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Once they start following MS's actual specs, I expect the quality of their implementation to drop.

That's funny.

And ilogical, but let's just take it in the spirit it was probably intended.

That's not true. Microsoft developers are plenty smart. It's just that the proprietary software development model tends to trade productivity, agility, performance, complexity, and cost in exchange for the assurances of centralized management.

The free software ecosystem is what happens to software development when you (largely) eliminate the managers and let the developers manage themselves. There are disadvantages to this model, but free software licensing provides a mechanism for mitigating ineffective project management to a certain extent.

You write good.

LOL!!!

Once they start following MS's actual specs, I expect the quality of their implementation to drop.

[sarcasm] huh, I guess you're right. They are so much better with guessing them as they do now. [/sarcasm]

Note for you from our planet. Samba IS implementation of MS protocols, so... why would be using documentation instead of guessing be a bad thing?

it's called sarcasm, you're American right?

At least the AD protocols are included, according to Andrew Tridgell no less.

The OpenChange folks are working on MAPI, both client and server side.
http://www.openchange.org/

As far as I understand they are already building upon work of the Samba team

There's also the OMC BRUTUS implementation: http://www.42tools.com/

BRUTUS and has both client and server MAPI implementations. It at least allows Evolution to talk to Exchange. The big downside is that BRUTUS is a CORBA project: OpenChange is a little more sane in that respect.

In all fairness and as someone who's had to delve into the IMAP RFCs I don't blame the Outlook team too much. IMAP is a horrible, horrible hack.

Not that MAPI in its current incarnations is a walk in the park either - you'd be amazed at the cruft that seeps through the design - but it seems to have been actually designed instead of organically extended.

Unfortunately, until someone who actually understands the core concepts of distributed messaging comes along and creates a proper protocol design document (my wish for xmas 2010 ), we're stuck with IMAP if we don't want our data to get locked into Microsoft technology.

BIG news! This could also be a killer blow to MS' home server product, where a linux NAS device could in theory be able to *fully* provide the functionality (including all the non-storage-specific fancy bits) for 1/3rd the cost.

Umm no. MS home server product is more than just a file-server. Samba is about serving files. So, conclusion: this has nothing to do with "non-storage-specific fancy bits".

You obviously don't have much experience with samba if you think it's only function is serving files. Domain controller/participant, print sharing, etc. It does a heckofalot for a reverse engineered piece of software.

The fancy bits being a home domain controller, with all the nice backup and remote access tools

(PS - I'm an 150k+ user AD design guy as a day job)

Interesting comment over at Neowin, reproduced below:

According to this report [1] (which references a Groklaw analysis), the Samba team apparently paid the 10,000 Euro fee to license the documentation. The documentation cannot be redistributed, but this allows the Samba team to see the specifics of SMB, and to code to match it. Importantly, it also seems to detail the patents that apply, so the Samba team can likewise write code that does not infringe on Microsoft's patents.

And, if you recall, Ballmer has been pretty noisy over the past 3 months or so about Linux infringing on patents.

Seems like Microsoft is being forced to provide information on these patents (if only by paying for protocol documentation), which will lessen the unspecific FUD that Microsoft is able to spread by claiming general patent liabilities in Linux.


[1] - http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/12/the_first...

Wait! you mean they *paid* for that ?
Insane.

Yes. Strange as it sounds, people often agree that is reasonable to compensate other people for goods and services.

service ?
There is no service there. It's just documentation that should come with the product.
When you buy a TV you get a manual telling what you can plug in where. (my parent's old TV even had the full schematics, but I suppose people were smarter 30 years ago)
When you buy a car you get a manual telling which fuel you can put in, the size of the wheels, ...
When you buy software (and hardware) the specs should be part of the manual. Actually for developers, specs *are* the manual.
Of course not every samba dev has an NT licence, but likely some have. So you shouldn't have to spend $10000 more to get what should be in.

So when you buy a car do you get the full manual on how you utilize unsupported parts, how to reimplement things like OBD, how to replace the chassis?

No you get everyday information required to run what oyu paid for, much like you get with Microsoft's products. Hell most of that information is available even before you buy the product on MS' website.

What you want is how to work around MS' proprietary stuff and you want them to give it to you. If you want to find out how you tear your car apart, do it by trial and error, or buy a haynes manual. Don't expect GM, Ford or anyone else to give you that information for free.

"When you buy a TV you get a manual telling what you can plug in where. (my parent's old TV even had the full schematics, but I suppose people were smarter 30 years ago)"

30 years ago, TVs were ment to be serviced and repaired. Today's TVs are meant to be thrown onto the dump after less than 5 years of use. After this periot of time, they'll break anyway.

I've been raised in the GDR, were the option to repair something was essential to the product to be sold! A TV you could not repair wouldn't occur in any store. I'm still glad I can repair my robotron home TV with the content of an average elements and circuit collection. Nothing special inside the TV, just standard parts.

Today, the heart of a TV is one big black circuit with 180 pins and no (!) identification on top of it. And usually this circuit burns, and you even don't know what exactly it is, and of course you cannot buy it as a spare part.

"When you buy software (and hardware) the specs should be part of the manual. Actually for developers, specs *are* the manual."

I don't know how this case is handled in the US, but in Germany, manuals are thrown away as soon as the hardware is unpacked. Software usually comes with an online manual, as a file nobody ever reads.

If I raise my head, I can see some "real" documentation on the shelf. These are real books full of features how computers and peripherials work, and software, too. Printed material makes the shelves look important. :-)

For developers, documentation is the Alpha and Omega. For example, when you want to program for BSD, you have online manuals of all system utilities, all system configuration files, all kernel interfaces and all library functions you can easily read via the "man" command. So the system you're on provides its own documentation instantly.

You should not need to pay for something that is an essential part of the OS. In my opinion, documentation is such a part of the OS. Documentation to operations, libraries, system calls, interfaces and protocols make up an inportant criterium for OS quality.

"This could also be a killer blow to MS' home server product ..."

LOL
I can just picture the glee on your face as you typed that. "Killing" Microsoft's products is really what this is all about, isn't it? Not "interoperability" or "fairness" or whatever other utopian notions someone spouts, it's about killing Microsoft products (for you and your ilk, at least).

I don't think this will kill Windows Home Server, but if it did, then I'd have to ask what incentive Microsoft would have to come up with a new product if government action can cause it to be "killed". Windows Home Server is getting rave reviews, and Microsoft did good work on the product. But if this sort of thing "kills" it, why should they bother making such efforts in the future? And how would such an outcome benefit consumers? Would consumers really be better off if Windows Home Server had never been developed because Microsoft felt that it was a waste of time because government action would kill it anyway?

Oh well, at least a talking point regarding Samba being impeded has been removed. When Microsoft continues to have high server share (according to the EC), the EC will have to find another excuse for why that is happening (which they won't disclose as they levy more fines.* lol).



* The EC chief stated that her goal is to significantly reduce Microsoft's market share, and suggested that if they had a market share greater than 50% or so, then that in itself is evidence of an unfair marketplace and/or Microsoft's violating EU law, and would necessitate further EC action (like more fines for whatever ostensible reason they can come up with).

Edited 2007-12-22 04:15

Whats wrong with that statement - it is unnatural to maintain such a high market share in a market which has low start up costs, low physical barriers to entry. The only way you can maintain the type of monopoly Microsoft has is either gained through being a natural monopoly such as a power generator or lines company, or they're doing something illegal.

The issue out of that is this; yes, there are companies which have market shares greater than 50% but it moves up, it moves down, it moves left, it moves right - the point is, it never stays static.

The issue which the EC is making is simply this; the fact is Microsoft is creating barriers to entry as they grow, as they gain more market share they create new protocols, new formats deliberately to shut the gate behind them and stop anyone from threatening that market share gained. Call it a mobile fortress.

The EC has NOTHING against Microsoft creating a better product, competing with vendors, and increasing their product line up - when they then use protocols and formats to stop interoperability forcing a whole companies to go all Microsoft or nothing - or worse, if they stay heterogeneous, it creates compatibility issues - Microsoft gains more due to the problems they create.

Compare that to the UNIX world; have you ever heard of system administrators on a mixed UNIX environment complain about not being able to hook their UNIX machines together because of proprietary protocols and formats?

Edited 2007-12-22 05:18

"The issue which the EC is making is simply this; the fact is Microsoft is creating barriers to entry as they grow, as they gain more market share they create new protocols, new formats deliberately to shut the gate behind them and stop anyone from threatening that market share gained. Call it a mobile fortress."

So, the EC is purposely stifling innovation and advancement? If a company gives consumers what they want they need to be dealt with? If 3rd party vendors decide to support 1 platform and not another, it is the fault of the company that made the product the vendors support?

I appreciate your posts kaiwai, though I do not agree with this part of it. Microsoft was in the right place at the right time, and got the majority of the market that way. Am I saying they did not do anything backhanded?? Certainly not, but I will say they did nothing more than Sun, IBM, HP, etc..

The EC is all about Microsoft NOT creating anything at this point. Once 3rd parties decide to support other OS, a whole bunch of people will leave MS behind. Anyone with intelligence can see that. Now if the EC would go after the *other* companies and ensure they made products that could not only work with windows, but also on other OS, I would be all for it. The fact is the EC wants nothing more than to get free money from MS in the way of fines, and could give a rats ass on interoperability or anything else. If they really cared, than go after Adobe and the like so consumers and businesses have what they want and are asking for. Which, btw, is for their programs to be supported. Us tech people forget that, the non-tech people do not.

You are now claiming, here on this forum that using open standards and being involved with developing those open standards is equal to that of stifling innovation? Thats pretty far fetched. Now sure, I admit, working in a group can take longer than working unilaterally when developing a protocol or format, but at the same time working in a group also addresses technical short comings and security issues a lot better - different people from different backgrounds with different expertise.



If you read what I said, they offered something, but they gained market share and maintained it through the creation of proprietary protocols and file formats to ensure that once a company has been locked into the Microsoft ecosystem - they were stuck; to move away from Microsoft would be so prohibitively expensive that it would be unworkable for the customer to leave. In other words it locked their market share gains in for the long term by ensuring that they would never lose customers and always gain a greater market share.

Couple that with the need to interoperate with customers and other vendors, if someone moves to a Microsoft solution within the 'ecosystem' of their industry, all those that rely on that business for their business are forced to move to Microsoft - its a domino effect.



Microsoft was with the working group who developed the ODF format, which includes spreadsheet, text, presentation - Microsoft worked on the committee that developed and ultimately ratified it. I find it hypocritical of the extreme when Microsoft works on the committee that developers it, then votes on the ratification of the standard THEN turns around, bad mouths that very standard which they voted on, and proceeds not to address the issues but instead develop their own 'standard' to compete with ODF.

They were there every step of the way - why didn't they attempt to address the short comings of ODF? why didn't they submit their partially completed OOXML to the OASIS working group to get it merged into the ODF which would allow a 'single format to rule them all'? why have they kept XPS to themselves than submitting it to the OASIS working group and establish it as a superior XML based replacement to PDF?

To me, Microsoft's actions, in the above example is like the person who sits at the side of the party complaining that 'no one likes them' and yet when someone comes over and try's to get them involved with the party, all they can do is bad mouth everyone in the room.

It is pathetic and childish on Microsoft's part to claim that they're and industry player and yet, all their actions so far have been anything but mature; they've refused to work with vendors, they bad mouth using ad-homen attacks on the GPL licence labelling it communist and cancerous without going into great detail. They make claims against competitors and yet, when asked to prove their claims - they go silent.

Edited 2007-12-22 12:43

Uggh... You actually brought ODF into this? Good grief. And you're wrong, Microsoft didn't work on ODF. They're a member of OASIS but many companies are. Only a handful worked on ODF (primarily Sun and IBM, using OO.o XML 1.0 format as a starting point), and Microsoft was not one of them. Microsoft wasn't on the ODF working group. They didn't care at all about ODF one way or the other, so they had no reason to raise quesions regarding it while it was developed.

And Microsoft didn't bad-mouth ODF (other than saying it wasn't sufficient for their needs), didn't try to block it, voted for its ISO and ANSI certification and hasn't lobbied governments to ban the use of it. (IBM has done the exact opposite wrt OOXML.) And this is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.

The rest of your post is just typical anti-Microsoft drivel seemingly based on your horrible misconceptions of ODF's development. Why are you so angry? You WON!! It's like you're looking for reasons to be mad about something. I see other posts celebrating the great victory (and even the post that's gleefully salivating at the prospect of killing Windows Home Server (why someone would be gleeful at killing a quality product is beyond me)), yet you're here ranting and raving against Microsoft without much reason.

Edited 2007-12-22 20:40

Yes it was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opendocument



Microsoft were represented on that "Technical Committee (TC) under the OASIS industry consortium" the entire time.

Microsoft knew full well the entire time what ODF was meant for:
"The OpenDocument format (ODF, ISO/IEC 26300, full name: OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications) is a file format for electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents."

... as a supplier of an application that produces "electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents", you would think that Microsoft would have something to say on this topic, when the entire industry has established a committee to produce a common, interoperable standard.

Microsoft said not one word the entire time. They attended every single meeting.

Another MollyC story totally spun down by the actual facts.

Edited 2007-12-23 00:28

Not to quibble but nowhere in your arguments do you point to anything that says Microsoft actually participated in the ODF working group. I believe they did, but I could not find any corroboration with a quick google and the wikipedia article does not either.

The only thing I can say is that they voted affirmative for it as an ANSI standard. This does mean they contributed to the process however, either in a token capacity or in a meaningful way.

lemur, I normally don't bother reading your posts since it's a complete waste of my time, but I happened to read Kokopelli's reply to you which prompted me to read what you wrote. And I see you continue to make vacuous posts, filled with lots of words and references, but ultimately failing to prove whatever you were trying to prove. You provide no evidence that Microsoft was on the ODF working group. You provide no evidence that Microsoft attended any meeting, let alone "every single meeting".

Where do you come up with this stuff?

Now, allow me to post a few references. (I could post articles written by Brian Jones, other Microsoft people, or other people that are generally favorable to Microsoft, but I assume you'll dismiss them as liars. Instead, I'll post articles that are pro-ODF and/or anti Microsoft, so you won't be able to dismiss them since they're more ideologically aligned with you.)

Let's start with an entry from Ubuntu chief Mark Shuttleworth's blog.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/125
Specifically, Mark's response to a comment at http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/125#comment-112738
"Instead of OpenXML, I would urge Microsoft to join the ODF working group. They are already a member of OASIS, I believe. Their participation in ODF would be genuine engagement with an open standards process. Microsoft would benefit from the innovation that comes from clean, well written standards that are widely implemented. They would have a large share of a larger market."


Now let's go to the blog of Bob Sutor. He is the "Vice President of Standards and Open Source for the IBM Corporation" ( http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/BobSutor ) And since IBM is one of the main ODF backers (and *the* main attacker of OOXML), I assume he knows whether Microsoft was in the ODF working group or not.
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=783
Specifically, Bob's comment at http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=783#comment-886
"It’s definitely an ODF victory, no question about that. I’ve said this before, but I would love it if MS joined the OASIS ODF working group and helped it evolve to what it thinks is necessary to serve its customers. Over time this could involve a refactoring and relayering of the standard, but all this is technically feasible."


Finally, OASIS's site list the members of the ODF TC. Nowhere does Microsoft appear on the list:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/membership.php?wg_abbrev=offic...

And here's a list of the "obligated members", and again, Microsoft does not appear on the list.
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/daycount/tc/office.html


Now, next time you say or imply that I'm a liar, do some research first.

Edited 2007-12-23 20:18

Johann Chua, you post was both offensive and pathetic. So now anyone that does not conform to your anti-Microsoft bashing is of course a shill. Then to top it off, since you have no valid argument you simply make this a personal insult to MollyC.

To produce software at the scale and quality of Microsoft there are huge startup costs. A very large number of man-years went into creating Windows, Office, Visual Studio, Exchange, SQL Server, and many of the other products that do well for Microsoft. Probably an equal number of man-years went into failed projects that have been forgotten in the collective memory and into other wasted efforts.

But MS is persistent and the management doesn't seem to waste a ton of money on fancy buildings or insane executive compensation. And they never seem to permanently give up on anything.

Well, MS is most persistent when it comes to leveraging their monopoly in the desktop operating system market to shut competitors out of the browser market, the media player market, and partially the server market.

MS does this by creating or extending data exchange formats.

And this leveraging is simply illegal. As illegal as putting your "Queen"-Albums for download on the internet. As illegal as hoodwinking someone into buying a house you don't own.

Monopolies have to be treated different from all other companies, especially in markets with large network effects. Otherwise there will be no market, there will be a planned economy, with the difference that a company will hold the plan and not the communists.

In a democracy you can choose for whom you vote, in communism you can choose if you want to go to the votes in the morning or in the afternoon. In microsoftism you have no choice, all your data is locked into microsofts secret proprietary formats and protocols (at least that is what microsoft wants).

I am very happy that the EC regulators reestablished one market to functionality. Many more markets still have to wait for that.

Is this just because Microsoft is a monopoly, or do you think it's wrong that I made my own formats for my own operating system? Standards impede progress. I have graphics and links in my source code documents... why doesn't everybody else? ...because they're locked into 1970's technology.

See http://www.losethos.com

Let me guess... you want to make anything but Linux illegal because you cannot compete. Hello! Real companies back products with warranties. No pain, no gain.

i don't offer a warranty, by the way ;-)

"Hello! Real companies back products with warranties. (...) i don't offer a warranty, by the way"

AFAIK neither does MS.

"Whats wrong with that statement - it is unnatural to maintain such a high market share in a market which has low start up costs, low physical barriers to entry. The only way you can maintain the type of monopoly Microsoft has is either gained through being a natural monopoly such as a power generator or lines company, or they're doing something illegal."

Wow, talk about turning jurisprudence on its head. See something you don't like, and assume it's due to some illegality, look for the illegality, and even if you don't find it, create an illegality on the fly (which the EU courts have sadly ruled the EC has the power to do in matters regarding commerce), don't tell the accused exactly what the illegality is and/or exactly what law it's based on, and levy the fines. A complete joke straight from the mind of Kafka.

More Kafka-esque is that the EC holds no "trials". They hold *hearings*, but those don't provide due process. The accused has no chance to cross examine evidence or face their accusers, and indeed, the evidence against the accuser doesn't even have to be disclosed. The accused can appeal EC rulings to a real court, but the appellate court still doesn't allow cross examination of the evidence or accusers, it only deals with if the EC followed proper procedure in declaring guilt (and, according to recent EU court ruling, whatever the EC has absolute authority regarding commerce, so whatever they do *is* proper procedure by definition). The whole thing is a sham. Which is why US companies that have a beef with Microsoft always threaten to go to the EC rather than going to a US court, the natural venue for disputes between American companies.

Here's the big problem with your and the EC's legal theory. If the maintaining a high marketshare is in itself evidence of illegality, but you don't really know what the illegality is, how the hell is a company supposed to know what to do to remain in compliance with EC law? Under this legal theory, the only way to ensure compliance is to intentionally gut your own marketshare somehow to make sure you remain below 50%.



"The issue out of that is this; yes, there are companies which have market shares greater than 50% but it moves up, it moves down, it moves left, it moves right - the point is, it never stays static. "

According to the EC, the market in question, servers, isn't "static". According to their stats, Microsoft's server share keeps increasing year after year, and they are pissed off about it.

Edited 2007-12-22 20:08

Extremely high marketshare is evidence of illegality in the sense that it is illegal in and of itself. The EC holds that, in the service of the public interest in competition and choice, they have a mandate to intervene in monopolized markets on the behalf of smaller competitors. They also have a mandate to intervene in the business of any corporation in response to widespread public dissatisfaction.

This may seem odd from an American perspective. But even in this country, corporations technically operate under a charter, a contract with the public that may be revoked at any time should the public decide that the corporation is no longer serving their interests faithfully. The Department of Justice typically refuses to prosecute such cases even where public outrage is enormous (e.g. the credit card industry) and blocks state governments from doing so.

Explicit marketshare caps are hardly a novel concept, even in the content industry (of which the software industry is a part). There is an undeniably public interest in the accessibility and diversity of information sources, which has clear implications for the software platform as a gateway to content.



Corporate personhood is a distinctly American concept rooted in Santa Clara Country v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Individual liberties under the 14th Amendment such as the right to due process weren't intended to apply to juristic persons such as corporations.

As far as I know, there is neither medical evidence of a corporation ever being born nor official records of any corporation successfully completing the naturalization process, and the next word in the 14th Amendment is "and". The SCOTUS ruling to the contrary fundamentally alters the original legal basis of the corporation as a servant of the public.

Legal authorities outside the United States may have slightly more sensible interpretations of the role of the corporation and may occasionally deprive them of liberty or property without due process. I suppose that it's at least exceedingly difficult to deprive a corporation of life, although the Supreme Court may beg to differ...

Nice post.

But I maintain this is flawed legal theory. My question remains, how can a company ensure that they are compliant with EC law other than to intentionally gut their own marketshare? Or is the normal course of action that of doing the best you can to generate revenue, of which a high marketshare may result, and then just deal with resulting EC action if it comes along? That seems to be the case.

You talked of "explicit marketshare caps", but there is nothing "explicit" here, and that's another problem. It's whatever the EC feels is too high a marketshare based on whatever. If an authority doesn't base its rulings on explicit laws and doesn't identify the actual illegal activity and point to an explicit law that says that the activity is illegal, then we have "ad-hoc law", which isn't law at all. You should make explicit laws, and live by them, not make things up as you go along and have ruling based on the whim of whoever happens to be running the EC that day.

To be more concrete:
Microsoft created Active Directory years and years ago. They kept that "protocol" private to themselves for use between Windows clients and Windows servers. And this was all perfectly legal according to the EC, and was legal for years. But years later, the EC sees that Microsoft's server share is too high for its liking, so suddenly Active Directory as a private "protocol" is illegal. Note that they do this without citing any explicit language nor any explicit marketshare cap. In other words, not based on explicit law that Microsoft could've been aware of before hand.


My other problem is that the EC, and even more so its rooters, demonize Microsoft as an evil, wicked, and corrupt entity. But it sounds like from your post, that in reality the situation is, "OK Microsoft, you did a good job in achieving a high marketshare, but it's too high under EC law, so we have to take measures lower it". Instead, we get talk of how evil, wicked, and corrupt Microsoft is. The over the top rhetoric portraying Microsoft as if they are the modern-day IG Farben of course creates friction and ill-will and would make anyone less cooperative in meeting demands or making concessions. It's like Bush rhetorically putting companies in his "axis of evil" then expecting to be able to deal with those countries.

I'd rather that the EC and its rooters had just stated the legal theory straight up from the beginning. "A high marketshare is illegal, period." Rather than talk of how evil Microsoft is.


We'll see if there's any real consistency based on whether the EC actually does anything to lower the marketshare of the iPod. I know they didn't do anything regarding the PS2's extremely high European marketshare.

"My question remains, how can a company ensure that they are compliant with EC law other than to intentionally gut their own marketshare? Or is the normal course of action that of doing the best you can to generate revenue, of which a high marketshare may result, and then just deal with resulting EC action if it comes along? That seems to be the case."

The issue is not the marketshare but the means used to obtain it, and MS knows this perfectly well. It's not about the Windows marketshare, but about how it was used to boost other MS technologies such as WMP and IE over their competitors.

"I'd rather that the EC and its rooters had just stated the legal theory straight up from the beginning. "A high marketshare is illegal, period." Rather than talk of how evil Microsoft is."

A high marketshare is not illegal, abusing it is.

"We'll see if there's any real consistency based on whether the EC actually does anything to lower the marketshare of the iPod. I know they didn't do anything regarding the PS2's extremely high European marketshare."

Were the PS2 and iPod marketshares obtained through Sony's and Apple's dominant positions on other non related market?

Edited 2007-12-24 22:30

You certainly have valid points, as usual ;-)

The relationship between multinational corporations and government is one of the keys to making globalization work for everybody.

I'm a free-trader for the most part. I believe that protectionism chokes prosperity and incites geopolitical conflict. But the role of the government in a capitalist economic system is first and foremost to cultivate a financially-secure and upwardly-mobile middle class. That's the engine of growth, without which no amount of supply-side butt-kissing can keep the train rolling down the tracks for very long.

In my view of the world, multinational corporations form a sort of distributed privately-owned and operated world government. The impact of national politics, even American politics, on multinational corporations is dramatically less than it was in 1980 because of globalization. These beasts are hedged against changes in currencies, regulations, and regional instability.

The global economy is moving much faster than our governance frameworks, and we should be careful not to knee-jerk in a way that stifles the amazing (albeit grossly inequitable) global growth we're experiencing. I appreciate your respect for the rule of law and setting the expectations in advance, but if our governments don't play this by ear, doing their best and making it up as they go along, the Dark Ages will be upon us before we've got this globalization thing all figured out.

The best I can offer in way of insight in this situation is a more intimate and cooperative real-time dialog between multinational corporations and national governments, a hybrid of the UN and WTO where corporations have seats at the table. Believe me, the CEOs understand the flip-side of globalization, and they understand that the scale of their enterprise necessitates a closer look at equitable growth. They're ready to role up their sleeves and help smooth out the wrinkles in ways that government can't with any reasonable efficiency or competency.

But governments have to tell them where they need help and where they need them to do better. In my neo-progressive politics, the role of government is to identify long-term socioeconomic challenges and to secure public funding through progressive taxation for investments in sustainable and equitable growth, while the private sector carries out the majority of the execution on behalf of the government. I advocate a lot of single-payer, private-provider solutions. However, the government has to drive a hard bargain and get tough with their corporate partners, like Wal-Mart or China does with their suppliers.

If you think of the EC as Microsoft's customer and the representative of millions of other Microsoft customers, their behavior makes sense. They said, "Microsoft, we like your Windows products, but unless you work harder on interoperability, the bloc of consumers we represent is going to look elsewhere". This is why corporations weren't initially entitled to due process. They're ultimately subject to the demands of their customers, although government is often required to expedite advocacy because of the massive leverage in the capitalist system.

I think it's unfortunate that these actions are, to some extent, manifesting as sneak attacks. As I said before, governments ought to work much more closely and continuously with large corporations to make sure that they understand what their constituents need from their products and services throughout the development cycle Through NDAs and incremental feedback, we can have the effective checks on corporate business practices that we so clearly need without weighing them down with onerous regulations. We can have more flexibility and nuance in our approach to globalization, suppressing the tendency for such issues to become cast in the absolutist ideologies of partisan politics.

"To be more concrete:
Microsoft created Active Directory years and years ago. They kept that "protocol" private to themselves for use between Windows clients and Windows servers. And this was all perfectly legal according to the EC, and was legal for years. But years later, the EC sees that Microsoft's server share is too high for its liking, so suddenly Active Directory as a private "protocol" is illegal. Note that they do this without citing any explicit language nor any explicit marketshare cap. In other words, not based on explicit law that Microsoft could've been aware of before hand."

I think you are on a completely wrong track here. The ONE rule that guide the EC markets is: "Competition must be possible". If that is ensured, the EC comission is happy, no matter if there are actually competing products or not.

The "keeping secret of AD protocols" has always been illegal. Just the EC didn't know they existed.
When Sun brought in their complaint, the EC commission was rather fast in pointing out that Microsoft's behavior was illegal. Then it took several years to actually make it clear to MS that they would not be allowed to weasel out of that.

The rules of the EC market are rather clear. So Microsoft at least had the chance to know that they had to give the protocol specs to anyone who asked.
And in case you did not notice: MS had the chance to go to court over this issue. And guess what: They went to court. And lost. Obviously an "explicit language" or "explicit market share cap" is not necessary for either the EC or the courts to recognize a monopoly when they see one and to recognize market distorting behaviour when they see one.

It seems to me that many US-citicens are angry about the EC success aginst MS. But let me tell you one thing: The EC commission usually punishes european companies, and the fines they pay are much larger than what MS paid (related to company revenue of course). Siemens for example paid almost as much as MS, when they tried to rise prices by forming a cartell with competitors. MS was given every doubt as non-EC company, they have been given almost 2 years of time before the first penalty was set, but MS simply did not want to play by the rules.

And that is why MS is evil. They are deliberately and knowingly hindering other companies at competing with them on a level playing field (the OOXML drama is the latest proof of that).

If someone runs into me and knocks me off my feet accidentally I would not call that person evil, clumsy maybe but not evil.
If someone sees me, runs at me, knocks me off my feet, does that again after I stand up, and then spits into my face, kicks at me and takes, then this person is evil.

"Extremely high marketshare is evidence of illegality in the sense that it is illegal in and of itself."

Phail. Not sure if it's the same in the EU, but high marketshare/monopoly in of itself is not illegal. However, if one has achieved this state, then the gov can apply a different set of rules (laws) to the company's behaviors.

Whats wrong with that statement - it is unnatural to maintain such a high market share in a market which has low start up costs, low physical barriers to entry. The only way you can maintain the type of monopoly Microsoft has is either gained through being a natural monopoly such as a power generator or lines company, or they're doing something illegal.

What's wrong is that there are LOTS of reasons why monopolies are maintained, and it isn't strictly due to anti-competitive pressures. For example, many companies obtain MULTIPLE products from Microsoft (Exchange, Office, Windows, Visual Studio, etc) -- as well as SUPPORT -- so having one source can actually be less expensive than trying to cobble together a Franken-solution from multiple vendors. I can understand the EC's attempts at leveling the playing field to make it more possible for other companies to compete; however, I think it's wrong to continually hobble Microsoft merely for maintaining a monopoly which is driven by customer demand, not anti-competitive measures.

"""

"""

No. What's really pathetic is that this is a story about the Samba Team receiving important documentation which may make a very significant difference to all of us in the future, but the threads under it have degenerated into flames about Microsoft vs Linux, as per usual.

And it shows that both sides have trouble focusing on constructive conversation as opposed to petty bickering over stuff that really doesn't matter.

And here is another exceedingly interesting perspective on this protocol documentation release, and how it was negotiated, despite flaws in the original MS/EC deal. Sorry if I'm on topic.

http://tinyurl.com/yntaka

Edited 2007-12-24 22:23

Nobody has an issue with microsoft having a monopoly. The issue is, that there CANNOT be competition as long as MS keeps the AD protocols secret.

The opening of the protocol does not hinder MS in selling their software and their support contracts as they always did. And nobody hobbles MS. There is no order or law which forbids MS to sell their stuff or create the next hypercool product.
Of course, using their market share dominance on the desktop operating system market to wipe out the competitors in an other market (browsers for example) is illegal. And can be reversed, of course.

So interoperability and open standards is utopian nonsense? Wow. Glad there are others who don't share your viewpoint. I mean, it's one thing to argue about the virtues of Windows Home Server, it's another thing to call interoperability a utopian notion. Can you imagine this world without open protocols like TCP/IP?

**whooooshh**

That's the sound of sarcasm flying overhead.

Yeah, you're obviously a master sarcaster whose talent is wasted on osnews.com. Oh, wait.

Edited 2007-12-23 17:38

It wasn't me that made the original statement...

pay attention.

No way, once people see that they do not need Windows as the OS, what makes you think they will stay with it ?

Microsoft's ONLY purpose is to make money for the shareholders, it does not matter if the product is perfect or that it sucks, just that money is generated for the shareholders.

Being inter operable with other operating systems is irrelevant to shareholders, who do not want to see even one person switch to an alternate os. It means one less person to sell future stuff to.

The EU is correct going after Microsoft, as there are numerous european governments that are moving away from Microsoft, and switching to alternatives. The comeback from Microsoft is that these countries and their people will be incompatible with the rest of the world, who uses Microsoft product. The EU will ensure this does not happen.

So, when The Application, Protocols and Formats are all opened up and are transparent, what is the point of Windows at all ?

BTW - I use Linux, but have Microsoft shares......

Maybe the EC will learn from their mistakes.

Currently there is a complaint by Opera for procession at the EC. The Opera guys want the EC to decide that Windows MUST NOT be shipped with IE, that the OEMs have to install a browser themselves.

We will see if the EC actually agrees with that.

No way, once people see that they do not need Windows as the OS, what makes you think they will stay with it ?

Existing Windows software, licenses already owned by them, computers shipping with Windows, contracts made...Want me to go on? And strange as it sounds, yes, some people actually like to use Windows.

Being inter operable with other operating systems is irrelevant to shareholders, who do not want to see even one person switch to an alternate os. It means one less person to sell future stuff to.

What about a case where some of the networked computers were something other than Windows clients and they couldn't properly communicate with each other? Those Windows machines would be ditched quite quickly for alternatives..As such, if Windows made it easy to communicate with other platforms too then those Windows machines might not be replaced. That means more customers/money for Microsoft. So, to say it bluntly: they would most likely just gain more users if they tried to really improve interoperability.

So, when The Application, Protocols and Formats are all opened up and are transparent, what is the point of Windows at all ?

What is the point of Linux? The apps, protocols and formats are all opened up and are transparent, and already implemented in numerous other alternative OSes, what is the point of Linux at all? Think about it, whatever reasons you come up with are most likely applicable to Windows too..

Even if all formats & protocols were opened up, there would still be at least one "point" to using Linux that could never apply to Windows too.

Using Linux means escape from the control & influence of, and escape from your dependence on, a large American corporation.

Using Linux means escape from the control & influence of, and escape from your dependence on, a large American corporation.

True, yet regular home-users don't really care about such: Windows just has a lot more useable software, it's familiar to almost everyone and you can always find someone who can help you. On the corporate end the need to use Windows usually comes from the software they use; there are lots of important applications which just haven't been ported to any other platform. As the interoperability between Windows and other OSes improves Microsoft does lose their control over users somewhat but it also means Windows too becomes a viable OS to use in multiplatform environments.

We are imagining a world where all the formats and protocols are open, are we not?

In such a world, Wine would work.



Regular home users, in such a world where Wine works, would be able to run all their programs under Linux, and Linux would be free of cost and the regular home users would be free-er of DRM restrictions on them.

For wine to work, the win32 api would have to be under an open source liscence. an api is not a format or a protocol, it is a platform.

good news though is that the official way to code for microsoft products is .net, and while that is not open source, it is an ECMA standard. mono is already at a better point then wine ever was.

.Net is a bit like OOXML ... it has the appearance of being "open" but important bits of the whole picture are deliberately kept as strictly proprietary by Microsoft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Standardization_and_lic...


Windows forms is part of the .NET way of writing applications, but it is not part of the ECMA standards.

If you write a standard .NET application with a GUI, it is effectively a Windows-only application.

There are other GUI libraries available for .NET and mono, including GTK, but you have to design your application to use that from the outset in order for it to be cross-platform portable.

Sorry, but no. Most programs written in the .NET framework are a bust in terms of cross-platform ... most .NET programs are Windows-only applications with no hope of being ported to other platforms.

Microsoft designed it that way. Typical.

BTW, an API is indeed a protocol. It is a protocol and a data exchange format between an application and the OS it runs under. Wine is a "translation layer" for the Win32 API on a Linux platform. It "translates" between the calls to the Win32 API made by a running x86-binary-only application program (an .exe file if you like) and the Linux OS API to service those calls.

Edited 2007-12-22 14:08

BTW, an API is indeed a protocol. It is a protocol and a data exchange format between an application and the OS it runs under. Wine is a "translation layer" for the Win32 API on a Linux platform. It "translates" between the calls to the Win32 API made by a running x86-binary-only application program (an .exe file if you like) and the Linux OS API to service those calls.

Just to be exact Wine is a whole lot more than just a translation layer. It duplicates the Win32 API to run on other platforms, and because of trying to duplicate the whole API (and parts of the API are not even documented!) it is a very complex piece of software.

You have a point. Regardlessly, a reverse engineered winforms is still easier to do then the entire win32 api, and about at the same level when it comes to legality.

I knew about winforms, but I was unaware of the fact that ASP.net was not under the standard. That is a real shame, considering how kickass it is compared to other server side scripting languages.

Do you know if WPF is covered? I remember Miguel mentioning that a WPF port wouldnt be that hard. Since WPF is the post-Vista way of doing windows guis, I would assume that it is blocked too.

We are imagining a world where all the formats and protocols are open, are we not?

In such a world, Wine would work.

Wine will never be complete and it will always have quirks and apps which just won't work properly..That is mainly due to the fact that Windows is also a moving platform and as such Wine is always playing the catch-on game :/

Too bad Microsoft can't be required to make documentation available to the Wine team then.

yet regular home-users don't really care about such: Windows just has a lot more useable software,

Linux distro's nowadays come with boatloads of software. I myself am doing lots of stuff with my computer (on Debian-Linux), and I think that the average Linux distro can serve 100% of the needs of 90% of the home desktop users. So there is no reason why Linux should not get to 90% market share.

it's familiar to almost everyone and you can always find someone who can help you.

Well, put anyone in front of a usual Linux desktop, and you will see that he can handle that. I once had guests from Texas (music students) who never saw anything other than MS Windows. I made them a guest account and told them the password. Within minutes they were surfing the web and typing some stuff on OpenOffice, and they definitely were no techs. The difference between Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 is huge compared to the difference between Windows XP and KDE on Linux. That's for the users. The home system maintainer usually is someone who is interested enough to learn about the interna of his tools. He had to learn Windows administration, now he has to learn Linux administration. Help is available for Linux as well as for Windows. Remember, with Linux you are not dependent on the neighbor who has a cracked version of MS Money to get an accounting application onto your system. The only thing you need to get going is internet access, then you can help yourself.

On the corporate end the need to use Windows usually comes from the software they use; there are lots of important applications which just haven't been ported to any other platform. As the interoperability between Windows and other OSes improves Microsoft does lose their control over users somewhat but it also means Windows too becomes a viable OS to use in multiplatform environments.

My company switched me to Windows because of this lock-in. We have been using IRIX, HPUX and Linux on the desktop workstations and did our MS Office stuff on an MS terminal server. That obviously was an expensive solution, so they totally switched us over to Windows. Now I have to reboot my machine 3 times a week and cannot utilize it for crankshaft dynamics calculation (one calculation job takes one day up to one week) anymore. So the 4 processor cores are sitting idle. We would get all apps we need for Linux with 3 exceptions (MSOffice, KisSoft, FlowMaster).

The lock-in tactics of MS work, I agree with you on that and us little guys have to live with an unstable operating system which throws a hissy fit every time it senses interoperability and cross platform stuff coming near it.

The funny thing is, I never thought Windows XP was unstable until I had to really work with it. I always thought, people were overly critical about the stability of XP, but I must say the reality is much harsher than I believed.

My experience with stability of operating systems:
- reboot IRIX every 3 to 6 months
- reboot HPUX every 2 to 4 weeks
- reboot Linux every 4 weeks to 3 months
- reboot Win XP SP2 every 2nd day

Therefore interoperability will cost Windows more than it wil bring them marketshare wise.

"This allows Samba devs to verify their understanding of the protocol and make sure it correctly communicates with Windows clients. Sure, Samba has worked quite well this far too but this is just to make absolutely sure they haven't missed anything."

As you know, nearly everything has the potential to improve; same thing for Samba.

"In the future I hope Microsoft understands the need for interoperability since they no longer can drive all the alternatives OSes out of the market."

As someone else mentioned before, MICROS~1 is interested in working operability just in the way it can lead them to more oh joy oh market share, and so to more money for the shareholders.

Creating methods and means for interoperability has alway been a job for free software developers who nearly "guess, trial and error" engineered software products that were able to communicate to "black box like" MICROS~1 products in an acceptable way.

Just imagine, if MICROS~1 released the specs for everything they have, in very short time Linux and UNIX would provide everything most "Windows" users are that proud of, and along with the latest "Vista" deals ("Get 'Vista', and by the way, get a new PC.") "Windows" has the chance to be less and less interesting to customers, because it costs too much when the requested functionalities can be obtained by using Linux / UNIX for free.

"But if Microsoft makes it easier for Windows to properly communicate with alternative OSes it just might convert some people back to Windows."

No, I don't think so. Most users of non-"Windows" OSes know why they've leaved "the boat", and even if "Windows" provided what is already standard in Linux / UNIX world for years, what would be the benefit for the individuals? The same power for much more money.

"They should understand that if an OS is to stay it shouldn't try to do that by forcing people to use only that OS: it should rather just try prove it is better to use than the other ones yet allow one to exchange information with the "inferior" OSes just as easily as with other machines running the same OS."

But I think they've done this since they started existing, hm?

"Bad interoperability usually translates to inferior and as such it's actually bad PR for them."

Yes, I agree here. I think that's why Linux and UNIX OSes are so popular among users who know about the importance of interoperability. But as you will admit, the average home users of "Windows" don't care for interoperability.

MS have plenty of Novell/SuSe licenses... HP are more likely losing some old Unix boxes and gaining a Novell box as a replacement, as part of the "you scratch our back, we'll pay you loads of money and promise not to litigate about software patents" agreement.

Unless you meant MS were gaining some linux servers....?

Microsoft bought a few Linux servers to host a xmas LAN party, they will all bring their XP machines in from home, and connect up to play Enemy Territory with the xmas skins of axis grinch and the allies in santa hats. Medics throw out presents and field ops throw out crackers.


BTW - This is lies, I made it up.......

Edited 2007-12-22 09:46

I'm pretty confident that the Microsoft internal network runs almost exclusively on Windows. I'd expect to see pigs flying first.

I'd expect to see pigs flying first.

Most police forces have had helicopters for some time now. If I were you I would dig around the MS internal network to see if there aren't some SAMBA servers doing some stuff.

Have a search on netcraft.com

Site Site Report First seen Netblock OS
1. www.microsoft.com Site Report August 1995 Microsoft Corp Windows Server 2008
2. update.microsoft.com Site Report February 2005 MS Hotmail Windows Server 2003
3. download.microsoft.com Site Report August 1999 ADSL endpoints NAT conections only Linux
4. v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com Site Report January 2004 Microsoft Corp Windows Server 2003
5. search.microsoft.com Site Report January 1997 ADSL endpoints NAT conections only Linux



And that was only after one search...

Yeah... parts of the external network which are hosted by other companies (probably akamai, but I'm not sure) run other OSes. HotMail also ran on BSD before it was converted to run Windows. That was a pretty important step for Windows because it forced the ironing out of a number of problems (a long time ago).

We have all heard that excuse, that they use other companies that might be using Linux servers, but, the data is there for all to see, both Update and Search are using linux servers..

http://search.microsoft.com was running unknown on Linux when last queried at 13-Dec-2007 19:25:00 GMT - refresh now Site Report
Try out the Netcraft Toolbar! FAQ
OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Linux unknown 13-Dec-2007 84.45.224.9 ADSL endpoints NAT conections only
Linux unknown 13-Sep-2007 84.45.224.9 ADSL endpoints NAT conections only
Linux unknown 12-Sep-2007 84.53.139.25 Akamai Technologies
Linux unknown 3-Jul-2007 84.45.224.9 ADSL endpoints NAT conections only
Linux unknown 2-Jul-2007 213.160.98.238 Akamai Technology
Linux unknown 30-Jun-2007 84.53.139.89 Akamai Technologies
Linux unknown 29-Jun-2007 84.53.134.198 Akamai Technologies
Linux unknown 29-Jun-2007 84.53.139.19 Akamai Technologies
Linux unknown 27-Jun-2007 84.45.224.9 ADSL endpoints NAT conections only
Linux unknown 23-Jun-2007 84.53.139.19 Akamai Technologies


However, does this alone not tell you that Microsoft do not trust security to their own system ?

Well, it might tell YOU that, but all it tells me is that Microsoft uses Akamai for global web distribution and doesn't try to force them to use Windows. Just do a traceroute to that search site and you'll see akamai.

By the same measure, you should take a look at store.apple.com. I was a bit surprised by what they were actually using, but I think they made a good choice there.

You extol Microsoft product here all the time....

What is wrong with Microsoft using a company that does use its products for web distribution ? Is there any ?

I can't find any on Netcraft, now, why is that ?
Is it because there is a Linux monopoly in this sector of the market, or is it because the performance of Windows is unimpressive ?

I presented you with stark facts, and still you tried to turn them around and make it out to be something that I had misinterpreted. I will spell it out again.

FOR MISSION CRITICAL PURPOSES, MICROSOFT WILL NOT USE ITS OWN PRODUCTS, SO WHY SHOULD WE?


btw - you should look for a new employer.

I've only been here for a few months... it's a bit soon to move, no? Plus I find my job to be interesting and I'm learning quite a bit.

I'm not going to continue this thread any further, but I will tell you that every server I have encountered at work runs Windows. Microsoft takes using its own stuff very seriously. A number of flagship online products run exclusively on Windows with high reliability. Live, Hotmail, and the various pieces of MSN are all hosted on Windows. It seems like akamai is mostly used for just pushing static files out around the world. But you're welcome to believe what you want.

Highly unlikely. Unless MS starts to lose money, and starts rolling heads out the door, I'd supremely doubt that they'd move any part of Windows to a Linux base.

Microsoft's head count is almost as bloated as their code-bases.

See above ^^^^^
or in case you missed it...

Site Site Report First seen Netblock OS
1. www.microsoft.com Site Report August 1995 Microsoft Corp Windows Server 2008
2. update.microsoft.com Site Report February 2005 MS Hotmail Windows Server 2003
3. download.microsoft.com Site Report August 1999 ADSL endpoints NAT conections only Linux
4. v5.windowsupdate.microsoft.com Site Report January 2004 Microsoft Corp Windows Server 2003
5. search.microsoft.com Site Report January 1997 ADSL endpoints NAT conections only Linux

Yeah, I saw it. So what. You're picking up a Linux OS in a firewall ADSL endpoint. Congratulations, it means nothing.

Then what is the alternative - the alternative would mean having to implement CUPS, NFS and numerous other technologies ontop of Windows, and even then it would be lacking the features which one needs in heterogeneous environment.

Just because *YOU* don't need it, doesn't mean that the rest of the world is going to go 'screw you' and take home their marbles.

No need to implement CUPS, NFS etc on top of windows. Just get rid of windows.

You can't get rid of Windows until you provide compatibility and allow a gradual migration; you're going to turn around to an organisation with 100,000 desktops to 'move all at once'?

I would move them all at once. Sure, it'll suck for a while, but the organization will be better off in the end and they won't have to waste their time slowly migrating stuff around. Yep, you've convinced me, inter-operability is a bad idea.

Welcome back to the unemployment line.

To remind you: The string-manufacturing company "Ernie Ball" did just that.

They yanked Windows out of the business within 3 months. And saved $80,000.00 that fiscal year.
That should tell you something: It is not as hard as Microsoft wants you to believe.
Especially the oh so impossible migration of the secretary who cannot possibly switch from MSOffice to OpenOffice is very cheap

Another non sensical reply. "Iw ould move them all at once. Sure.it'll suck for a while..."
You member of the fan club do not and never get it. Businesses and user that uses their computer to do business and real work, do not care about your phylosophical bending. We care that things work. Would any company for the sake of using open source, risk "would suck for a while"? No, only someone that has no common business sense would do anything like that. By default, you are inlcluded in that group.

Read business 101 and you might understand your failings.

Dude, you're arguing with someone who obviously flip burgers for a living and have no understanding at all of enterprise and corporate logistics and priorities.

Sir, I find your remark insulting to burger flippers everywhere, comparing that guy to them...

Everyone knows his real job is to screw the tops onto toothpaste tubes.

Laudable goal, but exactly how are we going to come up with the magical pixie fairies that will somehow change reality while we're asleep and make that happen? Because that's the scope of the miracle required to do that.

At this moment in time, the cost of moving *off* the Windows infrastructure is very high even for a small organization. Yes, there would be long term benefits, and yes, organizations should look for the long term and accept short to medium term costs, but that's simply not how the business world works.

Any CIO who would follow through with your proposal would get fired so quickly there would be a sonic boom as the air rushes in to fill his former spot on the payladder. Do you really expect someone in a position of authority to deliberately sacrifice her or his career for some nebulous far-away good deed for the company? Please.

Microsoft will have to keep their networking protocol compatible with the literally billions of client machines already out there.

Read about this question and many others in vast detail here:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071220124013919

... which is a site that scooped OSNews on this story by quite a long way.

The article you linked to does raise some questions; especially in regards to patents; I wonder, could they implement the 'patented algorithms and disable them by default, like Freetype does with their project - so those organisations that have agreements with Microsoft can enable those patented algorithms.

According to the Samba developers, it isn't hard to avoid a patent that you know about.

After all, a patent is granted as "a new & innovative method of doing <some desired thing>". You don't get a patent on the actual act of "doing <some desired thing>" but rather on your new & innovative method of doing it.

There is always more than one way to skin a cat. All Samba developers would need to do is examine any patent Microsoft are claiming as applicable, and then work around it by doing <whatever desired thing> using a different method ... even and old and boring method ... as long as it isn't the same method as described in the Microsoft patent.

After all, a patent on the formula for paracetemol isn't a patent on "headache tablet", but rather it is a patent on "a method of making a headache tablet", and such a patent has no impact at all on anyone making headache tablets with ibuprofen as the active ingredient.

Edited 2007-12-22 06:01

True; they can work around it, but like the patenting issue with Freetype, there is a level of sacrifice - and limiting in one can achieve when going down alternative avenue. Take Theora for example, and the compromises which needed to be done to ensure that they didn't violate some patented algorithm relating to video compression. Yes, you can work around, buts never going to be as good as the patented algorithm. There is the rare case when it is, but that's the exception rather than the rule.

For me, I don't understand the need for Microsoft to demand patent payments; it isn't as though their server product isn't good enough to compete. Windows 2003 is a great product, they have the advantage of a vertically integrated product line up which allows them to offer deals to large customers and sell the complete kit for all their needs.

Which brings to question why they think that they should need to use anti-competitive methods to remain competitive.

Precisely the right question. You have hit the nail on the proverbial head. Microsoft are supposed to be the best, aren't they? The world leaders in innovation in software?

Why exactly are Microsoft so persistently keen in trying to eliminate even the possibility of a competing product? What exactly are they afraid of?

Could it be that Microsoft are afraid that someone else could do a better job of something than Microsoft? No! Surely not! It just couldn't happen, could it?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140583-page,5-c,techindustrytrend...

Edited 2007-12-22 09:17

That's the thing; their Windows 2003 product is actually a good product.



What they're afraid of is decreasing profit margins. They're the only company out there who charges per server installed AND per user who logs onto the server. They might get forced to offer more at their existing price or charge less. Either way, they're going to be challenged on the pricing structure. Their profits may grow but the poor of customers will decrease at the same time.



I'd say its internal slackness more than anything else; Microsoft has become sloppy, lazy and lethargic; there isn't the same level of drive and passion for technology. They have a bloated R&D department developing technology that contributes to nothing in the way of produceable benefits to products - just look at some of the pointless crud money is being wasted on in their labs - each time I ask, "so, how is this going to enter into a product, and thus bring money in to cover the costs of that R&D, and thus, legitimise the expense to the shareholders?"

They have managers who are more interested in grand standing and abusing competition that coming up and confidently outlining where their technology is superior. They would sooner make insinuations to the illegality of competitors who offer compatible solutions which work with Microsoft products.

You have engineers and programmers who seem to have been stuck in a RDF where by they have taken on the arrogant Bill Gates attitude of 'screw you, I'm going home' when it comes to talking to other companies in regards to developing cross platform technologies. One only needs to look at the 'UNIX Haters Guide' written courtesy of an out of touch Microsoft engineer who should spend more time correct the A380 size deficiencies in Windows NT than throwing stones inside the glass house.

The company is from top to bottom a ball of arrogance which permeates from its founder to the existing CEO, and with each manager moulded in the Microsoft/Bill Gates ethos. For Microsoft to change they need to change the culture, and for that to change, they need to move away from this culture of indoctrination and allow those of different approaches to take charge and run it in a different manner.

One where meetings are held where ideas are discussed rather than who can yell, scream and debate an idea the loudest. Where people can sit around like adults and rationally looking at the different approaches - then coming to a compromise between each idea.

An organisation where engineers don't compete for the glory and limelight but instead work as a team towards a certain goal - where management has a direct hands on management rather than remote and out of touch with the reality of what those in the trenches are going through.

Yes, in other words, a complete overhaul.

Edited 2007-12-22 13:08

That is going to kill them in the long run, if they are relying on a continuing revenue stream such as that.

Samba 4 is coming:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/New-Samba-targets-Active-...

The announcement that is the topic of this thread will amplify the effectiveness of Samba 4. Support for Active Directory will be even more complete.

Microsoft exchange connectors are becoming available:
http://www.42tools.com/

As are replacements for Exchange and Sharepoint themselves:
http://www.alfresco.com/
http://www.zimbra.com/
http://www.open-xchange.com/DE/

You can get a decent supportable server distribution which does not charge either per server or per client who logs on:
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition
http://www.centos.org/

You can get a generic postscript printer driver for Windows which will allow a Windows client machine to print to any printer connected to a CUPS server:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=pdrv&pla...

You can get a decent ODF plugin at least for older versions of MS Office:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2163405,00.asp

You can get OpenOffice.org and IBM Lotus Symphony which have adequate support for legacy document formats.

You can virtualize XP on your powerful Linux server(s).

There are offerings of heavyweight Linux server support giving the concept of "cloud computing".
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/22613.wss

There are very-low-cost low end machines becoming available:

http://www.everex.com/
http://eeepc.asus.com/global/
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2414535067.html

There are people considering the switch, and think that one day it might even become a "no-brainer":
http://temporaryland.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/how-to-make-the-switc...

Governments are starting to mandate moving of the proprietary lock-in treadmill:
http://freeknowledge.eu/blog/wouter/netherlands-in-open-connection

More and more it becomes easier to contemplate avoiding Vista and moving Windows network over to Linux, firstly on the server and slowly (station-by-station) on the desktop.

Interesting.

Wow. That's an interesting indictment on how horrible Microsoft is a place to work. Do you have evidence for this or are you describing your own place of work? Or maybe you work at Microsoft yourself and are speaking from first hand knowledge. If not, then you're just talking a whole lot of nonsense, likely based on some malcontents posting at minimsft's blog.

I say your post is poppycock, and you know why? Because I've watched dozens of videos at channel9 and I can see for myself the things being worked on, the morale of the employees, etc, and none of it jives with your description.



Now, regarding Microsoft's research being bloated and useless, there was a story posted to slashdot a couple of days ago, talking about Microsoft's strength in patents. Evidently, in 2006, IBM had the most patents, with Microsoft coming in second, but Microsoft destroyed everyone else wrt the "science" quality of their patents, and Microsoft was #1 on the "industry impact" of their patents as well.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/20/1951229

So, of course the slashdot discusson talked of Microsoft Research, IBM Research, blah blah, and of course the anti-Microsoft crowd (which is about 90% of slashdotters) chipped in with the "WELL WHERE ARE THE PRODUCTS?" line that you are going with. There were some interesting responses to that, which I'll just summarize now.

First, a slashdotter posted a link to a page showing product contributions by Microsoft Research (last updated in 2005):
http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/pastpresentfuture/contributi...


Other slashdotters mentioned the following Microsoft innovations/research that have been or are being productized:

Microsoft's research on parallel processing was mentioned, and is now producing real products as the Parallel Extensions to .NET, including PLINQ:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/concurrency/default.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e848dc1d-5...

Photosynth
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060729-7381.html

Volta
http://labs.live.com/Announcing+Volta+Web+Development+Using+Only+Th...

And Microsoft Live Labs, in general
http://labs.live.com/

XNA, which won Microsoft two innovation awards, including Innovator of the Year at the 2006 DEMMX Awards.
http://www.demmx.com/demmx/awards/2006.jsp

JPEG XR (aka HD Photo and Windows Media Photo), for which the JPEG working group has formally assigned to Microsoft the task of developing into the next-gen image standard:
http://blogs.msdn.com/billcrow/archive/2007/07/31/industry-standard...

Microsoft's graphics research, which has resulted in them being one of the top innovators. See this report on the 2007 and 2006 Siggraph:
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic...
About which, a slashdotter posted the following:
"Believe it or not Microsoft's innovations and patents quite often end up in other pieces of software that don't cary the Microsoft brand name.

Microsoft's image processing research fund is really quite enormous. Just read all of the Siggraph papers every year and take note of how many are Microsoft Labs projects. Microsoft themselves almost never commercialize those image processing tools because they aren't a graphics software company (with the exception of the very impressive DirectX) and almost always pass off the patents and development to other companies."


Vista speech recognition. Yeah, I know there was a demo fiasco, but that was beta. See what David Pogue (no Microsoft fanboy, he) has to say about it (I've posted this link myself before to osnews :p):
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/telling-your-computer-wha...

Here's another link on that:
http://inetsynch.podbean.com/2007/09/26/windows-2-apples-episode-13...



A Microsoft employee posted, noting that many of Microsoft's innovations/research aren't consumer-oriented, so consumers wouldn't know about them. He gave these examples:
System Centre
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/default.aspx

Identity Lifecycle Management
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/idm/ILM.msp...

BizTalk
http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/default.mspx

Unified Communications
http://www.microsoft.com/uc/Default.mspx

And of course, VS, WPF, WCF, WF, CardSpace
http://www.netfx3.com

He also talked of great stuff being worked on, targeted for 2009 and beyond.


Other items listed in various slashdot posts as exmmples of Microsoft R&D showing up in products:
XMLHttpRequest
VC1
XBox Live
C#
LINQ
F#
Ribbon
Sharepoint
ClearType
TabletPC/Handwriting recognition
OneNote
Surface
Windows Home Server's data redudancy mechanism

All of which are products or are used in products.


One slashdotter had this to say:
"The problem with all fields of research (as opposed to Development) is that most often, the results are published in journals and papers years before the technology makes it into a product, then when it finally becomes "productized" everyone yawns because "that's so old", when in reality in terms of finished products it's not."

And lastly, a slashdotter posted a link to the list of Microsoft Research projects (I guess you consider them useless, since they won't result in an iPod or something, but I provide it for the other readers):
http://research.microsoft.com/research/projects/default.aspx

Edited 2007-12-22 22:01

Technology always moves on, and you just cannot say "never going to be as good as the patented algorithm". Never is such a long time, and technology often moves apace even in sometimes amazingly short timeframes.

For example, there is already new competition in the space. It may well be that we should watch "open & patent-free format" video on the web using something like matroska/dirac format (and encoding it using the libschrodinger encoding library) rather than Ogg/Theora.

http://www.matroska.org/

http://dirac.sourceforge.net/overview.html

Dirac still needs work, it has reached a "releasable" point but it is still quite CPU intensive ... but many a video codec started life that way.

http://www.linux.com/feature/123574


Dirac isn't there yet, but it may well be "on its way".

Edited 2007-12-22 09:51

Microsoft spent three years fighting the decision because the documentation is of that detail - the ruling against them was practically 'the documentation sucks, give your competitors a better one'

"""

"""

You bring up a good point. Because I am sometimes critical of FSF's strategy and tactics, I find that some people assume that I do not appreciate what they do accomplish, when in fact I acknowledge and welcome their achievements.

Our brains have a tendency to want to simplify things. Categorizing, pidgeon-holing, and black/white thinking are strategies that we employ without realizing.

Ah say, ah say, boy - you're mixin' your metaphors faster'n a one-legged horse leading a cat to water!

The problem Molly is of course that even if Microsoft published the source code, they still own the copyright to that code. In fact, copyright law is supposed to be legal protection for works that are published.

As soon as Microsoft had published their closed-source code, they could soon after claim that Samba had "copied" they way it works, even though it was a closely guarded trade secret before bing published. You get this type of nonsense when you try to protect something (that was IBM's to begin with, BTW) as your trade secret, your copyright and your patent all at the same time. Of those three protections, only one is supposed to apply to secrets.

Anyway, Microsoft have now had to reveal their secret obscuration of interoperability information. Just like a CD can play on a player made by any manufacturer, now finally we might see an even playing field where any manufacturer can make a server that will cater to Windows client machines.

For a not-Molly-spin view on this story's history, see here:
http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/PFIF_history.html


Obligated, Molly. Inter-operation of products from different manufacturers, giving rise to open competition, is a requirement of having a free market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-trust


Edited 2007-12-22 05:41

Oops. The link in my previous post on this is broken.
Here is the correct link on Samba wanting source code rather than a spec in 2002 (which later, Microsoft offered along with free support calls, but the EC rejected):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/19/why_microsofts_eu_concessio...

"There can't be a specification that's worth anything," says Jeremy Allison, joint lead of the Samba Project. "The source code itself is the specification . The level of detail required to interoperate successfully is simply not documentable - it would produce a stack of paper so high you might as well publish the source code."

Edited 2007-12-22 19:30

You need to include a few more quotes from that article to properly explain the context:


There is a legitimate complaint here that Microsoft does not provide adequate documentation to allow other parties to produce products that can interoperate with Microsoft's products, either as clients or as servers.



Microsoft were offering 120 pages of documentation. It was pure "fluff", and everyone knew it. Jeremy's comment was that if that 120 pages that Microsoft were offering truly was all that they had in the way of a specification, then the only real way anyone was going to be able to interoperate with Microsoft's products was going to be by looking at Microsoft's source code.

The outcome of the EU decision, which is what this thread was about, namely "Samba Team Receives Microsoft Protocol Documentation" ... that specification is over 14 thousand pages.

http://www.piana.eu/?q=en/samba_pfif
Carlo Piana: "The total number of pages of which the documentation is made is 14820."

So, Molly, if we compare 120 pages of fluff that Microsoft offered in 2002, to 14 thousand pages (more than twice the size of OOXML) of actual specification documentation required (as testified by the expert that Microsoft themselves picked) and I think we can begin to see what Jeremy was actually talking about in 2002.

Microsoft were only two orders of magnitude shy of the mark in 2002, Molly. They didn't quite make their 2002 offer up to 1% of the required information.

Another MollyC story totally spun down by the actual facts.

It's been my experience that when using Samba between two Linux computers or between a Linux system and a Windows system, it is faster than it is between Windows and Windows.

Yes, sadly enough, the reversed-engineered code is better than Microsoft's.

It was only around the time of XP's release that file sharing was a semi-decent speed. But it still stunk.

My guess is the trust level goes up when Microsoft is forced to take action by government bodies. It's not like Microsoft volunteered this information.