Microsoft is doing to much too late

Companies who fail to adapt to new market realities are often accused of doing "too little, too late". However, in the case of Microsoft I think they may be a case of doing  "too much, too late".

Until recently Microsoft had a virtual monopoly in the market for operating systems and productivity software that ran on Desktop PCs. People who were technology aware tended to favour either a MacOS desktop (which its fans claimed as being so much better that it justified the extra cost) or Linux (which is available for free but is rarely offered pre-installed on new PCs). However, there was (and indeed still is) a market for people who don't want new features and would prefer if the interface stayed the same as the one that they fist learned to use over a decade ago. In order to defend their monopoly position Microsoft made minimal changes to their software and put a top priority on backward compatibility which ensured that they appealed to people who did not want to learn any new interface.

In the last 5 years or so it became clear to Microsoft executives and anyone else observing the computer industry, that the desktop is becoming less important. In order to appeal to this new market Microsoft developed Windows mobile and then Windows v8. This was a brave move because, although these interfaces have received good reviews from people who have put the effort into learning them - the interfaces are very different from earlier versions of Windows and hence they force Windows users to learn something new.

I personally know only one person who has a Microsoft windows based phone - although he tells me that he grew to love it once he invested in learning the unconventional interface. The only thing I hear about Windows 8 based desktops is enquiries from people who are technical laggards asking if there is any way to downgrade from the version of windows 8 which came with their new PC.

I applaud Microsoft for their bravery to experiment. However, they have already lost their fans among the technical elite because of their slowness to innovate. With Windows 8 coming out I feel that they might also be set to lose their fans among the sizeable portion of the public who don't want to learn new technology.

Is Microsoft interested in promoting Open Source Software?

Many people were surprised to ses Microsoft named as one of the sponsors of the recent Open Source Software BarCamp in UCD. Some people reacted negatively saying things like "how can Microsoft pretend to be a friend of open source software?", but I was personally very pleased to find Microsoft finally getting behind a movement whose time has come.

As well as providing financial support, Microsoft also sent over Garrett Serack who flew all the way from Redmond to Dublin for the event which was the furthest anyone traveled. He spoke about the Common Opensource Application Publishing Platform (CoApp) which is a project to build a package management system for Windows which would provide many of the benefits that we would associate with for example the Synaptic Package manager on Ubuntu.

His presentation style was really interesting - instead of using a traditional set of slides it seems like he wrote on a whiteboard and then took pictures. I was also impressed with the way he was so open about the limitations of Windows as a platform on which to host open source applications. Unfortunately, we ran into slight technical problems when we recorded Garratt's presentation and so we are missing the end part. This means that we only have recorded the part where he admits the flaws, but are missing the part where he explains how they plan to fix it (this was not deliberate I promise). You can see the partial recording from the OSSBARCAMP channel on Vimeo below.


Bringing Real Package Management to Windows with the CoApp Project, by Garrett Serack of Microsoft from Brian O'Donovan on Vimeo.

To be fair to Microsoft, I will point you to another presentation from Garrett about CoApp where he gets to complete the pitch. It certainly seems like an ambitious project. They will consider they have success when they get the PHP and Apache web server packages available through the system. This is more challenging than it sounds because both of these projects require a large number of dependencies. I am not certain when they expect to reach this milestone,but I hope it won't be too far into the future.


CoApp Presentation from Garrett Serack on Vimeo.

Garrett's presence at the conference prompted an article in the Irish Times which shows that Microsoft getting involved in open source projects serves as a validation for many people that open source has finally entered mainstream business. I wish Microsoft every success with this project. If it succeeds it will help spread the adoption of open source software even further.

Even Microsoft realises that Open Source sometimes makes business sense

When the Open Source movement started in the 1980s, most of the people involved were mostly concerned with utopian ideals about what was morally right and wrong. Many of the developers of open source software worked in publicly funded institutions and had no interest in making any money out of their work. At this time open source an commercial software were seen as opposites and nobody believed that it was possible to make money from working with open source software.

However, in the 1990s and early 2000s it became clear that it was indeed possible to build a business that was based upon open source software. A number of different models became popular:

1. Many web companies (e.g. Google) made huge profits by using open source software to deliver services.
   
2. Some companies (e.g. RedHat) made money by providing support for open source software
3. Other companies (e.g. IBM and Sun) used a mixed model whereby some software was made available for free under an open source license (e.g. eclipse and Java), but other software was sold under a traditional license
   

Almost all software companies seemed to come to the conclusion that open source played some significant part in their business model. The one exception to this rule was Microsoft, with both Bill Gate and Steve Balmers frequently lecturing on the fact that they saw the open source model as being either unrealistic or even evil and bad for business.

I was very surprised to read an announcement from Microsoft yesterday that they are releasing 20,000 lines of code to the Linux community under a GPL license. It now seems that all major software companies are in agreement that open source sometimes makes sense.