Phoenix Technologies is sounding the death knell for BIOS – the bread and butter of its current operations. While Phoenix is comparatively the “Microsoft” of the BIOS world, it has spent years endeavoring to modernize the aging standard. If all goes according to plan, a new product the company dubs Core System Software (CSS) will serve as the foundation of PC architecture.
Phoenix Sounds Death Knell for BIOS
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Moving past the antiquated BIOS on your standard PC is a good thing, but I don’t like all the extra stuff Phoenix is proposing — things that would make it harder to run some other OS on the PC.
Apple, Sun, and SGI have some pretty good BIOS environments that PC manufacturers should look to emulate. Not put mini-windows on there.
I agree. Having an actual Forth-based programmable BIOS-thingie is much better than slapping on a bunch of extra crap that it should be the operating system’s job to handle.
And while I am not categorically against such things as DRM (I believe there are limited scenarios where they could be useful) I feel that they have no place in the BIOS.
Just imagine the next breed of Virus’s……Hmmm, BSOD on boot becuase the BIOS has been hacked???
You guys amuse me.
Smell the fish. This is absolutely in line with everything that happened in the last few years.
Microsoft made protocols and interfaces a moving target for two decades now, so that any competition must run to keep up. (The move to make NTFS non-writeable for the Open Source community by a combination of patents and DMCA lobbying was a brilliant one.)
Since no competition had comparable manpower (or control over the market), they all lost the race, regardless of how brilliant they were at their core.
Now, with the first competitor that might actually be able to catch up and give them a race for their money (Linux, although I don’t like it personally), they are “helping” in one technology after another that may help them in keeping the #1 platform by far in their grip.
They tossed ’em .NET, and they swallowed it, bait, hook, and line. (How much manpower is working on Mono et al.? How close can they ever come to the “real thing”? How much manpower will be eaten by trying to keep up when the next version of .NET is released?)
DMCA so you can’t adopt their protocols. TPC to keep the data “secure” (from being used on any non-TPC platform). Replacements for BIOS technology so you need a TPC certificate for your OS to run on that platform (which rules out any newcomers without company backing).
And the Linux people say “we can adapt”, and the Windows people say “I just won’t buy the new systems”.
Or they don’t bother at all.
And by this time tomorrow, it will be Windows, one or two corporate brands of Linux, perhaps MacOS, and nothing else. The monopoly will be successfully replaced by a duo/triopoly.
Brave new computing world.
Intel have already been pushing EFI to replace the BIOS, now Phoenix come up with their own system. Great; now we all have two possible systems to deal with.
While we’re at it, see this great peice of news from the article: “As part of the “trustworthy computing” model established by Microsoft, Phoenix d-NA will leverage support for Redmond’s CryptoAPI (CAPI) to deliver intrinsic security on systems running Windows and .NET applications. In addition, a variation of digitally signed core system software will allow the integration of devices serving as network endpoints – a step the company bills as the “critical first link in a ‘chain of trust’.”
Ignoraning the blatent buzzword bingo going on there, the truely good news is that Microsofts CryptoAPI’s is right there in the core of your computer. Oh boy, I’m sure that’ll be a larf to work with if you’re not a Windows developer! No doubt Microsoft and Phoenix will publish complete, freely available specifications to these API’s to allow interoperability with none-Microsoft software. Surely.
Excuse me, but I’m being a real cynic today.
and we’ll say “welcome in 1984”
IBM also uses OF. I think OF would be a great improvment for x86 based PC and for many expansion card manufacturers. While the later would need to move the bios they provide on their card to some forth code, it would would allow all systems to use that card (ie Sun boxes, SGI, and Apple). With that the cost of making a card model available to other architecture would reduce to just make a driver. No need to produce two version of the same card, one with a x86 bios the other with F-code bios.
—
http://homepage.mac.com/softkid/
with the coming battle for the new boot strap ROM, I could see some companies making OF boards. I think it would be interesting if OF made some headway in all the confusion.
Any chance of an article on the impact this stuff will have on all the various OS versions that get covered here? That would be a good ‘un Eugenia.
I know of LinuxBIOS (Although I don’t know of anyone who actually uses it..) Are there any “Open” OpenFirmware implementations in a similiar vien? With the replacement of the x86 BIOS certain within a few years, a freely available OF for common motherboards could offer an interesting alternative for those of us who don’t fancy using some bastardised Phoenix/Microsoft encumbered setup on our hardware.
Thats crimethink Goldstein, it’s room 101 for you I’m afraid.
Just as we have flash upgradeable BIOS’s, how feasible would it be for someone to develop a replacement BIOS if all these ‘unwanted’developments go ahead?
its callled openbios and linuxbios, they are working on it now…. dont worry! 🙂
You’re mostly right. Maybe the one thing that kept MS from doing everything they wanted to do is the emergence of TCP/IP as the standard networking protocol. This was something they didn’t own, so they couldn’t just patent it and shut everyone else out of the picture. And you are spot on about .NET and Mono– when are people going to stop wasting time on a “free” version of a Microsoft framework that, once everybody “embraces”, they will “extend” to kill off competition and ensure they get their money? People fail to understand this. I think that Linux has a chance at being able to continue to resist attempts by Microsoft for total dominance. What will make a difference is the continued adoption of Linux in the corporate world.
This is really disturbing. I agree that the BIOS structure could use some major updating, but reading the article seems like there is some other hidden agenda. Reading the Microsoft doublespeak terms “Trustworthy computing” always sounds the warning. Makes you wonder what is REALLY being planned, while this is old being sold to the public as an update.
It is sad that computer manufactures are not even mentioned. They are the ones that should be deciding what belongs in their systems. Instead, the OS supplier dictates how it will be.
Ok, I’m confused on two things about this new BIOS system. How will it detect the hardware in your computer? For example, in my current bios I can set the system date/time, geometry of the harddrives and cdrom, sound and modem functions. The article didn’t mention any of that.
Also, where did it say you can’t run other OS’s? I didn’t see that mentioned once, so how do people know it can’t be run?
Cascading StyleSheets, Content Scrambling System… please think of a better acronym.
The BIOS does need an upgrade, but I would prefer something Forth based like OpenFirmware. I won’t speculate further about DRM and such…
Microsoft made protocols and interfaces a moving target for two decades now, so that any competition must run to keep up. (The move to make NTFS non-writeable for the Open Source community by a combination of patents and DMCA lobbying was a brilliant one.)
Funny, I remember clearly they were in a lobby group lobbying for the repealment, or at least ammendment of the DMCA. Unless you are a novice in business, Microsoft has a lot more to loose than to gain with DMCA. For example, they didn’t sue that XBOX researcher, MIT grad Huang (IIRC).
And keeping NTFS open or close really doesn’t matter. The only time when Windows and Linux (or other *nixes) need to communicate in the enterprise is via networking. Dual operating systems, the only thing an open NTFS would bring about, is the stuff of hobbyists and geeks, and would never become mainstream regardless on whether NTFS is open or not.
Microsoft did not cause DMCA. Nobody blames the Church of Scientilogy for DMCA, even though they actually used it. Blame RIAA and MPAA/Hollywood. Microsoft position can be actually enchance with the repealment of the DMCA. Why?
Sure, Microsoft could use the DMCA to protect their current market, but it would be far harder for them to enter newer ones. Once Microsoft don’t have new markets, their growth drops, and they become stagnated. If you can’t go up, you go down holds true here, and Microsoft would experience just that. Therefore it is really in Microsoft’s interest that DMCA goes away.
Plus, Microsoft’s competition isn’t really hurt by the DMCA. Not much less Macs would be sold because NTFS is closed, nor would the adoption spur of Linux would decrease with Mono killed. Microsoft knows that.
They tossed ’em .NET, and they swallowed it, bait, hook, and line. (How much manpower is working on Mono et al.? How close can they ever come to the “real thing”? How much manpower will be eaten by trying to keep up when the next version of .NET is released?)
If Microsoft ever decides to laugh out to Mono saying “Haha, trick you!”, and closes .NET, Mono can easily remove patented portions and still be well off. Sure, there will no longer be 100% compatiblity, but at least there is a good API out there that it is very similar to Windows’ APIs, allowing Windows developers to quickly port applications to Linux. And with Mono on Windows, those ports can actually work on Windows, similar to Carbon on Mac OS.
There’s really nothing much Microsoft could do that wouldn’t in the end comes back around and smack themselves with.
And by this time tomorrow, it will be Windows, one or two corporate brands of Linux, perhaps MacOS, and nothing else. The monopoly will be successfully replaced by a duo/triopoly.
And this is bad, because….?
I’m sorry, but I can’t see how having a large amount of companies controlling a market be any good for customers. 4-5 major players would allow fierce competition without too much market fragmentation. And if this is the way the market is going, why stop it? Isn’t it better than a monopoly?
Phoenix’s move may actually give the incentive to either create an OpenFirmware BIOS for x86 or, perhaps, get commercial support for LinuxBIOS.
What would be bad is for a sudden upswell in BIOS replacements among the Free/Open projects. To fracture themselves into umpteen DIY projects would be the loss of a
great opportunity.
If you have the skills and/or the hardware, through your support behind one of the existing projects and let’s get a solid alternative to the proprietary BIOSes available as soon as possible.
“Who benefits in turning the USA/Canada/Europe into a police state?
Asia is not going for Phoenix’s Phoney Phucked BIOS that is for sure.”
Are claiming that Asian countries have more freedom than USA/Canada/Europe? Do you believe that China is not a police state?
You are very good at Newspeak Goldstein. Wasn’t Goldstein a creation of Big Brother, used to offer false hope?
enough said…
Let’s me see… A Rabid Linux hating company, who has been convicted of anti-trust behaviour in its establishment of its monopoly, developed the “trustworthy computing” model of the new BIOS. It is to “deliver intrinsic security on systems running Windows and .NET applications.”
I am not getting any warm and fuzzy feeling from this.
Quite simply this reads as “only allow Windows” and “deny mono applications”. This company has already publicly stated that open source is not to be trusted (part of its FUD campaign), and therefore it makes sense that is will try to lock out the open source and spin it as “trustworthy computing”.
My company and its clients use Windows and Linux in our business practice. If Pheonix pursues this line of activity, we will not be able to purchase any Pheonix products – we are not going to change our business practice.
Where are you getting this information that leads you to believe Phoenix Technologies is going to do something that is going to lock out other OS’s besides Microsft’s?
Has it ever occured to anyone that Microsoft actually needs Linux to keep the DOJ off of thier backs? Who better to compete against than a rag tag bunch of volunteers, who will never be able to unite due to competing “distro’s” and licensing scheme’s? The poison is in the pudding.
perhaps people are getting the idea from the statements about embedding Microsoft encrypted APIs into the CSS making windows the target OS, rather than another OS that does not have access to the same APIs.
>>Has it ever occured to anyone that Microsoft actually needs Linux to keep the DOJ off of thier backs? Who better to compete against than a rag tag bunch of volunteers, who will never be able to unite due to competing “distro’s” and licensing scheme’s? The poison is in the pudding>>
Linux hasn’t been the work solely of “a ragtag bunch of volunteers” for years. IBM, HP, SGI have made huge contributions – hence the SCO lawsuit, which, due to their hastiness in buying a license for which they have scant use, I believe to be supported, and possibly masterminded, by Microsoft.
Also, with SUN deciding to commit more resources to supporting the x86 platform, I don’t believe Microsoft needs Linux as a duckblind against the DOJ – more’s the pity.
Please explain how embedding Microsoft encrypted APIs into the CSS will keep Linux from running on a computer that contains Phoenix CSS will prevent Linux from running.
Some of the things that I have heard Phoenix is going to do may actually help alternative OS’s. Being able to connect to the internet before the OS’s loads, for example. I imagine someone could make a PC without an OS preloaded. You could boot and ftp into a site and install from that point.
This Microsoft is behind everything paranoia is really getting tiresome. Just because the largest bios maker wants to work with the largest desktop OS maker doesn’t mean smaller company’s are going to be locked out. Phoenix would be stupid to do this. What adavantage would there be?
Microsoft developers are only human (like you and I) Linux developers are only human (like you and I), so what makes you think the developers at Microsoft are better than the developers working for Linux???
actually i think Linux developers are better motivated, because Linux developers actually love what they are doing, Microsoft developers are just working for a paycheck and since all they are after is a paycheck they have an employer looking over their shoulder making demands i am sure they don’t have the love and loyalty for what they are doing like Linux developers do…
in the long run i am certain Linux will win…
@rajan r:
You bring this up again. Exactly how does Microsoft have anything to lose via the DMCA? Without the DMCA, one of their major initiatives, Palladium, would simply not work. Remember, there are two different phases of copying. First, you have to physically copy the data. Second, you have to distribute it to someone else. Without the DMCA, only the second act is illegal. Palladium does nothing to prevent that, however. All it addresses is the first act. It is the DMCA, which makes breaking copy protection illegal, that makes Palladium effective. Beyond that, Microsoft has a lot to gain by using the DMCA to protect their Office and WMA/WMV formats, as well as their SAMBA protocol. If they can use the DMCA to do this, there is no reason to believe that they won’t.
@Bill Sykes:
First, Asia is not just China. There are a great number of Asian countries (South Korea, Thailand, etc) that are becoming players in technology, and American-controlled OSs are something they need to be wary about. The OS is the fundemental infrastructure of your computer system, and its a dumb idea to trust that to another country.
Second, Linux isn’t made by a “rag-tag” bunch of volunteers. Many of the key players in Linux get paid to work on it. Beyond that, even if someone is a volunteer doesn’t mean that they are not capable. Indeed, free of the demands of meeting timelines and dealing with organizational overhead, they can concentrate fully on the code. Besides, thousands of Microsoft engineers worked for more then a decade, and Windows 2000 was the first decent desktop OS they could make. It took a rag-tag bunch of volunteers to light a fire under their asses and produce some decent products.
Third, Linux doesn’t need to unify. Unification is a load of bullshit, at least in a free market economy. If you want unification, go live in China. They *love* unification there! What you’re going to see in the Linux market is this:
– Consolidation of the major business players. The market will shrink until it reaches a number of firms that optimizes economics of scale vs diseconomics of scale. That’ll probably leave half a dozen major competitors. The smaller players will stay numerous and fragmented, because they aren’t competing in the same market anyway!
– There is going to be the emergence of open standards. You’re already starting to see this with the wide adoption of the OpenOffice file format. This trend will continue so that the multiple competing apps are inter-operable. There will also be a heavier focus on existing open standards like SVG and OpenGL. On the desktop side, freedesktop.org is going to become a larger player. You’re going to see a duality of GNOME and KDE, with GNOME (probably but unfortunately) becoming the more dominant one. Other desktops will continue to exist, but again, won’t be playing in the same market space.
– Portability layers will become very important. The day of writing native Windows or native Linux apps are coming to an end. The future will have more than one OS, and application developers will need to be able to target more than one OS. You’ll see frameworks like Mono, wxWindows, GTK+, and Qt become increasingly more popular. We’re already seeing this — with Adobe choosing Qt for one of its new photo album programs. There wil be increasing focus on cross-platform standards like POSIX, increasingly pushed by governments, some of which demand POSIX already.
Has it ever occured to you that you can love what you do and get payed for it at the same time? What a novel concept actually earning a living doing what you love.
If Linux developers were as good a MS developers they would be getting paid for what they love to do. In addition to this after ten years of developing Linux they would have more than a 3-4 percent share of the desktop market.
Of course I realize that you may believe that 90 percent of the desktop users out there are fool’s and have been manipulated by MS. But then Linux user’s and Windows users are all only human, like you and I, aren’t they?
Are they trying to create something similar to Sun’s OBP (Open Boot Prom). I believe it is a Forth based system with some handy utilities. When I had to install Solaris on sparc’s I found it really useful. Then when we switched to x86 machines I found the BIOS stuff confusing and not that useful. I really wish they had OBP on x86.
Since the processor is universal, every function of the computer (except input/output and random number generator) that can be implemented in hardware can be implemented in software. Implementation of programs in software rather than hardware is one of the key design philosophies of computers and is the reason that BIOS does not have many functions. Implementation as software offers great flexibility and control since software, unlike hardware, can be easily replaced or upgraded. Computer functionality can be worse than useless if it is not under the control of the users. Moreover, because users are becoming highly dependent on computers and because computers are becoming the primary means of communication, the ability to control a computer one owns is a matter of fundamental rights.
Integrating software into BIOS is unnecessary for disaster recovery, either: In the case of a hard drive failure, a backup operating system can be loaded from a USB memory card. By contrast, Intel’s Extensible Firmware Interface, which is proposed as a replacement for BIOS, is dependent on a special area of the hard drive to store instructions, and hence will not work in the event of a hard drive failure.
beyond pasion, certain things have to be done with resource. For example, in foreseeable future, you would not see an “open source” CPU, memory chips, etc.
Unification provides the “economy of scales”
“Indeed, free of the demands of meeting timelines and dealing with organizational overhead, they can concentrate fully on the code.”
Could you please explain to me why this concept doesn’t work on any other type of human endeavor that requires group participation, but you feel that it is better for a software development model? Are you sure that you are not tainted by an aversion to authority and fear of a enviorment that is under somenone else’s control?
For example can you imagine trying to build a house when the sub-contractors could show up when they want and work on what they want and finish thier task when they want?
Can you picture a volunteer Golden Gate bridge or Hoover Dam?
Often, software development is not a group effort, but a solitary one. This is especially true in open source projects, where people tend to create only a small module (libart or libxml, for example) with a well-defined interface. Also, the design phase of software also lends itself extraordinarily well to the focus of one individual. Many of the greatest software projects were the work of one individual. Many others were the work of a tiny core team. To this day, some of the coolest parts of Linux are the work of a single person. So, as a counter-question: could you imagine a large organization writing a poem like Shakespeare, or inventing a new mathematics, like Newton?
Beyond that, being a volunteer project in no way precludes the presence of a strong organizational body. The Linux kernel, for example, is very strongly organized. There is Linus at the head, who makes the major architectural decisions, as well as numerous deputies in charge of major subsystems. Anybody interested in making a change has to pass their work through the appropriate person. Other projects, like KDE or GNOME or FreeBSD, have a core team, either official or unofficial, that manages the overall direction of development. Larger projects are also sub-divided into teams that handle specific components. For example, there are a team of people who work on KDE’s window manager, another team that work on KHTML, etc. Lastly, distros have their own organizational structure. Debian, for example, has a highly developed central organization to coordinate the thousands of Debian developers. Read about their structure here:
http://www.debian.org/intro/organization.en.html
There is, however, a difference between the organizational structure of an open source project, and the bureaucracy of a company. In a company, engineers have many concerns that have nothing to do with the quality of the product. The have to answer to marketing people, meet product schedules, answer to stock holders, etc. In an community project, engineers only have to consider the technical merits of the project, and the wishes of their users.
Again, to address your question: yes, I can imagine a group of volunteers building the Hoover Dam. Indeed, there is strong evidence that the workers who built the pyramids were not slaves, but rather citizens volunteering part of a year’s work to public works. It is known for a fact that large structures like chairman Mao’s mausoleum were built entirely by volunteers.
Bill,
I respected you a lot more before I read some of your later comments. Some of your ideas are just ridiculous, aka that Microsoft wants Linux around–right now the Justice Dept. is on their side anyway; and that Linux coders are a bunch of hacks–most are volunteers out of ideology, not poor ability–there’s such a thing as working for a cause you believe in as opposed to what’ll get you the most cash.
However, I think you’re right on with your comments about Phoenix’s aim. Phoenix is not going to lock out the Linux community. That would be unbelievably stupid, and I don’t think any amount of pressure from Microsoft would get them to do this. The article states that Phoenix’s BIOS replacement would work with the Microsoft APIs. Big deal. Has anyone wining about this actually READ the article in depth, or are you just basing your comments on other people’s comments? The article states:
Due to CSS, Phoenix is predicting a new breed of intelligent devices and servers that provide self management, self-healing and self-authentication. This opens up scenarios for developers to deliver rights management and digital asset solutions whether they are Liberty Alliance, Microsoft, or OASIS.
Does that sound Microsoft-locked-in? No.
Incidentally, “secure” computing initiatives aren’t all evil. Although it’s true, they initiatives offer far less anonymity, we’re moving to a world where computers are extensions of people, and people themselves can never maintain complete anonymity, at least as long as they continue to interact with other people face-to-face (I guess that discludes some of the people reading this, after all
). The advantages of “secure” computing, then: One potential gain is that totally anonymous email, e.g. spam (IM’s too), will be increasingly difficult, because it will be more trackable. On the same note, credit card companies could add safeguards so that, for example, if a purchase is made from a computer that you don’t own, they check to make sure it was really you. Criminal activity committed online (whatever that may entail) will also be easier to track. Yes, the potential for misuse is great, but no greater than any other forms of law enforcement–if it gets abused, that’s something to take the government up on. And anyway, hackers of the system will never fail to exist.
DRM, incidentally, is indeed quite a shame, but I hardly blame Microsoft for implementing it. The recording and film industry is demanding it, and MS needs to follow suit or find its technologies unsupported. Linux, on the other hand, could care less what the “industry” thinks, and that’s great.
And now, one more issue that needs addressing: I percieve many of the anxious responses to be based on a fear of Microsoft.
The fear of Microsoft is groundless. Unless laws are enacted that declare open-source illegal, it will always be there, and that’s not going to happen, especially considering the vested interest companies like IBM have in it. In fact, I predict that open source will find its way into Microsoft products within the next few years. Bill Gates recently said in an interview something like, “Different development methods have their advantages. We happen to believe in the commercial model.” This is going to change, I almost guarantee, because Microsoft, like so many other companies, is eventually going to realize the corporate benefit of open-source–it saves money. People will develop your products for free. Open up some code, inject a little money to speed things up, and you get what you want for cheap, you get free bug catching and fixing, AND the open source community will love you for it. Just take a look at other any other corporate sponsored/guided open-source project. Witness Mozilla and Netscape/AOL. Witness Open(Star)Office and Sun. Witness GNOME and Red Hat. Nuf said.
Furthermore, Microsoft (and others) are realizing that in the inevitably approaching world of ever-more operating system diversity (yes it doesn’t want it but it can’t change it), open standards AREbetter. Anti-competitive practices become not just anti-competitive against other companies, but against the company that instigated them as well. If you don’t believe me that Microsoft is going in this direction, consider that they’re opening up the Office formats. They’re all going to be XML-based in the next release. Go look it up. And as for .NET, I used to think it was an evil plot for OS lock-in, but now I realize: it’s supposed to compete with Java, not Linux! Adding extensions to make it Windows-only would ruin the point. Office will in the future be totally .NET based. Why prevent more people (aka Linux users) from becoming potential Office customers? Why prevent the opportunity to strike Office licensing deals with Linux PC makers? Nuf said.
(Just to keep in mind, I still think MS is generally evil, and MS Word is a piece of **** (I use WordPerfect). But right now I must say Gates really seems to have his finger to the winds of change.)
The sad thing is that computers have the potential to usher in a new era of personal privacy and security. They allow you to order medications without letting some cashier in a store know what you take. They allow your doctor and your insurance company to coordinate without random administrative people seeing your health record. Yet, now, they are being used to destroy privacy instead…
Microsoft has reason to fear open standards. Open standards would mean that they’d have to compete on product quality. That’s a dangerous situation for Microsoft. If they didn’t have the Windows software dominance, and the Office lock-in, they would have been destroyed long ago during the Win 9x era. Heck, OS/2 probably would have taken them out during the Win 3.x era. More than anything, Microsoft thrives on power and control. If OpenOffice could access the Office file formats, do you think there is any reason that schools would continue to pay hundreds of dollars for Office licenses? Certainly, OpenOffice does everything 90% of home and even business users need it to do. The internet, because it is based on open standards, is a huge lost opportunity for Microsoft. Would Linux be kicking ass in the server market if Apache had to constantly play catch-up to be IIS compatible?
Open standards would mean competition. A truely competitive industry is hugely different from the computer industry today. In a truely competitive industry, no company could get away with a 80% profit margin on Windows or Office, or build up a $45 billion cash reserve. No company could produce a crappy OS for the better part of the 1990s and still be alive today. No company could make products that dominated every major market segment. That’s simply not what free markets look like.
Well, I just noticed (in addition to a couple of typos) a hole in one of my arguments: if secure computing is supposed to prevent spammers, but hackers hack it, then the spammers would use the hack. I guess my point there could be moot.
But, I should mention another reason computer authentication might be necessary. Ever more tech workers (and some non-tech workers, too) are becoming telecommuters. Outside the corporate firewall, they lose much of the accountability (and yes restriction) that they’d otherwise have. Corporations, then, are probably counting on secure computing to enforce employee accountability, in case an errant telecommuter tries to do something damaging to the company. I’m guessing that within the next few years Linux will support DRM and “secure” computing, too, due to corporate demand.
Whether you personally view it positively or negatively, there are people who will find benefits for the technology other than evil government profiling agencies or evil information-collecting corporations. If you’re worried about the latter two, you’re already too late.
the company has shown several times that it’s willing to threaten and kill of competition in several program fields and was even found guilty of several in recent weeks. There are certainly some of us that are paranoid, but we’re not blind.
There’s an old saying that to cook a frog in a frying pan you don’t just set the burner on high and expect the frog to cook for he’ll jump out to keep from burning. In order to cook the frog, you must slowly turn up the heat until it’s too late for him the escape.
That’s precisely what I see Microsofts strategy as being ever since they were called by the US government. Sure they got off rather easy, but that has not slowed down their pursuit of control of the browser, the media players, the DVRs, firewalls, media formats, and now into the very root of what makes a computer tick … the BIOS.
Anyone who ignores or forgets their past is doomed to repeating it, but in this case, the once minor blip on the radar is now a 800 lbs gorilla that can not be dismissed as minor and the consequences of such a course of behaviour can have devastating results.
Hmm, forget one key tidbit in my rant: Office will *not* be based on open formats. First, the XML format is only available on Office 2003 Pro and Office 2003. Its not even the default format for any Office version. Second, the format is patent encumbered. To implement the format, you have to get a patent license from Microsoft. The license is royalty free, but provided at the discretion of Microsoft, and most importantly, the terms are incompatible with both the GPL, the LGPL, and the SISSL (the three OpenOffice licenses). In fact, pretty much the only licenses that are comaptible with the patent license terms are weak OSS licenses like the BSD license. Beyond that, there are also still some black boxes and binary data present in the format.
The major use of the new format is to make it easy for XML tools to operate on document files (another “innovation”, btw, that UNIX folks did decades ago…). It is in no way a true open format like TCP/IP or PDF. Btw, this thread reminds me to give credit to Macromedia. Its SWF format is a true open format. They survive not by locking in their content, but by making the best authoring tools available for the format.
“So, as a counter-question: could you imagine a large organization writing a poem like Shakespeare, or inventing a new mathematics, like Newton?”
No one would have even heard of Shakespeare if there had not been productions of his play’s controlled by stage manager’s, producers, production schedules etc. No one would have known Newton’s mathematics without schools with department heads, deans and student’s showing up to class on time.
All great ideas have flowed from individuals but have been implemented and practiced by organized groups of men with the guidance of leadership and mangement. This is fact.
“There is going to be the emergence of open standards. You’re already starting to see this with the wide adoption of the OpenOffice file format. This trend will continue so that the multiple competing apps are inter-operable. There will also be a heavier focus on existing open standards like SVG and OpenGL. On the desktop side, freedesktop.org is going to become a larger player. You’re going to see a duality of GNOME and KDE, with GNOME (probably but unfortunately) becoming the more dominant one. Other desktops will continue to exist, but again, won’t be playing in the same market space.”
All great ideas have flowed from individuals but have been implemented and practiced by organized groups of men with the guidance of leadership and mangement. This is fact.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, and this is precisely how open source works. You think just anyone gets commit privleges into into KDE’s CVS? The key difference, again, is that the organizational structure of Open Source has a focus commensurate with product quality, while the organizational structure of commercial companies has goals only tangentially related to product quality.
“There is going to be the emergence of open standards. You’re already starting to see this with the wide adoption of the OpenOffice file format. This trend will continue so that the multiple competing apps are inter-operable. There will also be a heavier focus on existing open standards like SVG and OpenGL. On the desktop side, freedesktop.org is going to become a larger player. You’re going to see a duality of GNOME and KDE, with GNOME (probably but unfortunately) becoming the more dominant one. Other desktops will continue to exist, but again, won’t be playing in the same market space.”
Where exactly are you getting this from? I’ve seen more believable tales of fantasy in Buck Rodgers. I don’t where your living but “wide adoption of open office formats”, freedesktop.org as a major player… does not describe any place in america I’ve visited.
I think you’re taking it out of context. I’m not talking about the computer industry in general, but *NIX platform specifically. Bill Sykes was talking about Linux needing unification and whatnot, and my response was that it doesn’t, because it will have open standards.
In the context of UNIX software, my points are true. KWord and OpenOffice will both use the new OASIS OOo file format as their default, and AbiWord will have good support for it. This means that we don’t need one unified OSS Office Suite, because we will have a number of compatible ones.
Also, both major desktops have been cooperating closely with the freedesktop.org project and all indications are that they will cooperate even more closely in the future.
Third, Linux doesn’t need to unify. Unification is a load of bullshit, at least in a free market economy. If you want unification, go live in China.
Do you really believe Linux will ever become dominant if everbody + his dog can make its own distro with its own rules, its own package manager, etc? Standards do help but what are their uses when everybody can make their own? That is the current problem.
– There is going to be the emergence of open standards. You’re already starting to see this with the wide adoption of the OpenOffice file format.
Do we live in the same world? I don’t know anyone or even don’t know anyone that knows anyone using that format.
I know you’re pushing open standards and I agree with you but stay realistic… We won’t see that for a while.
Microsoft has reason to fear open standards. Open standards would mean that they’d have to compete on product quality. That’s a dangerous situation for Microsoft. If they didn’t have the Windows software dominance, and the Office lock-in, they would have been destroyed long ago during the Win 9x era. Heck, OS/2 probably would have taken them out during the Win 3.x era.
You’re absolutely right. But now, the chicken and egg issue. Microsoft was once in the underdog’s position with nearly every one of its products. That means, someone ELSE was setting the standard that they had to adapt to (aka with Lotus 123, WordPerfect). If closed standards were the only issue, then Microsoft would have lost all of its battles. As a matter of fact, it’s won battles in the open-standards arena before–witness IE vs Netscape.
But product quality doesn’t hit the nail, either. I can certainly vouch that WordPerfect 6.0 and 6.1 for Windows, which were the market leaders at that time, were a thousand times more intuitive to use than Word 6.0, yet Word 6.0 eventually took the leading position.
No, more than closed standards or product quality, Microsoft’s key to success has always been licensing and bundling. Through its aggressive (and often anti-competitive) licensing deals with PC makers, and through its bundling of other components (Internet Explorer), it has seen many of its products take over the Windows desktop.
But just because such strategies worked in the past doesn’t mean they’ll continue working. Microsoft’s products came to prominence due to its OS coming to prominence, in conjunction with its licensing practices. But now that companies are starting to license Linux, Microsoft is being left out of the loop.
This is why they have needed to change strategy. A strategy that leaves out Linux, and keeps its standards closed, is risking being replaced entirely by the open standards over the coming years. This simply wasn’t an issue in the past, as most standards used to be closed, and it was just one company versus another.
Yes, MS is risking new competition. An open MS Office spec means third parties will have a lot easier time with interoperability. But I think the alternative, to have their formats be completely ignored in countries that don’t want to pay for Office/Windows, and possibly to be overtaken by open standards in the future, causes more angst.
(In any case all I can say is thank God. Now word processing etc. documents might finally become as easy to share as HTML.)
As for .NET: I think MS realizes that cross-platform development is a trend they can’t stop one way or the other. If their development tools started leading the market for Windows AND Linux development as a side effect, I don’t think they’d be all that upset.
“The key difference, again, is that the organizational structure of Open Source has a focus commensurate with product quality, while the organizational structure of commercial companies has goals only tangentially related to product quality.”
Why is this so? So you are saying that a company can make a crappy product and it will sell as well as a quality product? If you believe that companies don’t rate product quality as one of thier main objectives, you have probably never worked in the private sector. I also think you may have misapplied the term “tangentially” in this case.
Also you will please note that most all successful productions of Shakespeare and pratical applictions of Newtonian mathematics were profit motivated and commerically based, as in ticket sales and useful products.
Back on topic: The network authentication that Phoenix is planning on using in their CSS will be a positive for networking of all flavors, as the article seems to suggest that it will be implemented on network devices, as well as server’s and PC’s.
Why is this so? So you are saying that a company can make a crappy product and it will sell as well as a quality product?
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*cough* Win98 *cough*. The point is that the primary focus of a company is not the product. Making a quality product at a reasonable price is only one way to generate sales, which is the real priority. There are also other ways, as companies like Microsoft and Enron have continually proven.
Also you will please note that most all successful productions of Shakespeare and pratical applictions of Newtonian mathematics were profit motivated and commerically based, as in ticket sales and useful products.
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How does that have anything at all to do with my point? The question I asked of you was could an organization *create* something like the works of Shakespeare or the mathematics of Newton. This was to parallel your question, which was whether an group of volunteers could *create* something like the Hoover Dam.
Ah ok in that context your description makes complete sense. However thats a very small area to focus on. Its true that linux is gaining inroads with the business workstation market but they are still in the minority and large scale switching of formats does not “just happen”. Its usually a slow process that has to have clear advantages in the begining for it to pick up pace and not fizzle out along the way.
This where the incumbents usually place the the argument that its cheaper to stay with a current solution than to switch over to a new one that is heretofor untested, and may have hidden limitations. Until major companies start to switch over to linux, the trickle down effect of familiarity to end-users that windows used to gain dominance just won’t occur. As long as people use predominately windows and windows based solutions at work they won’t switch over to something different because they are not familiar with it – irrespective of cost. Its a case of “I don’t know how this thing is going to act so I won’t trust it with my data”. Sure windows crashes word is incompatable with everything else but people are used to this – if something breaks they know how to fix it or they know were to take it to get fixed because they are familiar with it. Its not so much that MS locks people in – its that they lock themselves in.
With digital rights management on a rom bios chip the future will be the renting of software, or pay per use. Whatever extracts the most money from you in a given case. If there is no alternative I’ll keep what I’ve got.
Do you really believe Linux will ever become dominant if everbody + his dog can make its own distro with its own rules, its own package manager, etc?
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First, I don’t believe Linux will ever become dominant. I think it will become a major player a ways down the road, but the era of having one dominant player is gone. So I’ll rephrase your question: “do you really believe Linux will ever become a major player if everybody and his dog can make their own distro…?” To answer that: yes I do. I can go ahead and make a distro that doesn’t follow any of the standards, just like I can make an OS that doesn’t implement TCP/IP. I may even build a niche of people for whom my distro (or my TCP-less OS for that matter) is suitable, and they can use it happily. But does that affect Joe user at all? Joe user will look in his Computer Shopper, see that RedHat is offering the biggest sale this weekend, and buy a copy. These distros will follow open standards, because they will have to to be marketable. That’s the beauty of the whole thing. Everybody doesn’t *have* to conform for it to work. As long as a few popular ones do, the whole thing works out.
Standards do help but what are their uses when everybody can make their own? That is the current problem.
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Multiple standards are the problem now, but great progress has been made to address it. That’s why things are consolidating, and a few mainstream players are emerging. These seperate standards and products will always exist, but unless you fit in their niche, you need not pay any attention to them. Its not like someone is going to come out with a killer app that runs only on aewm!
Do we live in the same world? I don’t know anyone or even don’t know anyone that knows anyone using that format.
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We’re still talking about Linux desktop unification here. I’m saying that OpenOffice is becoming a key standard in the Linux desktop, not in general. Again, it is the standard format for both KOffice and OpenOffice (which covers both GNOME and KDE).
I thought one of the most interesting things was the peek into Intel’s advanced technology. They are workingon a predecessor to the BIOS. That means they have a time machine in the works and someone slipped and gave us a clue.
It is indeed a narrow focus, but my point was narrow as well. The reason for bringing up the OOo format was not to talk about open formats in general, but to demonstrate that the Linux desktop doesn’t need top-down unification (ala Microsoft) if there are well-supported open standards within the platform. You are right, however, that compatibility with external proprietory formats will be a key factor for OSS desktops for the forseeable future.
http://www.phoenix.com/en/products/phoenix+cme+trustedcore/
Sorry I didn’t include this with my original article submission. I didn’t think of checking out the source (Phoenix itself) until later.
Thanks for correcting me about the new MS Office formats. So, they won’t be open or able to be used under GPL but they’ll be freely licensable. Sneaky. I’m not sure, but is Adobe’s PDF license similar? If so, I’d say MS is trying to pull an Acrobat in the office suite realm.
I don’t see this as the worst thing in the world. Yes, it sucks for open source. But at least closed-source software will be able to attain compatibility (aka WordPerfect, yeah!) Hopefully at least the StarOffice version of OpenOffice could have full, licensed compatibility for those willing to pay for it, while OpenOffice maintained near-compatibility (I don’t know whether that would work or not, since it’s basically the same thing)…. Or perhaps open-source projects that want to use the formats could use the BSD license to get around the problem…
“I’m guessing that within the next few years Linux will support DRM and “secure” computing, too, due to corporate demand.”
Sad, really. Corporations and even government officials so worried about Digital Rights Management, but scarcely a single word ever about Consumer Rights.
You might want to add an “Update: Phoenix Technologies webpage on CSS.” to the story summary with the link I provided a few posts back so that people skimming the front page of OSNews will know that there is now more detailed information available on CSS.
Thanks.
“Thanks for correcting me about the new MS Office formats. So, they won’t be open or able to be used under GPL but they’ll be freely licensable. Sneaky. I’m not sure, but is Adobe’s PDF license similar? If so, I’d say MS is trying to pull an Acrobat in the office suite realm.”
Postscript has license restrictions, but PDF has none that I know of.
i read linux format magazine in the uk, i am sure i read something about a bios replacement, that was described as good for linux. the article said that drivers would be handled at a low level under this new system, digital rights management was never mentioned. wonder if it was the same system? i forget the name of it.
But product quality doesn’t hit the nail, either. I can certainly vouch that WordPerfect 6.0 and 6.1 for Windows, which were the market leaders at that time, were a thousand times more intuitive to use than Word 6.0, yet Word 6.0 eventually took the leading position.
This probably had a lot to do with the sheer atrocity of Wordperfect 5.x for Windows turning people off the product line. By the time the decent version appeared, Word for Windows was already well-entrenched, and switching products like that is not a trivial exercise for people who actually use the features available.
The Office Suite wars is something Microsoft won fair and square. MS Office was simply the best Office Suite in the market.
Thanks [Rayiner Hashem] for correcting me about the new MS Office formats. So, they won’t be open or able to be used under GPL but they’ll be freely licensable. Sneaky.
This is not sneaky, from a business perspective, it’s just common sense. There’s no reason this would stop GPL’ed software from being able to read Office documents, either.
If they didn’t have the Windows software dominance, and the Office lock-in, they would have been destroyed long ago during the Win 9x era.
Rubbish – that would have required something there to kill them. There was nothing.
OS/2 wasn’t an option – little interest (overall) from IBM in actually selling it, little support from IBM for developers and little software available.
Macs were largely comparable feature-wise, but still at the point of being horribly expensive (as opposed to just expensive).
Linux wasn’t even a comparable product.
If OpenOffice could access the Office file formats, do you think there is any reason that schools would continue to pay hundreds of dollars for Office licenses?
If Office was significantly better, almost certainly. That *is* how Office established itself in the market in the first place, after all.
Like it or lump it, all the places where Microsoft are dominant, at some stage they *weren’t* and had to convince consumers to use their product. They did this by providing products that gave the best cost/benefit ratio to the most people.
I know of LinuxBIOS (Although I don’t know of anyone who actually uses it..) Are there any “Open” OpenFirmware implementations in a similiar vien? With the replacement of the x86 BIOS certain within a few years, a freely available OF for common motherboards could offer an interesting alternative for those of us who don’t fancy using some bastardised Phoenix/Microsoft encumbered setup on our hardware.
Take a look at http://www.openbios.info/ which is:
“OpenBIOS is a free portable firmware implementation. The goal is to implement a 100% IEEE 1275-1994 (Referred to as Open Firmware) compliant firmware.”
Please explain how embedding Microsoft encrypted APIs into the CSS will keep Linux from running on a computer that contains Phoenix CSS will prevent Linux from running.
Aye? the article states that the CryptoAPI will hook into the BIOS functionality. The Microsoft CryptoAPI isn’t going to sit on the BIOS. As for the whole hoop-la, for all we know, Phoenix could document those BIOS features so that other operating system producers can take advantage of these added features.
The fact remains, for as much Microsoft would love to controll the PC, the fact remains that outside the desktop world, Microsoft is still a small player in many areas. If you look at the server stats regarding the usage of servers in situations that actually matter; no, not Joe and Jane Bakers 5 person network, I mean corporations with 5000 plus users.
Its not just hard for open source because they can’t use the specs, its hard because the availability of the specs makes it very difficult to prove that you have a clean-room implementation. Also, the patent license, which you can find here: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/format/xmlpatentlicense.asp is very limiting. It gives you a royalty-free license to the patented technologies in the spec, but prevents you from sub-licensing or transfering the licensing rights. It is this requirement that makes it GPL incompatible. The GPL requires the patent license to be transferable, to prevent people from “closing” GPL software by revoking their patent license.
As for using the BSD license, I don’t know how that would work. BSD code could implement the spec just fine, but GPL code would never be able to load it. When GPL code links to code licensed under a GPL-compatible license it depends on the linked binary becoming GPL’ed. Any license that is GPL-compatible implicitly or explicitly allows this change. GPL’ed code could not load a library implementing this spec, then, because while the license on the source would be compatible, the patent license would not.
The GPL and LGPL is definately incompatible with this license (confirmed by MS). The Apple Public Source license has a very similar clause (including explicit mention of a sublicense requirement) which probably means that it is also incompatible with this license. The IBM Public Licenes, Sun Industry Standards Source License (OpenOffice), Sun Public License, and Mozilla Public license all have similar-looking patent clauses that grant blanket rights to distribute/sell/etc. If one of those clauses are incompatible (they’re not as clear about the requirements on the distributer as the GPL), then all of these licenses are probably incompatible as well.
Oh, and another curse on Microsoft. I spent ten minutes looking for a copy Microsoft’s Shared Source License. Their Shared Source web page doesn’t appear to contain a single link to an actual license. And they say that the GPL has confusing terms! Anyway, the are also lying on one of their pages. They make 3 bullet points about the GPL. #2 says that if you distribute code under the GPL, you have to sell your software for only the cost of making a physical copy. That’s just wrong. You have to sell the *source* for only the cost of a copy, and then only to the people you sold the software too. You can sell the software for whatever you want.
OS/2 wasn’t an option – little interest (overall) from IBM in actually selling it, little support from IBM for developers and little software available.
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That’s why I said software base and Office lock-in. If there were open standards for the OS’s API, OS/2 would have much more software support. Remember, one of the ways MS beat OS/2 was by playing the API-of-the-day game with IBM. If OS/2 supporte all the Windows software, IBM would have wiped the floor with MS.
If Office was significantly better, almost certainly. That *is* how Office established itself in the market in the first place, after all.
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Do you have any idea what people use Office for? People use it to type documents in 12-point Times New Roman. In a school setting, that and the ability to choose from 1/1.5/2.0 line spacing are all the features most people need. Even in a government setting (my dad works for a government contractor, and I interned at one, and work now at another), tables and headers/footers are about as complicated as most people get. I’m sure there are people who need the fancy features of Word, but I have yet to come across one person who needed more features than OpenOffice provides.
I’ll switch over to Mac and OS-X or PPC’s and use Linux on those.
This probably had a lot to do with the sheer atrocity of Wordperfect 5.x for Windows turning people off the product line. By the time the decent version appeared, Word for Windows was already well-entrenched, and switching products like that is not a trivial exercise for people who actually use the features available.
The Office Suite wars is something Microsoft won fair and square. MS Office was simply the best Office Suite in the market.
Obviously, we’re going to have to agree to disagree about the quality of MS software. Some of it is good, yes, but it usually takes at least three versions to get there… (actually not so unlike open-source products, but with MS we’re talking about non-beta products that are supposed to have had tons of R&D money dumped into them).
Two other points: I’ve never used it so I can’t vouch for its usability, but WordPerfect 5.x for Windows had an automatic disadvantage to MS Office, in that when 5.x (first Windows version to my knowledge) came out MS had already had Office for Windows for quite some time, and they had the knowledge of the OS to make it a lot easier. I would hazard to guess that MS’s first Windows version of Office was just as bad, if not worse. Ditto for the situation with 1-2-3 (MS had a clear advantage). The other advantage MS had was that its office suite was already integrated to a greater extent. The other competing suites actually had to be put together from existing, separate products. (To be specific, Borland Office was put together from WP, Quattro (Pro) and Paradox (not quite sure if Presentations was originally in the mix); and Lotus SmartSuite was composed of Ami (Pro), 1-2-3, and Freelance Graphics (not quite sure if Approach was originally in the mix).)
But as I said before, as far as I can tell MS’s success with Office and Internet Explorer (come to think of it they don’t have any other industry-leading non-OS software (unless you count Hotmail or VirtualPC, ha ha)) was purely due to anticompetitive licensing or bundling. True, terming it “anticompetitive” is an opinion, but to claim that those two products got ahead purely on their quality is ridiculous.
That’s why I said software base and Office lock-in. If there were open standards for the OS’s API, OS/2 would have much more software support.
OS/2 had little available software because IBM marketed it extremely poorly and charged developers an arm and a leg for development tools and documentation in the early days.
Windows had boatloads of software because Microsoft gave their SDK away for free and aggressively marketed their platform to developers in the same time period.
No conspiracy there, IBM just fucked it up. It had nothing to do with an “open standards” API, it was because writing software for one API cost a lot more than writing software for the other.
Microsoft’s “software base and Office lock-in” didn’t just _happen_. They had to *earn* it.
Remember, one of the ways MS beat OS/2 was by playing the API-of-the-day game with IBM. If OS/2 supporte all the Windows software, IBM would have wiped the floor with MS.
OS/2 ran most important Windows 3.x (and earlier) software – usually better than Windows – although naturally not benefitting at all from the most user-visible superiority of OS/2, the Workplace Shell. It *did* practically support all the Windows software of the day and IBM most certainly did not “wipe the floor” with Microsoft.
Microsoft “beat” IBM because IBM didn’t try to “win” until it was too late. They placed to much confidence in the “no-one got fired for buying IBM” attitudes of the day (something Microsoft is trying hard *not* to do).
Do you have any idea what people use Office for? People use it to type documents in 12-point Times New Roman. In a school setting, that and the ability to choose from 1/1.5/2.0 line spacing are all the features most people need. Even in a government setting (my dad works for a government contractor, and I interned at one, and work now at another), tables and headers/footers are about as complicated as most people get. I’m sure there are people who need the fancy features of Word, but I have yet to come across one person who needed more features than OpenOffice provides.
It’s not just the functionality in a bulletpoint list. It’s how accessible and usable that functionality is.
Obviously, we’re going to have to agree to disagree about the quality of MS software. Some of it is good, yes, but it usually takes at least three versions to get there… (actually not so unlike open-source products, but with MS we’re talking about non-beta products that are supposed to have had tons of R&D money dumped into them).
The “killer version” of Word back then was 2.0 – it’s the one that got everyone using Word for Windows instead of Wordperfect or Word for DOS. Word 6.0 was, at best, a step sideways – just ask any Mac user (of sufficient experience).
Word 2.0 got to that position by being better. It took better advantage of the functionality Windows offered, had more features and had better compatibility (not only things like file formats, but modes that emulated other program’s shortcut keys).
Two other points: I’ve never used it so I can’t vouch for its usability, but WordPerfect 5.x for Windows had an automatic disadvantage to MS Office, in that when 5.x (first Windows version to my knowledge) came out MS had already had Office for Windows for quite some time, and they had the knowledge of the OS to make it a lot easier.
Wordperfect 5.x for Windows was truly horrible. It was buggy, unstable and if memory serves, somewhat incompatible with earlier DOS versions (file formats). It was also late, because Wordperfect (like many developers) miscalculated just how big Windows was going to be. Microsoft had a product out because Wordperfect dropped the ball, not because they didn’t have any way of developing for the platform.
If you can get hold of them, go back and read some magazines from the early 90s. You probably won’t be able to find much material online because of the age, although there’s probably some reviews and the like floating around in usenet archives. The short version is WP5 for Windows sucked. It sucked because it was long on features and short on quality.
I would hazard to guess that MS’s first Windows version of Office was just as bad, if not worse. Ditto for the situation with 1-2-3 (MS had a clear advantage). The other advantage MS had was that its office suite was already integrated to a greater extent.
Yes, and it was that integration that made it a *superior product*.
Trying to twist the situation – that Microsoft had a product ready to go that people wanted while everyone else was standing around flat-footed trying to sell shoddy GUI front ends over legacy DOS apps that couldn’t interoperate with each other – into a “people only chose Microsoft because they didn’t have a choice” argument is the height of dishonesty. People chose Office because it was *better*. It was *better* because all the other alternatives at the time were *worse*. Things like the clipboard, cross-application copy & paste and OLE made Office a better tool.
A lot of people either weren’t around when all this was happening, didn’t pay attention at the time, or have forgotten what happened. I strongly advise people to go down to their library and spend a day reading some old computer magazines from the late 80s and early 90s, if you can find them. You will find it very interesting.
The other competing suites actually had to be put together from existing, separate products.
So did Office. Up until Office, Word, Excel etc were all separate products. That Microsoft saw its customers wanting greater interoperability and an integrated product – and gave it to them – demonstrates how they provided a *better product* that *people wanted* (and bought in droves).
But as I said before, as far as I can tell MS’s success with Office and Internet Explorer (come to think of it they don’t have any other industry-leading non-OS software (unless you count Hotmail or VirtualPC, ha ha)) […]
Exchange, Visual Studio.
Not to mention VMWare is vastly superior to Virtual PC (at this point in time anyway).
[…] was purely due to anticompetitive licensing or bundling. True, terming it “anticompetitive” is an opinion, but to claim that those two products got ahead purely on their quality is ridiculous.
See, if I were going to pick the single msot obvious example of Microsoft software that became successful because of “anticompetitive behaviour” (the whole definition of which is broken, but I digress) it would have to be DOS. Everything else they have that’s really big – Windows, Office, IE, Exchange, Visual Studio, etc – have all gotten to where they are because, by and large, *people moved to those products from other products*. Office won because it was there first and did the job well. Windows won because IBM and Apple dropped the ball with superior products. IE won because Netscape did the same thing. Etc, etc.
I’ve never claimed Microsoft’s products “get ahead” *purely* because of their quality – no-one’s products do, and to claim otherwise is just naivety. Microsoft’s products “get ahead” because they’re there first, good enough and continue to improve (Office), they suck, they improve, they surpass (IE), because they leverage marketshare that was won fair and square (later versions of Windows) or because they’re just better than the others (Visual Studio).
Microsoft is no different from all those other companies out there – they’re all ruthless, they’re all greedy and they’re all trying to extract as much money out of you as possible. This is basically a product of good ol’ American capitalism. The sooner people realise this, the less silly they sound.
Remember, when you’re trying to make lots of money selling stuff, the objective is not to make the best product possible, it’s to make the product that’s good enough for the biggest number of people. Once you’ve got marketshare and a customer base established, *then* you take time to perfect your product.
Your last post was perfectly reasonable–you very nearly acknowledged that Microsoft doesn’t have the end-user experience in mind when it designs its software. But taking this further, I’ve still got a bone to pick…
OS/2 ran most important Windows 3.x (and earlier) software – usually better than Windows – although naturally not benefitting at all from the most user-visible superiority of OS/2, the Workplace Shell.
You said it yourself. Microsoft didn’t win on the quality of the software, but on the free SDK. Reminds me of another situation where they gave something away free because they could afford to… (IE, although frankly I’m glad that in the end I DON’T have to pay for my browser. That’s Mozilla Firebird, btw.)
It’s not just the functionality in a bulletpoint list. It’s how accessible and usable that functionality is.
And it took MS how long to make it really functional? Not to mention that it still doesn’t work quite right (and this is Word XP I’m talking about here): If I need to delete parts of the outline I just made and add something different, I have about a 50/50 chance of being able to do it the way I want without resorting to trying to trick the software to get it to work for me. It’s simply ridiculous! I’ll stick with manual outlining any day.
Just a few more examples of MS design stupidity:
I want to double space. In WordPerfect 6.1, I click the line spacing drop-button and change it from 1.0 to 2.0. In Word, I go to Format, Paragraph, and click a drop down list in the dialogue box there.
Or I want to change margins. WP: Format, Margins. Word: File, Page Setup, and then I think there was an additional tab before you could change the margins but I don’t have it in front of me so I can’t say. How does this make sense? Why are margins under the file menu? And why isn’t there support for changing margins within a single page? (I’m talking about Word 6 through at least 95 now, I’m not sure about the current capabilities).
Page Numbers: WP: Format, Numbering. Word: Page Setup again was it? (I honestly don’t remember)
And don’t get me started on Word’s handling of pagination, which to this day is some of the worst text handling in existence. Either keep it on one page or the other, but for God’s sake, don’t keep switching what lines are on which page!
Oh, and lest us not forget those wonderful convenience-enhancing automated features that made it delightfully fun to try and deal with paragraph formatting in Word 97. MS was really smart on that one: saving users from pressing the “Tab” key at the start of paragraphs must have been the most time-saving invention since sliced bread.
Oh: And why is it that when I try to add indents at the beginning of the line, but I didn’t press “Enter” after the line above it, it just doesn’t work?
Graphics positioning: In Word 6.0, 95 and probably up until 97, you had to utilize an obscure feature to add a “frame” around a graphic if you wanted to move it anywhere on the page. Otherwise it was stuck in the limits of the text formatting. WP always featured free movement of graphics, effortlessly. And, since they haven’t changed the format since 6.1, I was able to use WordPerfect 9, with complete accuracy, to open a complicated pamphlet I made in 6.1 back in the day (which would have been impossible to make in Word in the first place).
And adding insult to injury above all: MS never took it upon itself to think it necessary to add a “save” filter for WordPerfect 6.1, even though that format has been standard for ten years! It opens WP 6.1, but if you try to save it, the only option is WP 5.x. And MS did the WORST possible job on that save filter, to make sure that when WP users opened that document up, the fonts, the spacing, everything was completely botched.
MS loyalists like you who go around fervently proclaiming the wonders of Microsoft’s software engineering are simply ignorant of other software. I doubt you’ve ever tried a version of WordPerfect past 5.x, IF your critique of 5.x IS even based on experience. But if you had, and you didn’t immediately write it off for being different than what MS had already forced you to learn, you might have understood that software can be elegant, not just a big jumble of ever-more-complicated features.
The sad thing is, in recent version of WordPerfect Corel has actually added things like Page Setup and changed default settings to mimic Word, so that users could easily switch. In their frantic effort to “Microsoft-ize” things, though, a tremendous elegance has been sacrificed.
Your last post was perfectly reasonable–you very nearly acknowledged that Microsoft doesn’t have the end-user experience in mind when it designs its software.
Of course they do – as much as anyone else trying to sell software. To say they don’t care about it at all is patently ridiculous – we’d still be using DOS and edlin.
You said it yourself. Microsoft didn’t win on the quality of the software, but on the free SDK.
If you’re a developer, a platform that’s easier to develop for *is* better quality.
“Quality” encompasses many different aspects of a product. End users aren’t the only customers. It’s also not something that can really be measured objectively.
Incidentally, Microsoft didn’t really “win” over OS/2 until 1995-1996ish, at which point the direct relevance of their SDK strategy in the late 80s was about zero – and their products were better for most people.
Reminds me of another situation where they gave something away free because they could afford to… (IE, although frankly I’m glad that in the end I DON’T have to pay for my browser. That’s Mozilla Firebird, btw.)
Implying IBM couldn’t afford to give away their SDK is just plain stupidity.
Sometimes making a loss on one thing allows you to make that much more money on the other – that’s business. Netscape was *trying* to do something similar with their browser product so they could lock customers in to their server product, but they blew it.
And since we’re waving our browsers around, I use either Lynx or Links or Mozilla or Navigator or IE or Opera or Safari or Firebird – depending.
And it took MS how long to make it really functional?
Depends entirely on what you’re after.
Not to mention that it still doesn’t work quite right (and this is Word XP I’m talking about here): If I need to delete parts of the outline I just made and add something different, I have about a 50/50 chance of being able to do it the way I want without resorting to trying to trick the software to get it to work for me. It’s simply ridiculous! I’ll stick with manual outlining any day.
Have you told anyone who might actually be able to make a difference about your problems ?
I want to double space. In WordPerfect 6.1, I click the line spacing drop-button and change it from 1.0 to 2.0. In Word, I go to Format, Paragraph, and click a drop down list in the dialogue box there.
Or you click the same line spacing drop down button Word puts on its toolbar by default.
Or you right click selected text and hit “Paragraph”.
Or I want to change margins. WP: Format, Margins. Word: File, Page Setup, and then I think there was an additional tab before you could change the margins but I don’t have it in front of me so I can’t say. How does this make sense? Why are margins under the file menu? And why isn’t there support for changing margins within a single page? (I’m talking about Word 6 through at least 95 now, I’m not sure about the current capabilities).
*shrug*. I never tried to say Word was perfect.
Page Numbers: WP: Format, Numbering. Word: Page Setup again was it? (I honestly don’t remember)
Word XP has “Page Numbers” under the Insert menu.
And don’t get me started on Word’s handling of pagination, which to this day is some of the worst text handling in existence. Either keep it on one page or the other, but for God’s sake, don’t keep switching what lines are on which page!
Ah, can’t say I’ve ever had a problem.
Oh, and lest us not forget those wonderful convenience-enhancing automated features that made it delightfully fun to try and deal with paragraph formatting in Word 97. MS was really smart on that one: saving users from pressing the “Tab” key at the start of paragraphs must have been the most time-saving invention since sliced bread.
Oh: And why is it that when I try to add indents at the beginning of the line, but I didn’t press “Enter” after the line above it, it just doesn’t work?
?
Graphics positioning: In Word 6.0, 95 and probably up until 97, you had to utilize an obscure feature to add a “frame” around a graphic if you wanted to move it anywhere on the page. Otherwise it was stuck in the limits of the text formatting. WP always featured free movement of graphics, effortlessly. And, since they haven’t changed the format since 6.1, I was able to use WordPerfect 9, with complete accuracy, to open a complicated pamphlet I made in 6.1 back in the day (which would have been impossible to make in Word in the first place).
And adding insult to injury above all: MS never took it upon itself to think it necessary to add a “save” filter for WordPerfect 6.1, even though that format has been standard for ten years! It opens WP 6.1, but if you try to save it, the only option is WP 5.x. And MS did the WORST possible job on that save filter, to make sure that when WP users opened that document up, the fonts, the spacing, everything was completely botched.
See above. It has never been my assertion Word is the best program for everyone, or the best program at everything.
MS loyalists like you who go around fervently proclaiming the wonders of Microsoft’s software engineering are simply ignorant of other software.
Oh, goody, name calling. Does this mean I can call you a mindless, rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Microsoft bigot ?
Apparently, a lack of unconditional hatred for Microsoft makes me a “Microsoft loyalist”. I guess that also makes me a “loyalist” for a whole bunch or other companies and products as well – what a dilemma.
I doubt you’ve ever tried a version of WordPerfect past 5.x, IF your critique of 5.x IS even based on experience.
You have no idea of my experience – and it would clearly be pointless saying anything about it, because you wouldn’t believe me anyway.
But if you had, and you didn’t immediately write it off for being different than what MS had already forced you to learn, you might have understood that software can be elegant, not just a big jumble of ever-more-complicated features.
You have a strange idea of what “forced” means.
Phoenix made a big deal over the Mozilla browser called Phoenix, and yet, they pick CSS as the new name? The name CSS is already used by several other products.
Thre is no certainty about the future. There is no reason to assume that X86 will even be dominant in 10 years.
who cares about a bios replacement by phoenix and microsoft?
look at OpenBIOS ( http://www.openbios.org ),
LinuxBIOS ( http://www.linuxbios.org ) and the
L4 µ-kernel API implementations ( http://l4hq.org/ ). that’s the way to go IMHO.
“who cares about a bios replacement by phoenix and microsoft?
look at OpenBIOS ( http://www.openbios.org ),
LinuxBIOS ( http://www.linuxbios.org ) and the
L4 µ-kernel API implementations ( http://l4hq.org/ ). that’s the way to go IMHO.“
But that likely wont be what motherboard manufacturers think.
http://news.com.com/2100-7339_3-5111993.html?tag=nefd_top
“Phoenix is marketing the TrustedCore NB BIOS to laptop system designers and contract manufacturers, and it is expected that IBM is a likely customer. Fujitsu and Samsung have endorsed the technology. Phoenix said it will begin shipping TrustedCore for desktops by March 2004.”
http://news.com.com/2100-7339_3-5111993.html?tag=nefd_top
“Phoenix is marketing the TrustedCore NB BIOS to laptop system designers and contract manufacturers, and it is expected that IBM is a likely customer. Fujitsu and Samsung have endorsed the technology. Phoenix said it will begin shipping TrustedCore for desktops by March 2004.”
From the sound of the article, it simply re-enforces what people like me have been saying all along. This isn’t the end of the world and that these features will only affect you if you use an operating system which hooks into those features.
Windows has built in DRM, however, there is nothing forcing other media player producers from deciding not to hook into that particular piece of technology.
There are conspiracy theorists out there claim that their “rights” are going to be taken away. I don’t copy CD’s, I don’t download pirated software, I don’t rip DVD movies and post them on the net for all n’sundry to download. For me, this will not be an a restriction at all.
No, this isn’t a “troll” but the facts pointed out. Before one was given these capabilities with the hope that they would do the honest thing. Unfortunately people have no respected the copyrights and now we have the situation we have now. For people who have always “played by the rules”, there are no changes.
If the freedom waving crowd want someone to blame for these new security features, blame the people who continuously violate copyright law every chance they get, then expect to be believed that they “didn’t know”.
I don’t see what the big deal is about this. I Build my own PC’s. and every single MB I have bought within the past 5 years has always been an Award Bios. NOT Phoenix.
Remember if you Buy a Dell or a HP you should expect it since You can only upgrade the memory and Video card without buying a totally new PC.
“don’t see what the big deal is about this. I Build my own PC’s. and every single MB I have bought within the past 5 years has always been an Award Bios. NOT Phoenix.
Remember if you Buy a Dell or a HP you should expect it since You can only upgrade the memory and Video card without buying a totally new PC.”
Award BIOS is made by Phoenix.
http://www.phoenix.com/en/customer+services/bios/awardbios/default1…
Why don’t we have the OS control the hardware from the power-on state? Why not place the core components of the OS on a chip? I’m talking Palm/Newton here.
As for all this DRM and such… MS is obviously not intending for this all to be in the best interests of consumers and users. Spend wisely and keep your eyes and minds open.
Also, don’t put any faith in the DOJ… Linux is in no way required to keep MS clear of the DOJ. Only sympathetic politicians.
Why don’t we have the OS control the hardware from the power-on state?
Because something has to initialise the hardware to a usable state.
In PCs, the BIOS also plays a large part in supporting legacy hardware access.
Why not place the core components of the OS on a chip? I’m talking Palm/Newton here.
Because a) it’s complete overkill and b) that OS would probably be a Windows variant.
What should really be happening is hardware developers implementing Open Firmware and OS developers writing to it.
The article sounds to me like marketspeak, having nothing to do with what the product actually is.
They are not getting rid of BIOS, they are creating a new BIOS that they are choosing to call Core System Software. It does what BIOS does, boots the machine, provides basic system services, and starts the OS. If it looks like BIOS, Smells like BIOS, and acts like BIOS, GUESS WHAT???
This is the same type of marketing bull that you see with a number of products:
We had ‘Virtualization’ (like Java) since high level languages were developed, they are called interpreters. Basic comes to mind.
We had ‘Task Orientated’ (one of longhorns much touted ‘features’) since the early days of windows, they are called wizards. M$ Office comes to mind.
Great, they are creating a new BIOS, Big ____ing deal.
It’s like anarcho-syndicalists claiming there will be no organized government, but that ‘town meetings’ will rule. If it looks like government, smells like government, bite the damn bullet.
Could we start cutting through the BS and quit creating new names for old things?
It has four wheels. Its gets me from place to place. I can take the family with me on outings. Just call it a carriage.
It has four wheels. Its gets me from place to place. I can take the family with me on outings. Just call it a carriage.
You could call it a people moving device 😉
All you guys complaining here. Have you sent an e-mail to Phoenix yet. You are actually their customers, so I wonder if they continue if they get a couple of mails. The point is, for each customer telling a company off, there are approximatly 9 others thinking alike but not acting. Think of it.