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Microsoft's 12-Step Program
NevarMore writes to tell us eWeek is reporting that Microsoft, after almost 30 years of Windows, now has 12 philosophical tenets outlining Windows development. From the article: "Smith said the principles largely come from things Microsoft picked up in the consent decree the software giant signed in settling its landmark antitrust battle with the federal government, but that more recent developments led to the crafting of some of the other principles. The 12 principles are based on three main areas: choice for computer manufacturers and customers, opportunities for developers, and interoperability for users, Smith said."
So does that make 36 tenets in total?0 7/20/2047250 7 218&tid=109
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/19/21
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I believe it is Microsoft that is nearing 30 years
Their 30th anniversary was last year. Microsoft was founded in April 1975.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Smith said the principles largely come from things Microsoft picked up in the consent decree the software giant signed in settling its landmark antitrust battle with the federal government, but that more recent developments led to the crafting of some of the other principles.
Am I the only person who saw this?
Translation: We had to make some changes to keep from getting hit by more massive lawsuits, and then thanks to the EU ruling we had to make yet more changes. But we're going to act like it was voluntary because it looks better.
Where in there is "we've figured out some things that customers want and we're going to provide them"? No, this is all "let's keep from being sued again".
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
And we can get past all that antitrust litigation.
Oh, we forgot to mention the entire open source movement and anything they happen to create. Them and Google. Oh, and Apple. Um... how about if we just limit this to companies we can buy or crush?
Again with the antitrust thing. Of course there's nothing saying you won't buy or destroy the other company, retaliation is completely different.
#$%$^ EU.
Wait, didn't we just say no retaliation? Oh, you meant retaliation against them? Ok, them too.
We had this cool system all ready to go, but the marketing dept said they couldn't find a good way to sell it without pissing off the anti-trust folks.
Ok, so just this one time, we are going to do what we were order to do by the courts. But don't push your luck.
We think there's a lot of money to be made here.
Except to those damn open source folks, we'll make sure the license is way to restrictive for them.
We always have. Just ignore the fact that we then extend them to our own liking. And that process usually means we have to break a few parts of the standard.
So, yeah, nothing to see here folks. Move along.
A good recent example of this is the Multimedia Transfer Protocol (aka MTP) which is currently being pushed towards all the media player makers. Granted, there aren't really any such protocols that are really open. So everyone (well, Apple and MS currently, others don't seem to use any rich protocol, just mass storage fils transfers) is apparently building his own and pushing it to the market.
The MTP is an extended version of the PTP (the Picture Transfer Protocol) which wasn't much used since there wasn't many advantages compared to basic mass storage tranfer (which had the added bonus of working everywhere). With the more complex media players there is arguably a need for a more elaborate protocol. Whether the MTP fits the bill and whether it's open enough to be legaly used outside of the MS platforms remains to be seen (note that the libMTP project lets you fairly easily use MTP devices on pretty much anything)
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Take Google. It's the "not evil" company. Now, I might be mistaken, but doesn't Google have a similar position in areas like web search and to some extent web mail that MS has in the areas of OS and office? But where's the outcry?
You STILL don't get it? The outcry was not about MS having a monopoly, but about using this monoploy to illegally gain advantages in other markets.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
You have a good point. We've seen exactly this sort of attempt with the XML aspects of WinFS, with their modifications of Kerberos, and in their attempt to extend SPF with their SenderID system.
Fortunately, WinFS has finally been cancelled, Kerberos has been extended by MIT's authors to work around Microsoft's mistaken "extension", and fortunately or unfortunately SPF has basically been rejected due to the licensing problems Microsoft's "exteionsion" created.
"but doesn't Google have a similar position in areas like web search and to some extent web mail that MS has in the areas of OS and office?"
... at least not to anybody's knowledge.
No. I think Google has, at most, 50% market share. And even if they had 90%, there are healthy competetors out there like Yahoo and (dare I say it) MSN. Furthermore, Google took no illegal actions to get where they are