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.
Provable lie #3 in just this thread. I stated FreeBSD in post #45 as a guess of which BSD you use, tying it to de Raadt. I corrected myself about the association in post #48. Feel free to show me where between those two posts you corrected my error.
I don't see where you could possibly have room to weasel out on this one.
I must be one of the lucky few who have never been "forced" to used a particular office suite for work purposes. However, I would think that since it is their company, and their company's computers, that they would be able to have a say on how they standardized their software. If they chose MS Office (as many do), I doubt you'd be complaining about how they are forcing you to use a particular product.
I'm sorry you had such a rotten experience. How long ago was this? OOo has greatly improved starting with version 2.0 (it's now 2.2).
BTW--I'm a great believer in using the tools that you want to use. If you prefer MS Office, fine. If not, fine. It's not a religion to me. This applies to companies as well. I've used MS Office at work (due to company equipment), while editing the same files at home on OpenOffice.
I've used MS Office at work (due to company equipment),...
heh--two seemingly incompatible statements in one post. I'll explain. I can't remember specifics of using MS Office, but I do remember jobs where MS Office was the standard.
Yes it is. Business-wise I’ve (My own computer) been MS-free since 2003, and I’ve never had a problem. I like seeing the advances MS makes as it pushes others to make a better product. The reverse is true as well. If it weren’t for FOSS and Firefox, IE would still be at version 5.5.
While I admit the capabilities of the software have advanced massively, I'm a bit old-school and believe that modern word processors hurt writing and the production of documents.
There are two basic related reasons:
First, modern word processors try to also be desktop publishing programs. There is not one that does desktop publishing well, yet there are all the features for it, getting in the way of you typing documents.
Second, and related, is that they distract from the purpose of a word processor: writing. You concentrate on the font to choose, the graphics, the hyphenation, etc., and you completely forget to concentrate on the one important thing: again, writing.
I have concrete experience with this concept. Long ago I inherited a large document in a publishing system (lots of fonts, graphics, formatting, etc.), contributed to by many authors. This document was published periodically and was maybe 80-90% the same every time.
At first I would print out each author's section to allow him to mark it up. I would take the corrections and additions for this publication, put them in the system, and print out a proof. This was unbearable.
More than half of the mark-ups were over formatting. Many of them were hyphenation, which would change anyway with the text changes they'd just made.
We went through at least six draft cycles, every time they'd marked up more formatting, and catch a few more needed text revisions. I had enough and put an end to it. I exported each author's text to plain, completely unformatted, 12pt Courier text. I gave them this printout and never let them see the formatted text. Some tried bringing in their own copies of the previous version marked-up, but I rejected them.
Markups got cut in half as they finally concentrated on what they were writing instead of the formatting. The end result was that production cycles shortened while text mistakes went down. That's what happens you are forced to concentrate on the writing. Somebody with no care about the text should be doing the serious formatting.
Wordperfect (a piece of Shiite)
Which WordPerfect? All Windows versions sucked, badly. But 5.1 for DOS was a work of art. I've never been able to type documents faster and more reliably.
Lotus-1-2-3
I preferred Visicalc. With the exception of graphs, there's no need for anything graphical in a spreadsheet.
DBase 3-4-5-6-7
dBase rocked in the day. I could write complicated queries a lot faster than in SQL. Building an application was fast and easy.
Eudora Mail,
I used Eudora a bit, never liked it. But at least it lacked the new virus-enabling features of Outlook.
You're the only liar here pal. Those are the facts and I've posted them to this board before. I'll find the link later today and post it. It'll be a blast blowing your whining defense of radical leftists out of the water yet again LOL.
LOL in post 46! What are you, not only a kookly leftist liar, but blind? Apparently LMAO.
FSF has released better product and support for closed systems than MS has. For just some examples, gcc for windows, emacs for windows, cygwin and bash for windows.
Here’s a link regarding the 75% of sourceforge:
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html
“SourceForge.net reported on November 10, 2003 that the GPL accounted for 71% of the 45,736 projects it hosted “
Yes I see that is not copyright, and I admit that mistake, but it is showing over 70% using that whacko leftist Stallman’s license. In the grand context you’re still getting smoked son. More projects use Stallman’s license than anyone, he owns more copyright in Linux distros than anyone as well, YOUR OWN LINK ALREADY BLEW YOU COMPLETELY OUT OF THE WATER.
You still won’t of course admit your leftist godfather is the kook behind most open source software. Nope you’ll try to attack me personally, and make as much hay as you can out of me getting it slightly wrong about copyright, do anything you can but admit that ~75% used his license. You still haven’t even admitted your own link showed Stallman owned more Ubuntu modules than Torvalds, IBM and Sun combined, so why should this be any different LOL. You’ll say and do anything to defend those green party freaks, just as we’re seeing.
This is surely a sign of the apocalypse. Was it so hard for you to do that that you couldn't just admit it right after I corrected you?
But why do you rely on old information? Just search at SourceForge. 148,763 projects, 63,869 GPL projects, 43%. Of projects with files published, 66,838 total, 39,328 GPL, 59%.
Neither number is close to 75%. I won't chalk it up as a lie, just poor research skills. Why believe an article when you can check it yourself?
YOUR OWN LINK ALREADY BLEW YOU COMPLETELY OUT OF THE WATER.
My own links proved both of your statements absolutely wrong. You are now trying to argue other statements.
You still won’t of course admit your leftist godfather is the kook behind most open source software.
Defining most as titles? Size? Importance? Most GNU programs and libraries are quite small and insignificant, and rarely used. Want a Simula or Epsilon compiler? They have them, for the probably 10 people who actively program in those languages. I have the feeling that a lot of programmers dump their work in the GNU when they don't feel like dealing with it anymore, when they want to abandon it.
Aside from that, he's not "behind" a piece of software if the author decided to use his license. We've seen that he's not "behind" the Linux kernel, having a big philosophical difference on software with the guy who runs Linux that's led to several public confrontations (sort of like you and me, with you being Stallman). In fact, he resents it because it displaced his unsuccessful attempt at a kernel. He's a sad old man.
You might as well say that the University of Berkeley Regents is behind any code a programmer decides to put under a BSD license. It's just a dumb concept.
Interesting link though, showing that only about half of a Linux distribution at the time consisted of GPL code. I didn't know that.
do anything you can but admit that ~75% used his license
43%, 59% at most. See above. If it was 75%, this shows a trend of open source developers deciding not to use the GPL.
You still haven’t even admitted your own link showed Stallman owned more Ubuntu modules than Torvalds, IBM and Sun combined,
And I don't really care. It is not a point that I contended.
Here's the relevant part of #46:
As for BSD, nope you’re wrong about that too of course, it was netBSD. As for FreeBSD, don’t you find it hysterical that your linux hit men lawyers at OIN actually ran their website on Free BSD and not Linux for a good while? I do LOL. Linux’s hired guns running their own website on BSD, classic.You stated you use NetBSD instead of FreeBSD. That's fine. It was just a guess on my part.
However, as you can see above, your claim that you "corrected your error when you claimed he was associated with FreeBSD" in #46 is plainly false. You do not mention de Raadt in #46, you do not mention his lack of association with FreeBSD in #46.
You also demonstrated a gross misunderstanding of the philosophy behind the OIN, which is pro-open source. BSD is open source. The OIN is set to defend many programs, some of which are not GPL, one for sure even BSD.
You continue to argue a point with nobody arguing against you. You can’t switch the basis of your argument mid-stream and then claim that you were right in the first place.
Now don't you feel bad for calling me a liar when you later had to admit that I was the one telling the truth and you were the one who was lying?
Probably not.
Hardly, you’re constantly defending leftist scumbags with lies, why would I feel bad about continually exposing you on every thread?
In this case your very own link showed that green party whacko Stallman with more rights in Linux than IBM, Sun and Torvalds combined, you simply couldn’t have been blown out of the water any further LOL. Still denying it too, typical liberal when they’re busted flat.
If I remember correctly, Dell is still offering the option of installing Windows XP on any new machine purchase. Seems the customers don’t mind a Dell as long as Vista is not part of the equation.
This particular line is about your claim of 75% of SourceForge projects being under his copyright, which you later had to admit was false after calling me a liar for correcting you. You are misdirecting.
But to the distro point, you claimed that he owned the copyrights for most of a Linux distro, and he has only about five percent, even being generous going by number of packages and not the size of the contribution.
You were wrong, and you called me a liar for setting you straight. That you tried to change your argument mid-stream only reflects poorly on you.
you simply couldn’t have been blown out of the water any further
If I had been arguing that point, but I wasn't. I was arguing against your original statement, where I was clearly correct, he doesn't own the copyright for most of a Linux distribution.
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