RSSMicrosoft's Ray Ozzie: 'Nobody's going to be 100% open'
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 25, 2009, 2:52 PM
Over the last five years, Microsoft has undergone a gradual, but significant, shift in its public image, a shift toward interoperability and a willingness to play more fairly in competitive markets. At the same time, it remains a commercial software producer committed to the protection of its proprietary intellectual property.
Openness, as CEO Steve Ballmer explained to his company's Worldwide Partner Conference in July 2008, should not imply free. "Open source also implies free -- free is inconsistent with paying for lunches at the partner conference," he told attendees at the time.
The picture Ballmer painted then was more black-and-white, where Microsoft will selectively venture into the black world of openness where necessary, but stay rooted within the white world of business that pays salaries and funds conferences. Last week during a press luncheon at PDC 2009 in Los Angeles, where Betanews and others were invited, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie (the company's leading executive spokesperson now, after Ballmer) painted a more scalable picture of "openness" from Microsoft's vantage point, one which is more attainable by degrees.
What's 'open?'
"Well, we're all open and we're all not open," said Ozzie, in response to a statement repeated (at least) four times by TechCrunch reporter Steve Gillmor: "Android's open." Gillmor was pressing Ozzie and colleague Bob Muglia, President of Server and Tools, to be more "open" about when and whether Silverlight will become interoperable among multiple smartphone platforms (the Silverlight video on iPhone announcement had not yet been made). Someone in the company giggled in response to Ozzie's remark like an extra on "Hee Haw"...it was probably me.
"I mean, nobody is going to be a hundred percent open," Ozzie continued. "Android's not 100% open, we won't be. There are things that are illegal that, if you have the ability to shut off, we're going to have to shut off. There are things that get in the way of your partner's business model. I may be wrong on this...but the way Google Voice hooks into the Droid, I think Verizon's still gets billed for calls...So Windows has a brand value of openness, meaning, we don't control what desktop apps people write. It's got a history of data openness; we don't look at the data that's sitting on your desktop. So I think as we move forward, the nature of what we do on phones that carry the Windows brand, will probably be more open than not. It's not like the Xbox, where Xbox, like the iPhone, is more of a managed ecosystem [that] is part of the business model."
Seated next to Ozzie was Moonlight developer Miguel de Icaza, who related his recent problems with Apple in working to port code from Moonlight (a Silverlight-compatible runtime for non-Windows platforms) from Mac OS X to the iPhone. Technically, there were few problems at all; but Apple made the decision (after the fact) that two of the APIs that de Icaza's team ported over, should not have been.
Are apps important on phone platforms?
LiveSide.net blogger Kip Kniskern followed up by asking Ozzie and Muglia why consumers should wrestle with the confusion over phone platforms at all -- specifically, why can't there be an App Store that's a single location that applies to every user? Ozzie interrupted by saying, "This isn't going to be a big deal for consumers anyway. It's not going to be at all.
"Let's just step back: There's a lot of confusion, I think, right now, about what's going on on the phones," he continued, "and I'll just give you a high-level perspective -- this is my perspective, I'm not 'right,' I may be wrong, it's a perspective: These are app phones -- what distinguishes them from everything else. We're now in an era where apps are the higher [element of importance], not just calls. And the apps that are on them, most of them -- I know there are exceptions, but most of them -- aren't deeply complex. A lot of them are apps that somebody paid a reasonable amount of money for some group to go port or implement. A lot of them are front-end companions to a Web service on the back end. I think, my assumption -- and I don't have any reason to believe that this is wrong -- is that once things settle out, and we all have app phones (Apple has an app phone, Google has an app phone, Microsoft has an app phone, BlackBerry/RIM has an app phone)...If there's a market there, all the apps that count will be ported. Every app that matters will be ported to every one of them, because if there's a set of users and it costs $50,000 of consulting time to have somebody port a little app, it's going to get ported. So I just don't think there's going to be significant differentiation at the app level.
"This is a big difference from the PC, Mac ecosystem in the past" Ozzie continued. "You cannot take the lessons that we learned in that era and apply them to the phone. It's a totally different world. If all you saw on the phone was Office -- something of that substance that took that many man-years to implement, and it was very nuanced -- then it would be different." Kniskern reminded Ozzie of the remaining problem with apps not being approved by the proprietors of app stores, especially Apple's. "But once the other app phones have a more lenient approval environment, then they change."
Next: Is Microsoft's cloud bigger than the law?
It's always nice to see how extremely intelligent people naturally perceive the key important elements for EVERYTHING PRESENTED TO THEM.
On 11/14/09 *I* wrote:
"Apple has 100,000 apps of mostly 2 and a half weekends worth of coding. That's..just qu33r."
http://www.betanews.com/...re-still-not/1258040897
Of course I also said what's on Ozzie's mind without him being at liberty to reveal it:
"It'll take about 3-5 years for processor speed to be good enough for serious WinMo apps. Windows Mobile 8 (maybe 9) will be out by then and totally blow any teenager toy from Apple out of the water. The business world isn't gonna use the latest-then iPhone in 5 years... "
As for being "open" -- ha ha ha. Microsoft's just downplaying this major advantage of Google (if Google plays it right). Google is pulling a known Microsoft trick (give IE free to gain/maintain dominance to get webpages written for it to get users using IE to gain/maintain dominance...) -- only this time, they're giving out the Mobile OS for free, in order to gain some marketshare and have THEM (Google) THEMSELVES become the MAIN DEVELOPERS for the most complex, productive, fun apps which will generate hundreds of dollars a year (per user) in incoming ad money and services money, way more than $20-$30 you can get from an OEM for ANY mobile OS...
I personally already envision a major problem with the notion of Google not making money on the OS itself, per se. As a developer, your best ideas will be ripped off by Google in no-time and they'll compete with you like there's no tomorrow because unlike Microsoft that has a few key software products, Google is all-over-the-place and constantly trying to get into new SOFTWARE areas. In other words, my blind belief at this point (and the words of Ozzie corroborate): Google will try to write the majority of top 100 apps from Apple Store for the Android market, while Microsoft will TAKE THEIR HANDS OFF and let DEVELOPERS PROSPER FINANCIALLY on their platform in their characteristic "you know we love you so much, developers; we will do almost anything to make you happy". Microsoft will win, Google & Apple = big losers of tomorrow. Just wait and see...
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|It's all about making others rich... MS killed Apple & IBM in the home/small biz markets by letting hardware manuf and third party software devs completely flourish on a CHEAP COMMODITY computing platform. It's AMAZING TO SEE how dumb both Google and Apple can be not to learn a 20+ y.o lesson... In other simpler words: if you don't design your BUSINESS in such a way that you give EXTREMELY HIGH incentives for others to CONCENTRATE on supporting YOUR PLATFORM, well then, you're gonna lose the top position to the one smart top dog that will make EXACTLY THAT happen... Every smart developer who'll look at Android and iPhone in 5 years will say: this is crap -- they're not investing 1/10th of the money Microsoft is investing in THEIR mobile OS, on THEIR software dev tools, on promoting OUR products. Developers absolutely positively no-doubts-about it will flock to WinMo for all the right reasons... Gartner, again, will have to close their business since everyone will come to me for prophecy/analysis once every single prediction of mine to date will come true (as usual)... hehehehe
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|So in other word, Ozzie does not understand the web and builts on an old world business model. The problem is that customers pay and hate you for that, and try actually everything they can to get rid off you and your products. Either you do web and open standards or you are out. That does not mean "100% open".
Let's give you an example. I use a video camera from Sony and it stopped interoperability under Vista. Sony does not provide a driver. This is what makes people hate Vista where it is Sony which treats their customers badly. But in fact the problem is that interfaces are not laid open, so anyone can go and write a generic driver. And the problem is that source code of hardware drivers is not disclosed. No one can fix the problem for me.
I want open standards. And I won't ever buy a Sony product again. With Windows you don't have the choice which makes you feel like a slave to incompetent software engineers who rip you off.
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|I think Microsoft's stance that the web should be developed in Silverlight/Azure pretty well sums up their position. They are mixing "openness" terms, using open standards does not mean making all data open and it doesn't mean making all programs open source. These are all separate issues and separate concerns. For MS to say someone keeps data private, so they are no worse by not using open standards is just a completely bogus comparison. MS should commit to using open web standards like HTML 5/JavaScript/AJAX. MS should improve the IE JavaScript engine so it isn't 20 times worse than everyone else and they should shelve Silverlight.,
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|Maybe learn some things about XML and XSLT?
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|From the title: Nobody is going to be 100% open (?) What the hell are you talking about? Would you open your eyes, please, just for a second? There are millions of absolutely open projects around the world, some of them very successful...
There is life outside the tapper you live, really!
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|100% open means they can do whatever they want with it, if they wish to sell it and make a profit they can, if they wish to take the existing code and use it for something else, they can. Most open source projects require if you use their code you have to post what you did with it
Everything has some restriction one way or another, otherwise MS would not have gotten into trouble for using that tool for making a usb image for netbooks.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
This does not constitute 100% open as there are restrictions
restrictions = not 100% open
If this was in fact 100% open there would be no need to write out what you need to do
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|The "restrictions" does imply 100% open. They are there to ensure that close minded (MS) developers does not steal open minded developers' work.
They are therefor not restrictions but enablers
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|Let me explain to you what Ozzie means when he says "nobody's going to be 100% open".
He is saying this:
No open source OS will gain ANY major marketshare (above 10%) if it does not GUARANTEE, by RESTRICTIONS, that the entity SPENDING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN CASH on that open source OS, will get their investment back, and then make at least some profit.
I'll break it down to simple logic facts:
1. You cannot gain over 10% in non-server (mobile/desktop) OS markets unless you spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in OS development EVERY YEAR. The closed OS's will outspend you and keep getting further and further away from you as far as advancement/features/compatibility/stability/etc.
2. So if you must spend A LOT OF MONEY to even PLAY IN THE GAME, then you're gonna have to get that money back somehow. You'd want GUARANTEES. Those GUARANTEES will be RESTRICTIONS on your partners, developers, and/or users.
You also want to keep in mind that both Apple and Microsoft have a MAJOR ADVANTAGE over Google in that they both have 20yr+ EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE in building OS's, and both companies will OBVIOUSLY try to modularize their flagship OS's so, for example, major coding/libraries from Windows 9, will be reusable on the mobile (and server..) OS. So, seeing this from another angle, IF YOU ARE ALREADY SPENDING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON YOUR OS'S, ADDING EXTREMELY HIGH-QUALITY, COMPATIBLE SUPPORT FOR ANOTHER OS IS A RELATIVELY SIMPLE TASK, compared to what Google will have to face.
Microsoft wins yet again.
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|And before someone comes in with a silly rebuttal... What's happening right now in the mobile OS market is OBVIOUSLY very temporary. Smartphones are in their diapers. They can't do CRAP (so to speak) due to weak computational power. When they can actually stand up on their legs, we will then see who the tough guys really are. Hint: not google and not apple...
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