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Why Doesn't Microsoft Have A Cult Religion?
rs232 writes "'Apple has one. So does the Java community, Oracle, IBM, and Google. Lord knows anyone who uses Linux or free and open source software is dedicated to spreading the gospel of St. Linus Torvalds and St. Richard Stallman. But does anyone really worship the Gods of Redmond?' While many Microsoft employees are pumped to work there, article author Michael Singer explores why even enthusiastic Microsoft-watchers acknowledge that customers and product developers are unenthusiastic about the software giant. He theorizes that it comes down to passion: Microsoft lost that a long time ago, he says, and so passionate people gravitate to other projects and products."
Microsoft is like America. The biggest, the baddest, and the best. And everyone hates them for it.
Part of the definition of "cult" is (from Wikipedia): ..., term designating a cohesive group of people..., devoted to
beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture or society
considers to be outside the mainstream . In that
context it would seem self-fulfilling Microsoft not have a
cult... like it or not (I don't), Microsoft is mainstream.
As for the question,
I don't recall anyone ever worshipping the GoR. Heck I even worked there, and it was about being smart, it was about being competitive, but I don't ever remember it about being about customers. Microsoft's idea about good products has typically been:These attributes are hostile for creating cult followings, there is hardly anything there -- just a juggernaut of an industry bully.
I assume the author has never had any experience with a small ISP attempting to sell microsoft small business server. In that market you will find the people that worship the juggernaut.
Even Satan has devoted followers. Perhaps Satan is lesser Evil :')
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
The answer is obvious: Microsoft isn't the underdog and Microsoft doesn't require a positive choice.
Chances are you're running OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc. because you made a decision to do so.
...but you dont see them on slashdot because whenever one of them mentions Microsoft in a good light on here or goes against the group think, they get modded to oblivion and/or called a paid corporate shill (because its against the laws of physics to have a good opinion of Microsoft).
Because they suck?
I considered replying with a snide "Gee, I wonder..." comment.
But in a way, MS does have a cult-like following. Not the company itself, but some of the products. Consider:
Its not the kind of company worship that Apple or Google have, but from where I sit it is a cult-like following.
Bill Gates killed a potential hobbyist movement pro-Microsoft on its very beginning, just look at his open letter to hobbyists. Apple and Linux, on other hand, since their foundation had a big appeal with the amateur/hobbyist audience. The first place Woz showed his first machine was a Homebrew Computer Club, and Linus posted his newborn kernel in a newsgroup, for public evaluation.
That's how you get cult followers, appeal to the hobbyists, coders, enthusiasts, people that understand what is going on behind the scene.
You cant need a "cult" when you are the dominant entity by far. There is no function for that sort of entity to the current "winners".
It's also true in religion. The only reason the major religions arent called cults is they have established themselves at high enough #'s. Still same religion, ideology, etc. The only difference? #'s.
So, the massively dominant group of people that run windows/MS products sort of "are" the cult... but have already reached critical mass.
In some other reality where apple became dominant... then you could see a MS cult. But not happening... most of apples success if playing to the idea they are somehow an underdog little comapny that is cool.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Uhhh ... you've never been to a PDC (Professional Developers Conference)???
... it's too negative. If you want to find the faithful throngs, go right to the developers.
You've never heard a gillion programmers chanting "cool"?
"Cult" isn't quite the right word
Ever notice how those that have religion are very weak about their belief in it? It's as if a word spoken against it so threatens them that they must defend it vocally and almost violently. In fact, some get very violent about it. Their religion apparently cannot stand up on its own, it always needs the believers to prop it up.
Religionists want their religion to change their world, and they want to change the world to force it to accept their religion.
Many religions have missionaries. Most of them, the missionaries are as obnoxious, if not more so, than the religion itself. And, in many cases, the religion seems to survive in spite of their missionaries.
Now, that was about the OS wars. But, the same could be said about the theological religions as well.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
> In fact, I used to feel the same way about Linux until nothing ever came of the "year of Linux on the desktop" claims every year.
Linux got on my desktop a couple of years back.
Dell (the company that always only ever sell Windows to get better contracts with Microsoft) are now selling Linux to home users.
Last Thursday Uruguay started distributing Linux computers to kids.
So when will your Linux on the desktop be?
I'll probably be modded down for this...
At the risk of sounding like a troll, it comes down to: fanboy cults develop around the underdog, not around the big 800 pound gorilla who is winning anyway. Or rather, fanboys/zealots/cultists seem to have this need to, pretty much, save the world. Or at least they need something to defend, some cause to champion against all odds, some us-vs-them theme where "them" can be perceived as a credible threat. They have to be the (messiah of the) minority, even in a perverse minority-inside-a-minority way, or at least the unsung defenders against the barbarian hordes. They have to feel persecuted, looked down upon, but know in their heart that they're the Luke Skywalker against the might of the Empire, or one of the outnumbered hoplites at Thermopilae against the Persian hordes.
This isn't just about tech fanboys, but a more general phenomenon. You don't get many zealots when you're the one religion, you get them when it's 12 apostles vs the whole world. When it's the mainstream religion _and_ under no credible threat, you just get sheep and wolves in sheep skin. To get people all worked up there has to be a threat, a battle against all odds, where they're the few saving the world from a(n imaginary) threat it doesn't even acknowledge.
You can see that in Christianity too. Most of the spark it retained past a point was not because it was already the winner, but because it fragmented and ended up its own enemy. Arians vs Catholics vs Nestorians, Orthodox vs Catholic, Catholic vs Cathar, Catholic vs Protestant, and protestant factions against each other. That's what got people rallying to be the bleating champions of it: the credible us-vs-them setup, where "them" might just win if someone doesn't gather a (self-)righteous mob against it. When it didn't have such a challenger, it just ended up a court intrigues game where noone really gave a damn about the church. And occasionally it had to invent its own challenge, e.g., the Crusades.
It may sound like rehashing your first paragraph, but it's not. The definition of cult you give, is pretty much cult as opposed to religion. You're a cult if you're non-mainstream, you're a religion if it's mainstream. That's really all that that definition says.
But look at it this way: all mainstream religions got there by first being a cult. You don't get a religion directly formed around the mainstream thing in the first place. If something is already the undisputed 800 pound gorilla without a credible challenger, it already lost the chance of getting its own army of zealots. That's what I'm saying.
And Microsoft simply happens to be at that point, really. Apple is an underdog, it gets zealots. AMD used to be a major underdog, and it had some very rabid zealots, but then it became mainstream and now noone cares. Intel was always the big dog in CPUs, and it pretty much never really had zealots, it at most had some mild fans. IBM didn't use to have zealots either as long as it was _the_ big gorilla. Microsot is _the_ big gorilla and it has no zealots. Whop-de-do, big surprise there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
have a historical reputation for fleeing battles once things start getting ugly. I believe this was cited as a significant factor in early American wars where oponents employed German mercenaries, but it has been a while since I studied all that.
As a developer who primarily targets MS platforms I can tell you that most of my peers are in it for the money just like the mercenaries. More tellingly, I know many MS developers who get as far away from tech as possible during their weekends/time off. Doesn't sound like a recipe for inspiration or the creation of products that inspire cultish fandom.
As for me? I am into MS because I am a niche programmer, and most all of my customers are locked in with proprietary niche market apps. They couldn't just switch accounting systems and migrate to Linux... they would have to identify and migrate to numerous small specialty apps to match their current level of functionality.
BTW, I was really pissed about the mudslinging directed toward the Mono project on a recent thread. There are plenty of us out here who want to see Linux make inroads in small markets where MS has ruled for years, and Mono is the best hope we have.
Regards.
It would appear that an MCSE is worth rather more - sometimes much more - than $10/HR:
Median Salary by Job - MSCE
Median Hourly Rate by Job - MCSE [Both updated May 3, 2007]
Speaking as a partner in a paperless office solutions company, I can understand why employers are less willing to fork over $20+/hr to MCSEs. I'm trying not to paint everyone with the same brush here, but it's been my personal experience that the majority of MCSEs I've dealt with are skilled MICROSOFT people, not necessarily skilled COMPUTER people. I know some skilled computer people who can make my head spin when they get talking about tech-related things, and I'm an experienced programmer/DB/IT guy. They easily apply what they already know to new things and adapt when needed.
MCSEs I've encountered generally seem to have a limited understanding of underlying technology and principles. They have a vague idea of what the problem is, and know how to apply Microsoft solutions to solve(?) it. Throw another piece of software at them that solves the same problem and works very similarly to Microsoft's solution, and they get that "deer in the headlights" look.
Granted, you'd probably run into the same thing with any tech who has more vendor-specific training than general domain knowledge, but it's much more apparent with MCSEs because you encounter them much more often (depending on your line of work). From an employer's standpoint, I can empathize with those who don't want to pay an MCSE $20+/hr.
O rly?
What about the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the genocide of the indigenous people of several continents?
I take it history was not your best subject.
Caveat Utilitor
Richard Stallman is a man deeply committed to his principles, who has produced a large ecosystem of extremely useful software, and Linus produced a massively important component of that ecosystem. I respect them both for their technical skills, and also for their passion for their causes, but there is much that both (but especially Richard Stallman) have said which I disagree with.
I know people who are fanatically positive and negative about Linux, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, America, the EU, you name it. I have good arguments with them all. Why? The world isn't black and white (well, mine is a bit as I'm a Newcastle United fan). Deal with it.
...mostly corporate developers who are very happy that there are so many easy-to-use (albeit unstable) tools to develop apps on. They don't pay the costs directly, so they think it's great. I've always been happy to develop on the MS platform, as long as someone else absorbed the financial burden.
Quite frankly, MS is very developer friendly, if you are willing to pay for the privilege.
Thanks,
Mike
It's gotta be an obscure, little known cult then...
Lord knows anyone who uses Linux or free and open source software is dedicated to spreading the gospel
This is such bull. For every Linux fanboy there are 10 regular joes using Linux to just get stuff done so they can go home and play with their kids. The zelots just draw more attention to themselves.
In fact, it is my experience that the guys spreading Linux / OSS religion know LESS than the guy just getting stuff done. They don't work in large environments where Linux is really put to work. They know nothing of Kerberos or pxe booting or anything like that. They take one look at KDE and declare Windoze obsolete but have never worked in an environment where you need to manage 20,000 desktops.
Because PenIsland and PenisLand are two very different ideas that should not be confused.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
One problem is that Microsoft's best leaders (the ones getting the work done) tend to stay out of the limelight and not generate any kind of cult following. And the visible ones have failed to inspire, except for maybe Bach.
For example Gates bailed (probably got tired of being killed in the media for being evil), Ballmer is used up and was always more of a sales guy (i.e. no cred), Kevin Turner seems to be a hick shopkeeper who is little loved in MSFT (hiring him is starting to look like Balmer's biggest mistake), and Ray Ozzie, who MS put a lot of hope into, has disappeared for years and no one has a clue what he is doing.
OTOH the machine keeps cranking out products that dominate their market; their revenue and profits have accordingly doubled in the last 5 years. Hard to see the failure really. I have been told by Microserfs that they do not consider Linux or Apple to be a threat anymore, and are concentrating solely on Google, with a wary eye on a resurgent Oracle.
Yes, as a matter of fact, Windows back when it used DOS as a kernel was considered an ugly kludge. WinNT has a rather nice well formed kernel, and I do indeed know people who are fans of it!
.NET stuff), they are generally easy to use and have a much nicer, more modern orthogonal feel to them. Well except in places that they are forced to fall back on conventions set by older APIs, and then things get ugly.
I also know people who hate the NT kernel and love Unix-ish kernels, and people who hate Unix-ish kernels.
Now the APIs that are built on top of the kernel, yah, that is very ugly at times, but you are comparing an API that was largely designed in the 80's and early 90's to what? A modern API like KDE? Instead compare it to something of the same vintage. The original X16 API is not exactly a work of art either, simpler at least, but doing anything complex with it... well, that is why KDE was made! KDE is a lot newer than the most heavily used of Microsoft's APIs, and thus is a lot nicer to use.
If you use any of Microsoft's newer APIs (Windows Forms, the
Backwards compatibility comes at a price.
Are there particular niggles that piss people off? Yah. But in general, MS software undergoes a ton of usability testing, and their UI is amazing in the places it is used most often. You don't even need a mouse to use Windows, everything is keyboard accessible. This includes mandating a key that is used for "right click" operations. I have used a fair variety of other systems where developers occasionally just forget to include a key sequence that allows for a feature to be accessed! Or they don't put an element in the tab ordering at all, or make one of any other million UI design mistakes.
I would argue that Windows ME (and to an extent XP, until you beat it upside the head and restore things to their proper place) are regressive in terms of usability, but Windows 2000 is wonderful. Though violating Fitt's law in terms of button and menu placement is annoying...
Nice blanket statement.
Some departments at MS needed to have their heads beat in (and I think by now that they have!), others have done an excellent job on security. It is not like open source doesn't have similar stories. I recall a certain widely used compression library awhile back... not to mention the 1000 and 1 BIND vulnerabilities...
When the internet sprung into popularity, MS was horribly unprepared, and did some stupid things, but on the flip side, they have ACLs, easy to setup security rules for a system, and easy to configure user auditing.
MS has two primary file systems. FAT, which served its original purpose very well (and I might add that the majority of other Microcomputer OS vendors used a similar type of lazy file system!), and NTFS, which is a very reliable file system with decent performance that can stand up to user stupidity quite well.
:-D MS never has been able to make a good file system based search engine, which is funny, because a dozen companies have released good search engines for Windows, you figure Microsoft would just buy one of them up and release the damn thing! :)
As for search, yah, you got that one right.
Read your history. Unix is the original "good enough" OS.
You mean aside from making PCs usable for everyone? Aside from making
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Use of the words "worship" and "religion" is flamebait. Nobody worships Linus, or IBM, or Sun. WTF is up with this incindiary prose?
This FA is flamebait (RTFFA?) here's how It would have read if I were Information Week's editor:
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If you work in business, and are not a software person, Microsoft is like a Steelcase desk. It works and is a suitable platform to use to get your job done. Sometimes it fails, but generally it allows you to do your work.
Sure, the guy in the corner office has 'real hardwood' office furniture, and the 'Artwork' department down on third floor in the marketing area have that loopy new stuff, but that doesn't matter to the people in the rest of the company who have more important priorities.
Nothing quite like burning screaming young women alive to get a foreign populace to believe that you mean fucking business and submit to your theological tyrrany!