Bill Gate's "Communist Comment"

Bill Gates has again taken to calling open source programmers, and advocates "communists."
Bill has launched ad hominum attacks on the open source community using this very same term. The problem is that by attacking the open source community in this manner, he completely misunderstands the economics of open source software. I imagine Mr. Gates believes that by repeating the "communist" mantra enough, it will undermine adaption of GNU/Linux in the corporate environment. The problem with this statement is that it makes Bill look very silly. No one is really worried about communists anymore Bill. Furthermore when IBM is pushing Linux do you expect your communist comment to strike a chord in the market? Do you think the business world is suddenly going to believe that IBM has become a communist collective ala 1955? The answer is obviously of course not! It's just one more comment that allows IBM's salesmen paint Bill Gates as a man who has lost touch with reality. When Microsofts's chief software architect and chairman says utterly ridiculous things like that it hinders MS's competitive advantage in the marketplace.

It also shows that Bill Gates doesn't yet understand the economics of open source yet. This is a somewhat remarkable as the open source revolution has been going on for 21 years, and covered by the computing world extensively for the last 7 years. Open source developers do their work because of the economic advantage of doing so. By adapting the GPL or other similar license developers given up certain rights in return for certain others and these have a definite economic benefit. The best way to think about it in traditional corporate terms is cross-licensing of patent portfolios . You cross license because it makes economic sense, provides protection and allows you to leverage your patent portfolio.

By improving a GPL'd product you gain an economic advantage, you don't have to build from scratch. When a project has reached a critical mass of developers, the economic advantage is tremendous. At the institional level open source makes even more economic sense. By co-operating in development, companies can leverage development efforts, avoid the much dreaded vendor lock-in and as a result of the open source process itself, a much better product. For Bill not to even understand the economic reasons behind Microsoft's greatest threat and attempt to throw the "communist" label on it, shows a tremendous problem and blind spot with Microsoft's leadership.

Microsoft Integration Takes it Toll

Hackers use DRM to infect machines. I suggest anyone who make the argument that tight integration is a good thing, take a good long read at the article. This follows a long tradition at Microsoft of rapid and sudden bundling of features with little concern of the security consequences. We had a discussion two years ago about how this little hole could be exploited and this was exactly what we predicted what would happen. Frankly I was suprised it took this long for people to capitalize on this huge hole. Where is the security team at Microsoft? How can such badly designed features make it out the door?

Frankly security has never been a concern at Microsoft, even after the much vaunted security turnaround dictated by Gates. When MS integrated IE into the operating system into the operating system, they set the ground for thousands of viruses and BILLIONS of dollars in damages to companies. What I find amazing is that no one is holding MS liable for these damages. Of course the EULA prevents you from suing MS for this sort of thing. In an effort to stay ahead, Microsoft bundles competing products into the operating system. While this was fine during days when you were just bundling a windowing system into the operating systems; given todays's networking environment, it's a recipe for disaster.

By bolting new products onto the core product, you can certainly strangle the competition however with each new product you add to the OS, another security hole is added. Given that the security model of Windows 2000/98 lacks granularity and control you can expect a new species of virus for each bundled product.

So what to expect for MS virues in future. Here's my short list.

1. Media/Audio/Video Virii.
2. Messenger Virii.
3. Antispyware Virii - (only if Giant gets integrated into the OS)

Cringley's Crystal Ball

Every year Robert Cringley's starts off the New Year with a set of predictions about the coming future in technology. He usually bats around 75% so it's a good read. I suggest giving it a quick read. You can give it a read I, Cringely.

Voice Genesis - Redefining Text Messaging

A friend of mine started a company called Voice Genesis. The web site could be much clearer about what a revolutionary product this really is. It works this way. You get an email which shows up on your mobile phone. Instead of painfully texting a reply back using that damn phone pad, you simple speak a reply and this message is then converted to text and emailed back to the sender. The translation & mailing is handled on their servers so it's entirely transparent to the users. This is a big one people - This makes checking and replying to email on your mobile phone a snap. While the site currently doesn't yet offer the software for download, I know for a fact that it works. Check it out at Voice Genesis. They should be shipping the software in the next two weeks. This one is gonna be big.

Joel on Software Book Review

I just finished Joel On Software. A book devoted to software management, software development, and best practices. It's great book. I especially like the section devoted to writing a functional specification. Most of the practices that Joel suggest are easily implemented and with consistent use can improve the quality of software development, and your working experience. I do have a bone to pick with Joel. He consistently mentions Netscape as an example of what not to do in development in deciding to chuck Netscape 4.0 and re code from scratch. He then holds this up as why they lost the browser war.

Sorry Joel but that was hardly the reason why. Microsoft's predatory business practices were the reason, the decision to code from scratch acknowledged that fact. If you take a look at the market share Netscape had at that point, it wasn't 90% of the market, but rather closer to 25%. Here's an article from 1998 showing their market share had dropped to 54%, clearly the MS bundling strategy had worked. Another study has their market share at below 20% at January 1998, when they announced their open source strategy.

By 2000 the point had already tipped. The real question is what caused the tipping point, IE's superior technology? Or the very clear threats they made to hardware manufacturers that their OS licenses would be pulled if Netscape was bundled. As developer at Microsoft, Joel only saw the great things about Microsoft, namely their development practices, devotion to excellence in software and technical progress. He clearly never sat in a meeting where MS has welded their current monopoly on OS as a huge stick to force people into line. These meetings happened at every single hardware manufacturer that was bundling Netscape. Lo and behold they stopped shipping Netscape.

Let's remember that Microsoft was found guilty of anti-trust violations for this very behavior. The simple fact of the matter is that MS choked off 'Netscape's air supply' and their own incompetent practices finished them off. After removing the competition,MS stopped development on the browser, disbanded the team and as a result we have seen little to no improvement in IE since 5.0. Granted Joel does touch on this in the book, namely Microsft's reluctance to improve the browser as it commoditizes the OS. I have known several developers who have retired from Microsoft and they all love the place. As a developer I am sure Microsoft is a fantastic place to work. I only worry about some of their practices in business development.

This little bone of contention aside, I found the book useful, a great resource and I highly recommend it. The Joel Test is a useful guide for rating your current development practices. And to be frank his section on how to write a functional specification is one of the most useful I have ever read. I have found it especially helpful as I myself writing two specifications right now.

I highly suggest his blog
Joel On Software

You can buy his book Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity.

Tsunami Relief - Give Now, Give Often

I logged into my Amazon Associates account today and Amazon has already set up an easy way for people to help. So I thought it warranted a mention here.

Click Here to Donate for Red Cross Relief