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Microsoft's Annual Report Reveals OSS Mistakes
mjasay writes "Microsoft's most recent annual report suggests that the company is increasingly coming to grips with open source, yet also seems determined to perpetuate myths about open source that poorly serve it and its shareholders. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has suggested before that 'free software means no free soda' for Microsoft employees; but this is perhaps the first time that Microsoft has managed to enshrine its ignorance in a public document. In the annual report, Microsoft makes two primary false claims about open source: 1) Open source companies don't invest in research and development and instead largely free-ride on Microsoft's patents and copyrights; and 2) Open source projects don't innovate and instead mimic Microsoft's products. Perhaps Microsoft has forgotten its own 'innovative' past copying of markets and technologies created by Apple and others. But at least Microsoft gets one thing right: 'To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline.'"
So far, AIDS has killed more than 300,000 Americans. Why, after
so much time and money, are so many still dying?
One reason, according to a damning Wall Street Journal report,
is this: For 10 years, the government has been deliberately lying
to us about who is at risk of AIDS.
As early as 1987, Centers for Disease Control officials knew that
AIDS was likely to remain a disease of gay men and inner-city drug
users. Yet the same year, the nation's public health officials
embarked on a deliberate public-relations campaign to mislead the
American people into thinking that AIDS was spreading inexorably
into the mainstream.
SLEAZY CDC CAMPAIGN MISSTATES RISK OF AIDS
Remember those TV ads featuring the Baptist minister's son, who
said, "If I can get AIDS, anyone can"? Turns out he was gay.
Remember the brochures featuring a blond, middle-aged woman with
AIDS? She was an intravenous drug user.
Surveys show that, after the PR campaign was in full swing, the
percentage of Americans who thought it "likely" AIDS would become
a full scale epidemic leaped from 51% to 69%. By 1991, most agreed
that married people who had an occasional affair had a substantial
risk of getting AIDS.
In reality, the government's own research showed that the risk of
getting AIDS from one act of heterosexual intercourse was less than
the chance of getting hit by lightening. This was the conclusion
that Michael Fumento reached years ago in his book The Myth of
Heterosexual AIDS, for which he was unjustly and shamefully reviled.
Even more remarkable, these government officials now publicly defend
their deceit. "We wanted to reduce the stigma," acknowledges a CDC
official. "As long as this was seen as a gay disease,...that pushed
the disease way down the ladder of people's priorities," admitted
another.
DELIBERATELY FRIGHTENING AND DECEIVING TAXPAYERS
What astonishing bureaucratic hubris! The first and most obvious
victims of the government's lies are the 40,000 or so Americans
who this year will become HIV-positive, overwhelmingly gay men or
poor, inner-city drug users and their sexual partners. According
to one model by epidemiologist James G. Kahn, each dollar spent on
high-risk populations prevents 50 to 70 times as many new infections
as the same money spread out among low-risk groups. Yet, of the
almost $600 million the federal government spends on AIDS prevention,
probably less than 10% is spent on high-risk groups.
If Kahn's model is correct, redirecting the $540 million now wasted
on spreading the myth of heterosexual AIDS to high-risk groups - mostly
gays and inner-city drug users - could wipe out new infections entirely.
The CDC knows the truth. Yet this year, its education program, "Respect
Yourself, Protect Yourself" is once again aimed at the general population.
Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, "A current focus of the
campaign is to discourage premarital sex among heterosexuals."
The ultimate casualty of the CDCs lies will be Americans' faith in public-
health officials, heretofore generally exempt from our growing distrust
in government.
Yet public health officials, afraid they couldn't honestly generate
support, deliberately frightened and deceived American taxpayers to get
them to cough up the dough. In private life, this would be known as
fraud - not only a serious sin, but a crime. In Washington, D.C., judging
from the ease and even pride with which public health officials now confess
their wrongdoing, it's business as usual.
Did anyone expect anything other than spin from MS with regards to Open Source Software? Hmmm.
What a load of Frosty Piss that is.
Money is the root of all evil?
I don't see anything false about the two statements. 1) How can an opensource project fund any meaningful research, Sure they get donations to feed the guys in the basement with linux beards, but that's it. 2) Compiz made the multiple desktops, desktop cube thing, but did they make the minimize button? Maxamize,Windows, 2 button mouse, taskbar! Anyways when it comes down to it, MS, Apple and Linux all take things from eachother, but MS puts the most money into it obviously.
There's no question that they've made some missteps in this area, but I think the tales of their demise are very, very overstated. Microsoft still has an enormous install base, and I would absolutely expect them to try and apply the "embrace and extend" approach increasingly to open source. All they have to do is get more involved in coding for OSS projects, and they can change the entire nature of the situation.
Catch telemarketers
Hmm, where did that IP stack come from? Where did they get the idea of tabbed browsing? Where did they get a web browser from? The list goes on and on. I wonder how many "patents" came from ideas inspired by open source?
The reason Microsoft is failing is that the parasite has become larger than the host.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Extra Extra!
Slashdot spins Microsoft's spin! Zealous dorks incorrectly attribute and spread FUD about other zealous dorks! Film at 11!
I hate everyone equally Microsoft included
That makes sense now. Leave peer review out of research and you get vista.
"Perhaps Microsoft has forgotten its own 'innovative' past copying of markets and technologies created by Apple and others."
Or how they pretty much lifted the BSD networking stack for Windows.
2) Open source projects don't innovate and instead mimic Microsoft's products.
They must think they invented tabbed browsing so as to not have to admit they aren't able to innovate enough to have thought of the idea on their own.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
1) Open source companies don't invest in research and development and instead largely free-ride on Microsoft's patents and copyrights; and 2) Open source projects don't innovate and instead mimic Microsoft's products.
Those sound like the same point. Was it that way in the report or just in the summary... meh, not worth it to RTFA.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Just because Micro$oft copies doesn't mean open source doesn't.
I agree. Compiz-Fusion totally ripped Microsoft's patents to the desktop cube idea.
I just forgot how to enable it in Vista Ultimate...
Outside of development tools what major innovations has OpenSource produced?
Microsoft's innovations stand on their own.
Their accomplishments with active directory, for instance, are wonderful. I'd like to see the open source community come up with anything like it.
Also, their networking stack is rock solid. It would take years for the open source community to come up with anything as polished.
From the beginning, Microsoft has been an innovative company. MS Dos, Basic, I could go on and on. Their contributions to original research have truly advanced the human condition.
Open source projects are simply parasites on the innovations of microsoft. Bah!
A 10K report is *supposed* to have a section where the CEO lays out, in gory detail, external threats and situations on the horizon that have a significant chance of derailing their revenue plan for the next year.
What Ballmer is saying here is that
IIRC it was Marc Andressen who first hit on this tactic for competing against Microsoft, when Netscape launched the Mozilla Foundation in 1998. It took a few years of fumbling around before that took fruit - probably because the Navigator/Communicator code was so badly written - but that turned out to be a masterstroke of business tactics.
Microsoft knows that a lot of open source products overlap their patents, many of which would be dubious in court. MS is positioning itself to justify using it's patents to try and crush competing open source projects.
MS has made more money on me than if I had bought a PC with Windows pre-installed on it. I'm running a full retail version of Windows XP on my Macbook via Bootcamp. Everyone in our family is running either Office for Windows or Mac or both. BTW I also use Ubuntu and Windows 2000 via Vmware Fusion.
The originally proposed wording:
"Open source means you should sell your shares."
Just got reworked to make it easier to read.
--Q
At least they intended it to be I'm sure.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That was a load from mjasay. Frosty Piss did not submit this one
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ya gotta love Balmer.
No wonder MS is so fsck'ed! They think OSS is free as in Soda Pop!
It's free as in BEER monkey-boy!
Give them MS lackeys some free beer and see how their programming and debugging skilz improve. (Not intended as a joke -- it could only make them better.)
Not really worded as the author states, and is quite interesting - mainly the meat is the Risk Factors section where they must report the possible situations on investment/profit risk. Nothing really much there about stealing ideas, but what was omitted by the author was the probable losses incurred by MS "opening up" on some interoperability technology as well as being forced to open up other standards due to high court rulings.
They still call their Licensing "Ownership" as in Cost of Ownership... sigh.
Very interesting read.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I fail to see where Microsoft makes any "mistakes" in its filing. The statement the company made were, as far as I can tell, correct. Without making judgment calls on R&D models, it's fair to say that the proprietary-versus-open source methods are very different, and that open source products benefit from the fact that their research costs *are* distributed amongst the various contributing developers.
The filing never says that OSS companies don't spend a great deal on R&D, nor does it say that Microsoft's R&D (ie. feature development and coding) hasn't been influenced by outside factors. Therefore, I fail to see how there are any mistruths spoken here.
Keep in mind that this is SEC filing, for goodness sake, and that the questionable sections are intended to be simple, concise analyses of the competition and a few differentiating factors between them and Microsoft. I think it does that just fine.
With all the complaining we do here about the FUD inflicted on us by megacorporations, I am rather embarrassed to see us using the very same tacticts with this sort of story.
Yes. Nothing Open Source or non-Microsquish is ever creative. Remember: LaTeX=MS ripoff, KDE4 library integration = Vista developer ideas, Linux Kernel = NT Clone, wcalc = Windows Calculator, Unix based command system = MS DOS ... ad nauseam.
/sarcasm
Also, if they're measuring our research by the amount of money we put in... Well remember that we have lots of research for free.
Idiots...
Just make sure the folks at BSA do not pay you a visit.
The two statements from Microsoft in the summary is just their usual FUD. Spreading FUD doesn't mean the originator is ignorant, though.
Thankfully, most observers are able to see through this particular line of nonsense at this point. Sadly, however, it's likely that Ballmer and other 'softies actually believe it. They're so narcissistic that they really do believe that Microsoft is the epicenter of innovation, and that it really is impossible for good ideas to come from anywhere other than Redmond.
In fact, many open source projects and products use Microsoft as a reference point for how not to design software. Call it a second mover advantage if you like.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
10 mentions of "open source" vs 0 mentions of "free software". Discuss.
Such statements come from the company that has been so many times declared by Novell a benefactor and the only reason for its economic growth.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Perhaps Microsoft has forgotten its own 'innovative' past copying of markets and technologies created by Apple and others"
If they copied ideas from Apple how is open source community any different when it blatently copies Microsoft products?
Open office is a bad replica of Microsoft Office.
Sharp Develop is a bad replica of Visual Studio.
Firefox 3 search bar and navigation button interface is derived from that of IE.
Linux desktop are inharently trying to copy Windows day by day.
Open source companies do not have enough funding to invest in RnD and thats true. There IS RnD done in OS community but not as much as Google, Yahoo or Microsoft does.
Sometimes its just good to accept your short comings and try to improve yourself instead of continuely throwing mud at others for pointing them out.
I've noticed that stories regarding Microsoft or Apple have difficultly cultivating constructive debate. For example...
Apple topic - The iPod design is amazing, I really want one, but am concerned about DRM. (Score:-1, Flamebait)
Microsoft topic - vista suxors!!11!!1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Would it be possible for Slashdot to have two sections? One for discussion of topics, that present conclusions based upon stated facts and assumptions. And a second section for free expression of angst, like 'Bill Gates is the Borg-Devil' or 'I want to have Steve Jobs iBaby!'.
Compatibility gets confused with copying. And when you know nothing about the history of computing, well, "UNIX? That's like DOS, right?" Because the GUIs can be made similar to Windows, because menus like OpenOffice are made similar to Office for ease of transition, because compatible file formats are often read and written, people who know nothing about the underlying structure of computers or the history of innovations can logically, if incorrectly, conclude from their experience with Windows from the earlier '90s that linux _must_ be a copy of Windows in the '00s.
They must drink alot of soda in Redmond.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I think Microsoft is absolutely right here. I mean if you see this story about what they did to BlueJ I think you'd get a better picture of what I mean.
Pot, meet Kettle.
LB
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
So what MS is and has been saying is that it acquired the IP fair in square, and is properly selling it on the market, while others are just copying. Let us not dwell on the fact that is where MS was 20 years ago when Apple acquired the WIMP interface fair and square and MS copied it to run on cheaper hardware, which let us remember that Compaq created at no small expense fair and square. No, let's just look at the claims as they stand using a classic example, SQL
SQL server was aquired acquired from sybase. Is there technology here that MS can claim was part of that deal, and stolen by the OSS community. I think not. SQL was developed by IBM and what is now Oracle, and was standardized, I believe, in the mid 80's. The two big OSS competitors, mSQL and PostreSQL were both independently developed by teams concurrently with the Sybase product and opensourced, partly or otherwise, by their creator. I am sure that both not include features that MS SQL has, but I would also guess that Oracle or IBM has the features first.
In the end MS problem is simply that they are not 2-3 years ahead of the curve. When this happened to SGI, they went bankrupt. A firm simply cannot charge a premium for this years technology. In the case of software, this is because the OSS people can do the same thing, for free. MS Office is simply too mature to be a profit center. MS Server is simply relatively too low tech. Even the X Box is not at the front of the pack, at least not by more than six months.MS has some traction through collaboration, and they can continue to make money there, but complaining about the loss os MS Windows market share is silly. They had the chance the database file system, but for some reason they did not provide enough resources. This in itself proves that they are not innovative.
MS will lose customers because they are lazy. They will continue to have enterprise customers, they will continue to have the gaming market. We will see the general desktop and server market move away from them unless they come up with something big or go back to their roots as the cheap solution. We see this in the emerging $100-$200 portable market. If this will provide the growth the stock market wants is yet to be seen.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The last time I looked at one of their reports, Research was lumped in with Marketing so you really could not tell how much money they spent on "innovation". They may now list their real costs, but it does not matter because nothing original is evident in their software.
The company has long existed as a parasite. They used to brag about never entering anything but "mature markets" and doing so by purchasing "loss leaders". When it comes to original coding, they prefer to steal from other companies, BSD and other free software that has not been copyleft.
M$ is on the rocks and won't recover. People got tired of being ripped off and gave up on making money the M$ way. There's no one left to rob and M$ is incapable of doing the entire world's work. The future is free.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In a surprising twist, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted yesterday that Free Software is the cause of better than average health for Microsoft employees. "Free software means no free soda" is the new catch cry at the Redmond, WA software powerhouse.
"We used to offer our developers free soda, and never thought about the health consequences", said Ballmer while rocking on a designer chair. "Then one day, one of our employees installed Linux on his workstation, which also happened to run the in-house Visual Basic control panel that overrides all the networked soft drink machines on the campus. Suddently, people couldn't get their Mountain Dew anymore, unless they actually paid for it themselves".
Ballmer went on to explain that the programmer who wrote the soda control software had left years ago, and nobody could replace him. Soft drinks were left in the machines for months and morale went down at first among the employees, but soon picked up again when a drop in the monthly rate of deaths from heart failure was noticed. "Free software is like a virus that actually helps you", Ballmer said. "With the money we saved in ambulance fees, I bought every employee a free yo-yo, and even had enough money left over for a new chair. Way to go, Free Software, we love ya!" Former CEO Bill Gates declined to comment.
Slashdot can't do a supported fact based discussion because they would be sued by M$ for violating business method patents evident in the "Get the Facts" advertising campaign. I know, I know, there were no real facts presented in M$'s sponsored research, but the idea of objective conversation is still their IP. Judging from the Fine Quarterly Report, M$ people often confuse statements of angst with factual opinion. Any facts section would quickly be ruined by M$FT people writing things like, "You are all a bunch of pirates, we did this first, your work sucks, pay up, blah blah blah." What you have noticed is mostly this already.
Intellectual property was the desert property of the twenth century.
"open source software doesn't innovate"
Ha! The article directly below this one states that someone has developed an app to graph or diagram SQL statements... Now, that's innovation - and it didn't require any Microsoft products to be harmed during testing or development!
Oh by the way, the Internet itself is an open source effort and I can't imagine anything more innovative or groundbreaking than the most advanced communications medium ever created!
I'm actually running Windows Vista Business SP1 in a VirtualBox OSE on Ubuntu Linux and I have to say, I actually rather prefer it to Windows XP. I don't think the UAC is worse than Ubuntu's "type in password all the time.". And, the polish of Vista is pretty darned good. I think Vista looks -better- than Ubuntu does and I for one do not miss the cute animals that littered XP.
This is my sig.
The 0ne-eyed man is King
Those who would preserve GPL software from the end of copyrights for software need to realize that the end of copyright preserves the four freedoms (Yes, it's a FSF reference, no, I didn't link it wrong).
Be careful what you wish for.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It took "innovations" like Firefox to finally get the monolithic Microsoft of its collective ass and FINALY update their aging browser after letting it hold back the internet for about half a decade.
... I say.
I hope that Ballmer has a very long career as a CEO for life at Microsoft. In fact, I hope he takes more responsibilities as, I don't know, Chief Software Architect maybe. I think it's a win-win-win situation. A win for Ballmer, a win for Microsoft and a win for all Microsoft competitors.
Ballmer. May the board of director never fire you.
I guess you forgot some Desktops aren't MS based in the least. NeXt is so much more fun to copy =)
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I know it's somewhat taboo to RTFA around here, but I thought I'd compare with the summary anyway:
Article, quoting MSFT:
"Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives."
Implication: there exist some companies that reuse some of Microsoft's ideas, reducing their costs in the process (presumably at MSFT's expense)
Slashdot summary:
"Open source companies don't invest in research and development and instead largely free-ride on Microsoft's patents and copyrights"
Implication: Microsoft claims most/all open source companies copy Microsoft's ideas and don't contribute anything
Article,quoting MSFT:
"Open source software vendors are devoting considerable efforts to developing software that mimics the features and functionality of our products, in some cases on the basis of technical specifications for Microsoft technologies that we make available."
Implication: there are open source products that look and behave very similarly to some of Microsoft's products
Slashdot summary:
"Open source projects don't innovate and instead mimic Microsoft's products."
Implication: Microsoft claims most/all open source products are copies of MSFT's products
I understand that bashing MSFT is a popular passtime around here, but when the article summaries are completely misleading, that starts to get in the way of the trustworthiness Slashdot as a whole. If Slashdot hopes to remain relevant in the longterm, it needs to make at least some effort to accurately portray the stories. Otherwise, it will eventually become the internet equivalent of tabloids, worth only the entertainment value of reading the stories+comments, and completely untrustworthy for actual facts.
It's useful to recognize the differenc. A mistake is where you don't know any better.. misformation is where you intend that others not know any better. This is clearly an example of the latter.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Cunt punt!
Everyones a troll, I just have the balls to admit it!
seriously, when was the last time microsoft innovated?
Haltenfrauden27: The latest of Twitter's sockpuppets.
Another one: BUSTED! Already doing a typical Twitter to Twitter convo with the same language with one of his already exposed sockpuppets (Dreamchaser)
Just made today and already you couldn't help yourself couldn't you twitter!
Make SELinux enforcing again!
There is one Microsoft Fanboi who has consistently copied Microsoft and who has not had an original thought his entire life: Miguel de Icaza. But he seems to be an exception.
1) Open source companies don't invest in research and development and instead largely free-ride on Microsoft's patents and copyrights;
I say Microsoft cannot sue. If they could, they would've already done it. I think if Microsoft sues, they are either afraid that they'll get sued for the free-ride they've been enjoying or they simply do not know who or how to sue. OSS isn't really making any money. OSS is not a company. Yes, MS could sue, say, Redhat, but Redhat is not equal to or represent in anyway OSS itself, and I doubt Redhat really does that much IP damage since most of their business is distributing what others have made and providing support - they are not burning CDs of Windows, if you will. Then sue GNOME or KDE? Can't. Sue kernel developers? How? For what? They would have to go project to project performing drive-by lawsuits which will all be tedious and expensive and very unrewarding.
Like all annual reports, these are self-published documents designed to serve the appetites of shareholders. So anything written in it should be viewed with that in mind. It is not a tech document or a fact sheet. It is a spin sheet.
> Hmm, where did that IP stack come from?
I assume you mean the code, but you could also go a step higher and ask: where did the IP protocol stack itself come from ? The whole of the internet, WWW, email, HTML etc is built on Open Standards. That is why it is so successful. MS just added a proprietary front-end to it !
Shareholder reports are usually the most gloomy documents known to man. A corporation is liable if something goes wrong and they didn't warn the shareholders in the quarterly report, so the reports typically cover *every conceivably thing* that could possibly go wrong. It's not the sort of thing you want to put spin into. I can't understand why they would be doing it...
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
'innovative' past copying of markets and technologies created by Apple and others. Uhm, by putting that in the article makes the whole article void.... Apple NEVER has done anything innovating (ok, except for the Apple I and ][), talk about a company who does rip everything from everybody and claiming it their own...
With the Earth's population rising, I think it could be possible for MS to continue growing in size and profits, while OSS grows in market share.
"Our business model has been based upon customers paying a fee to license software that we develop and distribute .. Certain "open source" software business models challenge our license-based software model..."
I do believe MS has been drinking too much of its own koolaid. If they really believe this then they are only deluding themselves. That their current business model is under attack is a given, but not from the Open Source sector. I mean how many times can you sell the same GUI, web browser and email client to the same people. The only real innovation they do is making each new version of Windows more bloated than the previous version, forcing the endusers to buy a new computer year after year. They also manage to make their older formats incompatible with the 'newer' software. That you see the writing on the wall is evident in your "software as a service" sector.
The WinTEL PC is obsolete and people would have moved onto smaller embedded Internet aware devices if it wasn't for your repeated actions in stifling the market. Twenty years of CrapWare. That a bunch of hobbyists working in their garage can produce applications that equal anything Microsoft has produced tells us just how lacking in the innovation department you really are. Anything you ever produced you only ever leeched of the academic sector.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Almost no one realizes that R&D has only a tiny sliver of R of it, and the rest of it is D. And by Development, they mean everything - developer/tester/program manager salaries, computers, costs of running the buildings and datacenters, IT, etc. So it's not like they spend $7B just on Microsoft Research. Last I heard, MSR costs something like $300M a year. And stuff from there does end up in products every now and then.
Well, if you don't see any of it in products, I'm curious what you call R&D? 'Cause unless I'm mistaken, it means exactly that: Research and Development. It's the first step in the chain that then goes through Manufacturing and later Marketing.
So normally even stuff like developing a new product (say, the XBox 360) does count as R&D. When Ford comes up with a new car, even if it's not revolutionary in any way or aspect? That's R&D. When NEC or Samsung come up with a new TFT, only this time with LED backlight? That's R&D. When Seagate announces a new line of HDDs, only this time with higher density (i.e., pretty much a smaller head and more precise mechanics)? That's R&D too.
Technically even writing a program, any program, is R&D. (That's a mistake many PHB's do: thinking that programming is manufacturing and can be treated and measured like assembly line work.) Manufacturing is when you press the CDs and print the manuals and box it, later. So if none of MS's R&D made it into a product, they pretty much wouldn't have a product.
So, yes, MS does invest in R&D. Now if you're trying to say that they never made some major scientific breakthrough, we can agree on that. But then most other companies don't, either. And I don't remember many fundamental breakthroughs from the F/OSS camp either. They too just tweak a little here and there and occasionally put lipstick on a pig... err... skins and transparencies on the same old program. Not condemning it in any way, but let's not pretend that the latest release of KDE or Firefox are comparable to discovering Penicilin or Quantum Mechanics. It's R&D anyway. And it's still R&D when MS does it.
And yes, occasionally R&D does produce a dud like Vista. Well, that's the inherent risk of it. It happens to other companies too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"we know everything, we make no mistakes, we are the computer industry, when it goes wrong, it is everybody else's fault, they stole it from us"
How soon, if ever are the OEMs going to wake up a realise they own the desktop market. They could dispense with Microsoft tomorrow and the endusers wouldn't even notice.
davecb5620@gmail.com
This company lack of any common sense of ethics is just becoming a real case of concern as their "dominance" is now on the decline. Microsoft will finish like another company who was selling some *nix derivative who is now trolling the patent system...
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
1. Because it _is_ R&D. Manufacturing is where you already have a detailed blueprint of what cog/transistor/thingamabob goes where, and you just have to take it from bin A and stick it into hole B. And move on to do the same thing verbatim again. And again.
In programming, the equivalent would be, I don't know, copying someone else's program by hand. It makes no sense. If you have to make the same program again, you just make a copy it, you don't go through the assembly line to make an identical one from scratch. Even bits and pieces, whatever you need again, you don't program verbatim again. You move it to some library class and call it from there. Or it's already included in the compiler or standard library.
Programming isn't manufacturing and it makes no sense for it to work like manufacturing does. There is no mechanical taking a cog from here and placing it there, and knowing in advance exactly which cog, where, and how much time it takes. The whole exercise is, every single time, designing the whole mechanism in the first place.
Just because the manufacturing step is missing, or trivial (e.g., just pressing the CDs), it doesn't mean you can move back one step and proclaim the development stage to be manufacturing. It's just about as silly as, if a river has no delta, moving back a step and proclaiming the whole actual river to be a delta.
But that's what some incompetents do. They learned how to manage an assembly line, and then they re-christen a whole different thing an assembly line if they don't have one. Sorta, when your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
2. It's not even the only one. There have been plenty of other cases where only one piece of something was built, and it was basically the prototype at the end of R&D. It may have been an actual manufactured product, but nevertheless the manufacturing step has been missing or never done, and the "product" was the prototype built by R&D.
As an infamous case, and a botched project at that, take the Vasa. The design had been experimented with and tweaked right until it was put to sea. (And it sank.) If it were a software project, it would have been pulled out of the sea and "debugged" until it works. And it still would have been an R&D stage, rather than mechanical repetitive manufacturing.
Or take the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There was no assembly line, and (unlike the Nagasaki one) not even testing. It was a prototype right out of R&D. The fact that it was actually used, doesn't make the whole process any less R&D.
So basically again, it seems to me like just a case of some people not wrapping their heads around a different beast. They learned in school that if you have a product at the end it's manufacturing, and if that step is missing, they'll re-christen something else as manufacturing. Just so it fits their mental model.
3. Well, that's still no excuse for incompetence. If an industry works differently enough from others, managing it must fit the reality of the industry, not try to warp the industry to fit the pre-existing mind-set.
Basically, imagine if I came from agriculture, and started managing a car production plant. And went, "no, no, no, see you have to plough the land outside the factory and bury some cars as seeds." Wouldn't you think I'm retardedly incompetent and have no business managing a factory like it's a farm? Well, I'm thinking the same about those who manage R&D as if it were an assembly line.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've read MS's policies about licensing software over and over, and their ruinous shortsightedness about the kind of benefits that OSS brings to the market has inspired me to change some policies in an internet company I'm forming.
;-)
One of the side effects of the algorithms I'm writing for my company is that I'm *also* writing some very useful code that could be easily incorporated into OSS apps. Though I've thought about patenting those algorithms, I'd like to know whether or not you all think that releasing my code into the wild to benefit others while publicizing my work is a better business model than retaining the rights to it?
From what I've seen, I am coming to believe that patenting my algorithms might provide me with a short-term benefit (if GoogleYahooMicrosoftLexCorp wants to buy the patents), but that publicizing them might be a better business strategy in the long run.
I think, however, that trademarking makes more sense; if someone clicks on a link with my graphic design or logo, they should be assured that they'll actually GET to my site, as opposed to someone else filching my business's logo to redirect customers to their site. I don't particularly WANT to sue people, but I want to protect my company's image (GIF, not rep
Does the release of my code and algorithms into the wild make more sense? Will the OSS community embrace a business model that is actually trying to do a better job at what it does than any other site, rather than trying to shut out all competition by locking down an idea in patent regulation?
I "have a friend" who has occasionally forayed into downloaded books, music, and movies. This "friend" notes that she has paid quite a bit of money for books and music from artists she has grown to know after trying out their content beforehand. I am of the opinion that publicizing your work makes far more sense than trying to close it off, and that patenting ideas and locking down content causes resentment and frustration among people who would otherwise have enjoyed doing business with you (I'm pointing a finger at YOU, Metallica!).
On the other hand, it IS a business, and I don't want to scare off investors by engaging in creating a business that has no chance of succeeding because anyone can take my idea and sink money into it.
I don't want to commit Microsoft's sins, but I also don't particularly want to spend years building an unprofitable business only to have Yahoo blitz an ad campaign for their own version of my idea.
Ideas? Comments? Encouragement?
You may be joking, but I think something similar to WINE might be Microsoft's best approach to fixing Windows:
Redesign/clean up the OS without too much regard for backwards compatibility, then put a WINE-like compatibility layer on top.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Just for the record though, RMS has stated many times that the decision to base GNU on Unix was a technical one, not a preferred one.
One might add to this that before GNU, RMS was working on the Lisp machine and its window system.
The GUI toolkit he had developed was more powerful than Swing, Qt, or Gnome, and easier to program. The object system he was working on put AOP and Groovy to shame.
The fact that this software became proprietary despite his objections was what prompted him to develop GNU. And he based it on UNIX and C because he correctly realized that the world wasn't ready for advanced GUIs or advanced OOP. It's taken 20 years for people simply to accept basic single inheritance systems and garbage collection.
The people behind GNU were technical pioneers; they consciously kept things simple with GNU because they knew they were building software for the unwashed masses of programmers.
That's the first time I've ever heard I'm a sockpuppet. It's especially funny since I've been accused of working for MS by Twitter numerous times.
You know, claiming the Internet itself is an open source effort tends to discredit your argument. There are thousands of sources involved in the development of the Internet as it is today, many of which have nothing to do with open source. It certainly didn't originate with the idea of open-source. It originated with a government program. Further additions have come from both the public and private sector. To call it an open-source effort is to add your own inaccuracies and deceptions.
This is a discussion about Microsoft's annual report and their view of OSS, this has nothing much to do with their latest product.
It's entirely relevant. Vista OS, Linux OS. Who would have thought that the basis of microsoft's monopoly would marked OffTopic as another way to bash vista. You anti-corporate types are getting way out of hand.
This is my sig.
Open source is not just a term for the IT world my friend... Open source is a term that represents the free exchange of ideas and "innovations". The fact that we all work together to actually make the Internet possible makes the Internet an open source effort. No, we don't write code to make the TCP/IP stack or write code for Cisco routers, but we do create our own blogs, articles, and links that essentially build the Internet. If it were not for people like me and you adding our content (just like a programmer adds code) the Internet would just be a bunch of websites created by corporations like Microsoft. The Internet IS and open source involvement because it is developed by a community just as software is developed by a community...
I had to say something, it was bothering me :) First and foremost, I have yet to see true innovation from Microsoft. If anything, I've seen innovation ripped from the free and open source company by companies such as Apple and Microsoft. Look at the various GUI features that Apple and Microsoft both scream about, yet how many of these features were available in the Open Source and Free Software communities long before they implemented them? Also, is it not funny that Microsoft is creating a server with no GUI... Where in God's green earth did they get this idea?
I'm not saying Microsoft didn't contribute their fair share. They made personal computing available to the masses. Yet, was this truly innovative? Or did they steal their ideas from Apple and Xerox?
I think Mr. Ballmer is scared because he realizes the threat of the F/LOSS community. Various projects are maturing at a rapid pace thanks to the free time of developers, graphic designers, usability engineers, computer scientists, and just people who do it as a hobby. I guess he doesn't realize that people from all over the world do it for the fun of it or to scratch one's own itch.
I do not think F/LOSS will replace Microsoft anytime soon, but I definitely do think that they have been eating a big market share and Microsoft is definitely seeing some damage.
So... in conclusion... ::: Gives Ballmer the Finger ::: ::: Ducks to Avoid Flying Chair :::
And both try very hard to look like either Windows or the Mac.
While I do realize that there is a lot of R&D done in the open source world... there is also a lot of imitation being done interface wise.
What I think is being forgotten here is... MS didn't write the report for you or for any other even slightly savvy person. They wrote it for the investors and for the less knowledgable people who are more likely to give them their money now that they have been "shown the light" by the "all-mighty" Microsoft.
Sometimes ignorance compounds itself.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Claiming that "well, they do it too!" is a poor excuse for being a copy-cat. Certainly Microsoft (and Apple) have "borrowed" ideas from other companies -- and Gnome and KDE try to be just like Windows and OS X. Oh, you can say that KDE has such-and-such that Windows doesn't, or that doing something is easier on Gnome -- but in the end, it's pretty much the same old stuff.
We can't make Open Source better if we don't recognize its weaknesses -- and one weakness (among several) is a lack of truly original R&D in mainstream FOSS applications.
No one OS or application is perfect. And so my desktop has two computers on it, one running Vista and the other running Gentoo Linux, giving me the the best of both worlds. And as long as the free software community insists on turning a blind eye towards its own problems (which include a lack of innovation), I'll need both of those computers to get my work done.
All about me
I was an early coordinator for the Info-Zip Workgroup (which developed the first "universal" multi-platform PKZIP-compatible open-source public domain zip and unzip utilities).
I've often wondered, once I saw the .zip "compressed archive" capability in Windows appear, where the code came from. I can't believe MS back-engineered and re-invented all that themselves. But I sure don't see any obligatory "Info-Zip" signature in the binaries.
Oh well ... at least the capability is there. But a decent company would've given credit where credit was due.
Maybe they _did_ rewrite it all. One never knows. But it sure doesn't seem very likely. You don't make all the money MS has made by doing things the hard way.
Toad
So in your opinion, it will only be innovation if Microsoft employees were to produce offsprings by sexual intercourse within Microsoft premises and then these offsprings were to be bred and educated inside a Microsoft commune without any contact with the outside world and then they would create technology completely from scratch in absolute isolation?
A perfect example of the achilies heel of open-source..
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Despite your strange and repeated attacks on me personally, I don't remember calling you a M$ shill.
Either way, you are some kind of troll. If I did call you a shill, I was probably right. If I did not, you probably are because no one else would make something like that up.
Now that I've noticed, I'll go ahead and look you up some more. Chances are, I'll find all the hallmarks of a M$ shill. In the last ten minutes, I've already found you defending Vista's security, which we all know will be no better than any other version of Windoze. If I look back into your posting, I'm sure there will be more M$ advocacy, hatred of free software, and general idiocy.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This signals a cultural clash that will end in lawsuits of SCO proportions. These comments are very reminiscent of SCO's self-pity.
However Microsoft has more weight to it's claims. The patent and copyright threat implied is troublesome. A large component of any company taking the kind of action SCO did is cultural and rests with the memes circulating internally between the executives. If Microsoft is now so moribund and hopeless that they blame Open Source for taking a free ride on their coat tails (Geeze the sheer Chutzpah of this) then we could be heading for the mother of all battles.
That's partially true. Where would "free software" get R&D money from? As for the "ride on MS patents", that isn't necessarily true, since MS does not have a patent on the entire concept of operating systems and software. Unless he is talking about MS open source, in which case it's correct that free software isn't going to recoup it's investment: there's really no way to monetize FOSS, unless MS wants to become a consulting company (like IBM). Not a smart move, since IBM is a hardware company... and MS is a software company.
From the perspective of a company exclusively making money from software, OSS is has to be a "value added", because it is obviously not the value itself (just ask Red Hat, or IBM).
Completely true. Teh Lunix has tried and failed to be Windows for over 15 years. The hilarious irony is that Teh Lunix On Teh Desktop developers try to blame their 1.5 decades of epic fail on Microsoft, as if Bill Gates' very existence is the reason they have no programming skill.
I don't understand why people are grabbing onto this "free software" idea as if it is an entitlement. I mean, what if I said all lamps should be free. How would that make sense? Yet with software somehow it is a great idea. What is next calls for "free health care" as if it to is a right? Grow up people, life requires you work and effort, it is insane to assume otherwise, because doing so means you are a selfish prick living off of other people's work and efforts.
Respect the Constitution
The only real innovation they do is making each new version of Windows more bloated than the previous version
You cannot believe that
Visual Studio (It is one of the best, if not the best IDE out there and is reasonably priced. OK, yes I do use Eclipse, but VS is much more solid, cleaner and has great features that speed development/troubleshooting.)
Exchange (Hands down better for office resource management and scheduling than any other product out there.
Respect the Constitution
In other words, "We see the train coming, but we aren't going to do anything to modify our business strategy and are instead just going to stay in the middle of the tracks and get clobbered." It is frustrating to read ignorance from people who are in charge of billions of dollars in operating revenue. Change is inevitable and either you recognize that and get with the program, or you attempt to fight and it get taken apart.
I always hate to try to predict the future, but it seems to me like most of the "killer apps" for the commerical world have already been developed. There are only so many ways to efficiently do business, a limited number of ways to effectively collaborate, a fairly limited number of communication channels, etc. The applications to get things done have already been developed. Those applications are the office suites, the email applications, the webservers with their wiki's and document respositories, the databases to glue everything together. For the most part, it is already all there. The foundation has been laid. Most of what is taking place right now is polish and fine tuning. Any lead that Microsoft has will continue to decline as competitors continue to improve upon the foundation that is already there.
I am in the opinion of some, very pro-linux. I advocate it whenever possible. However, with respect to this article, its totally up to Microsoft to decide how it wants to operate. I for one don't really care if there is an open-source version of their windows software. They have chosen a business model that is completely closed. Its highly proprietary, and quite expensive. They make billions on it, and in related fashion, don't spend any more on it than they have to (they don't innovate unless they have to, in spite of claims otherwise). Its a common business stance. If you have a monopoly (or near monopoly, however artificially created), you need not innovate as you already have nearly all of the market. Innovation is therefore a needless expense, and should be avoided (shareholders by US law expect nothing less). Witness Internet Exploder 6 --unaltered for more than 7? years till Firefox 2.0 came along. With Firefox 2.0, IE was rapidly losing market share, and Microsoft had to put the old teams back together (if possible), and get people looking at near decade-old code. Its likely that Microsoft could make money if they went Open Source with windows, albeit not nearly as much as they currently do with windows, and its true that people would be able to audit their software (something not currently possible). In spite of all this, it truly is Microsofts own business whether they go open or not. I really truly don't care. I don't accept people trying to coerce Microsoft into making it open either.
At the risk of being flamed to the 9th circle of hell here on /. lets be honest with ourselves, Linux = innovative. Open Office = pretty blatant rip off. Microsoft has a point. They innovated their way to dominance over Word Perfect with Word, and they innovated their way to dominance over Lotus 123 with Excell. And Open Office is just a rip off of the Office suite, plain and simple. That being said, its one hell of a good one. And yes I fully acknowledge that MSFT has indeed ripped off its fair share, as well as used its monopoly to, well monopolize... but they did not get to where they are out of pure evil. They actually did some good things along the way, and one of them was Office (well, at least until the most recent version).
... we have to get beyond this childish "my idea" bullshit.
UNIX borrows from archaic systems, Mac borrows from PARC and UNIX, OS/2 borrows from PARC and Mac, Windows borrows from Mac and OS/2 and UNIX, GNOME and KDE borrows from Mac and Windows, Windows and Linux borrow from each other ad infinitum.
Anyone still keeping track are STUPID LITTLE RETARDS. Just get back to your code, now.
By taking the name of the popular operating system 'windows' and replacing the last bit with 'blows' (which is a colloquialism meaning 'bad' or 'inferior') you've just given the name a whole new meaning, while not really changing the sound of the word too much! this is the epitome of both wit and humour! other highly amusing (and often underused) slag terms are 'windoze' (doze meaning 'light sleep' or 'knap') and {'M$'} (which usually stands for MicroSoft, but in this case, the 'S' is deliciously replaced w
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
".NET Framework (The concept of the CLR for multiple languages .."
..
.. IDE out there .."
..
.."
.. :)
A virtual machine + a cross-compiler + an interpreted mode, like in BASIC
".Visual Studio
Yea, it's an IDE with losts of pre-fabricated bits, great for RAD development, as long as you don't know what you're doing. God forbid you actually have to look at the code
".Exchange
A GUI email + collaboration client, I don't use it, I've seen the staff use it, they're so busy updating their little boxes that they don't have time to do any real work
davecb5620@gmail.com