Ballmer stumps for openness in bid to beat Apple
Ralph Waldo Emerson once declared, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO and turgid (and very consistent) promoter of the software company's longstanding agenda against open source, apparently wants to step out of his proprietary box every so often, as he did Wednesday at the Mobile World Congress.
Ballmer, taking aim at Apple's closed iPhone ecosystem, declared the Apple kettle black and pleaded for openness, as CNET News reports:
I agree that no single company can create all the hardware and software. Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice.
I guess Ballmer forgot about how Microsoft has insisted it will emulate Apple's success by vertically integrating hardware and software? Or perhaps he's overlooking the vertical integration Microsoft has long pushed with Windows-plus-Internet Explorer (and other Microsoft software), or Microsoft's new push to tightly tie SharePoint in with Office, Windows, Active Directory, and more?
Ballmer has a short memory on Microsoft's strategies and a long leash when it comes to public pronouncements. So perhaps he can be forgiven for taking the word "openness" in his mouth and pretending it fits there. It doesn't or, at least, it hasn't.
Perhaps this is a new Microsoft, one that embraces open standards, open source, open APIs, and open competition. Perhaps. But that's Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie's schtick, not Ballmer's.
Public sophistry aside, Ballmer has not demonstrated that the lock-in strategies he has embraced and advanced for the past three decades have lost his favor. He's not the man to lead Microsoft to greater openness, given his past, and he sounds hypocritical pining for openness when nothing short of the U.S. government could wring the slightest concessions to openness from Microsoft.
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Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
With that said.. Cue in the MS fanboys to proclaim MS is the greatest and Apple is a niche.
but i think ballmer is making moves in a direction that could prove to be a viable competition to apple's extremely closed system. odd that people don't seem to criticize apple much around that -- but i guess it's too cool to criticize.
now we just have to see if ballmer's words will match his deeds.
So what if the apps can be written by other people if the product won't run on anything but Windows.
It's unfortunate that his words were correct since they came from this particular source. Open platforms could be compatible with whatever the customer wants to use them with. I'm not saying the customer should be able to reproduce and redistribute the software, I'm saying it should at least be capable of being used on whatever the customer wishes.
Before Ballmer/MS makes another statement about open source this, open platform that, let's see them live up to this standard.
Now, MS is far from 'open' as we in the free software community have come to use the term. But compared to Apple, their business model is far more open in the sense of licensing and hardware certification. MS will license their desktop, server, embedded, and mobile OS's to any and all hardware vendors. Apple absolutely will not. MS embraces pretty much any software developers who want to work with them. Apple on the other hand is closed, closed, closed at almost every turn. This finally worked for them in the music realm, but that was probably more due to the fact that their system actually worked flawlessy and was well executed at an early point in the digital music market. And that success comes at the expense of consumer choice and vendor lock-in. Their music system is a closed, one-vendor iTunes shop. MS conversely will license the Windows Media codecs to any shop who wants to set up, and will offer that store within Windows Media Player.
Now the iPhone is trying to use the exact same vertical lock-in. But the mobile computing market is a far more competitive environment. Personally I would not want to buy in too deeply into a single phone running on a single carrier with apps that only run on that one system. If and when I dive into the smart phone world, I would much rather use a truly open system, hopefully one running Linux such as Android, LiMo, Palm WebOS, or even a future open v. of Symbian. Both MS and Apple continue to try and wring cash out of the dying closed, vertical lock-in model. The future probably belongs to companies like Google who actually support true open source because they really get how to leverage truly open ecosystems.
I guess you weren't aware that iPod and iPhone play all of the industry standard formats, wherever you get them, and that the iTunes store is almost complete in its conversion to DRM free music. So tell me again about it being a closed, one-vendor shop.
don't forget wesisw_ if the ipod wont play other formats it would've died long ago, but considering iphone's u are not allowed to jailbreak scheme id still say ArtInvent was right
The Open Directory effort has been advanced further by Apple and Apple has created another great OSS called launchd. If you do not know about launchd the I sure cannot help. As a developer I find it great.
Have you tried Mac OS X Server. Try it, you will be amazed.
Apple uses and contributes to the FOSS. So do I see Apple as a closed company. Guess not.
Applications on the iPhone provide the developer a worry free store to promote and sell their apps without any worries of credit card validation, shipping updates, server maintenance etc. The developers can choose any price they want to. Obviously there are terms and conditions while selling something there. Let us accept it, Best Buy sells DVDs but do they sell porn in the store. No. That is a policy. Same for Apple. The App store has its conditions. Not all types of Apps rejected are porn but they do not meet the business needs of Apple and its partners. Would you as a businessman go against your own business. Guess not. If you are forthcoming then it is easier to do business with you. Apple has been pretty much very clear. It some are disgruntled then they have some problem and may discuss with Apple.
Now let us look at MS.
Windows is a closed OS. It uses the OSS TCP/IP network stack but MS does not acknowledge it. Neither has MS contributed towards it.
MS developer tools are paid. Really expensive. Many have it because they use the pirated version.
MS applications do not work well on platform other than Windows. Let us look at these Apps and environemtns:
1. Exchange Server - Windows only
2. Outlook - Windows only.
3. DirectX- Windows only
4. ActiveX- Thankfully Windows only.
5. Windows Media Player - Windows only
6. .Net- Windows only (for development). Deployment on other platforms pathetic.
7. IIS server - Windows only
8. MS SQL Server - Windows only
9. MS Office - Windows only. For Mac see below
10. IE - Windows only.
11. Sharepoint - Windows only (client barely works on other platforms).
12. Communicator- Windows only. No decent client else where. Poor.
This list is very long.
MS has some apps
1. Entourage - a pathetically written exchange client for Mac.
2. MS Office - a pathetic implementation for Mac. Does not contain MS Access.
3. Messenger - Poorly written for Mac. More like just because.
4. Is there anything else that we can even talk about. Yes
5. MS ActiveSync. That is also a half baked interface to Exchange so that MS can compete with RIM.
What are the MS apps on Linux:
1. Nada
2. Null
3. Nyet.
4. Nothing out there dude.
MS WinMo is as closed as everything else from MS.
Apple is a hardware company they want to sell the iPhone. The iTunes store and the App store is there to help sell the phone and that is exactly what these associative infrastructure are doing. I understand that the fine line between Hardware and Software is thinning at least in the case of Apple. Though this does not mean that Apple can change its business.
For many my comment above will be a 110% from a Fanboy but that is not true. I rap Apple's knuckles where they deserve. I am critical of this company but appreciate them too. I have been a Mac based developer for more than a decade and half. :)
I used to connect wirelessly to my home network via Windows XP. I'd have several hours per day trying to reconnect to the network and thought it was simply a network matter, that it wasn't set up properly. I switched over to Ubuntu and now have less than 20 minutes per 2 weeks where I might possibly not be connected to the internet.
It's not always something the IT department can fix. Sometimes it's the software acting as it was designed. Software that's designed properly will always work better.
i haven't had an issue where i had to try to connect to the wireless network for any longer than 1~2min, and I'm in the IT department
honestly most of the time if there is an issue its the hardware manufacturer, say for instance, dlink gave the most headache when we had it hooked up and when i got a different receiver from linksys it worked flawlessly
plus who writes the driver and software? the manufacturer, xp itself may have something to do with it but by now i doubt there is still any issue with it, besides everytime there is an issue and u update the driver its fixed, so im a firm believer that issues arise more often because of the third party rather than ms itself
btw linux has a whole bunch of ppl writing drivers and codes and fixing it as they pop up so its usually not a problem for them
Oh, I am on the Mac. I have not used Win PC with wireless. I do use XP in office as a development system as we develop for multi-platform. My primary hw at office is also a Mac.
Perhaps this is the old Microsoft, one that embraces open standards, open source, open APIs, and open competition. And then EXTENDS them!
That's been always their strategy :)
The $99/year iPhone developer membership give developers unlimited signing.
To develop for WM, $500 buys you 100 signings - and every exe, dll and cab must be signed for every build (meaning each minor upgrade would cost easily 4 to 5 signings).
Who is more open?
It's not being closed that I hated about Microsoft stuff. It's being closed and sucking at the same time that really pissed me off. At least Apple is good at being closed and they're closed to the benefit of their customers. There is no Apple product that I am dissatisfied with to date.
As a MSFT shareholder, I just want MSFT to concentrate on what it's good at. Getting Windows on computers and selling Office. Why dibble dabble in other markets and get totally crushed, create bad press, and drive my stocks down? Why, why, why? It's been lose lose lose for the last 3-5 years and I'm sick and tired of it.
I don't think it is the iPhone that makes him nervous, I think it is the iPhone along with Android and LiMo that make him nervous.
Who am I kidding? It would never work for MS.
- by The_happy_switcher February 19, 2009 11:38 AM PST
- I hope that Ballmer, aka Uncle Fester, has a very long tenure as CEO. Under his leadership people will continue to leave Microsoft in droves.
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