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Confidential Microsoft Emails Posted Online
dos4who writes "From the class action 'Comes et al. v. Microsoft' suit, some very enlightening internal Microsoft emails are now made public. Emails to and from Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, etc all make for some mind blowing reading. One of my favorites is from Jim Allchin to Bill Gates, entitled 'losing our way,' in which Allchin states 'I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.'"
http://www.iowaconsumercase.org/011107/PX_2768.pdf
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language."
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Is this not the same thing Groklaw covered quite sometime back? There are several updates in the link, including a clarification from Allchin on that 'I'd buy a Mac' quote.
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
The Linux Strategy???
Since we now know that Microsoft is willing (nay, obsessed) to go "to the mat", as it were, the Linux strategy should be to exploit this tendancy as often as possible. If it happens often enough, either it will become an un-tenable situation for Microsoft, wherein after Microsoft will no longer be able to make any kind of TCO statements regarding Linux vs. Microsoft; and/or else they will go broke in all these no-profit deals (okay, admittedly, it will take them awhile to go broke... but it could happen!
If nothing else, these documents reveal _very_ publically (what many of us already knew) that Microsoft is scared SHITLESS of Linux.
Why should the market leader (a monopolistic, strong-arming, dirty-tricks, no-holds-barred leader at that!) be scared of a FREE operating system and open-source applications-- unless they can see that their dominant position is deeply threatened?
Maybe Balmer will throw some more chairs at somebody. Better be prepared to duck fast.
I wonder what business Microsoft will get into after computers, software and IT?
Given that the youth of America have been brought up on MS products, they're going to have a stronger attachement to them than those of us who were brought up on Commodores, Amigas, and Apples. MS *clearly* knows this. Think about that.
This is because the promise of Linux has been wasted by the lack of production of true killer applications, allowing both Microsoft and Apple to further embed their OS's among their faithful.
New systems shipping with Vista are sticking a finger in the Penguin's eye, because when it comes down to it, its all about the apps.
We are engaged in a FUD campaign to let the press know about some of the bugs.
We'll provide info a few bugs at a time to stretch it out
the proof is in the pudding
comment directly in my journal
Nothing could be more clear than the intention of the rant, so I'll type it here for those too lazy to click the link. It deserves the space.
-Jim Allchin, January 07 2004
It's obvious they did not listen to him and that's good for everyone. Vista is 10 GB in size and wastes all sorts of processing power for it's DRM insanity, after they dropped their silly new file system and many other vaporware improvements. While it will be difficult if not impossible to make Vista work under Linux or Mac, it's not going to matter because Vista is going to kill the platform. The failure of Vista, more than the failure of Zune and Xbox shows that M$ is going to have to compete on something other than, "It's M$ and you are going to need them tomorrow no matter how crappy their stuff is."
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Netscape was better up until around Netscape 4, when it turned into a clunky, steaming pile, and IE actually became the better, smoother, more enjoyable browser for a while. Today, Firefox is better.
After Corel bought Quattro Pro and WordPerfect, they turned into steaming piles. I know... I worked there. :-) I think around WordPerfect 9, there was a latency in your typing that made it feel like a telnet session. And it crashed a lot. Excel and Word crash too, but generally, they've always been consistently solid, enjoyable products that get the job done.
when their business revolves around making me-too parodies of competitors innovative products.
... they want efficiency and familiarity because computers are no longer expensive gadgets but necessary tools. In a sense, the user base has become more conservative with time and less tolerant of gratuitous changes. That's hurting Microsoft, because those selfsame users aren't really seeing a clear need for the latest-greatest any more.
... very useful and worth the money. Operating systems are no different in that respect: if you want me to invest in something new, make damn sure it's worth my effort, otherwise I'll just be seriously torqued off. Apple has traditionally had a much better (not perfect, but better) grasp of this aspect of the user mentality than Microsoft.
... now you can honestly say you have a bad company. Of course, if you're talking about profit-margin and growth rate, hell, Microsoft is an awesome corporation.
So what? Competition often involves duplicating or emulating a competitor's efforts, particularly when there aren't many ways to solve a particular problem. The entire patent and copyright systems in the U.S. were once geared toward encouraging the creation of new ideas and products, with the intent that they would eventually become the property of everyone. Consumers benefit when good product ideas are promulgated throughout an entire industry. Frankly, I'd like to see Microsoft steal more of the good stuff from other operating systems rather than simply ladling in more DRM and SFX.
The fact that Microsoft isn't innovative is largely irrelevant when deciding if they are a good company or not, if you define innovative as meaning the development of novel products in-house. Many companies acquire technology originally developed outside the confines of their own organization. Is Google a bad company because they bought YouTube? Is Apple a bad company simply because they used some ideas originally developed by PARC? Windows NT (and all derivative OSes) benefited from technology originally developed by DEC and taken to Microsoft by Dave Cutler and his people. This idea that a company is somehow defective because it doesn't do everything on its own is a bit off-base. The fact that Microsoft point-blank steals a lot of technology, denies that fact, and the refuses to pay the originators is more to the point, however.
People spend a lot of time complaining about the unoriginality of Microsoft's products. Who cares? Graphical operating system technology is becoming fairly mature and commoditized at this point, as a matter of fact most users don't particularly want novelty anymore
For example, I don't want my socket set working differently every few months, I want the damn things to do their jobs in a consistent manner. Yet, once I did buy a new set because the handle had some kind of gearing that gave a mechanical advantage
In the end, this has less to do with the originality of the ideas that Microsoft turns into products as it does with the quality of those implementations. By taking the comparatively poor quality of the products that Microsoft has sold over the years in concert with the equally-poor ethical (indeed, outright criminal) standards upon which that company operates
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Let's not forget that both people discussing "screw Sun" used to work for them. There is probably a whole lot of baggage we'll never know that goes along with two guys switching companies and paradigms.
As an EDSer, I've seen plenty of my former colleagues take a "screw EDS" view in their new companies... they were dissatisfied with aspects of business and how they were managed (sometimes justifiably, sometimes not so much); until they became just as disafected by their new employers, they were considerably hostile in words and action, at times, to their old employer.
Given that they were involved with J++, discussing a cross-platform mandate (big with Slashdotters, but not even a blip on the radar screen with 99% of Microsoft's customer base), and the context of the discussion involved co-opting lessons learned and design imperitives (not really the product itself), this discussion was not exactly the smoking gun you guys would like it to be.
This reminds me of the Enron e-mail data that was released, with similarly "shocking" emails. Actually, in the Enron case, they really were illuminating because a lot of e-mails addressed to Ken Lay towards the end of the company's life included the words "you bastard". Also, you didn't have to look very hard to find rampant corporate nepotism (Ken Lay's daughter Elizabeth pimping her friends). The original dataset is at CMU, and a web-browsable version is at enronemail.com, although you have to register for the latter one. The first link lets you download the zipped contents of a bunch of executive's email boxes (sent items, deleted items, inbox, etc.)...it's really nuts.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
http://www.google.com/search?q=+site%3Amicrosoft.c om+%22microsoft+confidential%22&btnG=Search
I always enjoy seeing proprietary markings on a company's documents. It makes finding them with a search engine much easier. Other fun search terms:
site:microsoft.com "Microsoft Internal Use Only"
site:microsoft.com "Internal Use Only"
site:microsoft.com NDA
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Your blanket statement is no more valid than mine, with one exception, I've worked in the industry with everything from big movers to mass-produced consumer goods. Please, take it from me, cross-platform is not that important to a consumer.
There is a point of diminishing returns, where MOST consumers simply don't want an all-in-one device, for example, or simply don't care to have a spreadsheet work in Linux and Windows. People just want to turn on a computer and USE it. They want to turn on a DVR and USE it. They want to dial a number and USE it. Inter-operability, multi-functionality, cross-platform code... all results in more complexity, and usually a "Jack of all trades, master of none" device. This is also known as the "lowest common denominator".
Exactly. They just want to be able to buy a DVR and hook it up to their existing television and use it, without worrying about ensuring they're the same brand or dealing with masses of different, subtly incompatible, non-standard products. What's more, most of the time they can. (It's odd how incompatibilty, lack of standardization, and the resulting inconveniences, monocultures and near-monopolies are so widespread in software, when people wouldn't stand for it elsewhere.)