In Defense of Microsoft (aka Standing up for the little guy)
I was originally trying to write a response to Alex Bosworth’s post about Microsoft and standards,
but I realized that maybe it deserved a post of its own.
Especially because you can’t just leave a comment on his blog, you have
to sign up for a forum account and post a comment to the forum thread
that matches the blog post, which is rather annoying.
I have to take issue with some of Alex’s points, I will reference them from his post.
1. Ajax - Just because ajax didn’t take off when ms first developed
it doesn’t mean anything. There was nothing stopping the other
browsers from implementing a similar interface. I don’t
understand what this has to do with standards; they decided to
implement a feature in a browser, so they went ahead and implemented
it. Yes, it used ActiveX which I don’t really care for, but its their browser, let them live and die by their decisions.
2. .NET - You mention that this only runs on windows, however you reference Mono
later in your post. I have copied an asp.net application from a
windows box to a linux box and had it run in xsp with no problems. And
I question your assertion that “no one wants to run Windows
servers.” You know on a test with true/false questions the
easiest way to tell if a statement is false is to look for the
words “always”, “every”, “never”, “everybody”, etc. I
think Alex may have a slanted perspective on this, I believe there
are plenty of people who find a windows server easier to deal with.
3. Office XML - I’m at a loss as to how a non-GPL xml format makes
the office formats any less open? As long as they release the
schemas they use (I’m assuming they will), then thats as open as I care
about. Office is already the dominant business software and with
better xml support I believe they will provide a better integration
opportunity.
Alex, feel free to comment, even anonymously.
gappleby said,
Wrote on June 24, 2005 @ 3:29 am
You know what? Reading all this stuff (not your post, but the post you linked to and the stuff that alex linked to from there) makes me so extremely angry.
You’re right. What does all this have to do with embracing standards? The only things he does is mention software implementations to which, at the time of implementation, there realy was no standard for anything of the like, or a) the standard was crap, or b) the defacto standard could be improved upon.
Mostly.
All he’s doing is having a whinge, and an unjustified one at that.
And what really gets my goat is the whinging about things like the office format being GPL incompatible, or the need to license the IP of indigo and avalon to write a mono clone.
I’m unimpressed.
Anonymous said,
Wrote on June 24, 2005 @ 4:17 am
The last independent security survey I read had Win2k3 server with less unpatched security holes than Linux and it was even done by a generally Linux-happy group. It may require more resources but I have yet to see one crash (and I’ve seen Linux crash plenty) and it’s far easier to install and configure than Linux is. It’s a lot cheaper than an enterprise Linux implementation too. Redhat for example is on a subscription-based perpetual license. You pay $799 for ES Standard (which I would assume compares to 2k3 Standard) and you only get updates for a year unless you pay $799 again the next year. We pay ~$500 for 2k3 standard and updates are provided for the life of the product. Granted..you don’t get as good of support service with Windows (with the product purchase) but then again you’re not as likely to need it.
Anonymous said,
Wrote on June 24, 2005 @ 9:53 am
Well, Alex wants standards so that open source software can proliferate so he can sell support on it. There’s no need to sell support for an integrated stack that is fairly easy to maintain.
breichelt said,
Wrote on June 24, 2005 @ 6:56 pm
Geoff - I agree, the post title mentions standards, but the post has nothing to do with them.
Chris - thats a great point, its amazing what some people will pay for an “open” system.
Darrell - Can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but I see your porint, however he doesn’t need to rag on MS, his business model isn’t their concern
Another thing that I thought of after the fact is that microsoft sumitted C# and the CTS (i think) to ECMA for standardization, just some food for thought…
Anonymous said,
Wrote on June 26, 2005 @ 6:49 pm
I don’t have any problem with Microsoft doing whatever they want to do to gain their market share. They are in software business and business is business. I do have problem with Microsoft using their dominant power to partake in unfair competition. They can change/extend standards to ensure their product is better. But in doing so, they put other players in difficult situations because all they want is to have a fair ground to compete with. You may argue that in doing so, Microsoft can provide a better software for consumres. But, I do believe that competition is necessary for any breakthroughs that can really make innovations.
Anonymous said,
Wrote on June 26, 2005 @ 6:50 pm
I don’t have any problem with Microsoft doing whatever they want to do to gain their market share. They are in software business and business is business. I do have problem with Microsoft using their dominant power to partake in unfair competition. They can change/extend standards to ensure their product is better. But in doing so, they put other players in difficult situations because all they want is to have a fair ground to compete with. You may argue that in doing so, Microsoft can provide a better software for consumres. But, I do believe that competition is necessary for any breakthroughs that can really make innovations.
Anonymous said,
Wrote on June 29, 2005 @ 6:30 pm
Yeah I was harsh on them, but what I’m really trying to say is that open standards are what create beautiful ecosystems of development.
Microsoft keeps putting all this development time into features that would be cool, but because they are part of a platform play to lock you into Windows, people just don’t use them.
Microsoft also talks a good game when it comes to standards, like the Common Language Runtime, but they cripple those efforts when they threaten the Mono team with lawsuits.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t want to develop on .NET because I know that if Windows Server isn’t doing a good job for me, I cannot rely on switching to a Linux Server running the same application under Mono. So Microsoft just lost a developer with their .NET lockin strategy.
As for the GPL open doc thing, I really haven’t looked into it enough to speak expertly on it, but I think what they are saying is that although Microsoft opens the schemas up, if you interact with Office XML in GPL code (like Linux), Microsoft will sue you. That’s just no good.
I came upon this response by happenstance, feel free to give me an email ping if you disagree with one of my posts @ alex at sourcelabs, I’m happy to talk about them.
Anonymous said,
Wrote on September 17, 2005 @ 11:27 am
Your blog is realy very interesting.