][ stefano maffulli

As Bill Gates finally bows out of Microsoft to pursue his charity interests, BBC looks at some of the hits and misses of the software company he founded.

BBC NEWS | Technology | The hits and misses of Microsoft

Uncle Bill left a Microsoft not having beaten the Free Software movement and fighting to conquer new markets, like the mobile devices, where it is not a leader. I’ve played for a few hours with a Windows Mobile phone at Funambol and I remain skeptical about that OS. Anyway, it will be interesting to watch Ray Ozzie at work and see how he will play.

Lots of talking about Microsoft lately.  As I expected, Ray Ozzie’s public appearances are increasing with declarations of love for the magic word interoperability and with a new, more open, attitude.  I believe it’s true that “Microsoft fundamentally, as a whole, has changed dramatically as a result of open source,” as Ozzie said.

Roberto wrote a long post about Microsoft Open Source strategy. Having talked to him long enough, I know he sees the big potential for new Open Source firms to prosper on Microsoft ecosystem.  I suspect he is right, given the fact that the *nix competitors have lost 15 years of evolution fighting each other instead of building a common (superior) platform. Only with GNU/Linux such common platform arrived, but it probably came a day late and a dollar short.

Contrary to Roberto, I think that Microsoft change is not sufficient yet for Free Software advocates like me to merrily lift the precautions. I can still hear Ballmer shouting threats and see him trying to twist the arms of the EU Commission (as Carlo remembers very well). I’m not confident yet that these moves represent a new strategy and they’re not merely tactics to penetrate the FLOSS market and break it from the inside (patent lawsuit?).  If I were a developer I wouldn’t trust any promise not to sue by Microsoft, even if that promise uses the same (murky) words of IBM’s promises. I don’t care: Microsoft track records on Free Software is bad, bad, bad and worse. Microsoft must do better than IBM, it must be perfect (they can, if they want to).

We’re back to square one, 1 ISO standard on each side of the barricade since Microsoft managed to convince the ISO that its proprietary standard, OOXML  deserves the approved stamp. For all the money Google and IBM have thrown trying to stop it, it seems they’ve lost this battle. But I’ve learned yesterday from a ISO member that there are still 60 days for any country to appeal the decision. Given the irregularities mentioned by many, this is not a remote possibility.

But anyway, I wish we would all move on and focus on two main actions for two main groups of people.  Developers should focus to deliver good code to compete with Microsoft Office.  Advocates and lobbyist should instead convince Microsoft customers and Microsoft execs directly to modify the Open Specification Promise in order to fix its shortcomings (and make it compatible with GPLv3).  I think this will help free software (whose interests don’t necessarily coincide with those of IBM and Google) and I’m sure that there are people at Microsoft ready to listen.

If you close your eyes and stay in silence for a few minutes you will hear the echo of the fight engaged by Microsoft against Google and IBM (with many more smaller allies) to dominate the future of office documents. I’m now following from the distance and there is so much dust it’s impossible to see who is winning.

It’s clear though who is losing: ISO, the once glorious International Standards Organization lost. Its image of highly respected organization is devastated by the abuse of the inevitable cracks in its regulament that led to many irregularities. It’s easy to blame Microsoft this time: their OOXML proposal is not ready, they’re late in its development and it’s so bloated it’s impossible to implement. On the contrary ISO approved ODF (ISO 26300) is good enough, stable and widely used already.

It’s a sad, sad story, however it will end.

If you’re interested to discuss the issues of open standards and you’re in Milano on April 2nd, I’ll be at OMAT360 to listen to the round table about the implications of file format standards in the society. It’s going to be interesting, with speakers from Microsoft, Adobe, OO.org, public administration and others.

Come funziona sta cosa? Il Comune di Milano “regala” a tutti i suoi cittadini residenti i prodotti non interoperabili di un monopolista?

Il servizio è sperimentale, gratuito e ti permetterà di utilizzare tutti i servizi di Windows Live tra cui: account di posta, messaggistica istantanea, avvisi, calendario ed eventi, spazio di condivisione e collaborazione…

Mi pare strano che  il Comune demandi il trattamento dei dati personali a Microsoft, mentre il servizio è offerto dal Comune (almeno così pare). Per l’iscrizione vengono chiesti dati importanti, oltre a nome e cognome anche codice fiscale e numero della carta di identità. E non è affatto chiaro chi custodirà i dati personali come gli scambi di email, IM ecc.  A queste condizioni non faccio neanche la prova per vedere.

Incomprensibile: perché il Comune si fa veicolo di pubblicità per Microsoft senza avere niente in cambio?  Si sono resi conto gli alti dirigenti del Comune che la maggior parte di quei servizi sono già offerti da Microsoft (e da Yahoo e Google e Tiscali ecc ecc)  gratuitamente?  Che valore sperano di offrire così ai cittadini?

I’ve placed a bet that Microsoft will change radically its business model when Gates will leave his chair to Ray Ozzie, so I was trying to get a clue from Ozzie’s speech at the MIX last week. I wasn’t too impressed by his keynote, though, it was too much in the old known ‘corporate style’, too much junk talking about the old products (still talking about zune? Office Live? Come on, that’s so old stuff). And about old strategies.

Even in the GigaOM Interview Ozzie reveals anything new. His comment:

The OS that we’re using today is kind of in the model of a ’70s or ’80s vintage workstation. It was designed for a LAN, it’s got this great display, and a mouse, and all this stuff, but it’s not inherently designed for the Internet.

repeats that Microsoft will focus on the web. And on social interaction through the web. Just like Google. There is nothing new: Microsoft is playing again being the second mover in the online market. With its financial power will try to crush the competition. Disappointing: there is nothing really new coming from there. I still hope that Ozzie will at least introduce respect for open standards.

Now I better put my hope for a revolutionary product in some nice startup, to have some fun.

I couldn’t agree less with Schneier’s post on Wired: lock-in is bad for users.  I liked this sentence that explains well how I’m feeling now after having used a Mac for 2 weeks (I promise, I’ll write a long post about this experience in the next days):

With enough lock-in, a company can protect its market share even as it reduces customer service, raises prices, refuses to innovate and otherwise abuses its customer base. It should be no surprise that this sounds like pretty much every experience you’ve had with IT companies

Read the rest of it on With iPhone, ‘Security’ Is Code for ‘Control’

Doc Searls asks on LJ:

What if Yahoo’s main value isn’t its search engine or its advertising business, but the openness that makes it more Net-native and hacker-friendly than Microsoft?

Right… what if? I don’t think that today’s Microsoft understand the value of openness. But (possible) new Microsoft starting in June probably will. We’ll have to wait until then, but I’m not holding my breath. I just hoped I bought Yahoo shares a week ago

It’s worth reading the whole article Yahoo’s Openness Asset | Linux Journal

Standards can be a Royal PITA and every developer and hacker knows that. But for users they’re the only way not to go crazy. Web standards give users the possibility to connect to the Internet from any device and blog, check email, get and make information. The debate is heating up on top of the Opera-vs-Microsoft complaint. A nice summary is: Is the Sacred Cow of Web Standards Headed for the Slaughterhouse?

There’s a movement afoot in the web development community that says it’s time to move beyond standards and take the web to a new levels. Unhappy with the pace of innovation at the W3C, many developers are calling on browser manufacturers to go beyond supporting official W3C specifications and develop tools to support new features.

I understand hackers and their frustration, but we must be aware that power in the digital domain is mainly in hackers and developers, users are at their mercy. But powers must be balanced and at the moment I see the W3C as the only organization that can still balance freedom for hackers to innovate with users’ freedom of choice. I wouldn’t trade my freedom as a user with that of developers to push proprietary tools like Flash or Silverlight and patented formats.

Here we are again with the European Commission being asked by a competitor to remind Microsoft that competition doesn’t mean abuse of dominant position. I have a sense of deja-vu. Opera Software has asked the EC to investigate if Microsoft is abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards.

As in the past antitrust case, won by the EC, there are two parts: one is the bundling IE with Windows and the other is the interoperability issue. As before, the bundling issue is less important because the real problem is interoperability, a word that Microsoft has always interpreted in a monopolist way: I do whatever I please, and I set ‘industry standards’ by myself convincing clients and partners to either follow me or be squashed.

There is little doubt that Internet Explorer doesn’t support W3C standards well as Safari/WebKit, Firefox and Opera do, but nonetheless many web application prefer to support the non-standard browser because of IE has 80% market share. So, the question whether Opera is right to complain to the antitrust authority is a clear yes. Opera made a tactical move to pressure the dominant gorilla and at the same time inform the public about the interoperability issue. If Opera really cares about interoperability it should also support the W3C to keep its power and resist against Nokia’s proposition to remove referent to patent-unencumbered OGG format from HTML5.

Update: Microsoft informed that internal builds of IE8 pass the ACID2 test