Slashdot Mirror
How The Web Was Almost Won
radiator wrote to us with the latest writing from Tim O'Reilly, currently running on Salon. Tim, as always, does a great job writing, this time dealing with the Microsoft trial, the server market, and how close we really came to an Internet ruled by Microsoft.
That crippling of NT-Workstation never created as much outrage as I thought it should. Beyond the usual anti-competive bundling, they got caught repeatedly and blatantly lying about the "added features" of NT-Server.
Speaking of not getting attention, I was amazed that Salon's recent "How Slashdot Will Destroy Society" article didn't rate a mention here. I wrote up a comment as soon as I saw the story, and was surprised that it wasn't linked here.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Back to my comments now - he's right about everything except one. Microsoft is winning hand over fist in the intranet market. By standardizing on one browser, one OS, and one platform, companies can more easily deploy things onto the intranet - add hooks to MS-word documents, place Powerpoint presentations and Excel worksheets about company performance on the intranet, and do collaborative projects.
By combining "directory" functionality into NT5 and W2K like LDAP only a thousand-fold more complex, Microsoft will gain in the intranet market what it lost in the internet market - control over the protocols and clients. They have a solid browser now... a full-featured office suite that blows the competition out of the water (hey - I don't care what you think about Microsoft; MSO is a damn good product, minus that damned Clippy guy).
The war is very much still on. We can't keep the internet open forever if all the networks connecting to it have Microsoft as their gatekeeper.
--
Certainly, NT/IIS is faster than Linux/Apache at the extreme high end. But it's considerably less reliable, the OS has a greater overhead (both $ and speed :), and requires more time to maintain. In other words, you might save a few bucks on hardware, but you aren't getting a better deal.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
O'Reilly makes a number of contentions that simply don't follow, or that are colored by his obvious resentment of the success of IIS. I respect his books (bought two of them yesterday), but not this.
:)
Judge Jackson's analysis completely avoided the server side of the equation -- and it is the server which has turned out to be the real next-generation platform.[snip]Yet the most interesting new applications of the past few years don't reside on the PC at all, but on remote Web servers. I'm talking about Amazon.com, eBay, E-Trade, Yahoo Maps and so on.
I'm blinking but the words I'm reading don't change. Is O'Reilly expressing regret that Judge Jackson won't prevent Microsoft from growing its share in the server market? Excuse me, but Microsoft only has about a quarter of the world's web servers. They are decidedly an underdog. But because Tim prefers Linux, he wants to see MS legally crippled in every possible market, regardless of whether they enjoy any sort of dominance. This is where anti-trust can get ugly. Once the giant stumbles, the feeding frenzy begins. Everybody wants to have legal protection against competition, regardless of whether they personally have been wronged. Yes, Microsoft did a lot of bad things on the Internet and with OEM's and it will be punished. But web servers?
Microsoft argued, quite rightly, that it had the right to create two different versions of NT, with different price points, and different functionality. [snip] Microsoft's public rationale for the policy -- that it was protecting its customers because NT Workstation was not suitable for use as a server operating system -- was proven false by my colleague, former O'Reilly editor Andrew Schulman (working with Mark Russinovich). Shulman and Russinovich demonstrated that it was possible to convert NT Workstation to NT Server by changing only a few registry entries.
This proves exactly nothing. I'm amazed that Tim O'Reilly, of all people, would think that when you buy commercial software you are actually paying for the bits on the CD. Of course you aren't! Those bits cost next to nothing intrinsically. You are paying for the license, which in turn is the software company's way of recouping the salaries of its developers, testers, and managers.
If you buy a license for NT Workstation instead of NT Server, then you are agreeing to pay for the workstation features, but not for the server features. Thus you get a lower rate because Microsoft agrees to ship you a more restrictive license at a discount. If they also ship you other bits on the disk, it is illegal (although maybe not unethical depending on how you view piracy) to use those bits because you didn't pay the premium for them. I can see why you might not agree with that practice, but I don't see why is this difficult to understand.
The main point is that in each case, Microsoft used its power over the operating system to tilt the playing field in its favor, doing its utmost to crush the competition in a hotly contested Internet application area.[snip]In the server arena, Microsoft used a very similar tactic; it bundled the IIS Web server software with the NT operating system and then created roadblocks and financial disincentives for NT users to use alternate server applications.
I just installed Win2k two days ago, and IIS was indeed an installation option. If I didn't want to use it, of course, I could always turn the bitch off with a single click on the checkbox (for those who haven't installed NT server before, this is just like unchecking the checkbox for "games" or "accessibility" in win98). Simple as that - there is no integration, nothing to get in the way of installing Apache or any other server you please. What O'Reilly really wanted was for Microsoft customers who pay the lesser license fee for Workstation could nonetheless have server capacities by buying a comptetitor's product which would deliberately re-enable NT server functions through the registry, thus subverting Microsoft's licensing paradigm. In this way, users have a dubiously legal fiscal incentive to buy O'Reilly's web server instead of Microsoft's because Microsoft makes them pay for the NT Server functions as well as the IIS. I really have trouble understanding why O'Reilly could think this is irresponsible of Microsoft. On the contrary, it seems an obvious act of aggression on the part of the third party web server companies who are facilitating the theft of a server license from MS. Now, again, whether you think stealing a license is wrong is entirely another matter. But it is illegal.
Microsoft's IIS is today the number two Web server -- with 25 percent market share to Apache's 54 percent, according to an October survey conducted by Netcraft. But for the Justice Department scrutiny, might not Microsoft have mounted an all-out attack next on the open source technologies and open protocols of the Web?
Please tell me how this could have happened. Is O'Reilly saying that Microsoft is going to change HTTP so that it only works on IIS? With 25% of the market share that sounds about as stupid as I can imagine. Or, will they "embrace and extend" server-side extensions so that certain rich webpages will run only on IIS? They've already been doing that for ages. It's called "Front Page Server Extensions" and all it does is allow the web admin to enhance the content of pages on that web server. Now why, oh why, would that be in any way unethical. It doesn't violate a standard because it's server side and the user sees only the end result, regardless of their browser. It is, to put it briefly and sweetly, a feature. If the competition doesn't have that feature, and if customers want it, then whose fault is that? Not Microsofts as far as I can see.
It reminds me a bit of World War II. France (Netscape) has fallen, and the Battle of Britain is being fought for the Web, with the stalwart resistance of the Apache Group holding up the juggernaut till the rest of the free world can get its act together. Whether Linux and the rest of the open source movement, or the Justice Department and the courts, play the role of America, I leave to history to determine.
Godwin's law makes its sooty appearance once again. Microsoft wants to gain market share for its IIS? Hmm... that reminds me a lot of HITLER!
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
when i was working in the unix shop of an unnamed popular web content provider a few years ago, M$ came to us with a proposal: they were rolling out a fancy new OS (win98), with this nifty new feature (activedesktop), and there was going to be a panel on the desktop with one-click access to 25 popular websites. we could have one of those spots, but we had to agree to include prominently in our site 4 of these 7 nifty new (and of course incompatible) web technologies M$ was pushing, and place an IE sticker on all our pages. prisoner's dilemma: do we say yes? can we afford not to say yes? we knew M$ was going to all the other content providers too, if they managed to make it so that all the users out there wouldn't be able to see our site, it would have been a mistake not to get on board when we had the opportunity.
notice that they never said "you must get rid of your SGI boxes, fire your unix jockeys, and burn your copies of netscape server", but that was effectively what they were saying. since these proprietary web extensions could of course only be served off of NT/IIS, we needed to buy new hardware, hire new admins and cgi coders, and how long can you afford to support parallel hardware and software development paths? eventually you dump that which you're not contractually obligated to M$ to support, and goodbye netscape server. (by the way, i notice that they are still serving some of their content off of netscape server, but i recognize none of the names in the Interactive Technology department, so i assume they all left for this reason.)
now, what if this site was the one reason you went online? (i'm sure this isn't the case, but map the analogy to your favorite site...) when they finally go M$, do you just give up browsing forever? or do you just knuckle under and go get IE?
they put pressure on the browser/server wars from every direction, brilliant, evil, but not necessarily illegal.
It's irrelevant what MS stuff comes with NT. Obviously you get the good stuff if you pay the big bucks -- that's always true.
The issue is that MS required you to effectively pay for their product in order to be able to use another product.
In other words, they realized that NT Workstation was much too viable a server platform using 3rd party daemons, and changed the license to make sure you were paying for the MS daemons. That's way more insidious than the bullshit about including a browser in the operating system -- clearly the webserver is not part of the OS here, but if you're going to use anybody's, you've got to pay for MS's.
I'm not sure if I consider that unethical or illegal. It doesn't really matter. No company is going to put up with that -- it's too direct an example of the Free software rationale: if you buy it from one vendor, that vendor can screw you. This has been demonstrated time and time again in the computer industry, starting with the original "renters" of mainframe technology in the 60s.
I could not in good faith recommend a completely proprietary system (i.e. one which could not be replaced by an equivalent system provided by another vendor if necessary) today. It's too dangerous -- no company should be willing to take that risk.
[Argl, I mis-posted the first. Anyway, as Lando Calrissian said, here goes nothing.]
One simple way for Microsoft to change and break Apache's dominance of the web server market is to introduce 'feature creep' with IIS and NT, by integrating new features into the OS and IIS that aren't accessible to other servers.
An example was given with intranet corporate web posting. Sharing files and documents over a corporate intranet is the way to go. Email exchange and document sharing can be made much easier if it's all simply accessible with just a few mouseclicks from your Win98 desktop.
Now, everybody will want to put his drafts and whitepapers online quickly - and hey, look, there's a button just for that in Office2002.
And it all integrates nicely with Win2k and IIS. Why run Apache, which doesn't support all those nifty features and makes it 'more difficult' for admins to install and run it? If the users clamor for it, they'll get it, right?
After all, having admins mess about with incompatible stuff will annoy the management - this is all productivity loss, remember? Can't we just go with The Standard?
That'll be the first step.
Then, how does all that integrate with the outside world? Of course everybody in the firm will be using IE6 or 7, since it came with the OS and servers, and supports all the funky features Word2002 and IIS offer, 'for enhanced productivity and ease-of-use'. After all, it's all in the name of innovation - and annoyingly enough, it would make many things easier. But back to our example.
To tie everything in with the outside world, the corporate VPN and WAN, we need for our servers to communicate with each other. For instance so the offices everywhere can share the same documents. And send corporate email back and forth. And all of that ties in nicely with Exchange2k and all other corporate network solutions. From MS. All run on Win2k, with MS databases at the end.
After the internal structures of a business work so nicely together, we'll want the customers to be able to co-operate with all this. So we're adding special features. IE has an market dominance, anyway, and it ties in with everything else we're running.
Oh, you don't run MS? We're sorry, but our web logs and in-depth market research have shown that 92% of our customers are from home and corporate environments, which in turn mostly run IE. I'm afraid we can't support niche systems, Sir. We don't have the time, you understand?
This is how the web will be won. Unless Mozilla, Navigator 5, Konqueror, and Apache manage to impose a client-side as well as the existing server-side architecture on the market - an architecture that MS won't be able to break.
Does anyone remember 'Chrome', MS proprietary web enhancements? Or ActiveX-only pages? Guess what - if MS manages to fight back in the server market, it'll flood it with proprietary tech that will be tied to its OS, its servers, and its browsers. And then it will be all over.
So don't stand around idly, but go over to the Konqueror and Mozilla pages, and contribute. Even non-coders can write man and help pages and contribute to design decisions. Even you can add bug reports. Everybody can help - but as long as the infighting and holy wars continue, MS can only win.
And do you really want to see the message
Sorry, only for MS-enhanced browsers
on your screen? They can win it, and they will win it from the server side. We're already retreating in mass from the client side. Tim O'Reilly isn't an idiot, and he isn't a firebrand - he makes valid points: The entire MS case, and the FoF will be utterly pointless if the market decides to vote for MS servers in the end.
Apologies if this sounds inflammatory - I don't advocate that all MS products are bad, some of their software is awesome - but the way they market things goes against everything I believe in.
Alex
"Your telnet is talking to itself. Welcome to the wacky world of TCP/IP."
This could be the future for all of you radical non-Microsoft web users out there.
"Slapping people is fun." - Starla Grady
The two have some very strong similarities. Primarily, they both thirsted for power on a very large scale. Hitler wanted to rule for 'a thousand years', where Gates wanted to run MS software on 'every computer'. In both cases, they accumulated people around them which magnified their arrogance and destructiveness. :P
Hitler was filled with vengefulness towards the world due to the Versailles Treaty, and his main thesis was getting revenge for that 'insult' to the German people, and indeed the treaty was a great blow to German pride and helped create conditions for the Third Reich.
Gates was filled with vengefulness towards the world due to his Altair Basic tapes being wildly pirated, and his main theme was getting revenge for that 'insult' by never letting anyone 'steal' from him again, by making his software so necessary that he could never again be treated as just another hacker to take ideas from. Gates wanted control, and to punish the 'hacker', and indeed nobody'd asked his permission or opinion on the copying of his port of Basic: the hackers 'liberated' it instead, enraging Gates and setting the tone for his style of technology, always centralising control of the software somewhere other than the computer user, a path of vengeance that continues to this day, and colors all of Microsoft's technological developments right down to the ideas for 'Office on the Web'.
Honestly, when you look at the two men in terms of being driven by vengeance and hunger for power and control, they are very similar indeed. They even generate comparable 'reality distortion fields', in that their vengeances are so fierce that neither was an uncomplicatedly charismatic leader: in both cases the man was compelling but alarming at the same time, causing a polarisation between the hardcore devotees ('brownshirts' and 'microsofties') and others who would be disconcerted by the ferocity of the movement and try, fatally, to be quiet and hope things would settle down.
There are profound and fascinating parallels between the men and their movements, and to deny this is foolish and shortsighted. Microsoft is far too recent to expect these things can be discussed sensibly- they will never be discussed dispassionately, because on the one hand mass murder and Master Race theorising, and on the other hand crushing of all choice and Industry Standard theorising, are ugly things, and it's shocking to consider what each concept means and how far the respective movements were willing to take their viewpoints. We all know what the Nazis were willing to do, and conversely, Microsoft was and is actively trying to create a digital Third World, and literally disenfranchise and exile anyone not ready to first go all-MS in all things, and more disturbingly, to equally punish those not willing or able to spend substantial amounts of money keeping pace with an arbitrarily set technological limit that serves nobody but MS.
It's all very well that MS isn't out to kill anybody, but when their whole approach is to punish 'holdouts' and keep things unstable and madly upgrading, we are talking about digitally disenfranchising most of the world, as very very few human beings can afford to drop as much money on technology as MS requires. The ability to run dos or Linux or old Macintoshes means absolutely squat when the entire infrastructure of the Net is continually changed to lock these aging tools out, and as Net access becomes ever more important, we are very much talking about the establishment of a technological ruling class with the only access to information, influence, possibly the only class allowed to participate in newly invented online politics, possibly the only class allowed to use certain types of electronic banking (already a problem for non Windows consumers) or travel booking or any of a number of other resources.
If a country decided to invade the US and forbid the poor from using banks, voting, travelling, and set up a class of Americans which were allowed full privileges, while everyone else was denied those privileges, it would be considered an act of war.
Why is it so different when Bill Gates consistently moves in the direction of this exact state of affairs? In what way is Gates' obsession with control and establishing a privileged class of Windows users, with holdouts punished and ideally locked off the Net entirely in the long run, so different from the motivations of a politician acting in the interests of their own privileged class and trying to punish and suppress all other classes of people? You can't say it comes down to killing people: even before the Nazis were killing people, they were out to restrict rights and punish those not of the privileged class. How is this different from what Gates does in the technological sphere? In the modern, Internet age, how can anyone claim that the technological sphere has no civic relevance, or significance to a citizen?
I guess I am saying this: you're wrong, because Hitler and Gates are far more similar in motivation than you're ready to admit. Hitler was not simply a frothing psychopath, he was a particular _kind_ of frothing psychopath, one with a lust for vengeance and the ability to inspire the tyranny of a privileged class. Gates doesn't lack the lust for vengeance, or the ability to foster a privileged class, and he is every bit as hungry for control, plus he arguably has more money than the Third Reich had. Downplaying this is stupid, as Hitler's dead but we're still stuck with Gates.