as possible for you. They've engaged in this sort of behavior before and are doing it again.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do we have a case of complying with the letter of the law but crapping on the spirit of the law?
ALSA is the current driver infrastructure in the Linux kernel. OSS was the previous driver structure. ALSA has an OSS emulation layer.
ESD (The enlightenment sound daemon) is a software mixer that was also used in Gnome but isn't anymore. ARTS is the basically the KDE version of ESD but it also being deprecated in favor of ALSA's built in abilities like dmix.
I don't see your point.
Time makes more converts than reason
I think they are failing at that.
IIRC the dollar lost 26% of it's value in 2004 (compared to Euro and Yen), so the 6% increase in revenue (10-12 2004/2005 in dollars) don't look so great anymore.
Sure, they have cut 1.5 billion of R&D costs, which is impressive, but only revenue can keep a company alive.
Currently Microsoft's anti-Linux strategy seems to be:
This won't work.
It will have these effects, all bad for Microsoft:
It seems Microsoft is getting pretty desperate.
I mean look at all the problems people have using Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
LAMP will never catch on. Nope. Never.
Good thing my website doesn't use any of tho... oh, wait.
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For those of you new to Slashdot, here it is again to put this story in perspective:
First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you -- OSS is here right now
Then you win.
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Interoperability may not exist between certain OSS products; but, because they're Open Source, they can be made to interoperate without encumbrance - and you can be sure that this won't change.
Can the same be said for Microsoft software? Can developers 'freely' interoperate with all Microsoft software? Does Microsoft give assurance that developers can continue to freely interoperate with its products in the future?
Additionally, the open source development approach encourages the creation of many permutations of the same type of software application
In layman's terms, this means that Open Source encourages that evil thing called 'competition'.
Has Bill Gates ever said anything positive about Open Source Software?
I wonder why not?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
I hate to defend this guy, but there's other things you should be attacking him over. From a user point of view. Different Open Source distros are really like different Operating Systems.
How do you install software in Red Hat? Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
How do you change what IP address will be used for eth0, in Red Hat or Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
In both cases the 6 years different versions of Windows are more similar than the latest versions of both.
Funny you should mention that,
:)
just a day or two ago, a secretary in the office couldn't open up a power-point file sent to her by the boss. They were both created on different versions of Microsoft Office, but it woud crash every time she opened it.
I had her send it to me, opened it up in OpenOffice and re-saved it in a generic powerpoint format. I sent it back to her and it now works fine!
So yes, with a little effort - different versions of Microsoft Office can interpolate
et's put 8 different versions of OpenOffice Writer on millions of machines (10% of which have defective hardware, viruses, etc), and see how well works.
... something Microsoft can't do, with its own products, on its own platforms.
I know you're implicitly shilling Microsoft's shoddy products by implying other folks work is equally bad, but I hate to break the news to you: it isn't.
To take your example, I've what you're suggesting (on hundreds of machines, not millions, but the point remains) and guess what? They all read, write, and exchange one another's openoffice files perfectly...even the crappy windows boxes which do, from time to time, get hosed by the trojan, virus, spyware, or worm du jour.
Version deployed among colleagues, freinds, and relatives include:
OpenOffice 1.0 (Linux)
OpenOffice 1.1.1 (OS X)
OpenOffice 1.1.2 (Linux, Windows, OS X)
OpenOffice 1.1.3 (Linux, Windows)
OpenOffice 1.1.4 (Linux)
OpenOffice-Ximian 1.1.53 (Linux)
OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.5 (Linux)
OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.6 (Linux)
OpenOffice-Ximian 1.3.8 (Linux)
NeoOffice/J 0.8.4 (OS X)
NeoOffice/J 1.1 Alpha 2 (OS X)
NeoOffice/J 1.1 Beta (OS X)
Platforms include assorted versions of Windows, numerous distributions of GNU/Linux ranging from Debian, Red Hat, and Suse to Source Mage and Gentoo. Mac OS X Versions include 10.2.x on iMacs and 10.3.x on assorted systems, including my powerbook 17".
It all works and interoperates flawlessly
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