Microsoft's New Hurdles

gnuadam writes "The New York Times (free reg. required) is now running a piece about how the recently accepted settlement between Microsoft and the DOJ will affect the ever-so-loving relationship between them and the "worldwide community of volunteer programmers" who work on Linux and associated programs. Of interest, one interviewee quipped, "My prediction is that within three years time, Microsoft will `give away' its operating system to preserve its revenue in the applications business." Would Microsoft give away Windows to sell Office? Stay tuned." Update: 11/04 19:33 GMT by T : In related news, an anonymous reader writes "In an interview with Linux and Main Free Software Foundation General Counsel Eben Moglen reacts to Friday's U.S. v. Microsoft ruling and describes how it and 'trusted computing' will figure in formulating the next version of the GPL, expected in the next few months."

.Net Runtime negates the need for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft will probably start giving away a *nix-based .Net runtime first. Once you have all your products running on an abstraction layer, the OS becsome irrelevant.

Pfffffppt

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. They are more likely to give away Word and Excel than they are to give up their Operating system. With Linux beating them at the OS game;
they have to figure out how to leverage their monopoly strength in marketing to create a new distributed/wireless/tablet computing model.

Re:Never

[trentfoley]

Was anything mentioned about opening the source? I thought the idea was to just give away ths OS - Windows. That being said, it could remain closed. And, the "Crown Jewels", according to Microsoft, is the source code -- not the operating system itself.

Here's the article without registration

[Alethes]

Despite what the summary says, I wasn't prompted for registration, but thanks to news.google.com [google.com],
Here is the article [nytimes.com] sans-registration for those of you that are prompted.

Re:Never

[PCM2]

Microsoft will never give away the crown jewels to save the application side of the house.

I guess that all depends on what you mean by "crown jewels." Office has long been more profitable for Microsoft than Windows has. Makes sense, if you think about it. Most copies of Windows sold come as a bundle with new hardware, which means they were licensed in volume to the manufacturer at a deep discount. If you want to install Office on the same machine, however, you often have to buy it separately. A lot of the time they only bundle a stripped down office suite (Microsoft Works?)

If they were foolish enough to open their Windows source, all the links and hooks for Office would be out for everyone to integrate into Open Office. That would kill their app business within a couple of years.

I didn't see anybody mention opening the source to Windows. They just said "give away" the OS. Free beer.

Re:.Net Runtime negates the need for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, yeah, and it would have worked if Sun had tried a little harder to make consistent jvm runtimes from platform to platform.

Instead, Sun was just a little bit sloppy at first with the behavior of the AWT and graphics bits of the API between various platforms, and didn't do a good enough job initially of pushing for one unified jvm per platform (instead of several competing, not-fully-compatible jvms.. which brings me back to my belief that Netscape 4 ruined the internet, but lets not go there..). However, they did eventually get their act together.

The thing people forget is that by the time Sun started getting their act together, the dominant windows JVM was being distributed by Microsoft, who had a vested interest in java not living up to its potential, purposefully distributed a nonstandard java API, and tried to make their dev tools with their nonstandard API the standard java development environment for windows. This is why Sun is suing Microsoft. Remember?

I must have got it wrong....

[Eric Damron]

"The Linux strategy is to undercut Microsoft..."

And all this time I thought our strategy was to just keep making Linux better and to hell with anyone else...

Re:.Net Runtime negates the need for this

[Melantha_Bacchae]

ArmorFiend wrote:

> MacOS is essentially an MS operating system with
> different branding.

Mac OS X is a genuine UNIX, descended mostly from NeXT, with fresh stuff from the *BSD trees, and the coolest GUI on the planet. None of it comes from Microsoft (though Microsoft would certainly wish it did). The only code it would remotely have in common with anything Microsoft, would be the stuff from the BSD side of the family, and at best, they would be cousins in a few small areas.

> MS got control over what apps to ship (Internet
> Exploiter) in exchange for paying $ to Apple.

That is rubbish. Steve Jobs did a five year deal with Microsoft, which consisted of Microsoft buying some non-voting shares and providing Office on the Mac in return for the Mac shipping with Internet Explorer (Netscape was also frequently shipping on OS 9 Macs during the same time period). That deal is now over.

> So while it may not be 100% owned by MS,

The non-voting shares were dumped on the market in fall of 2000, in an effort to tank Apple's stock. It (and some mistakes on Apple's part) worked, and for a few days all gloated over Apple's apparent demise. It didn't last long though, as the entire PC industry then tanked, and fell farther than Apple, who recovered the next quarter.

> Apple is at least heavily influnced by Redmond.

Exactly what part of the Switch campaign are you not getting? Apple is flinging itself at Microsoft's jugular these days.

Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp! ;)

Re:.Net Runtime negates the need for this

[sql*kitten]

Microsoft will probably start giving away a *nix-based .Net runtime first. Once you have all your products running on an abstraction layer, the OS becsome irrelevant.

Like this one [microsoft.com] you mean? Microsoft have been giving away the a .NET runtime and development environment (including source) for FreeBSD since last March.