Jeremy Allison Calls Microsoft Dangerous Elephant

oranghutan writes "At the annual Linux.conf.au event being held in Wellington, NZ, one of the lead developers for the Samba Team (and Google employee) Jeremy Allison described Microsoft as 'an elephant that needs to be turned to stop it trampling the open source community.' Allison has been an outspoken critic of the vendor since he quit Novell over a deal it did with Microsoft that he saw as dangerous to open source intentions. And now he has evolved his argument to incorporate new case studies to explain why Microsoft's use of patents and its general tactics on free software are harmful.

Re:It wouldn't be a problem

[Lunix Nutcase]

Yeah his butthurt is especially funny in light of the fact that he's most famous for reimplementing Microsoft software.

Re:It wouldn't be a problem

[capnkr]

Seems to me that he makes some pretty valid points.

But then, I'm not on the MS 'turfing payroll, I'm just an independent IT person who likes to use whatever solution works best for a given situation...

How un-news worthy is this?

[Toreo asesino]

"Microsoft produces software that competes with FOSS" is basically the headline. Well who knew?!

Something they're also learning is that the above statement doesn't necessarily mean they can't work with FOSS in areas that are mutually beneficial. This, believe it or not, is happening too.

Re:Flamebait of a story

[Third Position]

Really. I've been hearing this kind of talk for nearly 20 years. Open source looks pretty healthy to me.

In the second case study, Allison argued Microsoft had tried to corrupt the open Internet by, among other things: Refusing to follow HTML standards and creating Internet Explorer-only websites; pushing its Windows-only media format; aiming to make ActiveX the only way to develop applications; and trying to replace Java with .Net.

And how successful were they at these endeavors? Apparently, not very.

Ubuntu and Commercial Software.

[headkase]

Want Open to win? Stop being bloody purists. See, Ubuntu Software Commercial Survey [google.ca] for a pragmatic approach. Ubuntu is a bridge, get the Windows people over first and once they know what they're doing they can compile their own Gentoo. Commercial software on Linux is also such a bridge, let it in: as long as the core operating system is Open who gives a crap. If the commercial is amazingly good compared to the Open then it will survive while the Open matures. But don't deny your users the commercial because you're being a dick about it. Follow the Linux philosophy: Openness, including commercial. Then work with it yourself, I have converted two of my family-members desktops over to Ubuntu within the last month, not including my own. If I wasn't using a "stupid" distribution it wouldn't have happened because I have no idea of the required options while building your kernel. Support the bridges, they all lead into Open.

Well... duh!

[wvmarle]

Microsoft is a software company, selling proprietary software, with a business model based around lock-in and obscurity on file formats and the like. Open source is the complete opposite of what MS's business model needs. Now obviously MS's business model is (was) a pretty good one considering they got very very rich with it (one of the richest companies in the world, if not the richest). Business wise they're a winner, no contest. Open source is breaking that.

Absolute winners for MS are of course Office with their doc format lock-in (slowly being eroded by OOo), and the Windows/Exchange/Outlook combo for which I don't know of any true competitor. Plus the many windows-only games of course. MS needs to keep their sources closed, their standards theirs and theirs alone, and needs to keep competitors out of their network. The network situation is improving but it is still very much everything except Windows talks easily to everything except Windows, and Windows talks easily to Windows alone.

When I'm at it, I was thinking of their two most high-profile competitors.

Apple: they couldn't care less about open/closed source and will likely go with the wind. Except maybe iTunes but then that contains DRM which requires the closed-source obscurity to not be cracked before it's released. OS-X is largely open-source even. Apple is a hardware company, after all. They make software to sell their hardware.

Google. Google appears to love open source: they are all about interoperability. Everyone on the Internet, everything on the Internet, the browser is the platform. Which browser? Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari? What would they care. Operating system? Irrelevant. Hardware platform? The cheaper the better, whether it's a laptop, phone, desktop or "slate". As long as the device understands standards. And open source is pretty good at exactly that: standards.

Yahoo is likely in the Google camp, being an Internet company. Though I don't hear much of any software developments coming from there. And they are quite friendly with Microsoft.

Then there is Microsoft's Bing. Gaining market share rapidly, got some positive comments a few stories ago here on /.. Makes me wonder where that stands really, as Bing just needs a standards-compliant browser. I haven't used the site, but I understand from the comments that it is pretty standards-compliant at the moment. And with the current market share of non-IE browsers, they will have to. You can't afford to lose 30% or so of your market, especially as that 30% will tell their friends "Bing sucks, doesn't work properly, use Google, that works good". People don't tend to try again later.

Re:It wouldn't be a problem

[HerculesMO]

Same here... when a business unit comes and asks how long will it take to develop XYZ, and you give them figures for .NET and for Java, they usually go with .NET because it's cheaper and faster to develop. Not universally true, but we certainly find it the case.

Either way, there's always going to be a war between Microsoft and Open Source... when Open Source offers something that is *better* than closed, then it will be used. It's simple, really. The unfortunate thing is that most open source projects are fragmented and disjointed, and not well funded or organized like Firefox is. And that article from a few days ago pretty much spelled out that Firefox without Google would be yet another disjointed open source project.

I'm not against open source... just use what works best. Usually the cost of the software is far cheaper than the loss of functionality or cohesiveness I'd get if I went with open source.

Re:It wouldn't be a problem

[domatic]

His being a high-profile developer, this part of the rant struck me as absolutely valid despite the making light going on in the rest of the comments:

"So you see this especially in the appliance market where Microsoft will go to a company — off the record as this is never ever done in public — and say 'this product you have there, shame if someone brought a patent suit. So you have two options you can re-architect — here is Windows — or the other thing is why don't you give us a cut on all the free software you are using?'. It is an attempt to create the work that we do, into a Microsoft revenue stream. I don't know about you but that really pisses me off."

The antitrust actions against MS to date have been misplaced IMHO focusing on things like browser bundling. The regulators seem to have no clue about the really evil crap like subverting the ISO and threatening product vendors who use FOSS.

Re:Flamebait of a story

[MarkvW]

Of course it's flamebait. It is mere provocation. I learned nothing from the story.
Any good suggestions for better tech news aggregators?

Re:Random anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story bro. I guess that's why you teach and not do ;)

Not New, But I can Corroborate

[mpapet]

"So you see this especially in the appliance market where Microsoft will go to a company — off the record as this is never ever done in public — and say 'this product you have there, shame if someone brought a patent suit. So you have two options you can re-architect — here is Windows — or the other thing is why don't you give us a cut on all the free software you are using?'.

This is very common business practice in the U.S. not exclusive to Microsoft. Bigger companies want two things from the smaller companies they intimidate, revenue and market penetration information. If they don't get it privately, they certainly get it with patent/trademark litigation.

I'm not calling Microsoft out exclusively on this, but it should give the average /. an idea of how fundamentally frozen the American economy is by patent and trademark law.

Re:Random anecdote

[captaindomon]

Yeah, that doesn't work in the real world, in F100 companies.

Re:Flamebait of a story

[poetmatt]

what do you call "Subverting an international commitee" (re: OOXML fiasco)? is that flamebait? If so, what isn't flamebait? When GPL advocates just roll over dead? Or when MS's proprietary specifications become world standards at the behest of MS? color me confused.

Re:Well... duh!

[that this is not und]

Then there is Microsoft's Bing. Gaining market share rapidly, got some positive comments a few stories ago here on /.. Makes me wonder where that stands really, as Bing just needs a standards-compliant browser

Bing is a 'weapon' product. They're only producing it to compete with and ultimately defeat Google. If and win Google is hobbled, they will be able to pay less attention to Bing and more to their lock-in product lines.

Re:Random anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was going over our syllabus, I said: "Email your homework here. Don't send us Microsoft Word documents. My TA and I don't have Word, we're probably not on a computer that does when we grade your homework, and we can't be arsed to go find a decoder for whatever the newest obscure Microsoft format is."

You "can't be arsed" to open a Word document? Seriously? Open a Word document? You're that close-minded that you feel it necessary to make your students jump through arbitrary hoops to appease your moral standing on a file format? I'm extremely grateful I'm not in a class taught by someone like you.

It makes sense too...

[RulerOf]

I can think of a few people off the top of my head that I know who would take a Windows based solution from Microsoft for the cost of licenses + support, over a Linux based FOSS solution with a similar or lower cost of support, and I'm sure all of you all do as well. Microsoft would be downright foolish not to court that market segment.

My favorite part though, as per TFA:

"We have a system that is absolutely free that we can do anything with, so why are we so obsessed with picking on Microsoft? ... Shouldn't we leave the elephant alone and stop poking it with sticks? Well, the problem is they aren't going to leave us alone."

Of course Microsoft is going to compete with your solutions. They're a god damned software company that makes every type of application they can produce without getting [successfully] sued by their competitors. I've never actually said this before, but...

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Re:Map Reduce?

[fermion]

This is what I was thinking. The biggest threat to OSS is not forms of less open and more closed software, the two can coexist, but patents. Look at what is happening with phone and media devices. A patent to show a telephone number on a screen? A patent to let the user choose a TV show. How can OSS be written in this environment? Anything is going to violate a patent.

Google does not yet have a huge number of patents, but that will change in the future, and they will become likely become more general. Already, IIRC, they have patent on in game advertising. I can see a time when we might a OSS game engine that allows in context game advertising. I wonder if Google would sue.

Re:It wouldn't be a problem

[truthsearch]

when Open Source offers something that is *better* than closed, then it will be used.

Not necessarily. I've worked with multiple companies that have "outlawed" open source for supposedly legal reasons. I've also worked in one company that used only MS software because they had a huge contract and preferred the one-vendor solution, even when some cases would call for a better solution from another source. So in many cases open source can't even get in the door because of business decisions, not technical ones.

Microsoft bullies FOSS with patents and conspirato

[ComputerInsultant]

No, the headline is "Microsoft bullies FOSS with patents and conspiratorial coersion."

When Microsoft patents obvious things, then uses those patents to threaten law suits, that is a threat.

If Microsoft was competing by building great software, we would be having a different conversation. This conversation is about Microsoft competing without building software.

Re:Random anecdote

[AnotherUsername]

So what obscure file format do you have them use? For you to call the basic .doc file format obscure is asinine. If you were to ask most people on the street what a .doc file was, they would be able to tell you that it is a document file. If you were ask most people on the street what a .ooo file was, they would look at you with a blank stare. Who is using the obscure file format?

Perhaps, if using anything associated with .doc is that distasteful for you, you should have your students print out their assignments and simply hand them in. That way you could read them no matter what file format the student chooses to utilize on their computer.

Re:Random anecdote

[Phred T. Magnificent]

You "can't be arsed" to open a Word document? Seriously? Open a Word document? You're that close-minded that you feel it necessary to make your students jump through arbitrary hoops to appease your moral standing on a file format? I'm extremely grateful I'm not in a class taught by someone like you.

Naturally I can't speak for GP, but I "can't be arsed" to pay for a copy of Word, or to keep a machine around that could run it if I had it. Thankfully I'm not taking any classes at all just now, but if I were, I'd be much happier with a teacher that refused Word, than with one that required it.

Re:FLOSS Community Is Their Own Worst Enemy

[msimm]

Boogeyman? Microsoft routinely does bad things (tm) that in no way can be used to explain the usability issues Linux-based operating systems face today. But none-the-less their patent trolling, anti-competitive and generally litigious nature still makes them a serious threat to freedom and innovation.

Re:Ubuntu and Commercial Software.

[CodeBuster]

Having read TFA, the principal objection of Jeremy Allison is not over use of commercial software in Linux per se, but rather over offensive use of patents, creating "walled gardens" which favor one implementation over another regardless of merit, to quash or demand ransom from open source projects. Mr Allison is wise in his conclusion: namely that open source projects should ignore these agreements and continue to produce software freely because, as others have pointed out, (Richard Stallman being prominent among them) patents remain a threat to free software which cannot be avoided at this time. In fact, it is not worth even searching existing patents because willful infringement, or infringing a patent that you know about, carries heavier penalties than simply infringing a patent of which you had no knowledge. The patent holder may decide to file a lawsuit in either case so it doesn't pay to risk more than necessary by being proactive with regard to software patents. Therefore, the open source community should accept the risk and continuing moving forward, for now, while working against software patents on the legal and political advocacy front. This is essentially the same conclusion that Richard Stallman arrived at many years ago.

Re:Random anecdote

[Sir_Lewk]

Obscure is relative. I've have had to deal with word documents maybe once or twice in the past two years. For me, that's enough to qualify for the label "obscure".

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Flamebait of a story

[Zero__Kelvin]

"And how successful were they at these endeavors? Apparently, not very."

Yeah. I mean it's not like companies are still using IE6 on Windows years after both have been shown to be security challenged, and being offered better free alternatives and rejecting them because Microsoft marketing has sold upper management a bunch of FUD or anything. If the Chinese hacked corporate computers by leveraging such a vulnerability and people still kept using their stuff instead of switching to well established secure FOSS alternatives that might be seen as some order of success squashing FOSS, but as things stand now they have been entirely unsuccessful!

Re:Random anecdote

[CodeBuster]

It may be different now, but when I attended University in the late 90s most incoming freshmen did not know how to use LaTeX and some hadn't even heard of it. So unless you want to turn your computational physics course into "Introduction to LaTeX", it probably isn't reasonable to expect that incoming freshmen are immediately productive in LaTeX (which definitely has a learning curve). In fact, you will be lucky if they have had any formal training in Linux or Unix use let alone LaTeX (most US high schools , if they offer computer courses at all, invariably use Windows and Word).

Re:Random anecdote

[Tolkien]

Actually, a lot of folks don't even know what a .doc file is because of Microsoft's file-name extension hiding. They think of documents as the files with the "W" on the piece of paper.

Re:It wouldn't be a problem

[AntiDragon]

Active Directory is in turn an implementation of LDAP - the schema (the data structure) is MS specific but the underlying protocols are not.

You're not wrong but come on, everyone's been cloning from everyone making little tweaks, changes, additions, snips - nearly every piece of software out there, be it FOSS, Microsoft, Apple - is deriviative at some level.

The question is - how derivitive does it have to be to be "wrong", and at which point do you start letting fly the patents?

Re:It wouldn't be a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

>I've worked with multiple companies that have "outlawed" open source for supposedly legal reasons.

Dumb. Not even MS outlaws using open source binaries.

Actually it teaches a valuable lesson

[EzInKy]

The vast majority of freshman enter college believing that there a is Microsoft software monoculture. This requirement forces them to open their minds when they learn that alternatives do exist. Once so enlightened, it is short leap from realizing that they don't have to depend on a corporation to meet their needs to realizing that they don't have to depend on a government to meet their needs.

Re:Random anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

For you to call the basic .doc file format obscure is asinine.

I don't think that word means what you think it means. Obscure means "not clear or plain" which is exactly what a .doc file is. The content in a .doc file is encoded in a proprietary MS format. It is obscure by design. Compare to the content in an ascii text file, which any program that handles text can read.

If you were to ask most people on the street what a .doc file was, they would be able to tell you that it is a document file.

And they would be wrong. It is an MS Word file. Regardless, whether or not a file format is obscure has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people have heard of it.

MS loves people like you who blindly accept that everyone who uses a computer will pay the MS tax in order to read each others documents. As a professor, asking people to turn in assignments in an open format which can be created with a freely available program is the right thing to do. Demanding that students pay MS for the ability to turn in assignments is absurd.