Watch out, parents - close the windows, and protect your kids. Ballmer is on the move again, this time to put the final nail into his own coffin.
Last week in the UK. A company event in London, discussing online services. Ballmer said this:
On the other hand, I’d also tell you the following is true. All… I would love to see all Open Source innovation happen on top of Windows. So we’ve done a lot to encourage, for example, the team building, PHP, the team building, many of the other Open Source components, I’d love to see those sorts of innovations proceed very successfully on top of Windows.
Because our battle is not sort of business model to business model. Our battle is product to product, Windows versus Linux, Office versus OpenOffice.
The only other thing I would say that is probably germane is, we spend a lot of money, the rest of the commercial industry spends a lot of money on R & D. We’ve spent a lot of money licensing patents, when people come to us and say, “Hey, this commercial piece of software violates our patent, our intellectual propery, we’ll either get a court judgment or we’ll pay a big check. And we are going to — I think it is important that the Open Source products also have an obligation to participate in the same way in the intellectual property regime.
That’s why we’ve done the deal we have with Novell, where not only are we working on technical interoperability between Linux and Windows but we’ve also made sure that we could provide the appropriate, for the appropriate fee Novell customers also get essentially the right to use our patented intellectual property. And I think it’s great the way Novell stepped up to kind of say intellectual property matters. People use Red hat, at least with respect to *our* intellectual property in a sense have an obligation to eventually compensate us.
There are plenty of other people who may also have intellectual property. And every time an Eolas comes to Microsoft and says, “Pay us,” I suspect they also would like to eventually go to the Open Source world.
So getting what I call an intellectual property interoperability framework between the two worlds I think is important.
What did Pamela Jones of Groklaw say to this? Her reply was, partly:
I get why Microsoft wants what it wants. They don’t want to die off like an aged and irrelevant elephant. But I don’t want to use their software ever again as long as I live. I hate it. It doesn’t work. It spies on me. It’s a malware magnet. It’s slow. It doesn’t multitask the way I’m used to. It takes over my computer in ways I can’t prevent, and the worst is, when something goes wrong, there’s nothing you can do about it without worrying about stepping on some of their stupid IP. It is the exact opposite of FOSS, where none of that happens.
Exactly. Debian developer Adrian von Bidder said:
We’ve all seen how successful the sue your own customers business model is. At this time, I think it’s safe to say that most big Linux users are also big Microsoft customers because Linux in the enterprise still means primarily Linux on the Server, Windows on the Desktop, so going after the big Linux users will be exactly that.
Right again.
Did that guy forget about SCO? Didn’t he see what happens when you shoot - no, not on your own customers, but at your own people over in Burma? They will put pressure on you, even more pressure than you ever had. The picture the public gets of guys like Steve Ballmer is this:
I mean, the “market”, and in this case that is: the shareholders, will decide. It is what happened to SCO. It is what is actually happening over in Burma - international pressure to “get rid of the guy”. How much longer can a company, even a big one like Microsoft, afford that kind of lunatic as their CEO?
This all reminds me of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s “Der Tunnel“. Go and read it if you don’t know it - it’s only about 14 pages or so. But be prepared for the horror story of your life.
Update: just found this on the blog of 37signals:
I have never seen a worse user interface in my life. Is that what this company believes their customers really want? Then no wonder they’re losing profit…
Update2: it seems that I’m not alone with that kind of analysis, and I’m not the first one. None less than Paul Graham wrote the same back in April already, here and here. Being the far more “popular” guy than me (he is one of those “A-List Bloggers”), his entry is recommended and appreciated.
Update3: now also Mark Shuttleworth commented on the case, tho D.C. Parris suggests to simply ignore the troll. Which is what I’ll do from now on - each time I update this, it re-appears on other sites unnecessarily (sorry, Planet SysAdmin!).
I was making my way through this article just fine until the Burma reference. Was that really necessary? Think a little more before you type next time, would you?
I’m afraid it was necessary, James. Shooting at the innocent… isn’t that what Ballmer is doing as well?
Well, the gravity of the two -is- entirely different… and I suspect that’s why the complaint.
Still, the analogy is a valid one.
“Watch out, parents - close the windows, and protect your kids. Ballmer is on the move again, this time to put the final nail into his own coffin.”
If only it were that easy…
Steve Ballmer is irrelevant. He’s just another greedy 65-year-old living in the 1950s. He wants another Coca-Cola and something to control (like his TV set). Back in the 1950s he was brainwashed (they’re called Baby Boomers) in front of a TV. He doesn’t understand it’s now 2007, and resistance is futile.
Brilliant summation. Thanks for posting. The youtube vid in particular will be helpful for those who need to see Ballmer in action. I am not sure about the rest of the world, but in the US, public opinion can turn so quickly. Ballmer’s outrage looks similar to Howard Dean’s or Senator McCain’s (which cost them dearly). No one wants to see venom, in business or politics. One of the reasons Hilary Clinton is smiling and laughing so much during interviews is to avoid any display that could possibly be interpreted as anger.
Of course, different arenas, but Ballmer’s approach can easily help encourage people to switch. I’ll help it circulate. Thanks.
Welcome back Cathy, and thanks for your nice comments. The other guys as well of course.
If that company had a guy with a bit more brains, like, say, Jonathan Schwartz (I think he’s brilliant), then that would make them dangerous or at least competitive. As it is now, they (M$) can only lose. Bad for them.
And sorry about the rant and the comparing to Than Shwe - but I simply couldn’t resist. Those who beat the innocent don’t deserve any better IMHO.
At the moment M$ are still aloof, charging money for this monstrosity called Vista, being a arrogant to the FOSS community and anybody considering them.
But I can honestly not imagine that a polarizing personality like Ballmer would be without enemies in his own camp, and that last stunt may well contribute to be the last nail.
Its only a question of time …
Once M$ comes to realize that people generally don’t ‘like’ their software anymore, they will give Vista away for free (or whatever they may call their OS then), they will run rings around Linux, bending over backwards to pledging their software is compatible with opensource, odf … and everything else that seemed so ghastly to the touch to them before.
I feel, its like watching a movie in slow-motion, and I am looking forward to the next sequence.
All the way down hill from now for M$ … bye, bye Bill … bye Steve , need some new chairs for your retirement?
I don’t think that Microsoft is going to die. They’ll be the new IBM. But this is the beginning of the downfall of the Microsoft empire. http://fishtrain.com/2007/11/13/the-downfall-of-the-microsoft-empire/
I have just seen the Steve Ballmer video. Is he the only one in captivity, or are there any more in the wild? Because if there is I am never going camping again.
Hehehe… I’m afraid that there are more of them. Funny what money can make out of people, isn’t it? And frightening as well…
I now possess a Steve Ballmer t shirt to keep werewolves away.