The whole of the thing
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| AnonymousCoward Sep 21, 2004 6:34 PM EDT |
Microsoft still don't get it. Giving people "90%" of the code won't allow customers to audit MS-Office. It's like giving spooks access to 90% of your telephone exchange, the missing 10% being where the wires come through the wall. Customers want Microsoft to trust them with all of the code. With things like Linux kicking around, they're now in a position to demand trust for trust, whereas in the past they had to take what they were given. Microsoft as a corporation don't natively trust anybody, because they know that they themselves aren't trustworthy (it's called "anti-trust" for a reason), but they can put on a facade of (to pluck a term out of the air) "trustworthy computing" for business reasons, and they must be really hurting for it to come down to them actually laying any MS-Office source code on the table even for so limited an audience. Take a step back, and have a look at the situation. Casting aside political and historical considerations... on one hand, we have OpenOffice, which not only does 99% of the stuff MS-Office does, it does other stuff besides (writes PDFs, edits HTML without totally buggering it like MS-Word does, runs on many platforms) but you can have complete access to all of the source code including write access if you fork your own or submit patches worth accepting; on the other hand we have a box which was once black but now governments can see all but a few dark corners, it doesn't do as much, it only runs on one platform, you've gotta pay heaps to use it, not even governments get write access and mere mortals don't even get to peek. Hmm. Which do I choose? Let me think about it. |
| r_a_trip Sep 22, 2004 3:05 AM EDT |
MS does get it, but they cannot act accordingly to it. MS's business is dependent on holding their customers hostage. MS never was in a position where they could give up their stranglehold on the code. In the past MS could compete on price. Their wares were "good enough" and cheaper than the competition. In that setting it didn't really matter that their service, support and quality weren't that great. The licensing costs were low enough to give a competitive edge. Nowadays, they have a multitude of competitors (GNU/Linux is the technology, the many Distributions are the competition) and the competition has better quality, better service arrangements, better support. The advantage of MS being "good enough" for "the right price" has evaporated. The only "advantage" MS still has, is that a large base of computer users are used to them and have their data and applications locked to the MS platform. Switching still seems a bit to expensive to justify the cost, so MS can leech the market on their licensing terms. The closedness of their code/technology is what keeps them afloat for a while longer. If MS would decide to throw out their code under an MS Public License, which would reveal every bit of their sourcery and allow others to make derivatives without using MS branding as a lever, they would crash and burn overnight. MS cannot compete on service and support. MS is not agile and customer oriented enough to jump on opportunities customers offer. Lean, mean code, with high modularity and extensibility to service the customer, is not something MS can offer. Look at Longhorn. In it's current )marketing) incarnation it's a mere Window(s)dressing for the aging Windows XP. MS's fleeting survival options are inertia, draconian licensing, DRM and FUD. In it's current form MS is doomed. |
| TxtEdMacs Sep 22, 2004 6:40 AM EDT |
There is one area that MS has been quick to learn: political cash goes far! If backed by U.S. government statutes their options are limitless. With the current administration and congress I would say their chance of success is not marginal. |
| phsolide Sep 22, 2004 7:05 AM EDT |
MSFT may not have the ability to give out all source code, even to a very limited office. Think about the implications of _NSAKEY (http://www.fact-index.com/n/ns/nsakey.html), or the Windows-3-on-DR-DOS "error" messages. If they've got other such indiscretions in their code, letting *anyone* view it may constitute Big Trouble. And then there's the Hidden Origins of DOS (settlement with Tim Paterson, anyone - http://fringe.davesource.com/Fringe/NonZen_Companies/Microso...) and all the "NT is DEC's Micah" rumors. Don't want to let those cats out of the bag. |
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