What is Bill Gates Learning From Open Source?

christian.einfeldt writes "In the world of Free Open Source Software communities, Microsoft is often viewed as the very epitome of the Cathedral-style model of software production. But is Bill Gates learning from the software development phenomenon that he once compared loosely to communism? In commenting on the results of a Microsoft-commissioned survey of approximately 500 board-level executives about the importance of interpersonal skills versus raw IT coding skills, Gates starts to sound a bit more like a member of the Apache Foundation than the take-no-prisoners king of cut-throat competition: 'Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.'."

Comments

Bill is okay, Steve Ballmer is the problem

[gilesjuk]

It's Ballmer who sounds off about the competition. Ballmer is probably a very good executive and businessman, but he's not visionary and he also doesn't hold back when giving his opinion. His opinion is very tabloid like.

Bill seems to be careful to base his opinions on fact and not overstate things.

Re:Bill is okay, Steve Ballmer is the problem

[webmaster404]

Yes, When Bill Gates was the head of MS, things were O.K. (just forget about ME for a second) there was little about DRM, and for most of the time, they actually somewhat innovated (or at least stole from Mac which innovated) things and and brought the world of the GUI to the cheap IBM PC. There was no competition because until 1991, and even then, Linux wasn't ready for the real world, in around 2003 with the 2.6 kernel, Linux posed a huge threat to MS. However from 2000-present, MS has been rapidly shooting itself in the foot with missed opportunities, disasters such as Vista, and falling to DRM. Steve Ballmer seems to be much more for DRM then Gates ever was, all Gates wanted to do was make some cash and make the computer easy to use, the same vision as Apple. However Ballmer wanted to make money at all costs and that meant taking out all competition and throwing us into this DRMed world which we hate.

Re:Bill is okay, Steve Ballmer is the problem

[Ugmo]

However from 2000-present, MS has been rapidly shooting itself in the foot with missed opportunities, disasters such as Vista, and falling to DRM. Steve Ballmer seems to be much more for DRM then Gates ever was, all Gates wanted to do was make some cash and make the computer easy to use, the same vision as Apple.

I think it was the book Innovator's Dilemma or it might have been some other management or business book, that said that a company listens to its customers, becomes successful and grows. Then there comes a point when the company keeps listening to its customers but the customers are giving it bad advice, along the lines of, "more of the same, but bigger or faster and throw in this". The product outgrows certain niches or is customized too much for a subset of large customers. At this point smaller companies with a different way of ding things can squeeze into the cracks answering the needs of the customers left behind. Using this as a base, the new companies grow and kill off the old company.

This applies to Microsoft if you understand who their customers are: other businesses, not consumers. All their decisions make sense if you understand that fact. Each new OS requires (not takes advantage of, but requires) larger hard drives, more memory and faster processors. Like Vista , all the previous OS versions required an upgrade to use, by design. This keeps Dell, Gateway etc happy as people throw out their old PC and buy a brand new one. If the consumer was Microsoft's customer they would be finding ways to write more efficient code that runs faster on existing hardware. As hardware advances, that code would become even faster instead of the situation we have now, where each new version of an application on faster and faster hardware delivers roughly the same word processing performance.

DRM is the same. The customer is not the consumer who would like to watch movies or listen to music with his computer. The customer is Hollywood and the RIAA. Microsoft listens to them. They say: "Find us a way to charge the consumer every time he listens to a song and we will give you a cut of the income." The consumer says: "Find me a way to make it easy to organize and listen to the large collection of CD's and albums I have collected and paid for over the years". Microsoft says, "Where's my cut?" to the consumer and then listens to the RIAA instead.

The third major customer is businesses or governments. In this case Microsoft is not trying to keep the business or government as a whole happy, they are cutting deals with the decision makers to preserve their monopoly. The citizens of a country will be better off if their government uses open file standards but this will threaten Microsoft Office's monopoly. Government employees get kickbacks, sweetheart deals and job offers from Microsoft in order to get them to choose Microsoft's products over what is in the ultimate customer, the citizen's, best interest.

The same thing happens in businesses where Microsoft cuts deals with other companies in return for stock, investment or the promise of future acquisition. It would really be in the companies interest to use a free OS like Linux or an alternative file format for music or movies but Microsoft cuts deals with individuals in management that screw over the business in the long term. The managers who sign the deals don't give a crap. They are getting their pay off down the road. See all the companies that signed up for Fair Play, or whoever was behind SCO or the hundreds of other instances that show up daily on Slashdot.

Remember that fact: You are not Microsoft's customer.They do not care about you.. Remember that and all their decisions make sense. Their customers are the memory, disk drive and PC manufacturers, the content providers and any other business they can cut a deal with and sell you down the river for. This is not a Ballmer thing. This has been going on s

Our new overlords

[mangu]

In the survey of approximately 500 board-level executives, 61 percent said interpersonal and teamworking skills were more important than IT skills.

Perhaps for board-level managing, but certainly not for doing IT jobs. That's a big problem in corporations when you get "professional" managers. In the old days top-level managers were usually people who had risen from factory jobs. They understood what made the business tick.

Enter the business schools. Managers start believing they can command any corporation without understanding how the production works. They start doing things like transplanting a CEO from Pepsi to Apple. Dismal results.

I, for one, do *NOT* welcome our new board-level executive overlords!

Re:That's easy ...

[oyenstikker]

The code may be closed, but the standards are open. Google uses properly formed HTML and CSS. Google uses IMAP. Google uses XMPP. Google releases their applications for multiple platforms. Google does not use broken or undocumented formats to force you to use their products.

Actions speak louder than words!

[jkrise]

Rather than going by Gates' utterings; we must examine what he has DONE after Open source succeeded despite Microsoft's best efforts at side-tracking it.

1. His departure from the Chairman post indicates very troubled times ahed for his company; and he is reluctant to be associated with a declining company that even customers speak poorly about. This is largely due to the influx of open source and more recently, open standards.

2. The features removed; the h/w requirements; broken s/w compatibility etc. in Vista shows that ignoring the merits of Open Source will only hurt his company even more. The fact that he has not learnt the lessons and abandoned Vista; and continues to brazen it out indicates he does not want to hear the truth... only self-sponsored eulogies from 'independent studies'.

3a. One of the biggest reasons for the success of the Windows platform has been that developers have been attracted to the commodity stuff so that everyone could win. Despite Gates' best efforts, Java and PHP have built up a commendable market-share; while after being bitten badly by the abandonment of VB, Foxpro etc.; developers are extremely cagey of adopting to .Net. Career-wise, it makes more sense for developers to stick to Java, PHP or even RubyonRails because they need not refresh their skills every 2 years or face extinction / pink slips.

3b. The loss of the developer community will pave the way for eventual collapse of the flawed Upgrade-And-We-Will-Solve-Your-Problems approach which has been Microsoft's business model for well over 2 decades.

4. For home users, the only hassle is getting broadband on Linux. Like Google, Linux has spread like wildfire by word-of-mouth; and even longtime friends of MS such as Dell, HP etc. have had to listen to customers and offer Linux bundles. The arrival of small form factor PCs like the OLPC, the XO laptop, the Asus EEE PC on Linux is further accelerating the success of Open source and the downfall of Windows. Microsoft is seeking to delay this by offering XP on these systems; but since long term avblty of XP is a question mark, OEMs, costomers or shareholders aren't very enthused.

All in all, Mr. William Gates has learnt his lessons well in advance; and as Eben Moglen remarked while launching GPL3; this is the beginning of the end for proprietary code.