I think Apple isn't all that interested in 'taking over' the high-end cellphone market as much as they're interested in defining a new category of communications device that's not thought of as a cellphone.
This thing is just a first stab, and it's being aimed at the high-end cellphone market, if only because that's a market that exists, and to communicate, you've got to have people to communicate with. But perhaps Apple's betting that, though it may make phone calls, the gadget of the future won't be though of as a phone.
As long as Tivo or your hypothetical router manufacturer releases the source code to any changes they make to the GPL software they use, there's no problem. You're continuing to receive the benefits of whatever improvements they make to your code. That's what the GPL's supposed to be for. Businesses trying to make money off of GPL'd software will try all kinds of business models. Some will succeed, and some will fail.
Nobody's forcing you to buy their hardware, and if they want to sell loss-leader hardware using GPL code, that should be their business. Just because you *want* to take a cheap router and use it as a general purpose computer (or whatever) doesn't mean you have that right. And just because that piece of hardware uses GPL software, that doesn't change everything.
Now, if Dell started selling computers that ran 'Dell Linux' and couldn't be upgraded, I guess that would be a bad thing. But such a computer ought not to succeed in the marketplace. What's more likely is that they'll start selling ultra-DMA-infested Windows computers that can't run anything buy Windows. But the GPL won't help you there, either.
Microsoft doesn't want to release proprietary software for anybody's Linux distro.
What they want is to make Linux non-free. They want to scare IT managers into only using commercial distros that don't cost much less than Windows. You see, they know that their whole TCO argument is bogus. Windows is probably not cheaper TCO-wise in many situations today, and in the future, the argument will become less and less valid, not more so.
But if they can make sure that businesses (think they) have to buy Linux to use it, then they know how to compete with it.
If they have to release some proprietary stuff on Novell's distro in order to keep the FUD alive, they they may do just that. But there's nothing in their announcement that suggests that they feel the need to do that. They're gonna 'help' Novell interoperate with Windows, but that just means "if you feel you must use Linux, we'll make sure it can be made to work with Active Directory". That just kills 2 birds with one stone. Preventing any migration to NDS, which is cross-platform, and removing the Linux price advantage. I think they even get some royalty payment.
All of which is targeted at one ultimate goal... elimination of the Linux threat.
So they continue to put a lot of effort into IE because 'Windows is a platform', and users and developers expect it to be there.
Well, users expect a browser to be there - they don't give a damn whether it's IE, FF or Netscape. Developers, of course, do care. But in that case, he's just saying that 'we got developers hooked on IE by promising it would be there, so now it needs to be there because of those developers'. A bit of circular logic that ignores the fact that the reason they made the promise in the first place was to kill the competition.
But the question remains a serious one. With a good renderer available for free for them via Gecko, why not simply base IE on that, and provide the necessary backward compatibility for developers based on wrappers? Well, the most logical answer is that they don't *wan*t to adhere to standards, because they know that'll result in websites that require IE - (i.e. Windows). It's the monopoly, stupid.
Another point. He says they IE7 took so long to appear because they weren't working on it. Essentially, they had all these OS security holes to fill - and Vista to develop, etc. Well, doesn't that beg the question, why develop a web browser at all? If you don't have the resources to maintain your browser, keep up with the latest standards and provide some modicum of a secure web browsing experience, why do it at all? IE is not a revenue stream, it has lots of anticompetitive and negative image baggage, and is not best of breed. Web developers would like them more for supporting the same standards as all the other browsers than for any other development aids IE might provide.
I think the reason Microsoft wants to bundle their own anti-virus software into Vista is not to add the money that Symantec is making to the MS bottom line. Rather, I think they want to sell Vista as 'the most secure OS in the world' and
1. Drive a healthy upgrade market based on that claim - both for the upgrade revenue stream and to accomplish whatever other MS agenda items are tied to getting the lion's share of PC users running Vista. 2. Drive a nail into the (valid) Linux and OS/X claims of being more secure than Windows.
They may actually make Vista more secure than XP in addition to providing built-in anti-virus checking, but it still won't be secure enough to prevent the problem of running as root, which many users will continue to do. But throw in a virus scanner, and they can claim that's not a problem (whether or not that's a valid claim).
The argument against nVidia and ATI opening up their drivers was always that it would give other vendors a headstart in cloning their chipsets. They'd be able to tell how they work (from a hardware API level at least), and have a driver ready to go if they copied that API.
Now that there's a working Intel 3D driver with source, does this mean that other vendors might start making cheap clones of the Intel graphics chips? Or was the above argument really a red herring.
And if they did, what's to stop them from making chips that use the same API, but work much better?
Well, somebody's been listening to Mr. Limbaugh, I guess.
Heresay, exaggeration and overall bullshit.
Clinton: Treason's a pretty serious charge (unless you're an Ann Coulter fan). I think lying about reasons to invade a country might qualify, but taking contributions from a Chinese guy (I assume that's what you're talking about) probably doesn't.
Kennedy: Drunkard - probably. Thief - ya got me there. Murderer - a bit of a stretch. We all know about Chapaquiddik. I think it was an accident, though. Murder's a pretty specific thing, Miss Coulter.
Kerry: Yep, he married a rich widow. So what? Lying? Oh, I guess you mean the Swift Boat charges. You're kidding, right? War profiteer - never heard that one, but considering the source...
I notice that you listed a slew of desktop apps that you run on Windows.
Interestingly, the article has PHP and Apache icons to define its category. Sure, Microsoft wants you to run your Apache and PHP applications on Windows. What choice do they have? If you're already building Apache/PHP apps, you're probably building them on Linux. Any move to Windows is a net gain for Microsoft, and a net loss for Linux.
But OOo. It'll be a cold day in Hell before Microsoft recommends that on Windows. Or Firefox, or Thunderbird or any of the other desktop apps listed here. Of course, most of them run great on Windows (in fact, often better than on Linux, but don't get me started there...), so if MS were really serious about encouraging OSS for Windows, they'd be on board with these apps too.
Anyway, if you've gotta run Windows, lots of OSS desktop apps are available, and you oughta use 'em. But, don't expect Microsoft to tell you that.
And that voulme pricing should top out at, say, 10000 copies. At some (reasonable) level, there's no more efficiency to be had by buying more copies, and all copies should be sold at the same price to all OEM's. Not only is that basic fairness, it also cuts down on the barrier to new OEM's entering the market.
Also, there should be no other side agreements like 'Windows license with every machine we sell'. And co-advertising agreements (or other stealth discounts) based on restricting what the OEM is allowed to sell should not be allowed.
None of this is punative. Just reasonable terms for sale of a monopoly commodity.
The issue is ODF. OpenOffice is a powerful, free implementation, and you'd certainly want to mention that, but the current buzz (to the extent that there is a buzz) is about governments mandating ODF because it's an *open* format. The story here isn't "it's free". The story is "it's open", and the challenge is to get the word out about why that matters.
Then that 'other' story about Massachusets starts to make sense. Then it gets in the news. Then you get all the free advertising you could want, plus invites to CNN, etc. to debate the issue.
Exactly. Sounds like what the target audience for this kind of thing really wants is an iMac clone. All in one hardware with minimal cable clutter. Moveable, without being truly portable. And cheaper than an iMac, not more expensive, which going for a laptop form factor is likely to make these things.
The AAC lock-in is the only thing I hate about my iPod. It's supposedly possible to play AAC's on Linux, but I haven't been able to get it to work, even after downloading gtkpod, faac, faad, xine, amarok1.4, etc. And you're right that AAC lock-in makes 'plays for sure' a joke.
Not that microsoft lock-in'd be any better, but what if Microsoft were to write a utility to seemlessly convert and/or copy your exisiting iTunes library from AAC (including DRM-AAC) to WMA?
That might work for Microsoft. Of course, the DMCA would probably make it illegal for them to do this. Do you think Microsoft might count on offshore 'talent' to build such a utility. Like 'count with cash'?
And what if Apple finally did open up iTunes to other hardware vendors? Would that fend of a direct challenge from Microsoft. Would Creative build an iTunes compatible and try to compete with Apple? Would Apple let them?
Taking Moore's law into account, Sony could probably issue an updated PS2 that comes close to the new generation consoles in 'user experience' and costs about the same as a current generation PS2.
That might cannibalize the PS3, but then again, if the PS3 is priced to appeal only to hardcore gamers (or people looking for a cheap blu-ray player), it might make sense to have an entry out there that is more competitive with the Xbox 360 and the Wii. A PS2 with a faster processor, more memory and disk might fill the bill nicely. And with that existing catalog...
I was running Firefox on Windows 95 until last August when I was given an iPod for my birthday and had to buy a new XP box to use it.
My old 233MHz PII box ran Firefox fine under Win95, and did ok as a dual-boot Linux box too. Of course the new Athlon64 box screams, but I still saw no *need* to upgrade until I had to do it.
Does someone who works on 'shared source' end up polluted by their access to MS source code? Can they no longer contribute to competing open source projects without being accused of stealing MS IP?
If so, it's a pretty lousy deal. Give away your code for free to Microsoft. Make it unavailable for use in other contexts, and give up your freedom to contribute *other* code to other projects.
Not only does this plugin allow MS Office users to use ODF, it does it with their existing MS Office licenses. Microsoft's OpenXML would have required an Office upgrade in order to achieve interoperability. And if they had implemented ODF in the upcoming Office release, this plugin probably wouldn't have been written, so again, you'd have needed to buy an Office upgrade to play.
Now there's interoperability with no revenue stream for Microsoft. Nice going, MS.
If Apple were to make it possible to port a WIN32 app to OS/X using winelib or something else, but providing hooks to allow the resulting app to have a native look and feel (if the developer were willing to exploit those hooks), then it could be a win-win.
Apple would get the Windows apps, and Windows devs who would really like to build native OS/X apps would have a way to feasibly do that. Some 'porting' work required, but far short of a total rewrite.
That would be really great.
And if they were to release the resulting technology back to the WINE folks so the same thing could be done to get a 'native' Linux port, well that would be fabulous.
And once the market shares of OS/X and Linux are there, then we can worry about migration paths to truly portable apps (via QT, etc). Or not, if they do a good enough job of making WIN32 'native'.
Sony screwed up royally with its rootkit fiasco. No question there.
But at least we know what Sony was trying to do with their rootkit. They wanted to protect their music from illegal copying and chose a heavy-handed, dumbass way to do it.
On the other hand, Microsoft can do anything Sony can do with a rootkit directly from Windows. And more. And beyond wanting to 'help' Sony and others protect their music, they also want Windows to 'help' Microsoft defeat its competitors in server OS's and web publishing, search, etc.
I don't doubt that Microsoft's internal documentation of their protocols might be lacking. Some of it may indeed exist only inside programmers' heads and the source code. So here's a solution.
Have Microsoft provide the Samba team with a contact to answer all questions they have about the way these things work. No NDA's, no license fees, just the info. Then let the open source samba code act as 'non-poisoned' documentation.
Ultimately, a Windows vs. Mac CPU benchmark on the same hardware would amount to a comparison of the code generated by the respective compilers.
Don't know how fast the code generated by the Visual C++ compiler is, but I've read that the proprietary Intel compiler generates much faster code than gcc, which (I think) is the default compiler for OS/X apps these days. Does that bode poorly for the Mac in any benchmark wars?
It seems to me that it would be great for Apple if they were to license FairPlay. While there may be a few people that switch from Windows to Mac's due to some kind of ipod halo effect, the bigger benefit is that ubiquity of the ipod could be used to prevent Windows-only media formats from making Macs less useful.
I don't know if Macs currently support WMA, but even if they do, it'd be nice to control a standard for once.
And how would it hurt Apple to license FairPlay to their competitors? Yes, it might make it easier to try a different player, but the ipod seems to be the player of choice due to its merits, not due to file format lock-in. Apple certainly doesn't charge unreasonable prices for ipods. Mostly they price them so that users won't be (too) mad when they find out it's easier to buy a new one than to fix a broken one.
And while they're at it, why not let 'em play OGG's too?
Before the election, when people talked about the potential for fraud with electronic voting, it was obvious that the only 'check' on the system was the exit polls. If they consistently went in a different direction than the official results, that said something fishy was likely to be going on.
Well, in Florida, that's exactly what happened.
Now, that doesn't mean the election was definitely stolen, but it's a pretty good indication that the chosen method of vote tallying is problematic. No audit trail and results out of sync with the next best way to measure them. In that light, what's a conspiracy theorist to do? Can you blame them?
The problem isn't bundling directory services with the server. It's that the windows client comes pre-built with an Active Directory client. Because of the desktop monopoly, that client makes it easier to go with a Windows Server/AD combo than, say, a Novell Directory Server.
That's the kind of bundling that's illegal. They use their desktop monopoly to define a de-facto standard that only Microsoft Servers can work with. That's why the EU is demaning that they open up the protocols.
That's also why there's a problem with bundling Windows media codecs with the desktop OS. It's not a problem that they bundle a media player, it's a problem that the monopoly desktop system comes with codecs that nobody else can code to. Again, if they're going to bundle codecs with the monopoly desktop system, they should be required to publish how to work with them. No problem with their being there. Just the fact that nobody else's server systems can talk to them, and nobody else can build a competing client system that can support them (without often-imperfect reverse engineering).
It's really an easy issue. The EU has it (mostly) right. Just open up the client protocols and compete on the merits. Then there's no problem. Or unbundle. The only problem with the EU is if they'll allow MS to charge for the 'open' protocols and so exclude open source implementations. That wouldn't solve the problem, since open source is the only viable competitor out there.
And finally, if they hadn't broken the law, no government would likely be requiring them to open up anything. But they did. Grow up and face the punishment. Windows isn't going to go away because of a little competition. There are enough windows-only apps out there to keep Windows secure on a huge number of desktops for decades.
Linus rightly points out that a total rejection of DRM is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There are legitimate reasons to lock down hardware. That doesn't mean there aren't nasty side-effects.
What about that other cliche, the chicken and the egg? Successful development of Linux was only possible because there was a ton of non-DRM'd hardware out there. That hardware was designed to run Windows, and the fact that Linux could be built to run on it is a happy coincidence. Imagine if Windows 95 required a 'Trusted Computing' platform. The manufacturers would have, for various reasons, produced hardware that could essentially only run Windows, and the fact that it couldn't run other, yet-to-be-developed operating systems would have been a total non issue to them. End result - no Linux.
So, fast forward to 2006 or 2007. The vast majority of computers are built to only run DRM OS's. It becomes hard to find a reasonably-priced PC that can run non-signed code. Red Hat might be okay for the time being, but eventually the pool of amateur contributers dries up. Nobody can do the initial experimenting to get involved without a deep commitment to being involved in the first place. I guess if RH doesn't want to support desktop users, Fedora could still put out a signed binary so that people could perhaps try it (if it's still possible to shrink the NTFS on this new DRM box). But with more and more friction, the Open Source movement gradually grinds to a halt.
This doesn't make Linus wrong, it just means that practially, there's no way 'Trusted Computing' doesn't work against Open Source.
The whole point of the EU's interoperability requirement was so that people could build compatible systems. Nobody want's to clone Windows (or at least that isn't an EU requirement). And just because somebody wants to be able to serve files to Windows desktops doesn't mean that they want to steal Microsoft's intellectual property. They just want to be able to support 90+ % of the systems out there. And maybe if MS hadn't broken the law, they wouldn't be forced to allow that. But they did.
Offering the source code with draconian licensing terms doesn't do it. They just need to release detailed specs for the bits of Windows that are required to interoperate with the system. That means the filesystem layout, networking protocols, and I'd argue, codecs that are 'built in' to windows enough that website dev's use them as 'always available' facilities.
And the specs should be made available for free. No restrictions on use. That's the whole point. If MS has the ability through its monopoly position to set de-facto standards, they should not be able to use those standards to further entrench their monopoly. A requirement to publish the specs would remove that incentive.
This offering is a big old red herring, and the EU should reject it.
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I think Apple isn't all that interested in 'taking over' the high-end cellphone market as much as they're interested in defining a new category of communications device that's not thought of as a cellphone.
This thing is just a first stab, and it's being aimed at the high-end cellphone market, if only because that's a market that exists, and to communicate, you've got to have people to communicate with. But perhaps Apple's betting that, though it may make phone calls, the gadget of the future won't be though of as a phone.
As long as Tivo or your hypothetical router manufacturer releases the source code to any changes they make to the GPL software they use, there's no problem. You're continuing to receive the benefits of whatever improvements they make to your code. That's what the GPL's supposed to be for. Businesses trying to make money off of GPL'd software will try all kinds of business models. Some will succeed, and some will fail.
Nobody's forcing you to buy their hardware, and if they want to sell loss-leader hardware using GPL code, that should be their business. Just because you *want* to take a cheap router and use it as a general purpose computer (or whatever) doesn't mean you have that right. And just because that piece of hardware uses GPL software, that doesn't change everything.
Now, if Dell started selling computers that ran 'Dell Linux' and couldn't be upgraded, I guess that would be a bad thing. But such a computer ought not to succeed in the marketplace. What's more likely is that they'll start selling ultra-DMA-infested Windows computers that can't run anything buy Windows. But the GPL won't help you there, either.
Microsoft doesn't want to release proprietary software for anybody's Linux distro.
What they want is to make Linux non-free. They want to scare IT managers into only using commercial distros that don't cost much less than Windows. You see, they know that their whole TCO argument is bogus. Windows is probably not cheaper TCO-wise in many situations today, and in the future, the argument will become less and less valid, not more so.
But if they can make sure that businesses (think they) have to buy Linux to use it, then they know how to compete with it.
If they have to release some proprietary stuff on Novell's distro in order to keep the FUD alive, they they may do just that. But there's nothing in their announcement that suggests that they feel the need to do that. They're gonna 'help' Novell interoperate with Windows, but that just means "if you feel you must use Linux, we'll make sure it can be made to work with Active Directory". That just kills 2 birds with one stone. Preventing any migration to NDS, which is cross-platform, and removing the Linux price advantage. I think they even get some royalty payment.
All of which is targeted at one ultimate goal... elimination of the Linux threat.
So they continue to put a lot of effort into IE because 'Windows is a platform', and users and developers expect it to be there.
Well, users expect a browser to be there - they don't give a damn whether it's IE, FF or Netscape. Developers, of course, do care. But in that case, he's just saying that 'we got developers hooked on IE by promising it would be there, so now it needs to be there because of those developers'. A bit of circular logic that ignores the fact that the reason they made the promise in the first place was to kill the competition.
But the question remains a serious one. With a good renderer available for free for them via Gecko, why not simply base IE on that, and provide the necessary backward compatibility for developers based on wrappers? Well, the most logical answer is that they don't *wan*t to adhere to standards, because they know that'll result in websites that require IE - (i.e. Windows). It's the monopoly, stupid.
Another point. He says they IE7 took so long to appear because they weren't working on it. Essentially, they had all these OS security holes to fill - and Vista to develop, etc. Well, doesn't that beg the question, why develop a web browser at all? If you don't have the resources to maintain your browser, keep up with the latest standards and provide some modicum of a secure web browsing experience, why do it at all? IE is not a revenue stream, it has lots of anticompetitive and negative image baggage, and is not best of breed. Web developers would like them more for supporting the same standards as all the other browsers than for any other development aids IE might provide.
I think the reason Microsoft wants to bundle their own anti-virus software into Vista is not to add the money that Symantec is making to the MS bottom line. Rather, I think they want to sell Vista as 'the most secure OS in the world' and
1. Drive a healthy upgrade market based on that claim - both for the upgrade revenue stream and to accomplish whatever other MS agenda items are tied to getting the lion's share of PC users running Vista.
2. Drive a nail into the (valid) Linux and OS/X claims of being more secure than Windows.
They may actually make Vista more secure than XP in addition to providing built-in anti-virus checking, but it still won't be secure enough to prevent the problem of running as root, which many users will continue to do. But throw in a virus scanner, and they can claim that's not a problem (whether or not that's a valid claim).
The argument against nVidia and ATI opening up their drivers was always that it would give other vendors a headstart in cloning their chipsets. They'd be able to tell how they work (from a hardware API level at least), and have a driver ready to go if they copied that API.
Now that there's a working Intel 3D driver with source, does this mean that other vendors might start making cheap clones of the Intel graphics chips? Or was the above argument really a red herring.
And if they did, what's to stop them from making chips that use the same API, but work much better?
Well, somebody's been listening to Mr. Limbaugh, I guess.
Heresay, exaggeration and overall bullshit.
Clinton: Treason's a pretty serious charge (unless you're an Ann Coulter fan). I think lying about reasons to invade a country might qualify, but taking contributions from a Chinese guy (I assume that's what you're talking about) probably doesn't.
Kennedy: Drunkard - probably. Thief - ya got me there. Murderer - a bit of a stretch. We all know about Chapaquiddik. I think it was an accident, though. Murder's a pretty specific thing, Miss Coulter.
Kerry: Yep, he married a rich widow. So what? Lying? Oh, I guess you mean the Swift Boat charges. You're kidding, right? War profiteer - never heard that one, but considering the source...
Who modded this post insightful?
I notice that you listed a slew of desktop apps that you run on Windows.
Interestingly, the article has PHP and Apache icons to define its category. Sure, Microsoft wants you to run your Apache and PHP applications on Windows. What choice do they have? If you're already building Apache/PHP apps, you're probably building them on Linux. Any move to Windows is a net gain for Microsoft, and a net loss for Linux.
But OOo. It'll be a cold day in Hell before Microsoft recommends that on Windows. Or Firefox, or Thunderbird or any of the other desktop apps listed here. Of course, most of them run great on Windows (in fact, often better than on Linux, but don't get me started there...), so if MS were really serious about encouraging OSS for Windows, they'd be on board with these apps too.
Anyway, if you've gotta run Windows, lots of OSS desktop apps are available, and you oughta use 'em. But, don't expect Microsoft to tell you that.
And that voulme pricing should top out at, say, 10000 copies. At some (reasonable) level, there's no more efficiency to be had by buying more copies, and all copies should be sold at the same price to all OEM's. Not only is that basic fairness, it also cuts down on the barrier to new OEM's entering the market.
Also, there should be no other side agreements like 'Windows license with every machine we sell'. And co-advertising agreements (or other stealth discounts) based on restricting what the OEM is allowed to sell should not be allowed.
None of this is punative. Just reasonable terms for sale of a monopoly commodity.
The issue is ODF. OpenOffice is a powerful, free implementation, and you'd certainly want to mention that, but the current buzz (to the extent that there is a buzz) is about governments mandating ODF because it's an *open* format. The story here isn't "it's free". The story is "it's open", and the challenge is to get the word out about why that matters.
Then that 'other' story about Massachusets starts to make sense. Then it gets in the news. Then you get all the free advertising you could want, plus invites to CNN, etc. to debate the issue.
Exactly. Sounds like what the target audience for this kind of thing really wants is an iMac clone. All in one hardware with minimal cable clutter. Moveable, without being truly portable. And cheaper than an iMac, not more expensive, which going for a laptop form factor is likely to make these things.
The AAC lock-in is the only thing I hate about my iPod. It's supposedly possible to play AAC's on Linux, but I haven't been able to get it to work, even after downloading gtkpod, faac, faad, xine, amarok1.4, etc. And you're right that AAC lock-in makes 'plays for sure' a joke.
Not that microsoft lock-in'd be any better, but what if Microsoft were to write a utility to seemlessly convert and/or copy your exisiting iTunes library from AAC (including DRM-AAC) to WMA?
That might work for Microsoft. Of course, the DMCA would probably make it illegal for them to do this. Do you think Microsoft might count on offshore 'talent' to build such a utility. Like 'count with cash'?
And what if Apple finally did open up iTunes to other hardware vendors? Would that fend of a direct challenge from Microsoft. Would Creative build an iTunes compatible and try to compete with Apple? Would Apple let them?
Taking Moore's law into account, Sony could probably issue an updated PS2 that comes close to the new generation consoles in 'user experience' and costs about the same as a current generation PS2.
That might cannibalize the PS3, but then again, if the PS3 is priced to appeal only to hardcore gamers (or people looking for a cheap blu-ray player), it might make sense to have an entry out there that is more competitive with the Xbox 360 and the Wii. A PS2 with a faster processor, more memory and disk might fill the bill nicely. And with that existing catalog...
I was running Firefox on Windows 95 until last August when I was given an iPod for my birthday and had to buy a new XP box to use it.
My old 233MHz PII box ran Firefox fine under Win95, and did ok as a dual-boot Linux box too. Of course the new Athlon64 box screams, but I still saw no *need* to upgrade until I had to do it.
Does someone who works on 'shared source' end up polluted by their access to MS source code? Can they no longer contribute to competing open source projects without being accused of stealing MS IP?
If so, it's a pretty lousy deal. Give away your code for free to Microsoft. Make it unavailable for use in other contexts, and give up your freedom to contribute *other* code to other projects.
All for a chance at a free Xbox?
Not only does this plugin allow MS Office users to use ODF, it does it with their existing MS Office licenses. Microsoft's OpenXML would have required an Office upgrade in order to achieve interoperability. And if they had implemented ODF in the upcoming Office release, this plugin probably wouldn't have been written, so again, you'd have needed to buy an Office upgrade to play.
Now there's interoperability with no revenue stream for Microsoft. Nice going, MS.
If Apple were to make it possible to port a WIN32 app to OS/X using winelib or something else, but providing hooks to allow the resulting app to have a native look and feel (if the developer were willing to exploit those hooks), then it could be a win-win.
Apple would get the Windows apps, and Windows devs who would really like to build native OS/X apps would have a way to feasibly do that. Some 'porting' work required, but far short of a total rewrite.
That would be really great.
And if they were to release the resulting technology back to the WINE folks so the same thing could be done to get a 'native' Linux port, well that would be fabulous.
And once the market shares of OS/X and Linux are there, then we can worry about migration paths to truly portable apps (via QT, etc). Or not, if they do a good enough job of making WIN32 'native'.
Sony screwed up royally with its rootkit fiasco. No question there.
But at least we know what Sony was trying to do with their rootkit. They wanted to protect their music from illegal copying and chose a heavy-handed, dumbass way to do it.
On the other hand, Microsoft can do anything Sony can do with a rootkit directly from Windows. And more. And beyond wanting to 'help' Sony and others protect their music, they also want Windows to 'help' Microsoft defeat its competitors in server OS's and web publishing, search, etc.
Who would you trust?
I don't doubt that Microsoft's internal documentation of their protocols might be lacking. Some of it may indeed exist only inside programmers' heads and the source code. So here's a solution.
Have Microsoft provide the Samba team with a contact to answer all questions they have about the way these things work. No NDA's, no license fees, just the info. Then let the open source samba code act as 'non-poisoned' documentation.
Ultimately, a Windows vs. Mac CPU benchmark on the same hardware would amount to a comparison of the code generated by the respective compilers.
Don't know how fast the code generated by the Visual C++ compiler is, but I've read that the proprietary Intel compiler generates much faster code than gcc, which (I think) is the default compiler for OS/X apps these days. Does that bode poorly for the Mac in any benchmark wars?
It seems to me that it would be great for Apple if they were to license FairPlay. While there may be a few people that switch from Windows to Mac's due to some kind of ipod halo effect, the bigger benefit is that ubiquity of the ipod could be used to prevent Windows-only media formats from making Macs less useful.
I don't know if Macs currently support WMA, but even if they do, it'd be nice to control a standard for once.
And how would it hurt Apple to license FairPlay to their competitors? Yes, it might make it easier to try a different player, but the ipod seems to be the player of choice due to its merits, not due to file format lock-in. Apple certainly doesn't charge unreasonable prices for ipods. Mostly they price them so that users won't be (too) mad when they find out it's easier to buy a new one than to fix a broken one.
And while they're at it, why not let 'em play OGG's too?
Before the election, when people talked about the potential for fraud with electronic voting, it was obvious that the only 'check' on the system was the exit polls. If they consistently went in a different direction than the official results, that said something fishy was likely to be going on.
Well, in Florida, that's exactly what happened.
Now, that doesn't mean the election was definitely stolen, but it's a pretty good indication that the chosen method of vote tallying is problematic. No audit trail and results out of sync with the next best way to measure them. In that light, what's a conspiracy theorist to do? Can you blame them?
The problem isn't bundling directory services with the server. It's that the windows client comes pre-built with an Active Directory client. Because of the desktop monopoly, that client makes it easier to go with a Windows Server/AD combo than, say, a Novell Directory Server.
That's the kind of bundling that's illegal. They use their desktop monopoly to define a de-facto standard that only Microsoft Servers can work with. That's why the EU is demaning that they open up the protocols.
That's also why there's a problem with bundling Windows media codecs with the desktop OS. It's not a problem that they bundle a media player, it's a problem that the monopoly desktop system comes with codecs that nobody else can code to. Again, if they're going to bundle codecs with the monopoly desktop system, they should be required to publish how to work with them. No problem with their being there. Just the fact that nobody else's server systems can talk to them, and nobody else can build a competing client system that can support them (without often-imperfect reverse engineering).
It's really an easy issue. The EU has it (mostly) right. Just open up the client protocols and compete on the merits. Then there's no problem. Or unbundle. The only problem with the EU is if they'll allow MS to charge for the 'open' protocols and so exclude open source implementations. That wouldn't solve the problem, since open source is the only viable competitor out there.
And finally, if they hadn't broken the law, no government would likely be requiring them to open up anything. But they did. Grow up and face the punishment. Windows isn't going to go away because of a little competition. There are enough windows-only apps out there to keep Windows secure on a huge number of desktops for decades.
Linus rightly points out that a total rejection of DRM is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There are legitimate reasons to lock down hardware. That doesn't mean there aren't nasty side-effects.
What about that other cliche, the chicken and the egg? Successful development of Linux was only possible because there was a ton of non-DRM'd hardware out there. That hardware was designed to run Windows, and the fact that Linux could be built to run on it is a happy coincidence. Imagine if Windows 95 required a 'Trusted Computing' platform. The manufacturers would have, for various reasons, produced hardware that could essentially only run Windows, and the fact that it couldn't run other, yet-to-be-developed operating systems would have been a total non issue to them. End result - no Linux.
So, fast forward to 2006 or 2007. The vast majority of computers are built to only run DRM OS's. It becomes hard to find a reasonably-priced PC that can run non-signed code. Red Hat might be okay for the time being, but eventually the pool of amateur contributers dries up. Nobody can do the initial experimenting to get involved without a deep commitment to being involved in the first place. I guess if RH doesn't want to support desktop users, Fedora could still put out a signed binary so that people could perhaps try it (if it's still possible to shrink the NTFS on this new DRM box). But with more and more friction, the Open Source movement gradually grinds to a halt.
This doesn't make Linus wrong, it just means that practially, there's no way 'Trusted Computing' doesn't work against Open Source.
The whole point of the EU's interoperability requirement was so that people could build compatible systems. Nobody want's to clone Windows (or at least that isn't an EU requirement). And just because somebody wants to be able to serve files to Windows desktops doesn't mean that they want to steal Microsoft's intellectual property. They just want to be able to support 90+ % of the systems out there. And maybe if MS hadn't broken the law, they wouldn't be forced to allow that. But they did.
Offering the source code with draconian licensing terms doesn't do it. They just need to release detailed specs for the bits of Windows that are required to interoperate with the system. That means the filesystem layout, networking protocols, and I'd argue, codecs that are 'built in' to windows enough that website dev's use them as 'always available' facilities.
And the specs should be made available for free. No restrictions on use. That's the whole point. If MS has the ability through its monopoly position to set de-facto standards, they should not be able to use those standards to further entrench their monopoly. A requirement to publish the specs would remove that incentive.
This offering is a big old red herring, and the EU should reject it.