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Five Ways Microsoft Could Change After Gates
Might Squirrel noted a perfectly mediocre story to chat about on a boring post-holiday weekend Monday. This one is a look at 5 ways Microsoft could change after Gates. From accepting Open Source to serious interoperability work, there are definitely 5 things on that list there. Nothing about my solid gold rocket car.
They could design a whole new OS from the ground up, abandoning much of the legacy code in Windows that makes it a bit flaky and adopting the "Ã la carte" modular design. They could even make it more secure. But that would risk alienating a huge chunk of traditional Windows users (who still want their old stuff to work, will be confused by a modular design, and who *hate* security popups asking for a password every time they install something). It would be a major risk to the dominance of one of their two big cash cows and could open the door for Apple to swoop in for some market share.
They could fully embrace open source. But that means risking the dominance of Office--their other cash cow. And they're not going to do that.
Basically, I don't expect them to change much at all in the post-Gates era. They may embark on some new initiatives and head in some new directions. And I do expect they will be a LOT more internet-oriented in the future. But they're not going to change their fundamental business model, or abandon their core apps to some radical new ideology.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
From Microsoft's attempts at documenting their file formats and interfaces I can say that Microsoft does not work to specifications or standards. They make the code work then make the working code the standard. That is bad practice and leads to, as all can see, bloated, undocumented and overly large interfaces.
I believe the biggest change for Microsoft, whether or not they embrace openness, is to work to a specification driven development rather than a code driven development system. Spend the timing working on the specification and interfaces, get a workable interface and security model then implement it.
1. It could get much worse
My money's on this one. Bill Gates was a mild-mannered geek. Steve Ballmer's just a psychopath.
#1:
Yes, Gates has been an opponent of Free Software ever since his famous first letter. However, he's not been as vocal regarding Open Source Software, and that's where it's our loss that we forgot about the difference between them. MS has made some early attempts with "shared source", and like other stuff, they'll refine it.
#2:
Nonsense. That's got absolutely nothing to do with Gates, and everything with the fact that MS simply can't write another windos. After the entire NT team packed up and left, it's been going downhill, and one of the reasons Vista sucks so much is that they shipped something that nobody in the company understood how it worked. If you thought Vista was a trainwreck, wait for Win7.
#3:
What this shows even more is how MS works. Despite their total lack of experience and ability, they enter the game like they own it, and get a bloody nose. But they come back - and get another beating. Just that they keep coming back. You can see that modus operandi in almost every area. Hardware, consoles, much of their non-core software. Usually, it doesn't matter much because they don't learn and keep on sucking, but sometimes along the way they get some wits, or acquire another company, and suddenly they matter (e.g. hardware) or the market is just so small that by sheer power they force their way in (e.g. consoles).
#4:
Pfft. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 20 years or so, you know that MS announcement regarding ODF is simply the opening stage of EEE. MS has replaced the "then you win" step of the "first they laugh at you..." thing with "then they embrace you, extend you, extinguish you", and fairly successfully at that. With MS as you enemy you don't win when they give up the fight. That's just their way of saying "ok, the cheap and easy way didn't work, we'll have to take you down the old way".
#5:
Yes, maybe. The only point that holds some merit, and even includes both sides of the story. Personally, I think MS will break apart. It'll be a long time, but a disorganized, never-grown-up company like MS simply needs a strong man to hold it together, and for all I know, the ape simply won't do.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They'd probably use a non-GPL license, like CDDL, so the hardcore zealots will refuse to touch it.
Would be for microsoft to simply go away.
Really? And what would you replace them with? An Apple Monopoly? an IBM one? Linux?
Notice how many Linux distro's are being sponsored by big companies these days? Ok, this is a good thing as part of an active OS ecosystem, but name one you'd happily hand a majority share of the OS market to.
Microsoft can't be excised from the IT world. If they, for the sake of argument, collapsed next week, there would be a worldwide IT company crash of epic proportions. We would all suffer.
Like it or not, we need them to stick around. In order to survive they will have to evolve as a company, just like IBM did. I hope they do, as much as I like Linux (and I do, a lot), I wouldn't like it if that was all there was aside from Apple's OS.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Huh?
You missed a word.
Until days ago MS had a face, Gates' face (borged or not). Without Gates, without that face...
But it's still not entirely faceless. There's Balmer, altho some may argue they'd be better without /that/ face.
Anyway, the rest may indeed have already been the case, but like 'em or hate 'em, there's little good argument to be made in the statement that Gates really was synonymous in many ways with MS, and that really, they could have done a lot worse.
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
There have been a number of open source projects over the years that have been kept under the control of a single source (by dual licensing, for example), and others that have ignored, ridden down, and flagrantly broken standards. There's been at least two high profile projects that have deliberately used embrace-end-extend to knock competing software (including other open source projects) out of the ring. Open source is not the same as open standards... hell, the software that really started the whole open systems movement in the '70s didn't have a good open source implementation until the '90s.
Both open source and open standards are important, vitally important, but they are not the same thing and mixing up the two just muddies the water and hurts both movements.
No, that is ridiculous. MacOSX kept a lot of compatibility with its BSD base and emulated MacOS9. The transition period was huge, and it was starting from scratch. Microsoft will not have the same opportunity, and it will lose a lot of market share.
The best Microsoft could do is something similar, rebasing on BSD and making a compatibility layer, but with almost every non-trivial Windows application hooking itself into the kernel and services and everywhere, that will NOT work for most of what ties people to Windows anyway.
Sam ty sig.