Long article, but a good read
Posted on 05/17/2007 6:38:27 AM PDT by ShadowAce
How is an untouchable superpower defeated? In many cases, it foolishly engages itself in an unwinnable war and simply consumes itself.
Microsoft, threatened by the encroachment of competition from open source, has long waged a detached propaganda war against free software and in particular Linux, but has recently escalated its conflict into a full blown attack. Here's what's happening, and why it will greatly accelerate the company's undoing.
Bill Gates' Infatuation With Software.
Back in the dawn of desktop computing, Bill Gates led the ideology that software was going to be the sole currency of the new economy. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Gates led Microsoft with the goal of making PC hardware a simple commodity, leaving software the main source of value and profits in the industry.
Microsoft's success in installing itself as a wide but shallow layer in the PC industry helped the company earn a steady increase of fantastical profits while its PC hardware partners struggled through boom and bust cycles. Gates seemed to know where the real money was in PCs: software.
For many years now, Gates has described his vision of the future as a world where customers will subscribe to Microsoft's software and automatically pay to use it at regular intervals, rather than buying retail boxes that can only claim an upgrade fee when there is an actual upgrade delivered.
Three Perspectives on the Software Business.
Gates' efforts to build a world exclusively ruled by proprietary software antagonized two camps of alternative opinions. The first differing viewpoint is presented by Free and Open Source Software, a general movement to develop shared software resources that others can use, adapt, and improve upon.
FOSS developers make a business case for sharing the work to develop software products, with the goal of producing high quality, interoperable tools that can be used by anyone at no cost. In the world of FOSS, software is a just a lubricant on the machinery of business.
A third perspective on software development originated with hardware makers. Companies like Apple, Cisco, IBM, and Sun all originally developed their own software. In most cases, it was not to directly market the software like Microsoft, but rather to play a supporting but critical role in selling their hardware.
In Apple's case, while it invested millions in developing Mac software, it only really used that software to sell its Mac hardware. For years, Apple didn't make much of an effort to sell its software at all; it was, in the manner of FOSS development, simply using software as a lubricant for its hardware sales.
Bizarre Love Triangle.
These three approaches to software development resulted in the development of today's triangle of desktop operating systems:
The GNU/Linux community built an alternative to Microsoft's commercial software for PCs; in doing so, they grew dependent upon the PC manufacturers who themselves were dependent upon Microsoft.
The result is that everything Linux can accomplish is at least indirectly tied to Microsoft. That's why Palladium, Microsoft's effort to lock down the PC to only run “approved software,” struck fear into the FOSS world.
Microsoft leads the PC world and can take in in dangerous directions; it most certainly does not want to be supplanted in the PC realm, and has vigorously worked to kill encroaching competitors who tried, from DR-DOS to IBM’s OS/2 to BeOS to NeXTSTEP to today's Linux.
By the mid 90s, Apple ended up as the only other significant, independent commercial desktop platform remaining. That put Apple in a unique position: it developed its own operating system software, so unlike other PC manufacturers, it was not beholden to Microsoft; unlike Microsoft, Apple did not really make any money from direct sales of its software.
I Love To Hate You.
Three very different positions resulting from the three different perspectives on software make for some interesting relationships between them.
Microsoft already sits on the majority of the market, and operates a high volume, low profit software licensing business model in direct contention with free software development.
Apple's low volume, high profit integrated hardware business model serves to distance Linux and Macs from being direct competitors.
The Iron Curtains of Microsoft.
Any new PC territory claimed by FOSS means less market share for Windows; a even a small but a significant decrease in Microsoft's holdings would severely weaken its monopoly position, forcing it to justify the expense of its software and directly compete in a difficult, multi-front battle.
Apple isn't threatened by a competitive marketplace, because it has little to lose and lots to gain. Few of its customers--who have gone out of their way to use Macs for their integration and polish--are suddenly going to be tempted to roll their own solutions with Linux or choose to return to using Windows PCs.
Similarly, FOSS developers are not concerned about losing customers to commercial platforms, because nobody is being held hostage to use Linux against their will either.
That has prompted Microsoft to erect iron curtains in its information war against competing alternatives. It must prevent its OEMs from doing business with other vendors, it must warn its Enterprise users of the fearsome dangers of using other platforms, and it must inextricably link its desktop users' applications, games, media and files to Windows so they can't ever leave.
The Changing Tide.
These circumstances have been in place for well over half a decade with little obvious movement in market share. Microsoft has maintained its monopoly position, FOSS has struggled to make any inroads on the desktop, and Apple has remained in a small minority position. Things under the surface have changed dramatically however.
Among them is the fact that Apple has partnered with open source in key areas where its own interests align with FOSS developers.
As a commercial developer with a significant installed base of customers in key markets, Apple's support for open alternatives rather than the de facto, proprietary standards pushed by Microsoft has helped to support the position of resistance incited by FOSS--and in particular Linux--users pushing for open interoperability.
A few key examples are Apple's support for:
The better Apple's products work with other systems, the more attractive its products will be. That's why the company also works to build interoperability with closed and proprietary standards that are entrenched in the market, including Microsoft's Active Directory service.
Microsoft is also growing to recognize the value of interoperability and open standards. Parts of the company have released technologies to open standards bodies, and Microsoft employees report that there is a new push to embrace standards-based development. This is due in part to the fact that development using open standards simply makes business sense.
Other hardware makers in a position similar to Apple, including Cisco, IBM, and Sun, have also worked to incorporate FOSS, open their own software, and work to use interoperable standards. These companies were all once known for hoarding their proprietary software away as secrets that needed to be protected, and for resisting outside ideas as shunned, “Not Invented Here” foreign developments. Things change.
FOSS Reevaluates Microsoft with .Net and Mono.
As the stalwart champion of closed, proprietary software, Microsoft has long accumulated a reputation as a planet inhospitable to any form of FOSS life forms. However, recent rumblings of change have suggested that a new world of interoperability is afoot, and that Microsoft may actually take the lead in launching new open standards.
One example is .Net, a general marketing name that includes new development frameworks that aspire to replace Windows' former Win32 platform with a modern new platform formerly referred to as Longhorn's WinFX, and now called Windows Vista and the .Net Framework 3.0.
Conceptually, this new framework has a lot in common with Apple's Cocoa frameworks in Mac OS X. The main difference is that while Apple has made no effort to offer an open specification for third party implementations of Cocoa (the way NeXT earlier opened up its predecessor under the name OpenStep), Microsoft has submitted portions of .Net technologies to the ECMA standards body.
Back in 2000, Microsoft's release of .Net's C# language and its Common Language Infrastructure captured the attention of Miguel de Icaza, a FOSS developer behind the Linux GNOME environment.
De Icaza started Mono, an open source project to implement Microsoft's .Net development platform for Linux. His company, Ximian, also worked to create an open source alternative to Microsoft's Exchange Server, called Ximian Evolution.
Ximian was bought up by Novell, which continues to support the development of Mono for a variety of platforms, including Apple's Mac OS X. Last fall, Microsoft entered into an agreement with Novell to not sue each others’ customers for patent infringement. This includes Novell customers using Mono.
Does this mean that Microsoft is now aligned with open source developers and working to push open, interoperable implementations of its software? Is the old triangle of contention between Microsoft, Linux and Apple dissolving into a free and open love circle?
Ha Ha, No.
Microsoft is not trying to usher in a new OpenStep with .Net. It is working to usher in a new Win32: another decade of dependance upon Microsoft software that can only work on Windows. Why the subterfuge on submitting portions of .Net to standards bodies? Three guesses, and the first two don't count!
The best way to keep opponents busy is to give them false directions that lead into traps. This will distract them from blazing their own successful, competing trail, and will lead them directly into containment with the least mess and inconvenience.
Microsoft is leading Mono users and developers into a pleasant feeling trap. Along the way, they gain appreciation for Microsoft's development tools as they struggle to make their own open source copies. They will grow increasingly familiar with Microsoft's directions, up to the point where they are hopelessly brainwashed into thinking that Microsoft is leading technology into a paradise of openness.
Then Microsoft will spring out its patent gun and offer a tight ultimatum: join or die. The only options for Mono developers will be to get bought out by Microsoft and join the collective, or to suddenly face the fact that Microsoft will always be two steps ahead in knowing where .Net is headed, and will have a laundry list of patents--obvious or not--lined up waiting for anyone who attempts to use its own technology to compete with it.
We already know that Mono development exists at the whim of Microsoft, and that dangerous looking stalactites of patent threats point down from above. Mono developers insist that Microsoft is a changed company and would never let anything bad happen to developers working to extend the features of its .Net.
Microsoft's New Patent War on Linux.
Mono isn't the only trap set for FOSS developers. While Microsoft has hinted at using patents to attack open source before, it has now moved from suggestion to accusation; it has turned off its safety and is taking aim at the hearts of FOSS developers, not to win them, but to shoot them.
In an article by Fortune, published by CNN, Microsoft announced that “Linux” violates at least 235 of its patents. It described a new litigation strategy for getting FOSS users to pay Microsoft royalty fees for their transgressions.
Among the patents infringed upon are 45 that apply to OpenOffice and 83 that apply to FOSS applications that are not part of the Linux kernel or its commonly associated graphical interface.
This isn’t just an attack on Linux, it’s an attack on open source development in general. That is a spectacularly bad idea for Microsoft to pursue.
Microsoft's announcements make it clear that the company isn't just working to protect its intellectual property, but that it really hopes to drag FOSS into a long term war in order to terrorize its own users who may be interested in open source, and thereby retain them as tightly held subjects within the walls of its iron curtains.
If Microsoft had any ideas to protect, it would simply lay them out and insist that Linux and other FOSS projects stop using them improperly. Instead, Microsoft is keeping its patent details a secret, while working to generate panicked headlines about the dangers inherent in using open source software.
Microsoft doesn’t want results, it wants to incite a climate of fear.
This All Happened Before.
Sound familiar? Microsoft's last assault on Linux was played similarly, albeit behind the mask of the SCO Group.
Microsoft invested tens of millions of dollars in the SCO Group, purportedly to license the company's Unix software. Why did Microsoft need such a massively expensive license from a litigation group which the rest of the tech industry--along with the stock market--valued as worthless?
Microsoft wasn't paying for the legitimate use of Unix code, it was funding the SCO Contras with illicit weapons to enable them to continue their own war against a common enemy: Linux.
Microsoft was also floating the idea that businesses faced multimillion dollar risks by using anything other than Windows in their business. “Oh no, look at me! I'm paying out craploads of money because I touched Unix! Don't make the same expensive mistake!”
Apart from a few other idiot companies who voluntarily threw money at the frauds at SCO, nobody who used Linux was found to owe the company anything. Microsoft's fantastically expensive license did keep SCO in business long enough to create years of terrorized fear surrounding the future outlook of Linux however.
SCO kept making accusations of intellectual property theft, but it kept hiding all the supposed proof. Like professional contribution collectors such as Greenpeace, SCO wasn't after action-oriented results, but only hoped to keep itself in the headlines long enough to drum up some threat money.
Just like Microsoft is doing now.
The Failure of War.
The problem for Microsoft is that it’s following a strategy of failure. SCO failed because it had no leg to stand upon in its invented war on Unix copyright violations. Microsoft similarly knows that its patent pool is not only a weak weapon that will be difficult to target and fire, but one that may likely explode in its face.
The problem with patents is that they are a lot like nuclear weapons: they pose a lot of threat, but you can't actually launch them to accomplish anything useful. Once you drop one, you'll have several more being dropped in return, negating any net results.
Like the cold war nukes, the only real purpose patents serve is to create a fear of mutually assured destruction that incites entities to work together. When Creative pulled out its iPod patent against Apple, Apple turned around with a handful of patents that could scrape the remains of Zen droppings from the floor. The result was a civil agreement that funded Creative and made it an Apple partner.
Such agreements aren't possible when patent holders try to attack individuals and create a general state of fear. Image if Creative had tried to sue iPod customers, and Apple responded by suing Zen customers! The only possible result would be disgust on the part of music player customers in general, and the badmouthing of Zens and iPods in particular. Everyone would lose.
Imagine how popular it will be for Microsoft to start suing companies that have mixed Linux and Windows operations. What would that do to prop up Microsoft loyalty figures or sales?
Will it incite interest in Microsoft’s other attempts to gain the attention of developers, including Silverlight?
Microsoft's Known Unknowns.
Like the RIAA, Microsoft must face the reality that suing your own customers is a strategy of failure. But consider what else will happen if the companies that defended Linux from SCO--and who now center their business on FOSS--turn their attention to Microsoft’s patent attacks in return.
IBM certainly has some patents of its own. Is it likely that Microsoft might violate some of them? Because Microsoft's Windows source code is secret, we would never know unless the company were foolish enough to open itself to legal scrutiny by inviting such retaliation.
And of course, there is another matter that Microsoft might unwittingly crack open: by launching a full frontal assault on open source using its software patents, Microsoft risks calling the legitimacy of software patents in general into question. The US Supreme Court has not ruled on software patents before.
However Fortune reported that just a month ago, the Supreme Court “stated in a unanimous opinion that patents have been issued too readily for the past two decades, and lots are probably invalid. For a variety of technical reasons, many dispassionate observers suspect that software patents are especially vulnerable to court challenge.”
As Microsoft begins waging its all out war against Linux, how far will its popularity decline? And will that war be conveniently limited to a far away land, or might it cause fear and distress to Microsoft's own customers? Would Microsoft's own customers be targeted as potential enemies in massive, RIAA-style crackdowns?
When asked by Fortune whether Microsoft would ever seek to “sue its customers for royalties, the way the record industry has,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer answered, “That's not a bridge we've crossed, and not a bridge I want to cross today on the phone with you.”
That should certainly scare the Windows out of Microsoft's customers.
Long article, but a good read
The PC really killed the general innovation of the computer industry, and Microsoft clogs up the development of decent, fun-loving software.
I’ve been a Windows user since Windows 3.0 but Windows Vista is the reason my next PC will be a Mac.
LOL what was his supposed point? That Apple and IBM are the saviors of open source? I guess he doesn't realize their own software products are mostly closed source and not free to copy, as well as both companies being patent hordes themselves.
The advent of the PC was the bane of my existence in the early days.
Probably the worst example that comes to mind was having to load up IBM's PC Access, Novell IPX, and TCP/IP on a bunch of PCs running DOS.
It could be done, but good luck trying to run anything like an application afterwards.
I think you got it backwards my friend. Before desktop computers arrived computers were locked behind glass and run only by those christened with a white coat. Now I'm even able to post this from a computer small enough to serve as a telephone as well, the migration of computers out of the data center and first to the desktops and now to fitting in one hand has been a marvelous transformation in technology that benefits the many not the few.
Pretty good analysis and commentary, if a little slanted.
The perspective one has on Microsoft's recent patent nonsense (pun intentional) is highly dependent on how one views Vista, specifically its success or failure.
If Vista had been delivered on-time, had been received well by customers and reviewers, and had sold well as an upgrade in addition to new machine pre-installs, this recent move to stomp FOSS with patents would be seen as the giant dealing the death blow to the renegade Linux penguin-heads.
But in fact, Vista was years late, has been panned in the press and rejected by customers, and is only selling in places where it's the only choice. As a result, this move against FOSS is seen as the dying gasp of an already fatally weakened dinosaur.
I believe the latter is the more accurate one (although both views are simplistic). As you know, I'm no Microsoft fan. But I hope that Microsoft does not die from this monumentally stupid move. Microsoft has a legitimate place in the software market, for the products that they sell in fair competition. I'd imagine they could hold somewhere between 35% and 50% of the market even after they shoot themselves in the foot here.
What I don't know for sure is whether their business model, which for two decades has been built on monopoly ownership of the market, can actually adapt successfully to honest competition. It might not, and that would be a shame for all, since as this article points out, the success of FOSS is dependent on standardized hardware that Microsoft made into a commodity. Remember when computer hardware was expensive? I sure do.
There is no FOSS-produced hardware, folks. Remember that.
That said, I'm glad to see the massive ship of Ballmer, Gates, & Co. headed for the rocks. They've fought hard to make themselves so ugly and hated, and they've earned every bit of pain they're about to cause themselves.
It'll be an interesting ride down, as long as they don't take everybody in FOSS with them. Here's a wacky thought: the grand irony could be that Jobs might be the last man standing (because Apple produces its own hardware).
> I think you got it backwards my friend. Before desktop computers arrived computers were locked behind glass and run only by those christened with a white coat. Now I'm even able to post this from a computer small enough to serve as a telephone as well, the migration of computers out of the data center and first to the desktops and now to fitting in one hand has been a marvelous transformation in technology that benefits the many not the few.
Hi G.E. Not often we agree, but in this case you're right on -- the IBM-PC was the catalyst for an entire industry that has brought astonishing technology to everybody from my 82-y.o. mother who has her own website, to my daughter who was playing on Win95 at the age of 4.
Microsoft's role in that development was mainly to force the price of hardware into the basement (because as the article points out, the Microsoft business model is dependent on having cheap, commodity hardware, not specialized hardware like Apple's or Sun's). MS did their job well, and we've all benefited from it.
It's unfortunate that in doing so, MS also crushed software innovation by killing off their competition instead of working competitively but fairly. But apparently that is at last coming to an end as they flame themselves out. It'll be interesting to see what rises from the ashes of the monolith.
Good software is harder to engineer and support than hardware. The people who do this should be paid for their work. Part time hobbyists have a role but some software is a valuable product that has a price. The war against such commercial software is stupid.
>>The PC really killed
no unix, java, and sun/ibm who want everything to look the same killed it. Even MSFT would like developers to try new things, like other languages, guis but the standards nuts want everyone to believe we have already solved every problem and just do it in java on a *x box.
Of course. You're confused between "Free as in Beer" and "Free as in Speech".
There's no rule in FOSS-land that says you can't sell your FOSS software at a fair price -- and tons of FOSS companies do exactly that. Others sell support services. There's tremendous opportunity to make money in the the FOSS model.
> The war against such commercial software is stupid.
No, the attempt to make closed, proprietary software the ONLY software, is what is stupid. FOSS existed before Microsoft was created -- prior to 1975 (when Bill Gates wrote BASIC and started MS), all software was free because it came with the hardware. Hello????
FOSS is not a war against commercial software. The Microsoft model of closed, proprietary software is a losing war against the natural tendency of software developers to share ideas openly so that all benefit. Microsoft's success is due to their business monopoly practices, not the inherent correctness of their software.
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