Category Archives: Microsoft

Something’s up

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Sun Microsystems has announced a link-up with Google.

What’s going to come from this?

Nobody knows — yet. But here’s a quote from the Blog maintained by Sun’s President, Jonathan Schwartz:

Or finally, as I did last week at a keynote, ask the audience which they’d rather give up – their browser, or all the rest of their desktop apps. (Unanimously, they’d all give up the latter without a blink.) All these trends show a slowing upgrade appetite calling into question the power of traditional distribution. In stark contrast to the value of volume, community and participation.

Now, I have been nothing if not tediously repetitive in stating my belief that volume begets value – best demonstrated by the rise of the free software movement (whose volume is derived from its price, its value from innovation, in all forms). The cost of reaching customers, traditionally the most expensive part of building a business, has largely been eliminated – resulting in massive, global participation. Value’s literally everywhere the network travels, on every device it touches (and it’s subsidizing some very interesting ideas.)

But value is returning to the desktop applications, and not simply through Windows Vista. But in the form of applications that are network service platforms. From the obvious, to music sharing clients and development tools, there’s a resurgence of interest in resident software that executes on your desktop, yet connects to network services. Without a browser. Like Skype. Or QNext. Or Google Earth. And Java? OpenOffice and StarOffice?

If I were a betting man, I’d bet the world was about to change. And that what just happened in Massachusetts, when a state government made what was to me a very rational statement – we will pick an open standard to protect the right of our citizens to access data and services; we will then buy from vendors that support standards – will be a shot heard ’round the world.

What will they produce? Here’s John Paczkowski’s guess:

If Sun and Google do uncrate an office productivity solution — say a Sun Ray ultra-thin client optimized to run “Google Office” — that shot will definitely be heard up in Redmond, along with a lot of expletives and an anguished scream or two. Because if anyone can shift personal computing out of Microsoft’s domain and into the open, it’s Google.

Interesting times. Watch this space.

Is Microsoft’s enemy our friend?

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My Observer article about the long term significance of Google…

A few months ago Bill Gates let slip an interesting thought about Google in an interview. It reminded him, he said, of Microsoft in its honeymoon period – ie. the decade 1985-95. This is the first time in recorded history that Gates has dignified a competitor by actually naming it in public: generally, he speaks only in paranoid generalities. But the Microsoft chairman knows trouble when he sees it, and Google does indeed pose a long-term threat to his profitable monopoly.

That’s par for the course in the capitalist jungle. A more important question is whether Google spells trouble for the rest of us in the long run. And the answer to that could well be yes…

My colleague Conal Walsh goes into more detail on the privacy front.

Donate your copy of Microsoft Office to Katrina relief!

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From Good Morning, Silicon Valley…

On Friday, [Massachussetts] state officials approved a proposal to standardize desktop applications on the OpenDocument format — a move that will strip some 50,000 state computers of Microsoft’s Office and effectively eliminate Microsoft, which has chosen not to support Open Document, from the state’s procurement process. Microsoft, it should be noted, could add native support for Open Document to Office, but won’t, no doubt because doing so could encourage the spread of non-Microsoft formats. In an interview with DesktopLinux.com, Massachusetts’ chief information officer, Peter Quinn, said the shift to open formats was inevitable. The state runs a “vast majority” of its office and system computers on Windows — “only a very small percentage of them run Linux and other open source software at this time,” Quinn said. “This is in tune with the general market in the U.S. But we like to ‘eat our own cooking,’ in that we are using OpenOffice.org and Linux more and more as time goes along, because it produces open format documents. Microsoft has remade the desktop world. But if you’ve watched history, there’s a slag heap of proprietary companies who have fallen by the wayside because they were stuck in their ways. Just look at the minicomputer business, for example. The world is about open standards and open source. I can’t understand why anybody would want to continue making closed-format documents anymore.”

Good stuff. Lots more coming in the same vein.

Microsoft at 30

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This morning’s Observer column.

Microsoft has grown up, and is beginning to experience the mixed blessings of corporate middle age. On the one hand there is the respectability and status of being the most famous company in the world after Disney, and the complacency that comes from having $50 billion in the bank. On the other hand, there’s the furring of the corporate arteries, the slowing of reflexes and the dawning realisation that you are no longer the coolest kid on the block.

And, as if to confirm the suspicion of internal unease, this week also saw the announcement of massive restructuring of the company’s corporate structure. Its seven divisions will be merged into three groups – Platform Products and Services, (formerly Windows, MSN, and the Server and Tools division); Business (formerly Office and Microsoft Business Solutions); and Entertainment and Devices (formerly Xbox and mobile devices)…

ESR’s reply to Microsoft

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Incredible, but true. A Microsoft recruiter offered Eric S. Raymond a job. The approach read, in part:

Microsoft is seeking world class engineers to help create products that help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

Your name and contact info was brought to my attention as someone who could potentially be a contributor at Microsoft. I would love an opportunity to speak with you in detail about your interest in a career at Microsoft, along with your experience, background and qualifications.

I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have and can also provide you with any information I have available in regard to the positions and work life at Microsoft.

At first Eric assumed it must be a joke, but apparently the approach was serious. His reply is worth quoting in full!

To: v -mikewa@microsoft.com

From: esr@thyrsus.com

I’d thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both) couldn’t get a clue if it were pounded into you with baseball bats. What were you going to do with the rest of your afternoon, offer jobs to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds? Or were you going to stick to something easier, like talking Pope Benedict into presiding at a Satanist orgy?

If you had bothered to do five seconds of background checking, you might have discovered that I am the guy who responded to Craig Mundie’s “Who are you?” with “I’m your worst nightmare”, and that I’ve in fact been something pretty close to your company’s worst nightmare since about 1997. You’ve maybe heard about this “open source” thing?

You get one guess who wrote most of the theory and propaganda for it and talked IBM and Wall Street and the Fortune 500 into buying in.

But don’t think I’m trying to destroy your company. Oh, no; I’d be just as determined to do in any other proprietary-software monopoly, and the community I helped found is well on its way to accomplishing that goal.

On the day *I* go to work for Microsoft, faint oinking sounds will be heard from far overhead, the moon will not merely turn blue but develop polkadots, and hell will freeze over so solid the brimstone will go superconductive.

But I must thank you for dropping a good joke on my afternoon. On that hopefully not too far distant day that I piss on Microsoft’s grave, I sincerely hope none of it will splash on you.

Cordially yours,
Eric S. Raymond

Don’t you just love that guff about “helping people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential”! Interestingly, there are lots of critical comments on ESR’s Blog, accusing him of being childish and giving the Open Source movement a bad name. Which makes one wonder if any of the critics have even seen Steve Ballmer in action.

More courtroom drama…

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… from the Microsoft-Google hearings.

Ballmer: Kai-Fu had a — a distinct commitment and responsibility on behalf of the company for being the senior executive here in Redmond, with responsibility for godfathering, shepherding all of our R&D activities in China. It’s a structure we also use for India. We have a senior executive with knowledge of India be the R&D godfather for India, encourage work to go there, shepherd, and — and mentor people in the area. Kai-Fu had that broad, important responsibility for China. … ”

Deposing lawyer: “This term, ‘godfather’ — is that an official title within the Microsoft organization?”

Ballmer explained that no, in fact, the correct title was “executive sponsor.”

Lee says Gates swore at him

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Shock, horror! From today’s New York Times…

SEATTLE, Sept. 6 (AP) – A former Microsoft executive whose defection to Google set off a legal battle testified on Tuesday that an expletive-filled tirade from the chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates, was a low point before he decided to leave.

Steve Ballmer unexpurgated

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Delicate souls, avert your gaze now. And do not under any circumstances read this report of what Microsoft CEO said about Google.

Those made of sterner stuff may read on…

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to “kill” internet search leader Google Inc. in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive “like wolves,” according to documents filed in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals.

The allegations, filed in a Washington state court, represent the latest salvos in a showdown triggered by Google’s July hiring of former Microsoft executive Kai Fu-Lee to oversee a research and development centre that Google plans to open in China. Lee started at Google the day after he resigned from Microsoft.

The tug-of-war over Lee – known for his work on computer recognition of language – has exposed the behind-the-scenes animosity that has been brewing between two of high-tech’s best-known companies.

Ballmer’s threat last November was recounted in a sworn declaration by a former Microsoft engineer, Mark Lucovsky, who said he met with Microsoft’s chief executive 10 months ago to discuss his decision to leave the company after six years. After learning Lucovsky was leaving to take a job at Google, Ballmer picked up his chair and hurled it across his office, according to the declaration.

Ballmer then pejoratively berated Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lucovsky recalled.

“I’m going to f—ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again,” the declaration quotes Ballmer. “I’m going to f—ing kill Google.”

In a statement, Ballmer described Lucovsky’s recollection as a “gross exaggeration.

Mark’s decision to leave was disappointing and I urged him strongly to change his mind. But his characterization of that meeting is not accurate.”

Editor’s Note: chair-throwing is a recognised and respected therapeutic procedure at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wa. Please do not be alarmed, or conclude that the man in charge of the company that makes your software is deranged. On the other hand, if you do use his software, perhaps the time has come to make an appointment with a therapist.

Thanks to Chris Walker for the link.

Massachusetts opens up

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Well, well. This from Good Morning, Silicon Valley…

Massachusetts has announced plans to back OpenDocument, an open file format for saving office documents such as spreadsheets, memos, charts, and presentation. In an announcement made Wednesday, state representatives said that to ensure their wide accessibility in the future, all government documents must be created in open formats by 2007. The proposal has vast implications, for the state and for open standards. “Given the majority of Executive Department agencies currently use office applications such as MS Office, Lotus Notes and WordPerfect that produce documents in proprietary formats, the magnitude of the migration effort to this new open standard is considerable,” state officials wrote in a document laying out the new strategy. “Agencies will need to develop phased migration plans with a target implementation date of January 1, 2007. In the interim, agencies may continue to use the office applications they have currently licensed. Any acquisition of new office applications must support the OpenDocument standard.”

For Microsoft, whose Office suite accounts for as much as 30 percent of its revenues, news that a populous state dumping its software is decidedly unwelcome. “I think it would be pretty risky for the state of Massachusetts to go in a direction like this without a clear look at the costs first,” Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft’s Office division, told the Financial Times. “It would seem to me that before taking such a big shift, they would look into it further.”

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he! But this is just an interesting illustration of a trend we’ve been seeing for some time.