Comments on: Microsoft's open-source patent threat still intact
Microsoft truly is sharing more--but it still insists that companies selling or using some open-source software must license Microsoft patents.
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This blog sheds light on digital photography subjects such as cameras, photo editing, and Web sites. Shankland joined CNET News in 1998 after a five-year stint as a science writer. He's a lab rat who grew up in Los Alamos, N.M., and graduated from Harvard.
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Thus, under the author's analysis, no competitive move could be made by such a company because it must move from pure motivations...and clearly, MS has "scienter" working against.
Baloney.
Does it matter how the company arrived at its new direction? The info will still be gobbled up - even by the FOSS-oriented (their latest guilty pleasure).
Congratulations, MS! This analysis/story reveals those against you feel truly scared. You're on the right trail.
So we'll be left with Microsoft taking a larger and larger cut out of America's productivity in exchange for contributing nothing.
That said, if Microsoft were to go open-source whole-hog (the way for example Sun Microsystems has), it would be fascinating watching the open-source movement's response. I wouldn't expect Microsoft's dominance on the desktop to budge much, for example.
And if you really believe that Microsoft is doing this from pure motivations, I've got some dihydro-peroxide to sell you for $50 US an ounce. MS is a for-profit company, as they so often remind us, and the reason they are releasing their APIs is because they believe they can improve their profits by doing so. If they didn't, they would be subject to lawsuits from their investors.
The complaint that many developers have with this move is that the API specs can change without notice, may be incomplete, and are encumbered by patents. If MS were motivated by "pure" intentions, they would use open standards which would not be weighted down by these problems.
Of course many for profit companies in the IT business use truly open standards because it benefits their customers _and_ is profitable. This is why the internet is so widespread, anyone can write a program using open standards, such as TCP/IP and HTML, and expect it to work with any other system using those standards. If all we had were the APIs from a dozen different companies, it would be difficult to impossible to write client software that worked effectively. And the ones that did exist would be so expensive, most people could not afford them.
With that in mind, you should pause to consider how much further we could have progressed if MS wasn't a monopoly.
Later . . . Jim
Let's see I'll write some software, give it to you for free, and let you make money off of it... That makes perfect sense if you believe in communism.
Open standards are the things that allow you to buy any brand of lightbulb at any store and have it fit in your lamp (assuming the obvious issues are correct).
By releasing their APIs, they are providing the specifications for interacting with their applications. This is not the same as an open standard, because only they can modify the specs, and they can also withhold some information.
The free part is their choice, but considering how long it took them to make this move, it is reasonable to assume that they believe they can make more money by releasing the APIs, than not. Time will tell on that one, but the rest of the IT world seems to be surviving just fine using fully open standards, such as TCP/IP, HTML, SMTP, etc.
Later . . . Jim
Is it that:
1) Microsoft is a commercial company and thus they are trying to make money? Yes, they are, that's the whole point in running a business.
2) Microsoft claims they are the best alternative? Well, it would be stupid to run a business by claiming your competitors are better.
3) Something else I can't imagine.
Let me make a proposal, Stephen. Why don't you go to CNet's CEO, and politely asks him to continue to pay you, but gives out all CNet's content for free for everyone who wants to make money out of its content. If you succeed, please let me know, because my wife's business can use some help from CNet's large library of product reviews!
As an aside, regarding free CNET content, I'd steer your attention toward CNET's Open Content Platform:
http://pressreleases.cnetnetworks.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=67325&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1085613
"Publishers can incorporate CNET Networks content through plug-and-play brand widgets available at www.cnetnetworks.com/partnerships, or work with CNET Networks to develop a customized partnership."
GUI
menus that drop down are not inventions from microsoft.
Maybe the taskbar is microsofts.... not sure though.
Easy app prototyping for basic users (VB)
Taskbar based desktop
File system/desktop analogy integration
Assistant (OK, perhaps you hate this one)
Automatic online OS patching
Object Linking and Embedding (copy and paste of external structured application data)
Cleartype
Self tuning DB
Multimaster Directory
Media Center
Tabs in dialog boxes (I can't think of any precedent, though I might be wrong).
Tablet PC
Online Satellite view Global Mapping Web Service (TerraServer in 1998)
Print Preview (in Project 2.0)
Format Painter
Autocomplete (InteliiSense)
Never saw them suing for any of those. Of course, you'll always be able to find some precedent for any of those, but that can also be said of ANY innovation at all. There's always a precedent for anything.
This annoying tactic of Ballmer's is proof positive that MSFT is not a software company but a barely competent law firm (who can forget the anti-trust follies?) and Junior-Achievement organized crime ring that just incidentally develops unstable operating systems and bloated, nearly useless office 'productivity' software.
What next from Monkeyboy? Walking around department stores, biting the faces of people carrying iPods?
Stephen, please call up 30 patent lawyers and ask them to dissect Ballmer's claims. It's called reporting. Listening to a guy with a bizarre kind of Tourettes that provokes him to spout legal pornography and quoting him verbatim is just your weird way of making fun of the handicapped. Shame on you.
Why should any government agency have the right to tell a company that it must support oss standards or any other software standards. The market should decide. I guarantee ya' that if MSFT doesn't produce software that customers want it won't be in business for long, but judging by it's last fiscal quarter, it's doing something right. Just look at Sun! She might still be around, but she ain't what she used to be!
And, getting standards approvel for office file formats, is just a formality. Regardless, of what the outcome of the vote, OOXML is the STANDARD. 1,000,000,000 + installations says it is.
- by eggaweb October 8, 2008 5:48 PM PDT
- A free lunch for developers? Microsoft gets free labour and then gets to charge if it goes commercial for the developers. It's a good first step though. Now it's time to open up the Windows.
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