Microsoft Died with the DoJ Ruling in 1998, and Why That Means OSS Is Winning

https://medium.com/@omarh/microsoft-died-with-the-doj-ruling-why-oss-is-winning-b172b58289c3

by alive2007 • 10 years ago

6 6 10 years ago

dragontamer2• 10 years ago

Comparisons to the 90s version of Microsoft to Apple make this article sound utterly insane.

For the first six or seven versions of IE, Microsoft’s IE-only JScript engines purposefully broke functionality with the open ECMAScript standards.

Thank god for that. XMLHTTPRequest truly is better than ECMAScript standards. No matter how you look at it, the web today would not exist as we know it if it weren't for Microsoft's proprietary JScript-only original implementation of what we have come to know as "Ajax".

And the worship of Apple here is rather... insane as well. The "closed" platform of Win98 looks open-as-all-hell compared to the walled-garden of iOS and iTunes.

Mac OSX may superficially be built on top of open technologies, but its reliance on iTunes for application distributions is harsher than even Win10's UWP platform (somewhat closed: but sideloading is allowed).

OSS is losing. iOS Apps make more money and have a stronger community than Android. Even within Android, Google has begun to lock down APIs (Google Play API is NOT part of the Android Open Source project for example).

Case in Point: the Amazon Fire Phone is Android. Does it "feel" like Android to its users? No? Because Google has successfully "embraced, extended, extinguished" the open-source Android.

Unless you really think that your fully-free Android app without any google-integration is going to be downloaded from Amazon Marketplace... my bet is that your competitor with Google Now / Google Play integration will get more purchases from Google's store.

But that's just my perspective.

alive20073• 10 years ago

I guess in a superficial sense, OSS is still losing. But it's losing less than it was losing 10 years ago. Its been steadily growing in popularity.

F(x) is still negative, but f'(x) is positive.

dragontamer2• 10 years ago

In the 90s, if I wanted to release a game through the mail or whatever means, I was on equal grounds as everyone else. Remember that Doom was just a shareware game passed around through the mail primarily.

Today, if you want to write a game for a major platform (ie: iOS), you basically have to get the permission from Apple. Put a confederate flag in a civil war game?

Grounds for termination.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/25/technology/apple-pulls-civil...

Feel like writing a Bitcoin wallet for iOS?

Grounds for termination. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2095060/apple-removes-blockch...

You can only write applications today if the platform holder agrees with your purpose. How the heck is this better than the 90s, when you were allowed to write whatever you wanted and anyone was allowed to install?

You may think things are improving, but if things keep going in this direction of the "walled garden", I really don't think they're better.

At least the Windows Win32 platform is still relatively open for games / applications. But everything else is basically run by an integrated store now: iOS, Android (Google Play).

mohamedattahri• 10 years ago

So basically, OSS wins because that's what developers want? I don't think so.

Developers want to make a living, and for that, they need a user base. Developers were more than happy to build for MS when it had all the users.

Bill Gates missed the Internet. Steve Ballmer missed Mobile. They both let others build massive user bases on those two platforms. Developers followed the users.

It just happens than Microsoft, the best developer tool maker at the time, did not have anything to offer them. They found support in the OSS community.

Today, Microsoft is back in a position where it needs to court developers with familiar tools (OSS). But make no mistake, their real selling point is the unified and combined one billion users of Windows PCs (desktop, mobile, xbox, etc.).

Also - there are tons of completely false statements about MSFT's position in some key markets, profitability, and successes with consumers.

Finally, stop hating Bill Gates. Every entrepreneur's dream is to create a monopoly.

alive20073• 10 years ago

Good points.

Developers need to make a living. In Microsoft's heyday, Microsoft could abuse their monopoly to coerce developers to care more about making a living than they cared about what they liked (OSS).

Now, this simply isn't true anymore.

My insults lobbed at Bill Gates were merely jokes. I obviously have a ton of respect for the man. Monopolies aside, he was the leading entrepreneur of his day alongside Jobs.

What were my false statements?

Microsoft Died with the DoJ Ruling in 1998, and Why That Means OSS Is Winning

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