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Microsoft's Mundie to Continue OSS Outreach
Techie writes "In an interview with eWeek Craig Mundie, Microsoft's new co-head-honcho and chief research and strategy officer, says he plans to continue to push the Redmond software titan forward with its goal of greater interoperability with software licensed under the GPL." From the article: "Even in Bill's own public remarks, he pointed out that he thought his iconic status and the way that was reported tended to overemphasize his role in the company's innovation and execution. This is really a transition that has been in the works for a couple of years, with a couple to go before, and we will see the emergence of a lot of great talent that has today been portrayed as all Bill. This is a company with, in many cases, the best people in the world. "
I think they are realising that OSS isn't going away, each year it continues to get stronger and because of its structure they cannot aggressivly compete against it in a traditional sense.
We are already seeing huge benefits of OSS and what it can achieve and I think Microsoft have realised if they are going to have any future in it they need to work with it to some extent.
I am neither a programmer nor a lawyer, so there may be some nuances I'm missing, but here's how I see it.
- FLOSS reveals everything there is to know about how it operates and interoperates.
- Microsoft reveals as little as possible about how it operates and interoperates.
- Microsoft has a high-profile, highly-paid person trying to figure out how to make the two work together. So far, this appears to be quite a challenge for them.
Unless I've missed something crucial, Microsoft will never fix this problem to everyone's solution. The problem isn't in their software. The problem is in their business model. But they can never admit that, so they'll go on trying to figure out which size wrench to use to hammer the light bulb into the socket.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
IBM was the Microsoft of it's time and now it's a darling of geeks everywhere. All companies eventually have to learn to transition from being an entity that makes standards to merely contributing to them. Microsoft will learn this lesson albeit the hard way but they will learn.
Then in the future we can adjust our ire towards future threats like Apple for closing Darwin off to development and Google who is probably amassing more power than any one company should.
Looks it's a computer journal. The job of a computer journal is not to ask hard hitting questions. It's to suck up to your advertisers and to make sure you get their press releases published as articles and to generally act as their publicity agents.
If Ms wants to play nice all they have to do is the publish some specs. NTFS, SMB, Active Directory, Office file formats etc. I mean full disclosure. They could also remove the DRM from their file formats which prevents open office from even attempting to open their files.
Ask yourself this question. Is a company which makes sure that the sample files it ships with office can only be opened up with MS office serious about playing nice? I don't think so. NOTE TO SHILLS: The previous statement has nothing to with the capability, the files are locked and refuse to be opened by open office.
Anyway this is Mundie we are talking about. If he doesn't lie a dozen times by lunch he feels quesy.
evil is as evil does
I tell you what. If MS puts their patents on the table and removes their support of SCO and copyright liability, then I'll consider talking. Until then, forget it, actions speak louder than words.
It is not supprising you have heard the line elsewhere though. George Lucas was never one for highly momentous lines, witness the usually talented Natilie Portman looking like a moron when she says pearls like "hold me like you did on naboo" and "you're breaking my heart Aniken". Hell, the only memorable lines in the 6 movies were Han Solo's which were probably snuck on the script when Lucas was visiting the shrine to himself for his daily devotion.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
With some groups, I'm willing to extend trust. MS, however, has a track record. They will need to PROVE that they are trustworthy before I will trust them. Even then it will be an iffy kind of thing for a decade or so.
But proof comes first.
1) Stop campaigning for closed standards. This is the first step towards earning trust.
2) Stop attempting to corrupt existing standards. This can be done simultaneous with 1.
3) Stop spreading FUD. If you continue to act like an enemy, there's no way I'll be willing to trust you.
Those steps are negative, but essential. Until those conditions are met there is no possible positive action that I would trust.
4) Do something positive. There are lots of options here, but if a government forces you to it, then it doesn't count as a positive action from you. Merely neutral (at best).
Possible examples of positive actions are:
1) Pushing an open standard, and adopting it in your own programs.
2) Opening the file format specifications beyond what the EU is demanding. (Alternatively, creating a new Open file format specification and adopting it...but this is 1 again.)
3) Releasing a version of MSWind that doesn't automatically remove the ability of other OSs on the same drive to boot. (Yeah, Linux isn't so good about this either. SuSE seems to do this, but most distros presume that they are the grand PooBah *AND* the Lord High Executioner wrapped into one bundle.)
4) Other. (I said there were lots of choices. There's really too many to enumerate.)
But proof comes before belief.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is a company with, in many cases, the best people in the world.
I don't know which is more disturbing. I mean, I use windows, I form an impression about the quality of its makers, and I think how scary it is, that good management can bring such a bunch of monkeys to world domination. Then I read something like this, and I think how scary would be if he was right, that bad management really can cause the best people in the world to produce something like windows.
He can't be right, can he?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth