Ok, ed, as promised, some material on Microsoft and "innovation". We start off with another one of Bill's revisionist history things,
Gates sees antitrust victory news.com
Addressing a conference on the Internet and the Media, Gates said that previous antitrust cases, particularly against International Business Machines, provided Microsoft with strong legal amunition. "They [IBM] won all of those law suits. Some of those precedents are fantastic for us because they say that even a successful company can be innovative," Gates said.
I have no idea what "innovative" means there. Bill wasn't clear. On the same day, we have:
Gates: IBM, Sun are biggest threat news.com
Threat to Bill's pending, righteous takeover of the entire computing world, of course. The word doesn't exactly come up, but try to read between the lines, ok?
IBM is still ten times Microsoft's size in terms of employment. They've still got that presence, but they are very conservative," Gates said.
"But the thing that's strange is, what is IBM's [software] unique architectural initiative? I swear they will come up with one some time. There is a vacuum there that we are benefiting immensely from," Gates said.
I guess this is in contrast to Bill's "innovative" "unique architectural initiative", the DNA retrovirus. The IBMers say that Bill ripped off the heart of it all, COM, from IBM. Of course, now that we've moved on to COM+, STORAGE+, FORMS+, all in a noble attempt to rationalize the 8500-odd Windows APIs, I guess you can say Microsoft added something "unique" to the mix. One final ironic bit:
The current watchword was "simplicity," he said, adding that Microsoft would seek partnerships rather than moving into areas where it had little expertise.
I like that line about partnerships, especially in light of a previous story I noted here.
Enlisting high-end help for NT news.com
Microsoft executives all but admitted today that if its Windows NT Server operating system is ever to gain the features that will make it an attractive alternative to proven high-end software, it's going to need some help.
Poor Microsoft, lacking expertise in operating systems. I'd have to leave it to Mr. Krnjeu to explain how other people are guilty of hype here, but the masters of megahype marketing are to be taken seriously on the matter of "enterprise computing".
And one more for the road, ed. It's an old story, from the beginning of the summer, but I think you'll enjoy it.
A unique look at software innovation was provided recently by Greg James in a letter to the editor published prominently by both the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the two largest dailies in Microsoft Town. James is the owner of a software company that competes (successfully, James says) with Bill Gates' Corbis venture in selling CD-ROMs of fine art. In his letter, he wrote:
"It would do people well to remember that Microsoft (for all its power and size) has never had a major success that was truly its own idea. It bought the original operating system [DOS] from another computer company, it copied Apple for its Windows operating system, it copied Lotus 1-2-3 and came up with Excel, it ripped off Netscape's idea for a Web browser, it came out with Word after WordPerfect, and so on and so forth. On the other side of the coin, when you look at all its own ideas or products (ones that have to stand on their own two feet) you have a different story: Bob, MSN, Slate, Mungo Park, and most of their entertainment products have been huge flops ... .
"An obvious pattern has emerged: If the idea is taken from someone else and assisted by or bundled with its operating system monopoly, it works. If it is an original idea and isn't supported by the monopoly, it fails (usually miserably)," James continued.
(from infoworld.com
Like I said, I don't feel like getting into the definition business. Maybe you'd like to give us the proper Microsoftese definition, ed. Personally, on the subject of "innovation", as well as broader legal matters, I think Bill ought to take John Dvorak's advice and shut up. Microsoft has good lawyers, I just don't see where Bill is one of them.
Cheers, Dan. |
