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.
I'm simply proving that Linux has strong ties to radical leftists who own more rights to the code than anyone. Your endless denials are hilarious, especially when your own links make my claim an open and shut case.
You are still avoiding apologizing for calling me a liar when I was right. You even admitted I was right.
Because you’re still completely wrong on the core argument, as your very own links showed. That was simply a mistake in nomenclature, I still showed the 70+% of sourceforge was licensed under Stallman’s license which remains further proof of the core point anyway. You’ve come nowhere near disassociating radical leftists from Linux, hysterically your very own links backed it up LMAO.
LOL
Your two core arguments were wrong. The FSF does not have the most copyrights in a Linux distro, nor do they have 75 percent of projects at Sourceforge. That other copyright owners choose to use their license (sometimes in addition to other licenses) is irrelevant. I support the constitutional right of authors to license their software as they see fit, as long as it is not in a way that violates the law or the constitutional rights of users.
A "mistake in nomenclature" as you call it is understandable and acceptable -- if you simply admit it when it is shown to you. You didn't do that, but instead tried to keep arguing your losing point, and then quietly changed your argument in the middle. Now you're claiming a victory in an argument you've been having with yourself. It certainly wasn't with me.
In the meantime you have called me a liar for pointing out the facts. You even lied about my FreeBSD mistake, claiming you caught me when the facts show I corrected myself two of my posts later. I also notice you refused to reply when I spelled out your lying personal attack to you.
I still showed the 70+% of sourceforge was licensed under Stallman’s license which remains further proof of the core point anyway.
Here's a good example. You referenced a years-old article for that figure, didn't even bother to go to the easily-available source to check it. Bad research isn't good, but it isn't a lie. But then I showed you that the actual, current SourceForge statistics from the source (not an article) are well below that number. That cannot be refuted. Yet you continue to use your discredited "70+%" figure.
You have now strayed from bad research practices into another willful lie.
I thought it would be easy to keep track of your lies and dishonesty in at least these couple threads, but I'm losing track already.
And it was pretty good for the time. I got a lot of use out of it.
ROFL! What two core arguments, there's only one "core" argument LOL. What's common knowledge, that a radical leftist owns more rights in Linux than anyone. You know, "the father of free software" you so religiously defend. Yeah, you know. The guy with more than everyone you mentioned combined LOL.
That's not what you said initially. That's not what we were arguing. You built up so many lies in defending your defenseless initial position.
And you still won't admit that you didn't expose me on de Raadt/FreeBSD, that I corrected myself. This is like when you falsely claimed you exposed me over Fyodor/nmap.
The two "lies" you have me on are two things I myself admitted the truth about, in the process educating you, because you didn't have the knowledge to expose me.
You’re a perfect display of liberal insanity. Thanks for the entertainment LOL!
Yet again you tuck tail and run instead of addressing the issue of your proven lies. If that's entertainment for you, see a shrink.
I’m not going anywhere, right here proving Linux has a leftist cult behind it again, that’s willing to say and do anything to cover it up. Can’t think of anything much easier to prove actually, especially when their own links prove the point LOL. Then we get the added enjoyment of watching the liberal meltdowns, thanks again!
Excellent article on Intellectual Property.
Quite an interesting battle of comments on Marxist ownership of technology, as well.
That paragraph might give the impression that .Net is available as an open specification, while Cocoa is not. In fact, Cocoa is an updated version of OpenStep - and all of OpenStep is available in open specification, while Microsoft has submitted "portions of .Net" to a standards body. Many Cocoa applications can be ported to GnuStep, particularily since the default compiler for the Objective-C language used with Cocoa on Macs is GNU's GCC compiler - the same one used on Linux for compiling C and C++ code.
I might add that the .Net frameworks are merely a thin wrapper for the antiquated WIN32 APIs.
Their portfolios are mostly for defensive purposes, and in IBM's case, licensing revenue. Apple does frequently send cease-and-desist letters to infringers, but I'm not aware that they have ever sued an open-source project as Microsoft seems to be threatening to.
Microsoft's biggest target is SAMBA, because they want to cripple interoperability by charging exorbitant fees for SMB/CIFS, a fairly obvious and non-innovative protocol. Perhaps the Linux consortium will deign to pay a six figure amount for Ballmer's cab fare home.
IBM is aggressively suing others, such as Amazon recently. Meanwhile Microsoft is believed by many to only be seeking new licensees with this move, such as Samba, who are obviously intending to duplicate Microsoft functionality specifically and therefore have a reasonable likelihood of infringement.
Apple does frequently send cease-and-desist letters to infringers, but I'm not aware that they have ever sued an open-source project as Microsoft seems to be threatening to.
Microsoft hasn't sued anyone yet either, nor do I expect them to be the first to actually launch a patent suit against Linux. Overall Apple's business model is much more equivalent to Microsoft's with regard to patent and other intellectual property protection, especially when compared to the Free Software Foundation types who believe all software should be free and have often criticized Apple for taking more from open source than giving back.
Which actuallly supports the author's contention "Apple has made no effort to offer an open specification for third party implementations of Cocoa" then doesn't it? And also draws his own conclusions into question.
Please, remove the tin foil hat. It is damaging you.
This will change when, if as announced, Dell starts selling Linux (Ubuntu) desktops. There will be no need to download it you can get it right here from an American company (like you already can with Suse or RedHat)
Its nothing like copyright you were proven *dead wrong* and somehow you still claim you are winning! wow 'denile' ain't just a river in Egypt kid..
SMB is not Microsoft functionality as a protocol it was created by IBM to help with DOS. MS is the most common user of the protocol now and has merged it with LAN Managers (yet another product they themselves did not develop) proving once again MS can combine two pieces or ideas which were not theirs and somehow claim they innovated.
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