Open Source at Microsoft
My personal opinion and comments in {orange}. Check the link for full context.
| Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV |
|---|---|---|---|
Bill Gates
This anti-trust thing will blow over. We haven’t changed our business practices _at all_. [May change e-mail retention policies]
- 1995
Basically what everyone is saying is that we have done nothing Microsoft specific that makes IE and IIS work well together. This is a huge missed opportunity. There seems to be a view that we should only do standard things and nothing better than standards even if it helps customers. This is a terrible mistake – it’s a mindset that will be fatal if it continues.
{Yes, it’s true – at one point a long time ago there were some people within Microsoft that wanted to conform to standards. BillG put the kibash on that quickly.}
I think we should say that all of the COM+ interfaces are available on UNIX even though we only provide the COM interfaces. Do COM transactions work on UNIX? Of course because we have defined these interfaces. We can even have someone like Transarc or one of the old UNIX transaction systems go ahead and implement some of the interfaces. This is great for us. It will never be as cheap or as integrated as it is on the NT platform. We should even encourage them to do this.
So the NEW THING is to say that the interfaces are there on UNIX and we are pleased with that.
{Hmmm, let me try something here:
I think we should say that all of .NET is available on Linux even though we only submitted CLR and C#. Does .NET work on Linux? Of course, because we have submitted these interfaces. We can even have someone like Novell go ahead and implement some of the interfaces. This is great for us. It will never be as featured or as integrated as it is on the Windows platform. We should even encourage them to do this. So the NEW THING is to say that the support is there on Linux and we are pleased with that.}
One thing we have got to change in our strategy – allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers in one of the most destructive things we could do to the company.
We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.
Anything else is suicide for our platform.
{Another directive straight from the top to intentionally break standards for pure anti-competitive purposes.}
Its right for business reasons because it supports competitive browsers but with a clear benefit for people who use our browser (particularly IE 5).
[...]
We should look at even patenting the things we do add to help Office.
{One of many times BillG reaches for the patent card.}
[On being told of the free Star Office]
An interesting development…
At some point we will have to consider the patents they violate.
{Not only does this illustrate another reach for the patent defense, but I like how it shows patents are the very first thing that comes to mind for him.}
One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn’t try to make the “ACPI” extensions somehow Windows specific.
It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work.
Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me.
Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open.
Or maybe we could patent something related to this
{Working towards a flush of patent cards in that hand. This also shows that you don’t have to actually sue someone to use patents against them. You can just let them sit there in the middle of the room like a big stinky turd to keep people away.}
Is Intel planning to write drivers for Linux? This huge driver group scares me. Its them doing something we should do and they will do it cross OS in a way that could be a real problem for us.
I’ve never had a customer mention Linux to me.
Why would the Office group be giving out the Office 2000 formats to competitors? To me this seems crazy.
{It is emails like this — and the thinking behind them — that really point out what a huge joke Microsoft’s current trumpeting of interoperability is. You want interoperability? Use standard formats. There — I just solved the whole interoperability problem. Interoperability is only a problem because Microsoft does not want interoperability.}
We will have to figure our ways to make sure that the Trident [an Internet Explorer layout engine] we ship in Windows doesn’t commoditize our Office editing asset but this can be done as some kind of hack after we get the engineering done. Parts of Trident like things relating to Ebook do not go to standards bodies.
[...]
One thing to be clear on – just because in point 2 we want to get the benefits of XMF/Ebook in Trident it does NOT mean we want to take those things to a standard commitee to give them away.
[T]here are problems for commercial users relative to the [GPL], and we are just making sure people understand the GPL.
[...]
[I]f you say to people, ‘Do you understand the GPL? (then) they’re pretty stunned when the Pac-Man-like nature of it is described to them.
[...]
[The GPL] breaks that cycle — that is, it makes it impossible for a commercial company to use any of that work or build on any of that work.
Our most potent Operating System competitor is Linux and the phenomena around Open Source and free software. The same phenomena fuels competitors to all of our products. The ease of picking up Linux to learn it or to modify some piece of it is very attractive. The academic community, start up companies, foreign governments and many other constituencies are putting their best work into Linux.
We have to spend a lot of money to make sure the openness of C# is well understood and that it is accepted at a level that allows our innovations to have traction. [...] The strength of this platform and the innovation around it is the key element in preventing commodization by Linux, our installed base and Network Appliance vendors.
Software written in universities should be free software. But it shouldn’t be GPL software. GPL software is like this thing called Linux, where you can never commercialize anything around it; that is, it always has to be free.
{Just a pure lie – and one he likes to repeat.}
There’s a faction against that [generating jobs], the so-called general GPL source license free software foundation, that says that these other countries other than the U.S. should devote R&D dollars in the so-called open approach, that means you can never commercialize that software.
{Another lie, with a little side helping of slandering the GPL.}
[On trying to get Intel to move from Linux to Windows for core development systems]
Where are we on this Jihad?
Do I need to be calling and emailing Ottelini [Intel CEO] to get this back on track??
Every day that goes by is a bad one for us on this. Despite the difficulty we need to draw the line in the sand on this one for a lot of reasons.
{MS uses the Jihad term in several internal communications … yet Free and Open Source enthusiasts are often the ones labeled as zealots or fundamentalists – sometimes even by other members of the community.}
Linux is UNIX, and it’s a form of UNIX. It’s not like anybody invented a new way of doing an operating system. It’s like Free BSD was, and that existed even 10 years ago. The open source approach is valuable for certain types of development. We’ve always seen software coming out of the universities that prototype those things, and it’s part of the ecosystem of our industry that that was there, and used, and people would, if the licensing model allowed it, if it was actually an open license, which the open source license is not open because you can’t take it and ever use it in a job-creating activity.
[...]
One thing to understand about the GPL is that you can’t just partially license—somebody can’t go and just license IBM Linux or Red Hat Linux, the way the GPL works, if you license anything at all you have to license it all.
[...]
[The GPL being the] unusual license that is the one that has the word open, because it’s not open, is called the GPL.
[...]
Certainly there’s no question that, particularly in some of the more cloning-type activities, intellectual property from many, many companies, including Microsoft, is being used in open source software. It’s pretty much when people clone things that often becomes unavoidable.
{This is where we see one of the weaknesses of separating the ideas of Open Source and Free Software. Gates tries to argue that Free != Open — when it can only be true that Open != Free.}
What is our view of Linux? I point out that Linux like Unix is not a single thing – it is many different systems that are not the same. The point that Linux is diverse is not one we are good at making. People who develop for RedHat Linux need to test for UnitedLinux. When people like SGI or HP enhance Linux you don’t get all those enhancements in one version – in fact just like Unix each company wants to have something that it does better and even though some pieces of source codes are there it doesn’t mean that the pieces are integrated and tested together. I explain how the commercial model allows for testing and binary upwards compatibility.
What about Linux price? I explain how Linux plus Websphere is more expensive that Window equivalent and Linux plus Oracle is more expensive than Windows equivalent. I explain how the richness of the platform that we sell for $500 just keeps getting richers – directory, certificates, app server, etc etc. I explain that for most projects the licensed OS is only a few percent of what people spend and getting the right platform can save much more and a few percent on the deployment, management, richness of the app, hardware flexibility, communications cost etc.. I say that is places where customers are very price sensitive like Education we have had special prices that are 15% of normal and we will keep those prices low enough to get very broad usage in education.
What about platform innovation – doesn’t Linux have more people doing cool stuff? I gave the analogy of someone saying that the new 747 competitior is being designed by an Open Source Airplane design group. The interdependencies and need for parallel coordinated innovation requires a commercial model with risk taking. A new 747 can’t be done by a non commercial model. I say that an opensource model could take an old design an have people do cloning and model improvements on various aspects independently. I give tablet as an example of something that required changes in many aspects on the system – getting Office to do its work and handwriting recognition and new platform capabilities.
I say that Linux is not where advances like great games, or tablet or management have comer or will come despite the openness. I explain the things like community involvement we have learned from Linux. I go back to the argument above that we are forced to do big advances or else or installed base will have “share” but there will be no revenue for us. I talk about Stallman’s view that there shouldn’t be jobs doing commercial software and how that could cut off a whole range of innovations that have come from the commercial world.
The GPL in our view should be used, which is the license that says you can’t enhance it and create a commercial product. Our view is that it should be used very narrowly, and we think people should think twice. So if you have government funded research, it’s ironic that then if it goes into that GPL you can’t create a company that creates jobs that pays taxes. And so most of the countries outside the U.S. have stayed away from that because they want to get the ecosystem that we have.
{Another … interesting … interpretation of the GPL.}
In recent years, there’s been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, “We’ve got to look at patents, we’ve got to look at copyrights.” What’s driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?
No, I’d say that of the world’s economies, there’s more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.
{And here, in true Gatesspeak, Freedom==Communism}
[Open Source creates a license] so that nobody can ever improve the software.
{Gates has never stopped distorting what Free and Open Source software means … just in case you are buying the latest round of propaganda out of Microsoft that they are “embracing” Open Source. He started the company fighting it, and left fighting it.}
Steve Ballmer
We cannot let Intel do chip design on Linux ever – what do we need to do to change the decision who do we need to call we will put whatever skin in the game they need
There’s no company called Linux, there’s barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it’s free.
{Another Freedom==Communism}
Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That’s the way that the license works
What do we want in cameras for metadata and UI? What do we want relative to device discovery? (hopefully patented stuff).
{Just one of many examples where we see priorities.}
Before I turn and talk about how all of that then can amount to growth, I do want to talk a little bit about the fact that there are risks in our business. We have risks, people love to talk about them. Challenges: People talk about the challenge we have from open source software. Yes, we do, and we’re focused in on it.
And we agreed on a, we call it an IP bridge, essentially an arrangement under which they pay us some money for the right to tell the customer that anybody who uses Suse Linux is appropriately covered. There will be no patent issues. They’ve appropriately compensated Microsoft for our intellectual property, which is important to us. In a sense you could say anybody who has got Linux in their data center today sort of has an undisclosed balance sheet liability, because it’s not just Microsoft patents.
[...]
We’ve had an issue, a problem that we’ve had to confront, which is because of the way the GPL works, and because open-source Linux does not come from a company — Linux comes from the community — the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders.
[...]
What [Novell and Microsoft] agreed, which is true, is we’ll continue to try to grow Windows share at the expense of Linux. That’s kind of our job. But to the degree that people are going to deploy Linux, we want Suse Linux to have the highest percent share of that, because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft. And we took a quota, you could say, to help them sell so much Suse Linux. That’s part of the deal.
- 2006 Remarks to Professional Association for SQL Server summit in Seattle
[L]et me be clear about one thing, we don’t license our intellectual property to Linux because of the way the Linux licensing, GPL framework works, that’s not really a possibility. The cleverness was, how do we get protection and respect for our intellectual property in a world in which that license agreement works? So the two top level points, as Ron [Hovesepian, Novell President and CEO] whispered to me, technical interoperability and patent peace of mind, and we’re trying to provide both of those things to our customers in a way that works for the business interest of the open source development community, and the Microsoft development community.
Consumers can, if they want to, now go buy what I’ll call the best possible form of Linux, the form of Linux that gives you peace of mind, and interoperability, and that’s SUSE Linux Enterprise, or SUSE Linux in all of its forms.
If a customer says, Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work? Essentially, If you’re using non-SUSE Linux, then Id say the answer is yes…I suspect that [customers] will take that issue up with their distributor. [Or if customers are considering doing a direct download of a non-SUSE Linux version] theyll think twice about that.
The deal that we announced at the end of last year with Novell I consider to be very important. It demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property even in the Open Source world. I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that Open Source is not free and Open Source will have to respect intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will.
{I love this because it so clearly shows Microsoft’s perspective on the Novell deal: the actual money transferred is not what’s important – the purpose is to portray Novell’s cooperation as validating years of patent and IP FUD from Microsoft.}
[W]e’ve worked very hard on making the value of a commercial company surpass what the open source community can deliver, because frankly, it’s not a business model we can embrace. It’s inconsistent with shareholder value.
{This illustrates why Microsoft can not be trusted when it comes to Open Source. It’s not because they are “evil” – it that Open Source is simply incompatible with their business model.}
People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us.
If anybody thinks open-source alternatives are free, I guess as they say, you can see me after class. [...] I will tell you that in any comparison that you would do of Windows with Linux, which is an open-source alternative, we will prove to you that when it comes to total cost of ownership our stuff is more economical, whether it’s the other patent-licensing costs that you might have to pay to use open-source software, which is kind of a big unknown right now [...]
There was the technology shift potentially to open source that we confronted four or five years ago, where we’ve done a very good job of competing against that new technology/business model. Today we live in a world where I think people worry about the risks in software plus services, and advertising, both of which I want to talk about during my talk today. And what do I tell our people, the only way to really win this game is to go out there and do it every day. Nobody talks as much today about the risks in our business that come from Linux and open source. They’re still there, they’re going to be there every day, and yet we’ve done a very, very good job, I think, in the marketplace versus those risks.
It’s untenable for our “Premier Partner” on Windows 2000 [Dell] to be doing aggressive market development for another OS. (If Kevin [Rollins, Dell President and CEO] protests they are not being aggressive we should remind him who sponsored Linux Word this year etc.)
Jim Allchin (Co-President, Platform & Services Division)
We must slow down Novell. … As you said Bill, it has to be dramatic … We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger.
Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer…. I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business…. I’m an American, I believe in the American Way. I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don’t think we’ve done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat.
{Continuing in the “Freedom==Communism” vein, here we get a little “Freedom==un-American” with a side of “Open Source is a threat to the American Way.” Disgusting.}
ActiveWin.com: How do you feel about the recent developments in the open source community? Do you still feel open source as a threat? Jim Allchin: Customers need to judge non-commercial software and Linux based on the merits of what they provide. This is true in terms of technology, compatibility, and the safety of your investment (whether the product you buy indemnified from patent-infringement lawsuits). Non-commercial software is a competitor to all commercial software. So yes, I view it as a competitive challenge.
We are not on a path to win against Linux. We must change some things and we must do it immediately. The current white papers, etc. are too high level and they are not going to cut it.
[...]
2. We need a paper which outlines technically how our system (kernel, web service, file server) is better. [...]
This paper needs to cover things like the facts that we have a preemptive kernel, asynchronous I/O, etc. Facts…that go to the core of why windows is different and Linux is old unix.
[...]
4. We need the technical resource / strategy resouce to look for fundamental issues about Linux that customers might not know. One that I thought of while on the trip that I used dealt with the fact you need to recompile your apps, etc when a new release of Linux comes out. I don’t think anyone wants to recompile their apps when they are running them in production, etc. I am sure if we put serious IQ to the situation we can think of many issues.5. We need someone to tear down the indemnification offered from RedHat and IBM to customers. We need to understand exactly the risk a customer is under if a patent lawsuit happens and Linux is challenged. [...]
There MUST be risks to customers that are being passed on. I want this understood precisely. We need to get the license from IBM given to customers and investigate.
6. We MUST get a [TCO] study done. [...]
If the IDC report won’t cut it, the we get another one done. Some customers know that Linux isn’t really free, but we need to help the other customers see this.[...]
10. We need to put together a single short paper [..] for a leave behind for customers of the 10 questions that they should consider before adopting Linux. [...]
These should be as hard-hitting as we can be, BUT they need to be factual based. [...] The paper we have today as I said was laughed at in one place.
{You know, if you were simply truthful, people wouldn’t laugh at you.}
GPL is the licensing model. We think it’s very bad for — on an education, telling the world why we think it’s bad. We don’t think it’s the same as public domain. Somebody wants to put in a free [BSD], we don’t have a problem with that, at least on licensing. But GPL, we think it’s very bad basically for the world, but especially for the United States.
Eric Rudder (Senior Vice President, Technical Strategy)
[Floating Point] is a case where we have fallen behind Linux, thanks to Intel’s great work w. Linux compilers. [...] It’s crazy we can’t get Intel to do Windows first, then Linux (if they must).
[...]
If we don’t get Intel off Linux internally (the failed EDA project) – we will never get the *cultural* alignment that we want. There are simply too many folks at Intel who use/love the stuff and want to improve it. We can *not* stop trying to win this project.
- 2003 “Highly Confidential” Email to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer
As many of you may know, we’ve actually kind of broadened the product portfolio of Visual Studio, targeting all the way from the low end with students and hobbyists, kind of competitive in that Linux space, making sure that every developer has a copy of .NET and is trained in writing .NET solutions. We introduced the low-end version we call Visual Studio Express, so we have Visual C# Express, Visual Basic Express, and Web Developer Express. These products are still in their beta phases, but we actually had more than a million downloads of Visual Studio, which is quite healthy for a developer tool. I think it will really help us in our competition with open source.
{Again, Microsoft realizes well that .NET is in competition with Open Source. That Microsoft itself competes with Open Source. Not just with Linux, not just with Apache, with Open Source.}
Craig Mundie
The GPL mandates that any software that incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it.
[...]
The GPL asserts that any product derived from source code licensed under it becomes subject to the GPL itself. When the resulting software product is distributed, the creator must make all of the source code available, at no additional charge.
- 2001 Speech to the New York University Stern School of Business
[In response to the question: Are there any patents that apply or that will apply to impelmenters of .Net or Hailstorm?]
I expect there certainly will be. I mean the patent process takes a long time.
Bill Hilf (General Manager, Platform Strategy)
The truth is my job is to help Microsoft have a clear, unbiased and knowledgeable understanding of Open Source Software (OSS): the technology, the development models, how the community works, the pros and cons, and the mechanics of the overall process.
We would like to strike similar patent deals with all the Linux vendors, but we had to start somewhere.
[...] Linux doesn’t exist any more in 2007. There is no free software movement. If someone says Linux is about Love, Peace and Harmony, I would tell them to do their research. There is no free software movement any more.
- 2007
This isn’t like a trivial invention. There are a couple hundred significant patents here.
{Hilf was a previous mouthpiece for Microsoft on Open Source.}
Sam Ramji
The reason we disclosed that [we believe Linux violates 235 patents], is because there was a request for transparency following the Novell deal last November. This was a response to that transparency.
{Ramji was another previous mouthpiece for Microsoft on Open Source, who is now on the board of Microsoft’s so-called Open Source “Foundation” CodePlex.org.
Also, please note that in response to this “request for transparence” Microsoft has never actually identified any actual patents or area of practice or
parts of Linux that it thinks are in violation – Microsoft just dropped a number out there, with no explanation or evidence. Very transparent, Mr. Ramji.}
Vinod Valloppillil (Program Manager)
OSS is a concern to Microsoft for several reasons:
- OSS projects have achieved “commerical quality”
- OSS projects have become large-scale & complex
- OSS has a unique development process with unique strengths/weakness
[...]
[T]o understand how to compete against OSS, we must target a process rather than a company.
[...]Linux and other OSS advocates are making a progressively more credible argument that OSS software is at least as robust – if not more – than commercial alternatives.
[...][E]vangelization of API’s in a closed source model basically defaults to trust, OSS API evangelization lets the developer make up his own mind.
[...]Linux is unlikely to be a threat in the medium-long term on the desktop for several reasons:
- Poor end-user apps & focus. [...]
- Switching costs for desktop installed base. [...]
- UNIX heritage will slow encroachment. Ease of use must be engineered from the ground up. Linux’s hacker orientation will never provide the ease-of-use requirements of the average desktop user.
Beating Linux
In addition to the attacking the general weakness of OSS projects (e.g. Integrative / Architectual costs), some specific attacks on Linux are:
- Beat UNIX
- All the standard product issues for NT vs. Sun apply to Linux
- Fold extended functionality into commodity protocols / services and create new protocols
- Linux’s homebase is currently commodity network and server infrastructure. By folding extended functionality (e.g. Storage+ in file systems, DAV/POD for networking) into today’s commodity services, we raise the bar & change the rules of the game.
[...]
The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing.
[...]How can Microsoft capture some of the rabid developer mindshare being focused on OSS products?
Some initial ideas include:
- Provide more extensibility – The Linux “enthusiast developer” loves writing to / understanding undocumented API’s and internals. Documenting / publishing some internal API’s as “unsupported” may be a means of generating external innovations that leverage our system investments.
- Monitor OSS news groups. Learn new ideas and hire the best/brightest individuals.
[...]
The OSS communities “MSDN” equivalent, of course, is a loose confederation of web sites with API docs of varying quality. MS has an opportunity to really exploit the web for developer evangelization.
[...]OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.
- Open Source Software: A (New?) Development Methodology, a 1998 “Highly Confidential” report (Halloween I memo)
Linux represents a best-of-breed UNIX that is trusted in mission critical applications, and – due to it’s open source code – has a long term credibility which exceeds many other competitive OS’s.
[...]
An important attribute to note which has led to volume drivers is the ease with which you can write drivers for linux, and the relatively powerful debugging infrastructure that linux has. [...]
Any idiot could write a driver in 2 days with a book like “Linux Device Drivers” — there is no such thing as a 2-day device driver for NT.
[...]An advanced Win32 GUI user would have a short learning cycle to become productive. [Emphasis in original]
[...]The Linux community is very willing to copy features from other OS’s if it will serve their needs. Consequently, there is the very real long term threat that as MS expends the development dollars to create a bevy of new features in NT, Linux will simply cherry pick the best features and incorporate them into their codebase.
The effect of patents and copyright in combatting Linux remains to be investigated.
- Linux OS Competitive Analysis, a 1998 “Highly Confidential” report
(Halloween II Memo)
{Bill Gates on these reports: The two documents in here from Vinod are the ones I want the board to see.
You may also be interested in ESR’s pages on the Halloween Memos.}
To understand [our strategy for competing with Linux] it is important to remember the following:
- Linux isn’t most importantly a product/feature: it’s a philosophy change
- Linux has no new specific features to co-opt
- Unlike the NC: the NC touted TCO benefits, and thus we introduced ZAK/ZAW
- Unlike the Internet: the Internet was loaded with technology changes, and thus we invested in browser technologies and reexamined all our existing products
The core strategic thrust of Linux is NOT an attack against some product/feature weakness of Microsoft. It’s an attack at the base of the commercial software industry – Intellectual Property.[...]
{I like this because it shows that Microsoft introduces competing standards just to hurt other emerging technologies, not because they have any inherent worth, or are “innovations” in any way.}
Microsoft is an IP company. Like the rest of the software industry, >90% of our IP valuation stems from Trade Secrecy of the source code. Open Source is mutually exclusive with Trade Secrecy. [Embracing Open Source and releasing NT Source] would instantly make the various Win32 clones (e.g. http://www.winehq.com) an order of magnitude more capable.
[...]Open Source development is the greatest cloning machine of all time. [...] Additionally, strong patent procurement is a key enabler which allows us to publish more of our source code to leverage evangelization benefits
[...]The following are all underway:
- Ramp-up / staff Linux competitive marketing efforts
- More proactively & aggressive secure patent rights to MSFT innovations that will be significant to the OSS fight. Development teams must shift mindsets from source code secrecy towards patents as the primary means of securing our key innovations.
{Note the wording: “The following are all underway” …
Microsoft tried to explain away the first two reports off as “an engineer’s individual assessment of the market at one point in time” , but as we’ve seen, the reports were shown to the Microsoft board at Bill Gates’ direct instructions, and the language in parts is outside of “assessment of the market” – and in some points specifically relays Microsoft’s cuurent and ongoing efforts against Linux.}
James Plamondon (Technical Evangelist)
Every line of code that is written to our standards is a small victory; every line of code that is written to any other standard, is a small defeat. Total victory, for DRG, is the universal adoption of our standards by developers, as this is an important step towards total victory for Microsoft itself: “A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.”
[...]
[A slide containing "We're Just Here to Help Developers"]
[A slide containing "We're Just Here to Help Developers", circled and crossed out]
[A slide containing "We Are Here to Help MICROSOFT"]
[...]
Too Many to Help
- Can’t help ‘em all
- We help those who can help us.
- If they can’t or won’t help us
- Screw ‘em!
- Help their competitors instead
[...]
Attack the Enemy’s Fortified Cities
- Big ISVs that compete with Microsoft
- Lotus, Novell, Oracle
- They hate us
- and there’s nothing we can do about it
- Don’t throw yourself against their walls
- Help their competitors instead
- Let them attack the cities for us
- They’ll be grateful for our help (for a little while…)
- Effective Evangelism, a “Highly Confidential” Microsoft document
{You should read all of this gentleman’s presentations. They strike me with a near-pathological delight in deceiving and using other human beings – they make me feel dirty, like I’m reading a serial killer’s diary or something.}
Analysts are people who are paid to take a stand, while always trying to appear to be disinterested observers (since the appearance of independence maximizes the price they can charge for selling out). [...] Bribe Hire them to produce “studies” that “prove” your technology is superior to the enemy’s, and that it is gaining momentum faster. [Strikethrough in original].
[...]
Working behind the scenes to orchestrate “independent” praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy’s, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. “Independent” analysts’ report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). “Independent” consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). “Independent” academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). “Independent” courseware providers should start profiting early from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage.
[...]
A stacked panel, one the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conferences allow the moderator to select the panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can’t expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only “independent ISVs” on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed – just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the “real world.” Sound marvelously independent doesn’t it? In fact, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the “independent” panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you’ve got a major win on your hands.
Finding a moderator is key to setting up a stacked panel. The best sources of pliable moderators are:
- Analysts: Analysts sell out – that’s their business model. But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.
- Consultants: These guys are your best bets as moderators. Get a well-known consultant on your side early, but don’t let him publish anything blatantly pro-Microsoft. Then, get him to propose himself to the conference organizer as a moderator, whenever a panel opportunity comes up. Since he’s well-known, but apparently independent, he’ll be accepted – one less thing for the constantly-overworked conference organizer to worry about, right?
- Generalized Evangelism Timeline, a “Highly Confidential” Microsoft document
The Role of ISVs
- Pawns in the struggle
- Today’s allies; tomorrow — who knows
- We may move into their markets
- They may move into ours
- Valuable pawns
- We can’t win without ‘em
- Must take good care of them
- Can’t let ‘em feel like pawns
- Treat them with respect (as you use them)
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Mind Control
- To control mental output, to have to control mental input
- Take control of the channels by which developers receive information
- Then they can only think about the things you tell them
- Thus, you control mindshare
